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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/John Brownlee sex scandal

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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 Karanacs 22:02, 24 March 2009 [1].

John Brownlee sex scandal

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Nominator(s): Sarcasticidealist (talk)

I've noticed that people sometimes seem less than enthused about reviewing my FACs and that, once passed, they never seem to make TFA. After examining the problem, I've concluded that this is for one simple reason: all of my FAs are really boring. In an effort to sex things up, I present to you the only interesting thing to ever happen in the political history of Alberta.

As is my custom, I've put this through GAC and PR; I think it's ready for here. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 17:53, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Support Comments Hey, you were right—this one didn't put me to sleep :) It's in pretty good shape. Some prose niggles:

  • Suggesting moving the abbreviation UFA out of the lead, into the first sentence of the first subsection.
  • "differing forms and with differing levels of enthusiasm." - Between this sentence and the next two, the word 'differing' is used three times.
  • "a suitor of MacMillan's and third year medical student at the University of Alberta" - and a third-year...
  • I don't see any reason for italics on Seduction Act; we don't italicize acts of law (court cases yes, but not law itself), and it doesn't appear that you've italicized for word-as-a-word or other reasons.
  • "He further claimed that, contrary to MacMillan's story of him claiming sexual alienation from his wife," - awkward noun+ing construction. I think the concept would still come across without that entire phrase, no?
  • "Smailes, while he acknowledged knowing at the time of MacMillan's hiring that she was acquainted with Brownlee, denied involvement on Brownlee's part in the decision to hire her, while the janitors denied ever seeing a young woman enter the premier's office in the evenings." - awkward. Perhaps "Smailes acknowledged knowing...with Brownlee, but denied involvement..."
  • Links (both in the text and the refs) to "Time Magazine" should be "Time magazine".
  • "It ordered Brownlee to pay $10,000 in damages to MacMillan, plus trial costs." - the referent of 'It' is not clear from the context of the previous sentence.
  • "After the trial, John Brownlee returned to the practice of law and died in 1961." - This is a jarring construct—didn't some two decades pass in the interim?
  • There's one link to Lakeland College that needs disambiguation.

These issues should be easy to clear up. Maralia (talk) 01:20, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All changes made exactly as you proposed. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 01:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy! Switched to support. Two minor things I just noticed:
  • You have a few accessdates that are in ISO format; please change to same date format as that used in the article text.
  • Regarding the Rennie source: why does the longform cite list "pp. 108" when the only shortform cite of it refers to page 119?
Maralia (talk) 02:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed both (the first should have been a page range, as the long-form is for a chapter of a book). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 02:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tech. Review
  • Dabs and external links (based on the respective links checker tools in the toolbox) are up to speed.
  • Ref formatting is not up to speed (based on the WP:REFTOOLS script
  • The following refs (code copied and pasted below) is duplicated, and appears more than once in the ref section, a ref name should be used instead
  • Foster 248
  • Foster 253
  • The following ref names are used more than once to name different refs, when they should only be naming one ref
Fixed. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:52, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support I enjoyed reading this article, and couldn't find anything substantial to complain about. I wikilinked a couple of words (Edson, Attorney-General). It might be a good idea to get the graphics people to fix up the crease in the picture of William Aberhart, but that's a minor detail. Sasata (talk) 05:43, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I guess it depends on whether you live here or not.  ;) It isn't mentioned in this article as it isn't relevant to the scandal itself, but the Social Credit victory in the first election following the scandal made international headlines, with the Boston Globe famously declaring "ALBERTA GOES CRAZY". Pretty big news for for a province that had all the national importance of Wyoming at the time. However, yes, our politics tend to be rather dull, all things considered, given we've lived in a right wing dynasty since the 1920s. Even the SoCreds went from far left to far right in their term. Resolute 16:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, two comments:

  • "The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and elements of the UFA's grassroots favored socialism and government ownership of the means of production, while the Alberta Liberal Party, William Aberhart's new provincial movement, and many within the UFA favored social credit, although in differing forms and with differing levels of enthusiasm.[1]" - This reads as if the Liberal Party was Aberhart's new movement rather than Social Credit. Also, the citation does not support this sentence as there is no mention at all of the Liberals, the SoCreds or Aberhart in Brownlee's Legislative bio. It does support the rest of the paragragh, however.
  • On the media reaction, the Edmonton Bulliten seems especially relevant, however I am curious about why Calgary's reaction is absent - especially given the Calgary Herald and Calgary Albertan would both likely have been far more conservative than the Bulletin was, and therefore more supportive of Brownlee. I'm happy to go digging through the archives of both papers if it would help. Resolute 16:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that I've addressed your first point. As to the second, I was surprised by the sources' omission of a Calgarian reaction, but neither of the major sources I used made any reference to the reaction of the Herald or the Albertan, while the Bulletin's reaction is given great prominence in every source. I suppose we could look through the archives to fill in the gap with primary sources - a quick scan of the Herald's coverage suggests that its reporting was fairly even-handed - but my preference would be to allow the secondary sources to dictate which reactions were notable. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 17:55, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You have on the first. On the second, the discussion on the Bulletin is obvious, but I am quite surprised at how the sources made no wider mention of the reaction within Alberta. I can see your point on not wanting to use primary source material too much though. I might dig through some archives at the library and see if I can find a statement along the lines of the "the greatest drama ever to be heard in an Alberta court" claim of the Bulliten, then see if it would fit. Evidently the Calgary papers were not big players in the scandal, so there may well be no reason to add anything. Regardless, I have no further concerns that would prevent me from supporting this article. Resolute 19:01, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The most interesting thing I found looking through the Herald is an editorial that Ives' dismissal of the action was inconsistent with his earlier instructions to the jury (in the July 3, 1934 issue). I wouldn't be adverse to including that, except that then it seems like we have to include a bit about Ives' instructions to the jury, which also aren't given significant prominence in the secondary sources. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:04, 23 March 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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