Wikipedia:Featured article review/Jim Thorpe/archive1

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 kept 06:28, 17 May 2007.

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Jim Thorpe

Review commentary

Messages left on User_talk:Jeronimo, Olympics, and Baseball --Miskwito 04:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC) Messages left at Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Indigenous peoples of NA, and NFL. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Fails 1(c), and probably 1(a), 1(d) and 2.

I don't think the prose is necessarily 'brilliant' or even compelling in some places:

• "As a result, Thorpe did not handle his brother's death very well, and ran away from school on several occasions. Hiram Thorpe then sent Jim to what is now known as Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, so that his son would not run away again."

In others, it reads too much like a sympathetic book written on Thorpe, rather than an encylcopedia article:

• "Unfortunately every square inch of the film has been lost to time. One of the ironies of Thorpe's life is that no footage exists of him in his athletic prime."
• "It was not Thorpe's first try at baseball, as would soon become known to the rest of the world."

Which brings us to 1d, neutrality. Section titles such as "A rising star", "An Olympic hero", and "Declared a professional" are not NPOV, nor, I think, is writing like "In October 1982, the IOC Executive Committee approved Thorpe's reinstatement. In an unusual ruling, however, they declared that Thorpe was now co-champion with Bie and Wieslander, even though both athletes had always said they considered Thorpe to be the only champion. In a ceremony on January 18, 1983, two of Thorpe's children, Gale and Bill, were presented with commemorative medals. (The original medals had both ended up in museums, but were stolen and are still missing.)"

With regards to criterion 2, the "Legacy" section in particular is poorly-formatted, and basically proseline. The most serious problem with the article, though, is that it's barely referenced at all. "Legends" and quotes aren't cited (e.g., "Legend has it that, when awarding Thorpe his prize, King Gustav said, "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world," to which Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King.""), but neither are almost all other claims, including his claimed Meskwaki name, or very specific data (e.g., "In his lackluster career, he amassed 91 runs scored, 82 runs batted in and a .252 batting average over 289 games."). By current standards, this wouldn't even be close to a GA, let alone a featured article. --Miskwito 03:51, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment—"compelling, even brilliant" is a subjective term that we should throw out the door in favor of "professional writing", which is less subjective. With that said, I agree that the prose needs work. The article has a case of the yo-yo effect; some areas are too formal, and others areas are excessively informal. If anyone is interested in working on this article, I recommend taking a look at User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a. — Deckiller 00:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations (1c), prose (1a), neutrality (1d), and formatting (2). Marskell 11:40, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I've done some work on it, I added some refs, expanded some sections, fixed some formatting, added some info etc. Deckiller said he'll try to help if he has time. Here's a diff. It still needs copyediting, more references, and a more neutral tone. I think the format is alright now. Quadzilla99 15:47, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Update Ok I added some more refs, should be close to satisying 1c still needs work on the prose and tone. Quadzilla99 19:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Update Alright I think it should be close to satisfying 1d and 2 now. Quadzilla99 14:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Good work with the referencing! Some of the prose still concerns me though, but by this point I don't think that's a big enough concern to demote the article over. I'm not sure. --Miskwito 12:21, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Yeah, as I said I think 1c, 1d, and 2 are close to addressed. 1a still needs work, it's on the LOCE list. Quadzilla99 13:34, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not sure on the use of hyphen vs. ndash here
  • ... 120–yard high hurdles in 15 seconds, and the 220–yard low hurdles in 24 seconds ...
• can someone ask Tony1 (talk · contribs)? Also, can ISBNs be added on book references where possible (there's an ISBN finder in the infobox on my user page). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I added them in the refs I inserted, you want them in the further reading section also I guess? I'll add them. Quadzilla99 19:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I changed the ref style and inserted hyphens, the article still needs copy-editing. Quadzilla99 21:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I am not familiar with the FARC process yet, so I will just add these comments rather than oppose or support (I am not sure whether I can really add new objections or not at this stage).

• I think that the article fails 1(c) because the major Thorpe biographies listed in the "Further reading" are not used as sources for the article. This makes me question the article's comprehensiveness (1b) and accuracy. It is odd to me that those biographies and others published about Thorpe would not be the basis of the article.
• One significant omission from the article seems to be a discussion of race. It is hard to believe that race was never an issue in Thorpe's life.
• I agree that the prose (1a) needs improvement. Quadzilla99 asked me to copyedit this article (which is how I discovered it), but I am not prepared to invest time copyediting an article that may need to be radically revised. (Sorry!)
• 2(a) The lead is not a summary of the article.

Again, I would say that my most serious concern is that the sources used here are perhaps not the best choices. While in and of themselves not necessarily questionable, a patchwork of websites and reference entries is not going to give the kind of detail that a biography will. I think that the editors should use the biographies since they are available (unless for some reason, they feel these biographies are unreliable). Awadewit 21:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

• Well I wouldn't say it's automatically lacking in certain areas because the bios weren't used, I used the best sources I could come up with on the notice I had. I'm fairly sure the original editors used the biographies to write the article (they're no longer around). It probably should deal with race relations more, also it needs copy-editing so I'm remove as of now. I tried my best to help out but I've exhausted my energy reserves. It's a shame though considering the importance of the figure. Quadzilla99 21:52, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Hold on, I'm doing some more work on this, let's see what happens. I'm also going to ask some more people to give it a copyedit tomorrow. Quadzilla99 05:51, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
    • To clarify, I added a section on racism and expanded the lead. Quadzilla99 12:51, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Weak keep Prose still needs some work, but I think that can be addressed by keeping it on the LOCE list and moving it from the FAR/FARC section to the proofreading section. Every other concern is addressed. Quadzilla99 09:58, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• Weak keep, concur with Quadz — prose could still use some tweaking, but other concerns have been addressed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.