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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mark Satin/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 12:02, 18 August 2011 [1].

Mark Satin

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Mark Satin (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Babel41 (talk) 07:06, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article status because I believe it meets the FA criteria and because I believe it is of compelling interest to those who care about American activism and innovative political thought over the last half-century. Its subject entered the public eye as a draft dodger leader during the Vietnam War, spent the next 20 years helping to frame and popularize the concept of “New Age” politics, and spent the next 20 doing the same for “radical middle” politics. He is now either a mere pragmatist or a cutting-edge synthesizer of disparate political ideologies, depending on your POV.

I wrote the original stub article on 18 February 2004 and did the major expansion / revision in 2005 (21 April, 17:07 through 29 April). Here I have updated, revised, and greatly expanded it (like, by a factor of 10) in an effort to make it truly useful for readers and researchers for decades to come. I did it with the “preferred article” attributes firmly in mind – not least of all (a) treating the subject in context, and (b) providing a (hopefully!) compelling narrative that conveys the evolution of the subject’s main ideas, and some critical responses to those ideas.

On my own, I had it reviewed for substance by some of those familiar with some of the events discussed. In addition, I had it copyedited by the managing editor of a literary magazine here in San Francisco. I hope you will enjoy reviewing it.

Note on citation style. I have retained the style I used in the 2005 revision (the original stub contained no references). It is a composite with the following major features: (1) first name before surname, as in the Bluebook; (2) all commas until the period at the end, as in the Bluebook; (3) no parentheses around dates or publishers (except around years of journals), as in the MLA Handbook; and (4) “p.” or “pp.” before page numbers, as is the practice of some American publishers of quality texts (see, e.g., Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought, Westview Press, 2nd ed., 1998, pp. 281-316). My principal goals here were – and are – clarity and ease of reading.

Note on links in the “References” section. I have linked authors and publishers here only if they are not linked anywhere in the text or in the “Publications” section; and I have only linked authors or publishers here on first mention. Babel41 (talk) 07:06, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, unfortunately, because while it's clear there's been a lot of time put into researching and writing this article, I don't feel it currently meets the FA criteria. Specifically:

  • Use of contractions in article text, which should be avoided outside of direct quotes
  • Organization seems odd. For example, seeing the section heading "Choices" I'm not sure what material such a section would contain, and the section itself spans a considerable time period and does not exclusively cover "choices"
  • File:Draft_dodger_counseling_office.jpg - Phillips contributed the photo to the public domain, but who holds copyright on the image on the door? Is the artist known, is the image PD...?
  • Some redundant or repetitious phrasings - for example, four consecutive sentences in "Toronto Anti-Draft Programme" begin with "For..."
  • Tone is at times more appropriate to a journalistic than a encyclopedic venue, for example "Sometimes he spoke from the gut...Sometimes he spoke from the heart..."
  • Newspaper references without weblinks should have page numbers
  • Include ISBN links for book sources.

You might consider having a peer review done on this article to improve its chances of reaching FA status. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:05, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Response from principal drafter of article. Thank you for getting back to me so promptly, and for your very thoughtful critique of my article. I believe I can allay your seven concerns. Let me respond to them in order:
1. Contractions. It is my understanding that there is not a blanket prohibition on contractions. I read the Manual of Style before drafting my article, and under "15.6. Contractions," it states that uncontracted forms are "generally" preferred to contractions, but that contractions "should not be expanded mechanically: they are sometimes acceptable."
There are approx. eight contractions in my 7,200-word article (not counting those in the quotations, of course); that does not seem excessive to me. Moreover, I try to be a very careful writer, and when I did use contractions I used them because I felt they were appropriate in their context. Brief explanations of each appear in parentheses below.
(#1, "Youth" sub-section, first para., fourth sentence – "he'd" precedes a quote from Satin’s mom in which she uses two contractions. #2, "Contentions" sub-section, end of second para. – "he's" occurs in a description of Marilyn Ferguson’s argument, and Ferguson is a very informal writer. #3, "Toronto Anti-Draft Programme" sub-section, fourth para., third sentence – "he'd" keeps the sentence from sounding ponderous. #4, "New Age Politics, the book" sub-section, second para., first sentence – "that's" keeps the sentence from sounding pompous.
(#5, "New Options Newsletter" sub-section, third sentence – "he'd" occurs in another paraphrase of Ferguson, the informal stylist referred to earlier. #6, "Radical Middle Newsletter" sub-section, third para., second to last sentence – "it's" precedes a very informal quoted phrase in which the author upbraids Satin and his "law school buddies." #7 and #8, "Radical Middle, the book" sub-section, second para., first and second sentences – the "they'll" and the "they're" are meant to convey Satin’s folksy way of justifying reliance on the Four Key Values.)
I would not go to the mat in defense of any of these contractions! But I did want you to see that they are not there because of inconsistency or, God forbid, laziness. They are each there for a purpose. I even feel they represent good writing. But I would un-contract them in a jiffy, if Wikipedia's editors insist.
I've searched on "he's", "he'd", "that's" and "it's" ... I'm not getting any hits. - Dank (push to talk) 14:10, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
2. Organization. You state that the article’s organization "seems odd." From your one example, I cannot tell what you mean. The sub-section you mention, "Choices," appears in the section "Personal life." Nothing in or about the "Personal life" section implies that the whole section is meant to be confined to Satin's youth!
The prior sub-section, "Youth," touches on Satin's home life through high school; and the "Choices" section goes on to discuss the key life-altering choices Satin made as an adult, from college on. And the third section, “Contentions,” conveys some of the many (contradictory) explanations journalists and others have given for what many see as the "odd turns" in Satin's life, some going back to his adolescence. All this seems pretty logically organized to me. Perhaps you mean simply that the section headings in the "Persona life" section are not sufficiently clear. I will be happy to change them to accommodate Wikipedia’s editors. Perhaps "Home Life," "Life Choices," and "Explaining Satin’s Choices" will do the trick.
The rest of the article’s organization is hyper-conventional, and so are the section headings and sub-headings. The three subsequent headings convey the three stages of Satin's political development over time ("Neopacifism," "New Age politics," and "Radical centrist politics," respectively). And the nine sub-headings are all named after the books, newsletters, or political groups that are discussed in those sub-sections. I do not see what you find confusing here.
I don't generally see "Choices" or "Life choices" as subsection headings in featured articles that are biographies; I conclude that the community doesn't feel that those words convey sufficient information. Life is full of choices. Anyone want to jump in with a suggestion? - Dank (push to talk) 14:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed! I suggest for the “Personal life” section, the sub-sections “Youth,” “Colleges and career(s),” and “Explaining Satin’s ‘odd turns.’” These titles hopefully convey sufficient information, and the third title keeps the sequence from sounding mundane. – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
3. Copyright problem. I do see why the image in Phillips's photograph might cause you concern. Fortunately, I can assure you that there is no problem. Satin designed the door himself a couple of days after the New York Times Magazine article in May 1967, and he had a couple of draft dodgers come over with paint and brushes to execute his design (and also to paint the front room). He had them color the door yellow, an ironic comment on what most U.S. citizens then thought of draft dodgers. No one could paint letters well – that’s why the letters look so awful. Somebody did manage to do a less than completely atrocious job with the peace dove beginning to land (presumably, in Canada). The maple leaf appeared in its beak a few days later.
No one was proud of this work, let alone harbored any illusions that it was art. It did make many unhappy people smile. After the SUPA Anti-Draft Programme became the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme on October 1, 1967, the group moved out of the Spadina Avenue office, and the door was painted over in thick, dark brown. Nobody cared.
4a. Redundant. I have looked closely, but I cannot find any "redundant" (your word) phrases or sentences in the article. You would have to give me an example. Or perhaps you are using redundant as a synonym for repetitious, #4b below.
4b. Repetitious. There are three "repetitious phrasings" (your term) in the article. The first I apologize for – the four sentences beginning with "For" in the first paragraph under the "Toronto Anti-Draft Programme" sub-section. My readers or I should have caught that. It is very easy to fix, and I shall do so. The first two sentences should stay the same, since they work together ("For some ... For others"). But in the third I'll use "At first" instead of "For some time." And in the fourth I'll simply eliminate the beginning phrase "For example" and begin with, "In January 1967." Thanks for catching this.
There are two other instances of repetitive phrasing in the article – the series of sentences beginning with "Instead of" in the second and third paragraphs of the "Toronto Anti-Draft Programme" sub-section, and the series of sentences also beginning with "Instead of" in the second through fourth paragraphs under the "Radical Middle, the book" sub-section.
Thanks for the fix. - Dank (push to talk) 14:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
However, these are deliberate. I have created what grammarians call "parallelisms" here as a way of deftly making an extended comparison of two things. In the TADP sub-section I'm comparing the traditional pacifist-radical approach to draft dodger assistance (carefully set forth in the first paragraph of that sub-section) to Satin's more entrepreneurial and media-savvy approach. And in the "Radical Middle, the book" sub-section, I'm comparing the guiding ideas in the New Age Politics book to the guiding ideas in the Radical Middle book.
When that is the purpose of sentences beginning all in the same way, then it is (as I'm sure you know) stylistically perfectly acceptable. In fact, it is a device that's often used in British and American quality nonfiction. Wikipedia itself has a brief but useful description of the device on a page called Parallelism (grammar).
Agreed, and that's a good description of parallelism. - Dank (push to talk) 14:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
5. Journalistic tone. I am sorry that you find some of my tone "journalistic." I would not characterize it that way. I strive to be clear, concise, and expressive, but none of that is out of keeping with Wikipedia’s stated policies. For example, the third paragraph of the Wikipedia:Featured article advice page states that FA articles should not "merely provide information," but should strive to do so in a "way that is compelling and engaging to non-specialist readers."
The one example you cite from my writing – probably the most expressive passage in the entire text – provides a good case study of how careful I've been to prevent expressive language from becoming merely journalistic or rhetorical. Yes, the fourth para. of the "Toronto Anti-Draft Programme" sub-section does contain the phrases "Sometimes he spoke from the gut ... . Sometimes he spoke from the heart ...." But please note that (1) these phrases provide reasons to support the claim I make in my earlier sentence, that Satin "rejected the intellectual apparatus of traditional pacifism and socialism." Moreover, (2) I follow each phrase up with a concrete example to demonstrate what I'm talking about (e.g., Satin spoke from the gut when he blurted out to the New York Times Magazine reporter that America is a "godawful" place). Thus I provide evidence to support the reasons that support my claim. That is good logic, not blowsy journalism at all. Finally, please note that (3) in my last sentence in that paragraph I mention that Satin identified not with older pacifists but with Holden Caulfield, a fictional character well known for speaking pretty exclusively from the gut and the heart.
I'll give a general reply below in my own review. - Dank (push to talk) 14:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
6. Newspaper page numbers. You state that newspaper references without weblinks "should have" page numbers. With all due respect, on the Wikipedia:Citing sources page, 6.2.3., "Newspaper articles," it clearly states that "page numbers are optional." I made an editorial decision to exclude page numbers because overwhelmingly, in the 2010s, researchers are looking up old newspapers not in library stacks but via online databases like ProQuest, where the author, date, and article title are more than sufficient to locate the article. Has the rule I read in 6.2.3 been changed?
7. ISBN links. Your last comment is that I must "include ISBN links with book sources." Once again, with all due respect, it was my understanding that ISBN numbers are optional. On the Wikipedia:Citing sources page, 6.2.1, "Books," it unambiguously states that "ISBN is optional." I made an editorial decision to exclude ISBN numbers because in the year 2011 I see them as so much clutter, and because my references section is already lengthy and full of more important numbers. Again, unless the rule in 6.2.1 has been changed, I would very much like to stick to my original decision.
To conclude: Again, I appreciate the work you put in on my article, and the seven important issues you raised. I hope my responses will persuade you that my article is closer to being FA-ready than you initially supposed. I would like to hear from other editors on these seven issues. - Babel41 (talk) 09:07, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Oppose ... not because I hate the article, I really like it ... but please understand that Wikipedia in general and FAC in particular is driven by consensus and compromise. WP:MOS encodes a lot of the compromises ... and granted, many of these will come across as silly little issues (silly for you, but not silly for me when I have to edit every other sentence to get this to pass FAC) ... for example, we insist on straight quotes (") rather than curly quotes at FAC for a number of reasons, including the fact that searches for straight quotes will miss the curly quotes, and we insist that everything inside quote marks was actually in the quote unless otherwise noted (by brackets or ellipses), even the punctuation ... which is a semi-British style, and again, a compromise. The point is ... it sucks up a lot of reviewer time to deal with a host of issues that could have been dealt with at peer review. So, best of luck, and I hope to see you back here soon (ish!) - Dank (push to talk) 00:15, 14 August 2011 (UTC) P.S. And once again, Nikki has done a superb job and I agree with all that, except that I don't know much about image copyright issues. - Dank (push to talk) 00:19, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I've made some general points about how FAC works on your user talk page. - Dank (push to talk) 13:09, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Concerning "from the gut" and "from the heart", we're talking about:
    Sometimes he spoke from the gut, as when he described the United States to the New York Times Magazine as “[t]hat godawful sick, foul country; could anything be worse?” Sometimes he spoke from the heart, as when he told author Jules Witcover, “It’s colder here, but you feel warm because you know you’re not trying to kill people.”
  • Those expressions aren't terribly different than saying he spoke during interviews "with emotion", and I won't object if you want to substitute that phrase. I'm comfortable saying they don't match the style we aim for at Wikipedia. (And what appears to some as an absence of style does start to look like a style after a while.) We prefer expressions that have as little subtext as possible, expressions that (from experience) are less likely to engender edit wars. As a reader, I would personally translate "from the heart" to "with emotion" and wouldn't have any strong reaction to it, but other readers will be ascribing subtext: "He's being sincere and human." But we don't know if he's being sincere, unless you have some way to open up his brain and check. If secondary sources came to the conclusion that he was sincere, we can echo them; otherwise, let's go with something more, as we say, "neutral". - Dank (push to talk) 14:42, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I get your point, but I feel it is overblown here. Unless “objectivity” means that we constantly have to assume that any media figure might be insincere any time they speak, then I don’t see why Satin’s statements can’t be taken at face value here, i.e. can’t “objectively” be described as being from the gut and from the heart. He’s a 20-year-old kid here!
In my world, I would give Satin the benefit of the doubt, unless a significant number of observers judged him to be phony. (They did not.) But I will stop this!! I believe you when you tell me what Wikipedia’s position would be. So let me run this passage by you (and others): “Sometimes he spoke with emotion, as when he [see text]. Sometimes he spoke poetically, as when he [see text].” (I do need the examples to give credibility to the point I’m making; see the entire fourth paragraph in the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme sub-section.) – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Normally I just make edits that might be described as copyediting myself, to save everyone some time, but when the writer is less than impressed with the quality of the review, it's probably better just to comment here, so:
  • "the old Maoist slogan “Dare to struggle, dare to win,” with ...": See WP:Checklist#second commas and WT:Checklist for support for the point in style guides. Lose the comma after "win", or add one after "slogan".
Right. I’ll lose the comma after “win.” (To add one after “slogan” would imply that there was only one Maoist slogan.) – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot find this hyphenated phrase. I will certainly delete the hyphen; do you remember where it is? – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • In some articles, reviewers seem to want more direct quotations than you'd usually see in an academic survey article, on the theory that we need the extra information to help us comply with our core content policies. More often, reviewers want fewer direct quotes, saying that too many quotes make the prose choppy and unprofessional, that Wikipedia tries to avoid the self-promotion inherent in academic publishing, and that using other people's words avoids taking a position (and we need to be taking a position ... the vaunted "neutral" position). Since this article hasn't undergone any reviews, it's hard for me to make a call, but I'm pretty sure there are more quotes here than most of us are comfortable with.
I did use a relatively large number of direct quotes – 49 passages of more than a couple of words each (not counting quotes from Satin himself). But I did so for a number of reasons, which I hope Wikipedia’s reviewers will approve of.
First, though, let me make a couple of preliminary points. (1) Most of these quoted passages are extremely brief, a phrase or a sentence. (2) I feel that none of the passages – not one – interferes with the flow of the main text; makes it “choppy” or “unprofessional,” to use your words. (2) The 49 passages appear in a text of 51 paragraphs and approx. 7,200 words. In other words, there’s only about one per paragraph, or one in every block of 140+ words. Hopefully that is not too many given the considerations below.
Okay. My main intent in using them was not to avoid objectivity or neutrality. It was to enhance it. The world Satin entered in 1967, and continues to live in, consists of a minefield of competing ideological positions. Virtually every quoted passage reflects one of those positions, and the 49 passages cover the whole gamut of political-ideological responses to Satin’s work. Fourteen can be described as pro-, 21 as con-, and 14 as “purely” informative. So taken together, they provide what I feel can be described as an objective, and wonderfully textured, view of Satin’s work.
Another purpose of mine in quoting those passages, just as important really, was to properly inform the politically aware reader, i.e. probably the majority of those who will actually read this article. As you know, political writing and particularly ideologically attuned writing is laden with nuance. To summarize most of the passages I’ve quoted would inevitably tamp down or eliminate some of the delicious nuances they contain. I chose them carefully. Virtually all of them embody meanings and shades of meaning that a politically sophisticated reader will appreciate.
Finally, about the self-promotion question. As I mentioned above, the con- passages outnumber the pro- passages by a ratio of three to two. Moreover, few of the pro- passages resemble anything like blurbs on the back of a book. Most of them are truly informative – Pierre Berton’s take on Satin’s high-profile status in Canada, John Rensenbrink’s take on the Ten Key Values, etc. In addition, most of the pro- passages are followed by ones from people with different views.
In my view, the one passage that may sound promotional is in the very first sentence of the article – the statement that Satin is “miles ahead of the academics and intellectuals who cling to the Marxist vision.’ I think that passage is important, though. It sets up the whole article by informing the reader that (a) Satin is taken seriously by serious people (important to get across early, because of his draft dodger background and his use of the phrase “New Age”), and (b) Satin’s entire life would be spent seeking for a modern-day alternative to “the Marxist vision.” (The Toronto Star is one of Canada’s largest and most prestigious newspapers, and at the time it was the most liberal of Toronto’s three dailies; it was by no means a red-baiting rag. Robert Nielsen, the author of the article, which covered most of the op-ed page that day, has a biography on Wikipedia.)
I was inspired to use that quote by a very similar passage in the first sentence of the Featured Article on Bernard Williams, in which The Times of London is said to call him “the most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time.” That is actually at least as incendiary a statement as my Toronto Star quote. Certainly utilitarians would disagree with it, Kantians would disagree, Biblical Christians would disagree, followers of some British feminist moral philosophers would disagree. But the passage does exactly what my Toronto Star passage does: it makes the subject of the article sound provocative, and interesting, and worth reading about.
But if Wikipedia’s editors want me to cut down on the number of direct quotes (or to eliminate that particular direct quote) – if I haven’t made my case successfully here – then I will of course do so. – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "quasi-pacifist–flexible": quasi-pacifist – flexible
I do not understand this comment. In my text, there are no quotation marks here. If I were to put quotes around anything, it would be the word “quasi-pacifist,” since that’s the word Cummings uses. – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
“Says” is in the present tense here because Satin is explaining his 1967-68 actions from the perspective of 2008. If that carries no weight with Wikipedia’s reviewers, then I’ll change it to past tense. - Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... to evade military conscription,": a period would work better there.
This is at the end of the second-to-last paragraph of the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada sub-section. I believe my punctuation works better stylistically. A short, snappy sentence – “But few observers believed him, then or now” – is followed by a longer sentence containing three brief examples. To break that sentence up would slow the reader down unnecessarily (it is easy to follow as is), and make it less clear that the three examples all pertain to the short, initial sentence. But, again, if I am running afoul of Wikipedia FA style here, I am willing to follow your lead. –- Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "fired/purged": At the third occurrence, "fired" would be better. See WP:SLASH.
Yes, absolutely. – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Response from the principal drafter. Thanks for your very helpful critique from August 14. I see that you have recently made a treasure-trove of further comments, and I look forward to downloading them (because of the condition of my eyes, I prefer reading hard-copy text). Here I just wanted to reassure you that I do not see the MOS or Citing-sources rules as "silly little issues"; if I did, I would not have responded to Nikki in such detail, detail that only an editor could love.
The curly-quotes problem you describe was not a result of my ignoring the rules; I used a version of Ariel that has straight quotes. I was just not technologically sophisticated enough to understand that you cannot ever transfer punctuation from Microsoft Word into the Sandbox. I then added and revised text in the Sandbox, which is why the quotation marks, apostrophes, etc., are so, um, diverse. I was hoping that they would all come out the same at your end. Obviously, they did not, so of course I will go over the entire text by hand, entering straight quotes and apostrophes as I go.
I know, I know: ignorance and old age is no excuse. I am sorry I wasted your time, and I will come back with pristine text. Because of my eyes, it will take a few weeks. In the meantime, I am looking forward to absorbing your and other reviewers' comments. – Babel41 (talk) 06:06, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, this was a very productive use of my time. Feel free to take a few weeks if you like ... but also feel free to be as collaborative as you like. There are friendly people all over the place here. - Dank (push to talk) 13:18, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I choose collaboration!!! And you’re right, see Ed’s comment immediately below. I can hardly believe this. – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've fixed all the curly quotes and apostrophes. If you click "advanced" on the editing screen, there's this cool 'find and replace' tool in the top right that you can use to make changes like this. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:54, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Dear man – sorry, dear “Ed” – you are an angel. You got the curly double quotes all fixed, saving me hours of optical agony. And by following your instructions, I was able to get rid of all 138 curly single quotes and apostrophes with a click of my mouse. We are ON OUR WAY.
BTW, I am assuming I should not enter other suggested changes until I receive possible further comments on all the above. But I couldn’t let this one wait another day. – Babel41 (talk) 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The article must not contain references unless they are direct quotations, and I suggest you using footnotes. 50.19.78.29 (talk) 20:55, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Every bit of information that could be challenged needs a "reference" (assuming we are talking about citations here) and he is using footnotes, at least what Wikipedia calls footnotes (see WP:FOOTNOTE; I don't agree with their definition either, they should be called endnotes). Can you clarify? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:18, 17 August 2011 (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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