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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bud Dunn/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 11:13, 29 September 2016 [1].

Bud Dunn

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Nominator(s): White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:03, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about Bud Dunn, who is notable for training two World Grand Champions in the Tennessee Walking Horse breed, being inducted into his breed's Hall of Fame, and being named Trainer of the Year twice. Interestingly, he accomplished most of these things as an older man, and is the only horse trainer I know of who won anything in their 80s. The article is fairly short, but I've tried to cover his career in a neutral way, with a lot of RS. (He would have been covered extensively in the official TWH magazine, the Voice, and was probably on the cover both times he won the World Grand Championship, but issues from back then are not online and I've had no luck finding copies at used book sales.) This is my first try at FAC, but I have 5 GAs counting this one. White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:03, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments by starship.paint

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The problem is getting the sources to consult them. I know that traditionally, the World Grand Champion each year is on the cover of the Voice, and they also write an article about them. The problem is finding copies; since it's a magazine, most people will have thrown them out years ago. I know I go to a lot of used book sales, and haven't found any from that time period. If I ever get to the Tennessee Walking Horse National Museum, I can probably find and reference the relevant issues. That is not likely to happen soon (it's about 100-125 miles away from me), though I do have an old copy of Western Horseman that has some coverage about Dunn and RPM. White Arabian Filly Neigh 20:14, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Short of a trip to a museum and spending days digging through one-of-a-kind sources, I think WAF has done a pretty thorough review. The newspapers are actually some of the best extant sources we have for these old guys; few industry magazines are digitized and eBay is, $$$ indeed, plus locating good indexes to find out WHICH issue something was in can be equally challenging. I found the text on Harmon v. Dunn, here -- that case mostly involved Steve, not Bud, his name only appears as the dba for the stable name, but Steve was the lead plaintiff and he prevailed, so it's all irrelevant here unless we need an RS that "Bud Dunn and Son Stable" existed as a dba business entity and that it was in Florence, Alabama. I think other sources cover that. (The legal precedent is of interest, but not here]). The snippet view of Green's book looks like a list of results and so is RS for those results in snippet view. I'm pretty good at digging up Congressional hearings, if the HPA testimony in 1969 is findable online, I'll find it. If it's relevant, I'll be back or add something to the article; otherwise, no news is no luck. Montanabw(talk) 01:08, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Follow up: I did an exhaustive online search, and while it does appear that this source contains some testimony on page 106 by Bud Dunn related to what became the Horse Protection Act of 1970, full text is not available online; I reviewed the Library of Congress and Congress.gov, the Hathi Trust and several other sources. (Cornell, USDA, etc.) Print copies are reasonably available at various libraries and maybe via interlibrary loan, but I don't know if WAF can access any of this. But absent additional sources saying what impact his testimony had on the outcome of the legislation (and I cannot locate any), or if he made some other public statement about it, it's probably SYNTH in this article anyway, though it would be interesting to know if he was for or against it. The late 60s and early 70s are a bearcat for finding stuff; I did find at Hathi Trust scan on the Congressional Record of the hearing on the same bill in 1970 but not the one in 1969. Montanabw(talk) 01:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @White Arabian Filly: apologies for the ping, I didn't see they were already addressed. Could you get a source for the Paschals being brothers though? starship.paint ~ KO 12:58, 8 August 2016 (UTC
  • @White Arabian Filly: nice job! There are two more things though. Would it be possible to find out his earliest world championship win? Plus, list the winning years for his winning horses (Stock Exchange etc). Because right now the earliest actual win date by a horse is 1992, while he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987. He must have done significant things before 1987... starship.paint ~ KO 12:44, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've added a couple of new refs that say he competed in 125-150 shows a year, and that he won a leadup to the World Grand Championship in 1970 (doesn't say whether it was an actual Championship, but it seems to be a pretty big class, so it is significant enoufh to include). I've added dates for all the winners I could find. One of them says he was living in Russellville, Alabama in 1970, so I included that as well. It doesn't say his stable was there though and Russellville isn't far from Florence, so he could've lived there and commuted to his stable. Everything says the stable was in Florence, Alabama. White Arabian Filly Neigh 20:48, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

Comments This is close to FA quality, but I think the article has an organization problem. All the information seems to be there, and I don't see much wrong with the writing at a sentence level, but occasionally it feels bitty and jumps back and forth. Some examples, along with a couple of other points:

  • The life and death section mentions the two World Grand Championships; this is repeated in the career section.
  • The life section mentions he moved to Alabama from Georgia; the career section mentions him living in Alabama, then repeats that he moved there from Georgia.
  • You mention Russellville and Florence in quick succession, but the reader doesn't know the two are near each other; since you don't say "he lived in Russellville and his stables were in Florence", I thought he moved from one to the other and had to reread it to be clear.
  • The note about breaking bones seems a non sequitur where it's currently placed; can it be better integrated with the text?
  • The "Spring Celebration" isn't linked or explained.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:15, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Addressing comments:
    • Would it be better if the World Grand Championships weren't mentioned in the life section? I may eventually do an article about Steve himself, since he also won 2 WGCs and one had nothing to do with Bud (because he was dead by then). In the meantime I could cut the mention of Bud's WGCs out of that section if it would help the flow.
    • I put more detail on the move in the career section because it related to him buying the stable and starting the training business. It seemed to have more to do with his career than personal life.
    • Actually, he does seem to have lived in Russellville when he first came to Alabama, and then moved to Florence. The 1984 article definitely says he lived in Florence at the time. I'm assuming he lived in Russellville and commuted to the stables in Florence, then moved himself to Florence when he found a house there. I can't find anything that says so, though. Would it be better to add a sourced note about the close proximity of the two towns, or to add some content with a source about each town's distance from Huntsville (the biggest city in north Alabama)?
    • I just remove that about the broken bones if necessary.
    • I haven't got around to writing an article about the Spring Celebration yet (though it probably deserves one, and so does the Wartrace Horse Show, and the National Trainers Show, and a lot of others). I added a sourced sentence explaining it; it's similar to the main Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration, except it's in the spring instead of late summer and they don't award a World Grand Championship. It's not as popular with spectators, but it is a fairly big show and popular with trainers who want to compete in the World Championships later in the year. White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:26, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think the best fix might be to combine the life and career sections and call it something like "Life and career", and then have a "Notable horses" section. Then you could move everything into chronological order, and there'd be no cause for repetition. I don't think it would be all that much work -- just move a couple of things up and down. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:12, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I may do that, though I don't know when he married Elaine or had his kids, so that could be a chronology problem. I also have trouble moving things around because cell phones like I edit with don't copy-paste well. I'd prefer to leave it with the marriage and death separate from the horse training stuff, but I could deal with putting it together if I have to. In the meantime I'll do a bit of work to improve the flow and try to improve the way it reads. If it mentions something briefly in one place and then more extensively further down, I can blame my study of fiction writing. I had it so beat into my head that you should mention something before it kills off a character or blows up the house. 😃 White Arabian Filly Neigh 20:48, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a draft in a sandbox, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about; how does that look? By the way, I looked here and I see Dunn listed as Trainer of the Year for 1991, but not 1980; are you sure he won that year? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:03, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It looks OK; you are talking about putting that in place of the life and career sections that are already there, and then making notable horses into its own section immediately below, right?
The newspaper source definitely says he was Trainer of the Year in 1980, but says it was with the Professional Walking Horse Trainers Organization, not the Walking Horse Trainers Association, which is what they call it now. I don't know if the association changed name, or perhaps there were once two separate associations and they merged, or one went defunct and the other survived. White Arabian Filly Neigh 20:16, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If you can't be sure they're the same award, I'd change the text of the article; right now it says he won the award "again", which may not be accurate. You might want to contact the WHTA and see if they can clarify the history. I looked up "Professional walking horse trainers organization" on newspapers.com but the only hits were behind a paywall, all from 1979 to 1980. They were all from the Louisville Courier-Journal -- do you have access to that via your library? As for the text, yes, I wrote it to replace the first two sections but not the notable horse section, but I didn't mean for you to take it exactly as is -- I just wanted to illustrate what I meant about re-organizing the text so it flows more smoothly. Up to you how much of that you think is worth doing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:58, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I can change the reading a bit to say that he was Trainer of the Year twice, without saying that it was the same group that gave him the award. (Though Trainer of the Year is pretty much the same thing in all the hundreds of organizations that have it.)
I used Google Newspaper archive as the primary resource for this; I'd have to look and see if that paper is in their archives. Some papers I really want, like the ones from the Shelbyville, Tennessee area, are not in there. I understood that your draft was for demo purposes only. I will think about moving the content around and combining those two sections, and will probably try to do it tomorrow (no time today). Right now there's an SPA inserting allegations of horse abuse into another of my created articles, and I'm having to deal with that, and stuff is going on in real life. White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:09, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reorganization you've now done is definitely an improvement. Any reason not to put the mention of his wife and kids with the sentence about his death? As it stands it's a non sequitur; with his death it becomes part of a paragraph about his life and I think would flow better. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:02, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, done. White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:26, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: A few comments. This looks OK generally, but given that it is so short, I think it is worth making sure what information that we do have is highly polished. Glitches tend to stand out more in short articles. So, not quite there yet for me. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:28, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Dunn was born Emerson Dunn on May 15, 1918,[2] in Scott County, Kentucky, near Lexington, to Lucius Dunn and Sadie Burgess Dunn.": Is there any way to avoid having the name Dunn four times in one sentence? Perhaps split the sentences, or combine the Dunns somehow?
  • A pedant writes... "Dunn was born Emerson Dunn": Technically he wasn't born with any name at all. Feel free to ignore this one, and throw sharp objects in my general direction.
  • "He was involved with horses from a young age": Involved how? Riding? Training?
    • The source doesn't say, but since his father was a farmer and most people didn't have tractors back then, they likely plowed and did all their work and traveling with horses. Many people in the rural areas didn't get cars and tractors until after the Depression of the 1930s. White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:14, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "almost every year for 50 years": Is there a better way to say this? How many years did he not participate? I'm wondering about something like "annually for 50 years except for X, Y and Z".
    • I can't find anything that says he participated the year before his death (2000). The sources say that he started going in 1950 and apparently went every year or almost every year up to 1999, when he won with RPM. It does say that he was injured multiple times, and if he happened to be hurt right before the Celebration he probably wouldn't have gone. I don't have any sources that say, "He skipped it in 19xx". White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:14, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I appreciate that work is ongoing on this, but the 2nd paragraph of Life and Career combines his overall record with his early life. The two don't sit easily in the same paragraph, so maybe a split would help?
  • Similarly, it might be worth just checking the flow of sentences here. A few consecutive sentences do not quite fit together. For example, "Dunn broke multiple bones while training horses.[3] He also judged Tennessee Walking Horse shows, including the Spring Celebration,[15] an annual Tennessee Walking Horse show in Shelbyville, Tennessee, that is traditionally popular with trainers and horses who hope to compete in the National Celebration later in the year" don't obviously fit together. There are one or two similar examples.
  • The third paragraph of that section has similar problems, and almost becomes WP:PROSELINE at some points, in that we have "In YEAR, he did THIS. He did THAT in this YEAR". I think some smoothing might be in order before we are quite at FA standard.
  • Watch out for too many sentences that begin "Dunn" or "He". Sarastro1 (talk) 20:28, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More: I've done some copy-editing; feel free to revert anything I've messed up, or that you don't like. A few more points: Sarastro1 (talk) 22:32, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just took a copyediting whack at the article, added a few ore words on what TWH's do, rephrased a few sentences and I moved around some of the sections from one paragraph to another, particularly to group the show career stuff all in one place (as someone here noted) and I put the history of his stables ahead of the show career to make the sequence chronological. If that didn't help, feel free to revert, but my eyes are a bit fresher on this article because I haven't edited it much (I did the GA review) and I think I was seeing the stuff that was causing some head-scratching. I hope my changes were a net improvement and if they weren't, I do hope that at least a few wording tweaks clarified matters. Montanabw(talk) 22:14, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it helped. Thanks for all your help and everybody's comments. I haven't been able to be online as much I've wanted because of issues going on with two chronically ill relatives. I am trying to check in at least once a day, sometimes twice if possible, so I will get to something sooner or later. White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:16, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Coord notes

  • Mike and Sarastro, how are things looking to you now?
  • As this is the nominator's first FAC (a belated welcome to the process, BTW!), I'd like to see a reviewer conduct a spotcheck of sources for accurate use and avoidance of close paraphrasing -- just FYI, WAF, this is a standard hoop we ask all first-time nominators to jump through.
  • I think we also still need the usual source review for formatting and reliability.

Tks/cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:42, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Source review – I noticed that spotchecks and a source inspection were requested, and think that I can fill in to give an FAC newcomer some help.

  • Reference 24 is to RootsWeb, which is not a very reliable source in general, and I wouldn't want to see it used in an FA unless there is a really good reason. The rest of the references appear to be reliable.
    • In that case, it is a note verifying a minor point that two prior family members who both won the championship were not father and son. I'm not sure where else the obituary could be located. It is a source for a minor issue that could be a quibble amongst the aficionados or the anal-retentive. I did a brief search and could not locate an obituary elsewhere, though it might not be impossible--MTBW
  • The publisher of ref 12 (TWHBEA) should be spelled out, like you did in ref 1. The RootsWeb source is also missing a listed publisher.
    • Fixed --MTBW
  • Ref 13 is missing an access date, unlike the other Times Daily sources.
    • FIXED--MTBW
  • I don't think a Google Books link (ref 2) requires an access date, as it is treated as a printed book cite for that purpose.
    • REPLACED accessdate with date, which was missing. --MTBW
  • Ref 16 has the date in MDY format (September 1, 1970), when the rest of the cites are in DMY format (9 August 2016). You're going to hate me for saying this, but I actually think the cites should be MDY. That is the typical formatting for an American subject, and would be consistent with how dates are formatted in the article. If this sounds too tedious for you, let me know and I'll lend a hand.
  • The end of Note a doesn't have a reference. You might want to add one, since I'm not sure if a horse's gait style would be considered common knowledge.
    • Found a source and added it -MTBW
  • Is a page number possible for reference 26?
  • For the spot-checks, I looked at references 2, 7, 11, 14, and 22, and identified the following issues:
    • Ref 2 doesn't give a birth date for the third child of Lucius and Sadie Burgess Dunn, but it says Sadie Dunn died in 1984 at the age of 91. That means that she must have been born in the 1800s, and that Bud was his parents' third child, not the second as the article says.
      • FIXED -- The Burgess source (now footnote 3) only lists two children, then Sadie is discussed before and after the kids are listed, I can see why that was confusing. If changed the text to "second child."
    • Ref 7 gives Delight Puff and Stuff's name as Delight Puff & Stuff. Is that an MoS thing or did you find something else presenting the name with "and"?
      • this source used "and." Also, most breed registries grumble at us if we use symbols, usually only letters and numbers are allowed. --MTBW
    • Ref 14: "was the most popular team in Celebration history." Article: "was said to be the most popular in Celebration history." It's a little close, although this is the only thing near a close paraphrasing concern that I found. I'd try to rephrase it just to be safe.
      • I made it more direct and quoted the source. --MTBW
  • An optional recommendation: I strongly suggest that page numbers be provided for the Google News links. Stories on Google News have a way of disappearing sometimes, due to rights issues etc., and this can harm verifiability down the road. By adding page numbers, if a link goes dead you can simply remove the link and have a full citation to a print source, lowering the chance of link rot affecting FA status in the future. This is up to you, though. Giants2008 (Talk) 23:37, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • FIXED--MTBW

Giants2008 and others: I think I got most of your fixes. WAF is a bit busy IRL, so also Let me know if there is more to do! Montanabw(talk) 02:02, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I think if there's no source for the "only father and son pair to win world championships" fact, it should be cut; and I don't think rootsweb is good enough to source it. It's a fairly minor point -- after all, the newspaper article about the victory doesn't mention it. Once this is cut I'm ready to support promotion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:37, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Mike, ref 9 said "No other father and son team has ever won grand championships", which appears to cover that sentence. My concern was about the second note, which is where RootsWeb is used. I proposed a solution above, which should be good enough to preserve the note. Giants2008 (Talk) 16:30, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You're right; sorry, I didn't read your notes carefully enough. I agree your solution would work, and I'll support when that (or something equivalent) is done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:12, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I have now made that change. White Arabian Filly Neigh 20:49, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. That was the last obstacle. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:27, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Sorry for the delay, but all the changes looking good and I'm happy to support now. Sarastro1 (talk) 18:28, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ian Rose:: I think you can take another look at this to see if it's ready to promote yet. Montanabw(talk) 06:28, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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