Wikipedia:Peer review/Jennifer Brunner/archive1

Jennifer Brunner

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for January 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because the article failed at WP:GAC for reasons that were not clear because the cited problems do not seem to exist. I took the article to WP:GAR. Many people there mentioned several other areas of improvement for the article.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 00:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments by Doncram I am a fan of TonyTheTiger's work and given the nomination I thought I would disagree with the GAC. However, I find that I do have somewhat the same issues as expressed there, although perhaps they were expressed too briefly and were not specific enough focussed on improvements that could be made. But, this article is also under GAR and has received extensive comments there, with feedback communicating why 2 reviewers there believe the article is not GA yet. I am not sure, but I believe those comments have not been addressed by rewriting in the article. I am not sure about policy for wp:Peer Review but I know that there is supposed to be a gap of time between repeated peer reviews anyhow, and I think that should extend to requiring a gap between GARs and PRs, and between FARs and PRs as well. So if i were a dictator running this (which I am not), I would say this is ineligible for PR now.

All that said, I will share a few general thoughts. I apologize that I think this is not what you were looking for, and you should note that i am not experienced in reviewing bio articles, but here goes:

• Nice article, very informative to me about this person I did not know about previously.
• The two photos are great quality and really add.
• I thought the GAC review sounded a bit odd in calling for more info about Jennifer Brunner's personal life, or something like that. However, reading the article, it seems to have a lot about the election logistics issues in Ohio which could better be in a political scandal article or in an article about election technologies. I would almost prefer striking all of it, and just mentioning in very short bio style that Brunner has been active in exploring improved election management in Ohio. (I'm sorry, that is a bit of an exageration for effect.) And I find I would indeed like to see more biographical info about Brunner. In fact, in an article about Brunner, the biography should be the article, it should not be relegated to a late section.
  • I do not think a political scandal is appropriate. There are several distinct legal issues and cases related to the United States elections, 2008. I am just starting to look at this review. I am not sure where I am going with the article, but do not think there is much reason for a separate article. I think the problem is that for the extent of career details the personal stuff is underweighted. However, there is not much biographical information to use for encyclopedic content in Brunner articles that I have found. Maybe I need a different type of resource to find what is desired.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:30, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, i don't know whether terming it a scandal or not is appropriate. The "United States elections, 2008" article does indeed seem like an appropriate place to hold some of this material, or at least it should mention some of the issues about voting technology in Ohio which you have documented here. Hope it was fun to see the inauguration, among 1.75 or 2 million others! :) doncram (talk) 07:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• The current organization of the article is:

# 1 Career
    * 1.1 Secretary of State
    * 1.2 2008 general election
          o 1.2.1 Same-day voter registration
          o 1.2.2 Help America Vote Act (HAVA)
                + 1.2.2.1 Dispute over voter registration verification methods
                + 1.2.2.2 Growth of voter registrations in 2008
                + 1.2.2.3 Supreme Court reverses lower court on verification methods
          o 1.2.3 Other issues
# 2 Personal
# 3 General election results

This does not seem like a bio article to me. A reader-understandable approach would be to provide an overview about her importance, and then explain her life to date chronologically. Question: what is your model wikipedia article of this genre? As a reviewer, at least as an inexperienced one, I would like to know what your models are to provide more useful review comments. Without that, perhaps you could still find it useful to pick a FA biography article or two and consider the extent that they provide more of a biographical view, and otherwise are organized.

• • I am just starting to dive into this one. Here is the problem. Brunner was not a notable person until she attained her current office two years ago. In the last two years she has begun being mentioned in The New York Times, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and Time. None of these magazines have profiled her. You can not even get her place of birth at Project Vote Smart. Her life history is not an open book yet. Rumor has it that she may vie for a United States Senate seat. If she does, she is likely to be featured and profiled in the publications that she is now just mentioned in. I am at a loss in terms of rounding out her life story. I have thumbed many newspaper articles in which she is mentioned. Mostly I am able to find her professional history. She is notable, but not really knowable at this point. I like to believe I am one of the better scroungers for bio info, but you need to call the FBI to get any info on her. In terms of models, I have done several WP:PLT WP:GAs at this point and she is unique in the sense that there is nothing really interesting about her pre WP:N life from what I see.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
• By the intro, I was not very wowed(sp?) by the notability of Brunner. The intro seems not to be written to establish her importance, while i think it should be. It is factual sounding, instead of trying to grab the reader, while i think some puffery is allowed and needed in an article. (Perhaps the current intro is an artifact of prior reviews that were anti-puffery, however; I did not review the edit history.) The only mention in the first para as to her importance is that she is the first female Attorney General of Ohio, but being the first female of something like that is not as noteworthy as it once would have been. Very late in the article, in the personal section, it is mentioned that she received the Profiles in Courage Award. To me, that is hugely informative and a great honor and I think it should be in the lead of the article instead. She is one of apparently only two awardees in 2008, and one of, cumulatively, still very few. I'd prefer if the Profiles in Courage Award article were itself more developed, but it should be wikilinked. Also, there may exist a text of the award statement about Brunner, akin to, say, the Ohio University-based Accounting Hall of Fame's available-on-line texts of nomination/award statements about its awardees. This should be quoted from and would provide a very strong statement about the importance of Brunner. It is not explained in the article why she won the award, except very vaguely, while the stories I have heard of other Profiles in Courage awardees are very engaging and compelling.
• In the intro and throughout the paper, it is repeatedly reported that Brunner has said X, and advocated Y, and supports Z so on. I am hugely skeptical of the importance of these assertions. Talk is cheap. Politicians talk a lot and say many things. I advise way cutting back on those. Practically all that is important is what she has actually done, and it is not usually important what she said. Of course, sometimes the saying is what is important, like if it is newsworthy and notable that she is the very first person to say some particular thing, and saying that had an important and measured effect galvanizing public opinion on some issue, or had other measurable effects. Specifically in the intro: She has argued policy regarding same day voting,[5] privacy of social security information,[6] and foreclosure-related voter eligibility.[7] She has advocated for greater availability and access of voting to all. I think the importance of her having made those arguments needs to be established.
• In several places it is stated that Brunner "feels" X. Those need to be rewritten. You cannot know what she felt, and such statements do not belong in an encyclopedia article, in my view. You can quote what she said, but she may well have been saying it for entirely different reasons than she believed it or felt it.
• Grammar: Her efforts have focused on correcting the procedural election difficulties that Ohio has become known for. Reword to avoid ending with a preposition. Also, I am not sure you can correct a difficulty. Perhaps: "She has focused on addressing the election procedural issues for which Ohio has become known."?

I hope this helps. doncram (talk) 10:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• • The outline of current content gives me some perspective. I had not noticed it.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, good, glad at least that is helpful. Thanks for the feedback; actually there are a lot of peer reviews where requestors, oddly in my view, say nothing. :) doncram (talk) 07:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure how much I will be working on this. It is looking like Friday will be a travel day to the inauguration from Chicago. I will probably look at these later in the month.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 09:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The revised article is a lot better, I think. It is very informative and interesting, and now it is more clearly about Brunner. I appreciate that the intro now more clearly establishes her imortance. There remain wording issues involving who "felt" what, and other issues that might be well addressed by getting a copy-editing done by another editor. One that I note is: "Because a voter could show up with only a cell phone bill, give any four digits and claim they were the last four digits of his or her Social Security Number, and then immediately vote and have such ballots put into the same pool as other votes with no procedure for more rigorous scrutiny of their validity, the Republican Party opposed the same day voting plan and fought it in several Ohio Courts." That asserts that the reason why the Republicans opposed same-day voting has to do with mundanities (perhaps they are anti-cell phones?). You can't know why they did it, really, although you could perhaps find a quote asserting their reasons and quote that. Frankly, it would be much more believable to me that the Republicans opposed same-day voting because same-day voters tend to vote as Democrats, and that as a tactic towards winning elections the Republicans therefore piled up various objections (some valid) which could be used to argue against it. Anyhow, I think the article was good and is now better, though it would not necessarily pass a GA review just yet. It's been a pleasure watching this. doncram (talk) 17:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I concede, I have pretty much only added semi-important information to fill in the years of her private practice and judge tenure. As a judge, she probably handled a routine variety of cases. I don't know, but most of the ones that made statewide papers are included in the article. As a private practice lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, she represented a lot of politicians who worked in the State Capital (Columbus). She handled a few other cases. Of course it fills out her career adding all this detail. It also clarifies her political connections. Most importantly it tells the reader almost every half-notable thing she did before becoming a notable person (On the talk page you can see her article was twice deleted prior to assuming her current office). I am glad to have been able to fill this in. If the GA reviewers ask for more attention on the article I will give it. Right now I am contributing my time elsewhere. Thus, most other concerns here have been overlooked. I am sorry. It was a huge effort tracking down the stuff I added though and realize the article is now a much broader picture of her. I will be surprised if she does not eventually become a Governor or Senator in Ohio. Thus, I am glad to have performed the service of tracking down the information that I have.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)