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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Charles L. McNary/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 not promoted by SandyGeorgia 19:52, 24 October 2009 [1].

Charles L. McNary

edit
Nominator(s): Aboutmovies (talk) 09:34, 13 October 2009 (UTC) User:Finetooth[reply]
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I am nominating this for featured article because after passing through GA more than a year ago it has been expanding significantly and refined and passed through peer review. I believe it has the breadth of coverage and meets all the technical requirements for FA. Aboutmovies (talk) 09:34, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments -
  • Current ref 7 (A training manual..) needs a publisher. (Should be formatted like a book, publisher would be U. S. Army Corps of Engigneers and give the original page numbers).
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Ealdgyth. I attempted a fix of ref 7, adding the publisher—the Center for Columbia River History (CCRH)—and the page numbers. The source document is a reprint by CCRH of two pages of the original Corps of Engineers manual rather than the entire manual. Will this suffice? Finetooth (talk) 19:13, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I tweaked it a bit more, to make it clear that the Corps was the original author/publisher but that the CCRH reprinted it. Luckily, US Army publications aren't copyrighted, so they can reprint it freely! Ealdgyth - Talk 19:20, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Muchas gracias. Finetooth (talk) 20:11, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline 1c
  1. Unsigned tertiary source articles used as historical references:
    ^ a b c d e f g h i "McNary, Charles Linza". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. United States Congress. Retrieved 2007-02-03.
    ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oregon Biographical Dictionary. St. Clair Shores, Michigan: Somerset Publishers, Inc.. 1999. pp. 130–134. ISBN 0-403-09841-6.
    ^ "Notable Oregonians: Charles McNary". Oregon Blue Book. Oregon Secretary of State. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
    ^ "Supreme Court Justices of Oregon". Oregon Blue Book. Oregon Secretary of State. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
    ^ "Governors of Oregon". Oregon Blue Book. Oregon Secretary of State. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
    ^ "Harry Lane". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. United States Congress. Retrieved 2008-11-26.
    In some cases the inappropriate tertiary is a second citation, where the first citation is from a high quality RS. But this, "He first held political office in 1913 when Governor Oswald West appointed him to the Oregon Supreme Court to fill a new position created by the legislature's expansion of the court from five justices to seven." is only substantiated from unsigned tertiaries.
    Similarly a number of assertions are only supported by sources [1] and [2] which are unsigned tertiaries.
  2. Unclear what the original publication date is, reorder the imprint and the initial publication? clarify, "^ a b A Training Manual for Interpreters McNary Lock and Dam (Center for Columbia River History online reprint ed.). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District. 1999. pp. 12–14. Retrieved 2009-10-13."
  3. An engineering dam manual really substantiates, "On November 19, 1902, he married Breyman, the daughter of a successful Salem businessman, Eugene Breyman." and "Jessie died in 1918, in one of the first automobile accidents in the Salem area, while Charles was on a summer break from the Senate." This strikes me as dubious, or the source as a primary source and the conclusions being drawn inappropriate due to OR. Both points are cited in other sources.
  4. Inappropriate substantiation by a poor quality source, "Ultimately, the Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, and the United States never joined the League of Nations." via "^ "Woodrow Wilson". American Experience. PBS. 2001. Retrieved 2008-12-11." the standard of historical publishing is scholarly press monograph, scholarly press edited collection, peer reviewed journal article, fully peer reviewed conference paper published as a result of a scholarly conference. Second in line one could consider popular press monographs from major houses.
  5. "Going against much of his party, McNary, part of a group of senators known as "reservationists", proposed minor changes but supported the United States entry into the League." insufficiently expanded concept of reservationists, bipartisan, ideological, more than single issue?
  6. Insufficient reference to political theorisation Republicanism and political function in the period, seems isolated from party life, debates, Oregonian life, constituency.
  7. No discussion of the constituency he mobilised within Oregon (presents Oregonian republicanism as naturalistic and inevitable, rather than as something worked for).
  8. No discussion of Senate career 1941-1943. Confused presentation in the chronology of his later political career by jumping from post-isolationism to a 1940 presidential bid, to 1944 death. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:15, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the comments. I will work through them.
  1. Signing in and of itself is not indicative of high quality referencing. It is one of many factors to look at. And tertiary sources can be used, just should not be overly relied upon. 45 citations alone come from the Neal book, and an additional 10 from other non-tertiary sources. About 38 come from tertiary sources, and the "justices" and "governors" from the Blue Book are really more akin to primary sources (which are fine is they are not interpreting, they are simply giving the increase in the # of judges and who appointed him). But more importantly, who do you think is the most reliable source for when someone held an office. I'd go with the state, as they sort of keep the official records. But, most of the article is based on the Neal biography, the only published bio on him that I am aware of (there are some unpublished thesis on him), and the only one at Willamette University where he was dean.
  2. I will have to look into #2 on your list.
  3. Yes, the manual is for tour guides on the dam, and thus they apparently inform visitors about the namesake. So, if you read the source via the EL you will see the source verifies this.
  4. For history, the proper sources usually are to be primary sources going off my historiography classes. But we are not allowed to do OR on Wikipedia, so we go with what Wikipedia allows under RS, which includes websites by media outlets if they have a system for quality control type issues. I would hope that PBS would be considered reliable, but we can also just lose the citation and I doubt anyone could seriously challenge that the US did not sign the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations.
5-8. Do not appear to be source issues. I will clarify in the text what can be clarified. As to #6, could you explain what you are discussing?
7. From 1872 until 1932 (minus 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican vote) Oregon went Republican in the presidential elections, so though maybe not naturalistic it simply was a fact of life that Oregon was pretty much a Republican stronghold until I believe the 1950s (and even longer in the presidential elections). Not that Democrats didn't hold office, but the majority of the state was Republican (including the largest paper The Oregonian which endorsed Republicans for president from its founding in 1850 until Bill Clinton in 1992.). I will look to see if there is much on mobilization of the electorate, but unlike the Mark Hatfield article where I have added information on that topic, I do not recall this as being much of a topic of discussion in the sources. What I do recall is basically he was party chairman when the seat opened up, was able to leverage that name recognition within the party (probably personal connections too) to win the appointment and then later the party nomination. After that, it is a Republican state, he was holding that office during the campaign, and the previous guy was a Democrat whom the public had called for his resignation over neutrality voting during WWI (i.e. Democrats were not particularly popular). Even Mulkey who served briefly between McNary was a Republican.
8. I will work to get that section in more of a chrono order, and look for activity during those years.
Again, thank you for the notes, I will work to address what can be addressed. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:46, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply!
6 is entirely about the context in terms of political theory, about McNary and Republicanism's role. More than a straight bio, I'd expect contextualised links to isolationism, graft, free markets (etc... US political theory is not my field, one of the reasons why I miss the context and want to see it.)
Historiography, Primaries are the most reliable when used by historians (whose methodological and theoretical stance you agree with). Wikipedia's culture and history have forced us into Secondary sources for OR and reliability, and when it comes to using Primaries they're meant to be illustrative (like a photograph or diagram, explaining what's already been demonstrated). Tertiaries are only RS when signed by a specialist, ala, "Bloggs (PhD) "On Oregonian Republicanism" Dictionary of historical republicanism Place: Academic publisher, 2009". The point being that tertiary sources are of low reliability (cough, wiki, britannica, cough), and that dog shouldn't eat dog. Think about which primaries are illustrative going to trivial facts (state appointments).
Point 7, again, is about context. If McNary was such a long serving senator, and a republican new deal supporter, I'd expect the theoretical / historical context to be higher. Oregon doesn't reside in the Australian historical imaginary much (Portland doesn't have public transport due to the 1970s, it rains), so as an encyclopedia reader, I'd want to know why McNary is fundamentally interesting (as he seems) in a historical / political / theoretical context.
Regarding Versailles and US politics, either drop it down to unsourced trivial, or use some magisterial post-war history of US foreign relations. Citing a video work without a time stamp is a bit gauche too. :::::Fifelfoo (talk) 09:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for now: 1a, 1b (I've also evaluated 1d, 1e, 2a, 2b, and 4, and think it meets those criteria).
  • The prose is a little bloated and clunky. I've done a copyedit, but I think at least one more thorough one would help.
  • I find it slightly odd that the lead seems to be written in reverse order: first he's a senator, then he's an Oregon Supreme Court justice, then he's dean, then he's a deputy D.A. I sort of expected him to be born during the last paragraph, but happily that expectation did not come to pass.
  • "the Oregon County". Is the article required? It strikes me as wrong, but I'm not an expert. Also, the link goes to a disambig page.
  • The Hoover bit seems just kind of stuck in there. If there's no context to the meeting (and I realize that there may not be), could it be incorporated into another sentence?
  • It would be nice if the article gave some indication of what the Salem Fruit Union was.
  • The timelines of his courtship with Jesse Breyman are confusing: we're told that he met and began courting her at the end of the "Early life" paragraph, which suggests that this was sometime in the early 1890s, and then we're told that he was courting her when he started teaching property law in 1899. If the latter is only saying that he continued to court her, after he started several years previous, I'm not sure why it's there.
  • "...it created an opportunity for McNary to redeem himself after his failed bid for election to the Oregon Supreme Court." Not sure about this - had he been some kind of pariah since his defeat? I imagine not, or the governor wouldn't have promoted him. My inclination here is to lose that phrasing entirely and merge its sentence with the next one.
  • I find the last paragraph of "national politics" very confusing: first, didn't McNary already have a seniority advantage over Mulkey, since he was appointed in 1916 while Mulkey didn't take office until 1918? Second, what's this business about Chamberlain's defeat making McNary the senior senator? I thought that was the whole point of Mulkey's resignation? Finally, just who were Oregon's two senators from 1918 to 1920? Obviously McNary was one, but the article seems to imply that both Mulkey and Chamberlain were the other one. It's possible that I'm just being dim, but I really can't make heads or tails of this paragraph.
  • I'm a little confused about why Lodge, a major opponent of the League, took McNary under his wing as a result of a debate in which McNary supported the League. Am I missing something?
  • "under his wing" seems a little colloquial.
  • We're sort of left hanging after being told that Harding offered McNary the Secretary of the Interior post. We can infer that he declined it, but it should probably say so, along with (if possible) his reasons.
  • "As minority leader he advocated a progressive agenda..." What does that mean? Wouldn't all politicians consider their agendas to be progressive? Does anybody advocate a regressive agenda?
  • "As World War II approached, he favored keeping an arms embargo in place..." Against whom?
  • "...but voted for the lend-lease agreement with the British..." The reasons for the "but" here aren't clear. Assuming the embargo was against the Axis powers, wouldn't it make sense for him to be in favour of supporting the British?
  • "Senate years" comes across as a list of facts; after reading it, I don't feel like I could identify the dominant themes of his time in office. This relative incoherence (not in the sense of being incomprehensible, but in the sense of not being moulded into a coherent whole) is especially problematic given a tendency towards temporal jumps. Those are excusable, even desirable, when a section is being thematically organized, but I don't get any sense that this one is.
  • "As with his first marriage, his second did not produce children..." I'm undecided about this: does adoption count as producing children? I suppose arguably not, since the child was "produced" elsewhere, but it just kind of seems offensive to me to imply that adoptive parents aren't "real" parents. As I said, undecided - I can certainly see the reasons for this wording.
It's conceivable that I can be brought around to supporting this article, but I think there are still considerable problems with it. Steve Smith (talk) 04:58, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have tried to re-word the seniority/two senators info, but here it is in a time line:
  • Oregon's class 2 (McNary's seat): Lane elected in 1912 to a six year term set to expire in early 1919. He dies in May 1917, vacating the seat. McNary is then appointed to that seat until someone else is elected to fill the remainder of Lane's unexpired term. While McNary is serving in the Senate, he then runs for election for the regular term that would begin in early 1919 after the expiration of Lane's original term. Meanwhile Mulkey runs to serve out Lane's original term. Both win. So, Mulkey then takes over for McNary in this same seat in Nov. 1918 (i.e. McNary is not in the Senate at that time). Mulkey then resigns the seat to allow for McNary to be appointed by Oregon's governor to serve the last remaining month or so of Lane's original term. Since he was also elected to the new full term, he gets a slight head start on seniority over any freshman Senators that would begin their terms in January 1919.
  • Class 3: Chamberlain was elected in 1908 and took office in 1909. When Lane won election to the Class 2 seat in 1912, Chamberlain became Oregon's senior senator. Then Chamberlain lost in 1920, thus McNary takes over as senior Oregon Senator. This time line might help.
  • It is Oregon Country, not county (thus there should not be a dab page), and it gives a link to what Oregon was before becoming under US dominion.
  • With the lede, one train of thought for organizing them is chrono order, another is in order of significance. His Senate years are far more what he is known for than anything else, which is why its first and why it has the most details (it also was the majority of his life). But logically, the next thing you have to touch on is the VP candidacy, as that is a rather important item. After that, it is throwing out the other parts of his life, and then ending with his death and what is named after him. Its basically the News style cited in the lede guideline. I'll take a stab at it to try and re-organize, and even add a few things after the rest of the article items have been addressed.
  • With Hoover, I guess I just assumed people knew Hoover was president at the same time as McNary was in the Senate (and both went to Stanford). I will try to better outline that the two knew each other well before their noteworthy political endeavors.
  • With the Sec. of Interior post, no inference is needed, it specifically says he declined and it was because he preferred to stay in the Senate.
  • With World War II items, I guess I while have to expand out into those topics. But generally speaking, the Neutrality Acts prevented selling arms to any nations at war, thus it prevented sales of arms to Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and everyone else involved in WWII prior to official US involvement after Pearl Harbor. But, Lend-Lease was a work-around used to get arms to what would be our allies prior to the repeal of the neutrality acts mainly after Pearl Harbor.
  • With the rest of the points, we will be working on them over the next week or so (along with all the other comments). Thank you for the review, its great to get an outside view on the topic. Many items are just assumed that people know, but in practice it turns out they are not that well known. Thanks again. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:31, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • So in November 1918 they held two elections for the same seat, one to last from immediately after the election until January 1919, and the other to commence in January 1919?
  • Re: Oregon Country - right so, I was sloppy there. I'm still wondering whether the article's needed.
  • Your explanation for the lead's organization is satisfactory, and I've struck that concern. It seems unintuitive to me, but I suppose my intuition does not have a privileged position in determining Wikipedia content policy.
  • Re: Secretary of the Interior - I could swear that last sentence wasn't there when I last read the article, but the edit history bears you out.
  • Your explanation of the World War II stuff makes sense. When I read "embargo" my immediate assumption was Japan, and it didn't occur to me that it might have applied to the Allies. That seems like the kind of issue that can be solved just with a link to the Neutrality Acts. Steve Smith (talk) 08:34, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Still working on some of the items, but to answer your questions: Yes, they had in essence two elections. Really one election on the same day, but one "office" up was to serve as Senator from the day after the election until that term ended early the next year (turns out it was still March at this time), and the other office was to serve as Senator starting in March of the next year for the regular 6-year term. They did basically the same thing in May at the primaries. Likely an oversight in the vacancy election law at the time, which judging by the current state law seems to address the issue (if I still had free access to Westlaw's databases I could work through the law's history and tell you what the law had been and when it was changed). As to the Oregon Country link, I don't think it makes or breaks the article, but I think it is similar to the Kentucky link as it is basically a geographic link to provide the reader more information, specifically why the grandparent didn't immigrate to Oregon. And judging by your unfamiliarity with the term, I think it bears out the point that many readers do not know that Oregon was not part of the US pre-1846 and not a territory until 1848. Lastly, when I re-work the Senate Years, Il make sure to have the links regarding WWII. Thanks. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose on criterion 3
  • File:Jessie Breyman circa 1896.jpg - The copyright holder of the image is not listed, nor is any basic information about the image. Please try to find out the date, the author, etc.
  • I'm curious why this image is fair use. The date given is 1896, suggesting it might qualify for PD-1923. Was it not published until after 1923? Did the studio renew the copyright? If so, when? Awadewit (talk) 17:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Charles L. McNary standing.jpg - "No known restrictions" does not mean "in the public domain". For an image to be hosted on the Commons, we have to establish that it definitely is in the PD. As there is no date on this photo, I'm not sure that will be possible. Is there a way to estimate the date?
  • File:McNary-Haugen 1929.jpg - The license on the image says it is in the PD because it was published before 1923, however the date on the photo is 1929, so the tag is incorrect. Please investigate whether or not this image really is in the PD and affix the proper license.

Some of these will take some detective work. Awadewit (talk) 05:31, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • The Breyman image is fair use, and the info was mostly below, but I have added to it what little there is. With the other two, both are considered PD by commons. The standing one had a PD license approved by Commons (or at least I am assuming it is approved since it is listed here). I have fixed the other one to also use a PD one specific to that LOC collection that, again, Commons considered public domain based on the listing of the tag. Also, they are mostly likely PD simply due to lack of renewal to their copyrights. Both of these collections were acquired prior to 1950, and thus would need to have their copyrights renewed at some point by the copyright holder, which after purchase would be the LOC. Thus I doubt the LOC renewed the copyright with themselves, and I don't know if they could even legally do so. I know they can hold copyrights and acquire them (as they did in these two instances), but we didn't cover if they can renew copyrights they hold in my copyrights class. The law itself only says it can receive and hold, nothing about renewing.

But, until I here back from you, I have simply removed those two images and added a different one. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Commons is a wiki, just like Wikipedia. Whatever information and tags appear there have been added by users and have to be carefully scrutinized - nothing has really been "approved". Moreover, those tags regarding the Collections do not establish that the images are in the PD. If both the images are PD due to lack of renewal of copyright, we have to demonstrate that by searching for the copyright. You can contact the LOC and ask them to do a copyright search, for example. Awadewit (talk) 17:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes Commons is a wiki, but the FA criteria require the images to be appropriately licensed (it actually says "acceptable copyright status" with a link to the licenses), and they are. If there is a problem with the license, then that needs to be addressed at Commons. No known restrictions is simply a way for the LOC to say it is public domain, but still cover their ass just in case, as they even use it on the official portrait of presidents, and I doubt anyone would question if the White House portrait of Ronald Reagan is PD (except maybe you). As to contacting the LOC for a copyright search, yes I know. And if you would be willing to donate the $300+ minimum for a search, feel free to, but as I am not paid to edit Wikipedia or elevate an article to FA status I'll pass on the expense and take my chances of being sued by the LOC for copyright infringement of a work they say "no known restrictions". At worse, I think they would get a court to order a take down notice. But note, we also use lots of user generated images, and we do not require much to confirm that these are in fact created by these users, and I do not think FA has to date required extensive searches and documentation (such as requiring an affidavit from the user and a receipt for the camera used and an upload of their GPS data to prove they were near such and such place or a ticket to a sporting event to prove they were there) to prove the licensing of images. But I may be wrong. As to the fair use of the Breyman images, the reason it is fair use is because (as you noted in your original query) a lot of information about the image is not there, and it is not there because it is unknown. Since we do not know if or even when it was published, we cannot determine if it is out of copyright, and unlike the Bain and National collections of the LOC, the source for this one is claiming copyright, as you can't really force people to give you credit for something you don't own. Now, I personally think its PD by now and the Oregon State Library has no clue about copyrights, but fair use works just as well in this instance and it would require a lot of work outside of Wikipedia to get the state library to better represent the actual status of the images it has possession of. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:24, 21 October 2009 (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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