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Wikipedia:Featured article review/L. Ron Hubbard/archive1

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

The article was delisted by Casliber via FACBot (talk) 4:36, 2 April 2020 (UTC) [1].

L. Ron Hubbard

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Notified: User talk:MartinPoulter

Review section

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I am nominating this featured article for review because it lacks inline citations (and those that it has are questionable with regard to reliability). It is suffers from weasel words and the prose is sub-standard for a contemporary FA. There were several unstruck valid opposes at the FAC. Graham Beards (talk) 00:41, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think you need to be much more specific about your concerns:
  • What citations do you think are missing?
  • Which do you think are unreliable?
  • What are the weasel words?
  • Which prose do you think is unsatisfactory?
Without more specificity, I'm afraid there's not much for others to go on. Prioryman (talk) 13:19, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, I think a review's a good idea given the age of the article, but it needs to be focused and specific. Prioryman (talk) 13:21, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have indicated using the {{fact}} where I think additional citations are needed. With regard to the citations, (which are inconsistently formatted) what makes this, for example, a reliable source; [2]? There are also single sentence paragraphs and the prose flows badly in places. Graham Beards (talk) 14:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that. I see from the article history that it's had a lot of piecemeal edits over the years, so it's no wonder it's a bit choppy. I'm happy to have a go at fixing the problems you've highlighted; in particular I should be able to supply the citations you suggest.
Regarding the source you mention, I note that it's from a veteran journalist and author who has a particular expertise on Scientology (and his own Wikipedia article). Per WP:SPS: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." Ortega certainly counts on both criteria (two books and multiple news articles). Prioryman (talk) 17:11, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Prioryman. I agree with your comments regarding Ortega - I had not heard of him before. The citations are the main issue IMHO, but the prose does need some attention. Graham Beards (talk) 17:29, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'll have a look at the prose too. I have some skills in that regard. :-) I probably won't be able to do it before the weekend though, due to other commitments. Prioryman (talk) 17:37, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You are too modest. :-) There is no rush; this isn't FAC. Best wishes. Graham Beards (talk) 18:41, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I've fixed all but one of the citation issues. The next step is to review the prose and see where improvements can be made. Prioryman (talk) 21:32, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd encourage a hard look at the sources used here. I was put in a position, as Graham Beards mentioned, of promoting over valid opposition because the editor who commented on sources basically disappeared and didn't participate in the discourse. As far as I can tell, the other opposition was over article size, which personally I don't care that much about. Most of the guidance written here about article size is based on research that's both 10+ years old and was of questionable validity even when it was current. --Laser brain (talk) 13:40, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problematic sources are listed at the FAC, with good reasoning provided.
From the FAC
  • Russell Miller's biography is a book-length treatment of the article's subject by a reputable investigative journalist, sourced to literally hundreds of end-notes. Reviews have praised it again and again for meticulous research. Frenschkowski's review that you cite (and which is cited and linked in the article) calls it "The most important critical biography of Hubbard". Yes, Frenschkowski raises concerns about specific statements in the book: let's discuss those specifics. Miller doubted the existence of "Snake" Thompson and his connection with Freud. Frenschkowski says that Miller was wrong, and that Snake's reality is backed up by additional documents. The article takes Frenschkowksi's position.

We need to look at specific text cited to these sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:04, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's about time to deal with Frenschkowski. His criticism of Miller is brief, vague and wrong. Frenschkowski states two specific points of criticism. The first is that Hubbard's assertions about his military career "have been much nearer to the truth than Miller is trying to show". That is quite wrong. I spent a year going through Hubbard's records to write a book on his military career, checked them with other material that Frenschkowski didn't have (because it hadn't been published then), and found not only that Miller had got it right but that he had actually understated the degree to which Hubbard made a mess of his military career. Frenschkowski is a theologian, not a military historian, and has no expertise in that area. He cannot be relied on as an authority on military history.
The other criticism that Frenschkowski states is that "Scientology has also been able to verify Hubbard's statements about "Comander [sic] Thompson". Yet Miller does not dispute Hubbard's statements. He only states (on page 25 of my 1987 edition) that "the Commander remains an enigma. He cannot be identified from US Navy records, nor can his relationship with Freud be established. Doctor Kurt Eissler, one of the world's leading authorities on Freud, says he has no knowledge of any correspondence or contact of any kind between Freud and Thompson." Miller states the limits of his knowledge; he doesn't anywhere reject the existence of Thompson. Subsequent researchers found more evidence of Thompson, who is discussed over 3 pages in Larry Wright's Going Clear. That's a perfect example of researchers building on each other's work – Miller identified a gap in knowledge that Wright was able to fill.
And that is it. Frenschkowski states no further criticisms of Miller's accuracy, nor does any other non-Scientologist publication that I'm aware of criticise Miller on the points that Frenschkowski raises. From my point of view, this is a very inadequate basis to imply that Miller's entire work is unreliable and needs to be reviewed. By the way, I contacted Frenschkowski during my research for my book to ask him: "I have been unable to find anything in [Hubbard's records] that contradicts Miller's assertions. Could you possibly clarify which records you refer to in your essay?". He declined to respond. If he is not interested in defending his own work I don't see why it is worth your while to do so.
I also have no idea what "our Mikael Rothstein source points in the Death and Legacy section the problems with that" is supposed to mean; it's unintelligible. Can you please clarify? Prioryman (talk) 00:38, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Is any progress happening here? I see no edits.
There is still a citation needed tag, the Daily Mail (deprecated) is used as a source, and there are duplicate citations (... unaccredited degree mill called Sequoia University.[165][166][165]) Why does a direct quote need three citations (The idea may not have been new; Hubbard has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention in 1948: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."[140][172][173]) A good amount of the excessive size could be minimized by dealing with the excessive quoting throughout the article. There is an excess of images that add little to the article. Overuse of however abounds. In the lead, "1952, Hubbard lost the rights to Dianetics in bankruptcy proceedings, and he subsequently founded Scientology." What is that subsequently about; how are the two related? Several issues of problematic "subsequently" (sample, "he was arrested in San Luis Obispo, California, and subsequently pleaded guilty" ... unlike he would plead guilty before he was arrested). The article is tediously overquoted (the red hair, green eyes quote from Parsons gives a sample of the level of unnecessary quoted detail throughout) and does not appropriately use summary style to the many sub-articles available, which could be used to reduce the tedious detail. As an example, since there is a sub-article on his military career, why do we need to know in this article when a ship was commissioned? WP:DASHes need attention, as does WP:OVERLINKing (miscarriage as one sample, New York City, World War I, it goes on). Poor writing exemplified in the first paragraph, which tells us in the first sentence that he was the founder of Scientology and two sentences later that he subsequently (ugh) founded scientology. Here is the clean TOC at promotion, for contrast with the rambling long section names now. The same diff shows the deterioration in the lead.
If anyone is working on this article, they should get busy, and we should ask Ealdgyth to look at the sources, and Mike Christie to perhaps weigh in on the magazine sections. If not, move to FARC; this has already been here six weeks, and it's in rather bad shape. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:28, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The section that covers the material I'm knowledgeable about is this one. I've had a look through and fixed one minor error, and added a couple of links. A couple of comments about that section:
  • I'd cut 'Science fiction newsletter Xignals reported that Hubbard wrote "over 100,000 words a month" during his peak. Martin Gardner asserted that his writing "[wa]s done at lightning speed."'; I don't know Xignals but doubt it's a reliable source for this, and Gardner's comment won't be from first hand knowledge, but taken from other sources. Both are from encyclopedia.com, which I'm not familiar with -- is it an RS? SFE3, which is an RS, has an article on Hubbard which mentions that his writing of this era was "composed with delirious speed"; that would be a better source if we want to reinsert a mention.
  • I'm not sure about the assertion, cited to Stableford, that Hubbard was taken under Campbell's wing; Stableford is a respectable source, and I wouldn't oppose at FAC over something like this, but Hubbard's success as a writer predates his involvement with Campbell, and per SFE3 he was not one of the writers who, under Campbell, helped redefine sf's conventions in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It would be worth looking at other sources to see if Stableford's comment is a minority view. For contrast, there's no question that some writers (Isaac Asimov for example) benefited very much from Campbell's tutelage; I haven't heard that Hubbard was one of them.
  • The source given for Buckskin Brigades doesn't support it being Hubbard's first novel; our article on the book has other sources that might work.
  • The point about Hubbard being short of money is made twice, at different points in the section; one refers to Maryland and the other to Washington, but both refer to 1936 so it would make sense to combine the two points.
  • The last two sentences seem disconnected and look as though they were dropped in without attempting to integrate them.
Generally the material in this section matches what I know about this part of Hubbard's career. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:49, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

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Issues raised in the review section mostly centred around sourcing. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:55, 29 February 2020 (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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