Wikipedia:Featured article review/D. B. Cooper/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 delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 3:24, 3 March 2022 (UTC) [1].

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D. B. Cooper

Notified: DoctorJoeE, Nishkid64, Indopug, Maclean25, Ealdgyth, TJRC, Sceptre, JeffUK, WikiProject Biography, WikiProject Oregon, WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, WikiProject Aircraft, WikiProject FBI, diff for talk page notification 2021-11-26

Review section

Thirteen years have passed since the article's promotion as Featured Article in March 2008. Issues about reliability of sources were raised initially by Hog Farm. Among the list of questionable sources are self-published sources and forum posts. There have been edits since the thread there was created at least two weeks ago. However, AFAICS, edits not yet challenged have been usually cleanups. Other edits have been reverted. The sourcing issue still hasn't been addressed. George Ho (talk) 03:10, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• Move to FARC - sourcing/original research concerns. Additionally, the article is currently the subject of an ongoing content dispute, so the recent editing history is mainly just reverting. Hog Farm _Talk 15:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• Move to FARC – per Hog Farm – zmbro _(talk) 20:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

FARC section

Issues raised in the review include sourcing and original research. DrKay (talk) 15:37, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• Delist issues still present (t · c) buidhe 04:18, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Delist - the article has been and continues to be a magnet for additions of unreliable sources/original research/synth, the questionable sources identified by me on the talk page haven't been purged from the article, and there doesn't seem to be anyone providing a watchful eye to keep the iffy additions out. Hog Farm _Talk 19:50, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Striking delist for now, as work has been occurring. Hog Farm _Talk 15:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. I cleaned out some of the more egreiously poorly sourced bits that had accumulated since 2008, but ideally the article needs a looking over by someone who's read the relevant books to ensure content - source integrity, since I suspect it's possible for claims to have worked their way in that aren't really supported by the references. SnowFire (talk) 03:58, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: After taking a quick look through this article, I have some concerns:

• The suspects section is incredibly long, with possible WP:OVERSECTION and I am unsure why these people are highlighted when, as the article states, thousands of people were considered. Did a source compile a list of most likely suspects? I don't think it's great that the article states that these are notable examples without a citation.
• The Further Reading section needs a good trim, with high-quality sources used as citations in the article.
• I don't think Inside Edition (ref 151) is a high-quality source.
• Reference formatting is inconsistent. A "Works cited" should be split from the "Further reading" to prevent Harv errors.

@SnowFire: are you interested in continuing to fix up this article? If not, I'll recommend delisting unless someone else steps forward. Z1720 (talk) 17:04, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• No, I'm just doing minor cleanup, since at least some of it is low-hanging fruit. I will say that I suspect the article is at least GA quality? But FA quality really needs someone who's read at least two or three of the major books to affirm that the article matches their conclusions and the references check out, IMO.
• While the suspects list is long, it does appear that these are all suspects who were sufficiently "notable" that they at least got local news to run stories about them. So it's not a total indiscriminate list of people the FBI checked. I suppose it could theoretically be split from the article on size concerns but I think that would be a bad idea and an invitation for overmuch detail in the split-off article.

• I think I am more concerned about who isn't on this list: What determined the criteria of persons included as suspects in this article? Right now it seems like suspects were added as editors found sources for them. I would rather have a source generate a list of notable suspects to talk about on this article, if possible. I'm not to concerned about a spinout article: the FA criteria doesn't require spinout articles to be of any specific quality so it might be better for Cooper's article to have the info spunout. Also, I will note that many suspects were not present in the article when this was at FAC. Z1720 (talk) 18:16, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• Hmm, not sure I'd trust any single repository of all suspects myself, especially for people who were only raised as suspects after a book might have been published. SnowFire (talk) 21:23, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• I agree about Inside Edition, I rolled my eyes a bit when I saw that used as a source - I removed both references that used it and made sure that what remained went back to the more reliable sources.
• I'm not seeing any citation errors? The sfn refs appear to work fine for me at least, but maybe I'm missing something. SnowFire (talk) 17:57, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• I use a script, available here: User:Ucucha/HarvErrors that highlights harv link errors. The errors are caused by the script seeing the books listed in a Further reading section. I'm not sure if this is a specific requirement for FA criteria, but I would suggest that sources used in the article are listed in a Works cited section, not Further reading. Also, there are many book sources that are not in sfn templates: either all books should use sfn templates, or none should. Z1720 (talk) 18:16, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• I'd argue that's the script being overly strict and marking something an error that's merely not the usual style - I can imagine an integrated "sources and further reading" section done well that'd be unusual but not invalid. That said, on closer inspection, the "Further reading" section had too much self-published quasi-spam, and the relevant books were actually cited rather than being "pure" further reading, so went ahead and converted the section into a Bibliography, integrating the occasional single citation into the material. SnowFire (talk) 21:23, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• As an additional comment if anyone wants to take a go at cleaning this one up - it seems that the Gunther 1985 book reference ("D. B. Cooper: What Really Happened") is pretty heavily contested by some sources that essentially accuse Gunther of making stuff up. It may well still be a notable book in Cooper lore to discuss (apparently some people got ideas about Cooper accusations from reading the book and it influenced perceptions of the case) but it sounds like it probably should be used very carefully, if at all, for the basic factual tale of what's known - but it's reasonably heavily cited at the moment, included in the "this is the boring consensus view" sections rather than the "here's some wild-eyed conspiracy theories that are notable but probably wrong" sections where such sources might be more acceptable). SnowFire (talk) 21:34, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
• I've started working on the issues laid out here in hopes of potentially saving the article from delisting. Thanks SnowFire for the good feedback and your work so far. ––FormalDude talk 22:09, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  I've addressed the issue of the Gunther 1985 book raised by SnowFire. All Gunther references are now verified, corroborated by an RS, or have been removed.

  I've also addressed the issue of the list of suspects raised by Z1720. There are now 3 references that are lists of notable suspects. ––FormalDude talk 18:31, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  Nice work. I think this one might be savable. Were you able to read Himmelsbach's book at all, as that one appears the "best" book on the FBI's take? I suppose I can go down to the library and check it out if you haven't. I think that's my main concern left.

  To reply to myself: I suppose "be the change you want in the world", so I went ahead and put on a hold request for Himmelsbach's book at the library. It'll take a few days to come in though, so a matter for next week. SnowFire (talk) 20:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  One other note: Is "The Crime Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained" really a RS that you added? I didn't take a close look, but the title isn't encouraging - I'd definitely rather stick to literature that's specifically about Cooper, not passing mentions in a crime book that may simply be repeating Stuff They Read Somewhere Else.

  Another (minor) issue with a reference: Currently Rhodes & Calame's book on the McCoy hypothesis (which they advocate for) is used as a source to describe the evidence against the McCoy hypothesis (ref 158 that starts with "Some notable examples" and is really more a footnote than a citation). That's very fair of them and fine to include, but it would be nice to verify that there's some "neutral" source that concurs with this as well. SnowFire (talk) 18:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  "The Crime Book" is an RS that I added. It's written by multiple non-fiction crime authors and a historian. While it may be tertiary in nature, I have no reason to doubt its reliability.

  I have been having trouble finding the book by Himmelsbach, I'm not sure my library has it. Much appreciated if you are able to help with that at all.

  I think I see what you're saying with the third reference. It appears that ref 158 verifies the claim that the FBI did not consider him a suspect. ––FormalDude talk 22:18, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• Himmelsbach's book came in earlier than I expected at the library. There's definitely been some citation drift since the FAC in 2008, and I've realigned some of the content to match the citation better diff. The bit about Cooper demanding takeoff occur with the aft staircase deployed and arguing over it is not in Himmelsbach - maybe it's real, but it's from somewhere else if so. Marked it as citation needed for now; can just remove it as well. Also requested a cite for the airplane landing at 10:15 in Reno. If we can't dig anything up in a few days, can just remove that too. SnowFire (talk) 02:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
  • @FormalDude: - Any interest in attempting to track down where this claim of an argument between Cooper & the crew over taking off with the aft staircase deployed is coming from? If not, I can just remove it, since my browsing of the sources didn't turn it up - but maybe I just missed it. Other than that, any feelings about the article, and if it's keepable-as-FA? It's a little unsettling how much the article is sourced to random news stories, but as best I can tell, Himmelsbach really is the only good "neutral" book on the topic... most all of the other books are also "let me show off my STUNNING NEW THEORY that Roderick G. Badguy was Cooper" on the side, which makes them a bit problematic to use. SnowFire (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

    Thanks for the ping, SnowFire. Yes I'd be happy to look into those two claims that failed verification. This source seems to provide corroboration: https://offbeatoregon.com/1306b-db-cooper-part-2-the-getaway.html. ––FormalDude talk 01:38, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

    I'm a bit skeptical that article is sufficient on its own as a source (website maintainer is apparently a college professor in Communications, which... isn't perfect for a FA [2]), but to his credit, he cited his sources, and it turns out his source was in Gray's book. Also it seems that the library has an electronic copy of it; updated the article to match. I'll try and look through Gray's book a bit more and see if there's any other adjustments to be made. SnowFire (talk) 06:04, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

• Sorry about the delay. I've finished reading / skimming Gray's book "Skyjack"... while it does thankfully cite sources in the back, it's a little chattier than I'd prefer. Anyway, the bad news is that I don't think it really adds that much, since Gray's New Yorker article is already cited a bunch, and the book adds a lot of uninteresting filler. The good news is that it does seem to basically confirm the slants given in the article. This definitely isn't a perfect article, and there's a lot more citing of random news stories than would be ideal, but given that nobody has published a real scholarly takedown on the topic other than maybe Himmelsbach (who can't be used for post 1980s developments), I think it may be the best on offer. So a weak keep? There's still some sources I don't like (Waymarking for the most obvious one, but it's also used to cite a trivial fact that is infuriatingly offline), but I think the article is in acceptable shape. Happy to take another hack at it if there's specific areas of concern. Thoughts, @FormalDude:? SnowFire (talk) 09:29, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
  • @Buidhe and Hog Farm: Since you !voted earlier, any thoughts? I think the article is probably keepable myself. The FAR was initiated on grounds of weak sourcing, and the worst sources have been removed. There's still some borderline sources in stuff like local Oregon newspapers which, while not banned, are not great, but think they're used basically appropriately. Also, the revised article seems to match my review of the literature without any major omissions. Any further removals required, or is this good to maintain FA status as is? SnowFire (talk) 12:23, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• Almost 20-year-old sources: "The crime remains the only unsolved air piracy in commercial aviation history.[4][5][6]". And why three sources? Either it does (today) or doesn't hold this record.
• Don't start a sentence with a number: "$5,880 of the ransom was found along the banks of the Columbia River in 1980, which triggered renewed interest but ultimately only deepened the mystery."
• Cited to a 2016 source, but stated in the present (what is the 2022 situation)? "The FBI officially suspended active investigation of the case in July 2016, but the agency continues to request that any physical evidence that might emerge related to the parachutes or the ransom money be submitted for analysis.[8]"
• Not a sentence (ends a section): "Some notable examples:[116][121][122]"

Not a thorough read; just what I picked up on a quick glance. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• In general, I'm not too worried about dated sources on the basic facts of the skyjacking - not a lot has happened in the core case details since the partial ransom recovery in 1980, mostly just new people to accuse of Maybe Being Cooper But With No Direct Evidence since then. Replaced the refs with a December 2021 one that asserted that it's still the only unsolved skyjacking. I don't really agree that starting sentences with a number is a problem, but I think that number is too much detail for the lede anyway, so moved to the body of the article regardless. I'm sure that the FBI still is accepting new evidence in the same way that they'll accept new evidence on unsolved cases from 1853, but it's not real likely, so removed that fragment for the definitely factual suspension of the main investigation. I think that the "Some notable examples:" is introducing a list but just in section form, but I changed it to a full sentence since it doesn't really matter either way. (I know you said that was just a skim, but as most of this isn't "my" text, I'm leery of doing a personal close copyedit myself.) SnowFire (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Not looking too bad, but for a 9,000 word article, that's an awfully small lead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:32, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• Expanded the lede a tad (and removed refs from the lede after moving them into the body in appropriate spots). A lot of the article is talking about specific suspects - all of whom are Almost Certainly Innocent - so that list-of-suspects material doesn't really fit in the lede. Probably fair to expand Cooper's route, Cooper's hypothesized fate, and the impact on airport security though. SnowFire (talk) 00:39, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Any further comments? As noted above, I didn't really go over the prose with a fine-toothed comb, partially since the FARC nom just cited sourcing and partially because that isn't my forte. So it might not hurt for such a second pass, but it isn't so bad as to be delist-worthy I would hope. We good to keep if there are no more requests? SnowFire (talk) 23:30, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

    I'd definitely support keeping the article as FA at this point. ––FormalDude talk 00:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

    User:FormalDude, did you intend to enter a Keep declaration? If so, you should bold your "Keep". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:40, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

• Keep Since this review is still opened and there hasn't been further chatter, maybe a bolded vote will help to either close the review or to get additional feedback. SnowFire (talk) 17:24, 28 February 2022 (UTC) (EDIT: See below, striking keep.)

  @Buidhe: to have a new look. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:37, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Hog Farm: to have a new look. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  Sorry for the false alarm; I thought I would only be cleaning up citations, but I am finding considerable sourcing problems here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:21, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

• "In an experimental re-creation, with the same aircraft used in the hijacking in the same flight configuration, FBI agents pushed a 200-pound (91 kg) sled out of the open airstair and were able to reproduce the upward motion of the tail section and brief change in cabin pressure described by the flight crew at 8:13 p.m. It was concluded that 8:13 p.m. was the most likely jump time." I can't access the source; who concluded? The FBI concluded that ... ? Avoid passive voice. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:36, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
  • The book was long since returned to the library, but yes, Himmelsbach / the FBI was who thought this, yes. I disagree that the passive voice is an issue here though since I don't think this statement should be over-qualified: I don't want to imply that it's controversial or that only the FBI thought this. It seems pretty accepted by everyone. That said, it's not a big deal, and I can make it say the FBI instead if desired. SnowFire (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
• Inconsistent citations; sources have been added over time by multiple editors, and they're a mess. The later citations have the URL linked to the publisher, not the title, and there is no consistency between cite news/cite web, how to list publishers vs works. I don't mind doing all the cleanup, but first want to know that others approve the prose, before I go through all the work, 'cuz It Is A Mess. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:10, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• Usually airplanes fly from somewhere to somewhere: "The aircraft was operated by Northwest Orient Airlines and was flying from Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington." SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:12, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• No "mystery" has been identified at the point in the lead when this statement is made: "which triggered renewed interest but ultimately only deepened the mystery;" presumably the myster(ies) are a) who was D.B. Cooper, and b) what became of him, but "mystery" is introduced before we know there is a mystery. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:14, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
  • That line was originally farther down in the lede but a different editor (not me) moved it up. I think it's obvious though: the mystery is who is D B Cooper and what happened to them? The first sentence calls the hijacker "unidentified" so disagree it hasn't been introduced yet that there's still unknown elements. SnowFire (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

  That's all from me; the article is worthy of a save, and I am willing to help clean up citations if others agree it is close. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:30, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  Sorry, everyone, for the false alarm; this article has considerable sourcing issues, and should not have gotten this far at all. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:20, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

• Delist, there are sourcing messes everywhere, and I don't think we can get there from here. It is unfortunate that no one checked the sourcing sooner. The article looks good on the surface, but what lurks inside a source check is frightful. @Buidhe, Hog Farm, and FormalDude:, sorry for the false alarm. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:11, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  I stopped checking after 11 failed verification tags, and four unreliable source tags. I did not verify content for all the citations I cleaned up, lest anyone mistakenly assumes I did. And I did not finish citation cleanup, as not worth the five hours I already gave it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  Delist, and I am afraid that all of the FAC nominator's articles will need sizable source-text integrity repairs. See also Wikipedia:Featured article review/Lee Smith (baseball)/archive1, Wikipedia:Featured article review/Barthélemy Boganda/archive1, as well as the source-text integrity issues noted at Talk:J. R. Richard and Talk:Thomas C. Hindman (the latter two need to go to FAR as well). I am afraid that it will be a lot of work to get the sourcing back up to grade here, especially given that amount of speculation/problematic additions that this article has been subjected to that Smith/Boganda/Richard/Hindman don't seem to have been. Hog Farm _Talk 03:29, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

George Ho are you following? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:05, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I do. I don't feel like interfering very much. I just happen to see the results of this. --George Ho (talk) 05:14, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

• So, I agree that source-cite integrity was the major concern when I looked into this before (as stated), and I did make some major changes in my earlier examination to correct article drift since promotion. The reason SandyGeorgia & I got different impressions was (I suspect) that I did not, however, vigorously remove "extra" citations I couldn't check; I erred on the side of leaving them around in case they had some minor value. I figure if they're additional data, they're Basically Harmless, and only removed egregiously unreliable sources. What I did check was that the overall content matched with Himmelsbach's book (and to a lesser extent, Grey's book), such that there weren't any wild claims. That's why I was suggesting keep above: even if some of the sources are weak or unreliable, they aren't the foundation the article is built on. If some of these sources are weak, whatever, just remove them. (For example, I agree that the serial number checker website is hardly a great source, but it's also only used to support a claim about what serial numbers were used, basically a trivia point.) I see the Rolling Stone article was marked as better cite needed - I didn't login to read it myself, but I'm pretty sure that the statement it backs is in Himmelsbach & is non-controversial. I guess I should have added a cite there when I had the book checked out, but didn't want to spam over citations, and Rolling Stone is reasonably reliable? I can't read the whole article so maybe it's awful, just going on general reputation here. It's a good catch that through drift, the FBI "Help Us Solve the Mystery" cites ended up in random spots and should be removed, but again not really a concern if the material is still sourced elsewhere. Basically, the article might be guilty of having some questionable citations, but that are also non-essential nor THAT important.
• Anyway, is it worth getting the book out of the library again? I really don't think these issues are that bad. Would just sprinkling even more Himmelsbach cites everywhere to replace the news articles be what's being requested? Or is there some deeper issue? SnowFire (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Also, side note, but I see that SandyGeorgia de-capped the title of some of the newspaper citations (e.g. "Hijacker Collects Ransom of $200,000; Parachutes From Jet and Disappears"). The documentation of Template:Cite news clearly shows examples in title caps that respect the style of the original article, though, and the original headline was indeed in title caps. Any objection to restoring this to title caps? SnowFire (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

    The article needs a consistent citation style. Books are always title case. It is up to editor discretion whether the rest are title or sentence case, as long as we pick one style and are consistent (the article before I started was a mixed mess-- there was no citation style on any parameter). If you switch anything, they all have to agree, so undoing the work I have done now would be unnecessary work. We don't have to respect the case of the original article; we use our own house style, which simply requires consistency.

    Re, should you check the book out again? Considering these same kinds of problems are throughout the FAC nominator's other work, I will not be entering a Keep declaration on this article unless someone goes through Every Single Citation and verifies it with a reliable source. That is, a line-by-line source-to-text integrity check; stuff in here is just made up. Are you up for that ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:25, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  • As another comment, re Hog Farm... I don't know the original nominator at all, but to defend their honor slightly, checking the article at time of promotion in 2008, the various references to the FBI "Help Us Solve the Mystery" page (several of which were tagged failed verification by Sandy in the current form of the article) all seem to check out then, except for one maybe (the claim that it was dark - but not a big deal, it was indeed dark, a statement perhaps referenced later). This was just the normal passage of time on an article more popular with random good-faith editors that shifted some of the references around to be far from the claim that they were actually verifying. SnowFire (talk) 23:57, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

    How are you able to check that content was verified in the original version? That FAC was promoted (by me, as a new FAC delegate) before Ealdgyth started serious sourcing checks later in 2008, and before we started source-to-text integrity checks on every new nominator after the Halloween 2010 copyvio debacle. I pulled up the oldest archive.org version, and got nothing. At any rate, if the content is now verifiable, that has not been done with updated citations, and 15 years worth of work is needed. The other articles written by the same nominator have required line-by-line rewrites; that's what is needed here. A complete rewrite to sources that meet FA standards. And using a consistent citation style; I spent five hours cleaning up citations for non-reliable sources that didn't verify text. (And that was only half the article.) Better to enter the citations correctly the first time.

    It is great that you read a book and believe the article is verifiable, but that information will be of no help to us five years down the road, when we are facing FAR again; we need citations added to reliable sources that meet FA standards; those will endure so that we don't have to go through this again in a few years. It's unfortunate that you didn't replace them when you had the book. My recommendation is that this article be delisted, and you can bring it back to FAC in a new, rewritten version, and then you own the shiny star :)

    Also, per Hog Farm, source-to-text integrity issues are found throughout the FAC nominator's work, and we can't expect either our readers or other editors to "take our word for it" on sourcing. Indy beetle was able to salvage Barthélemy Boganda partly because they had already written many FAs and know the standard. When the next FAR comes up from the same nominator, we need to be sure there is a rigorous look under the hood before anyone wastes time polishing prose and cleaning citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:55, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

    As I've been mentioned here, would like to note that Sandy's general point is correct in my experience. For the Boganda article rewrite I obtained most of the source material that was originally cited to double check it; took a lot of time but allowed me to find both inaccuracies and text that leaned a little close to plagiarism (both of these require rewriting the text in question). A lot off old FAs have citations that do not support the text given, sometimes due to good faith carelessness, and sometimes due to original research. Right now I'm doing an extensive rewrite of the former FA Hamlet chicken processing plant fire. While I'm using mostly newer sources, I've found several instances of text cited to old sources during its FA days that was not actually supported by those sources (this was not a case of "drift" in some instances, some of these problems were there when the article was promoted). Old FAs require source checks, hefty spot checks at the least and near-total ones if a problem is uncovered. -Indy beetle (talk) 01:50, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

    Re Sandy's question of "how was I able to check the content was verified": I meant very specifically for the one source I mentioned above, the "Help Us Solve The Mystery" refernece which you tagged with failed verification several times. I looked at the page as it existed on the Wayback Machine and compared it to the version of the article in 2008. Now, if Indy Beetle says that this editor's other work had to be substantially rewritten, I believe him of course, I was just saying that in the instance I checked, it wasn't the worst kind of sourcing issue where a simply invalid citation is used. The citation as used in 2008 was for material on the page (including the one part I thought was missing, upon closer inspection of the source). SnowFire (talk) 03:01, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Looking at today's edits, Snowfire made these changes.

• A source which is accessible and verifiable by any reader (The New York Times) was changed to a book that requires a trip to a library. Why was NYT removed and how are you adding page numbers from a book you said you returned to the library?
• On the paragraph about the 9,710 bills remaining, the non-reliable source was removed, but the text was merged to another source, ref name isodbc. None of that text is in that source. So, we're not going forward, and constant rechecks will be needed (but to a book the rest of us don't have). I hope the @WP:FAR coordinators: will shut this down so reviewers don't have to chase their tails on source-to-text issues for much longer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:18, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  For what it's worth, the book is accessible to anyone (free registration) via archive.org. @SnowFire: Are you using a different edition? One of the changes in the diff Sandy posted (heavy rainstorm cited to Himmelsbach) is definitely not on the pages indicated. Spotchecks show that some of the other claims attributed to Himmelsbach are also not on the pages cited, and unless there's a clear reason for that such as a variation in editions, I'm inclined to close this as delist due to the verifiability concerns. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:16, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  • Sandy: I believe you misread my edit? I did not remove that citation to the New York Times nor replace it with a book citation. The same NYT article was cited in two separate references somehow (the ref you renamed "Caldwell1971" elsewhere). I merely changed the reference to be a copy of it. It still goes to the exact same NYT article, "Hijacker Collects Ransom of $200,000; Parachutes From Jet and Disappears".

    My apologies; struck above. It's not only that there is no citation style; there's no ref naming convention, so that's a mess too. I am trying to move to ref name=AuthorDate, where possible, so we can eliminate duplicates. (Which is exactly what you did, so thank you!) If you intend to save this article, work will have to be much more systematic and methodical, because it has bad bones, hidden behind competent prose. What you describe below as partial edits will confuse. Everything needs to be checked systematically, top-to-bottom, verified, not from memory because you read it in a book, and a citation style needs to be established. I use sentence case on everything but books, and italicized publishers only for hard print sources. For this article, all books in works cited with sfns. I have fixed citation formatting on only about half so far, and have not checked more than what I flagged for source-to-text integrity or too close paraphrasing. There is a mountain of work to be done here if you intend to save the article. My apologies that yesterday's work left me frustrated and ... short-tempered. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

    My apologies as well, I wasn't trying to waste your time earlier and appreciate you taking a look, but I guess there was a mismatch in communications or expectations. I suppose I should have been more precise about exactly what I did and didn't do: I stand by what I said above that the article seems to be basically on point, but I wasn't blind to some of the weak sources either that were left in - just figured that it wasn't a FARC-breaking deal after I removed the worst ones from earlier and nobody else chipped in as requesting further pruning. SnowFire (talk) 08:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  • Nikkimaria: I was not using the Archive.org version. I'm not seeing it come up on a search of archive.org - can you send the link over so I can see if it has the same pagination as the version I did? I was half=way through some changes - apologies on the copied reference in the edit above, that was just a clerical error. However, the other Himmelsbach cites were from reading the book, yes, so I disagree that there's a mismatch there. SnowFire (talk) 02:54, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
    • Here. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:10, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
    • (Ninja edit, wrote this and got edit conflict'd) Never mind, I found it now, although it says "borrow unavailable" (probably because you checked it out). So I can't immediately tell if there was some sort of version mis-match. (The version I had definitely didn't have the cover that the archive.org version had, but that might just be because the dust jacket came off or the like, since Worldcat claims there was only one version.) SnowFire (talk) 03:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

      Then all book pages need to be checked, versus the archive.org version (since there is only one version). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

      Nikkimaria: Thanks for the heads up that archive had this, should make things much easier. It's the same pagination / version on archive.org. If you saw something that failed verification other than that regretted C&P error I added recently (and have since removed), feel free to drop a tag on it. I'll go ahead and double-check but per above, this is basically what I did a month or so ago, so it shouldn't be THAT bad. SnowFire (talk) 08:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  • Also, to expand on the above: This was not a "mission complete" edit that declared there was nothing else to be done. I was merely removing the bad source on the bills, yes, and I agree with Sandy that a replacement source should be added. I'll add the cn tag myself next time I make such a removal, I guess. (The fact that the bills weren't recovered is mentioned in multiple sources so it shouldn't be hard to source, just... again, that was not a "complete" edit, I'd been intending to do a series). SnowFire (talk) 03:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
• Comment - Would like to note that the "Similar hijackings" section appears to be mostly OR/SYNTH. There doesn't seem to be secondary sources describing these all as "similar" to the Cooper hijacking, and noting their importance relative to the Cooper case such as they would all warrant a summary. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I think that section might be bloated and the sources are not as strong as would be preferred in a FA (lots of local news stories - can probably trim some), but I disagree it's OR. As the section notes, Cooper was credited with "inspiring" a lot of copycat hijackings in the sources. I can see saying that a random local news article connecting Cooper with (random 1972 hijacker) was just the 1970s equivalent of clickbait and should be given less weight, but it is real. Anyway, McCoy Jr.'s hijacking was similar enough he was considered a suspect to be Cooper too and he's covered by sources, so he's definitely legit. McNally apparently directly credited Cooper in a recent podcast for giving him the idea. Cini, LaPoint, and Hanehman are a little more distant - news articles mention them in the same breath as Cooper since they were temporarlly close skyjacking crimes involving parachutes, but it's unclear if LaPoint or Hanehman were directly inspired. I think it's probably okay to stand just to set the scene of similar hijackings in the time period, myself. SnowFire (talk) 08:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with Indy beetle. (And note that neither this OR, nor most of the other issues present today, were in the version that passed FAC.). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:12, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. I've struck my keep and will just abstain. I still don't think the article is that bad, but I don't want to get a bad reputation for wasting FARC reviewer's time. I've said from the start (when criticizing the article!) that the article does indeed have some weak sources in it, but I had hoped it was FA quality in spite of this because there simply weren't better ones (while the topic is covered, a vast amount of the coverage is unreliable and even less usable than the existing sourcing). If we're going to say that won't fly (har har), then I suspect for everyone's sanity we will have to await a scholarly update to Himmelsbach's book that soberly covers Cooper, the copycats, the implications, and so on to avoid OR issues raised by Indy Beetle from potentially stitching a narrative together from local news articles that happen to mention Cooper. I will attempt to clean up the final issues that Sandy raised from her check though to leave the article in an approachable state, though. SnowFire (talk) 22:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@WP:FAR coordinators: this is abusive; can we please shut this down? I raised just yesterday (see my post at 01:18, 2 March 2022) that Snowfire had removed a non-reliable source, and merged all of the remaining text under one reliable source, which did not support the text. Upon rechecking tonight, the same continues. In this edit, Snowfire removes a non-reliable source, leaving the entire paragraph cited to one reliable source. The source does not verify the content of the entire paragraph. I don't believe Snowfire should be editing this article. At. All. Also, this from Nikkimaria; page numbers cited are not adding up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:45, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I started checking Gray, a heavily used source, and stopped after finding that most of what is cited to Gray in the first few I checked is simply not there. I stopped after only partial checking. I also located multiple other FBI pages that also don't verify the content cited to the FBI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:18, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

And, the unverified content from Gray was not in the FAC-promoted version. According to the "Who Wrote That" tool, a good deal of the unverified content was added in 2011 by DoctorJoeE (who is still editing the article). We can't get there from here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:42, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, I'm sorry I set you off this badly, but I do not agree with your accusation here - this is a clash of editing styles, not me attempting to sabotage the article (I was agreeing with you that particular source should be removed and removing it sooner rather than later, and I considered the "has remained unchanged" part as obvious enough that it did not require a citation, not saying that was in the FBI website - the description was made very shortly after the hijacking and the FBI was still using it later. But maybe that makes that fact trivial.). It's unfortunate that the Grey NY article matches poorly with its current use though (I had mostly only looked through Grey's book when I was attempting to reinforce the article - which sadly didn't help that much, it's not a great book). I'm willing to look into Nikkimaria's page number tags if desired, but I'll step back from editing the article if you'd rather and see if someone else is willing to give it fresh eyes. (And I kind of presumed that the FARC would be obviously closed as demote anyway?) SnowFire (talk) 07:08, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

To add on to this - I did miss that "close-set piercing" wasn't in the FBI website, and I absolutely would have removed it had I noticed, but this claim wasn't in the removed "enigma" source either (which just quoted the FBI website without attribution instead). That phrase being unsupported by citation wasn't changed by my edit at all - and the FBI source I moved did verify the parts that the "enigma" reference had verified before. It was just a source switch-out for a more reliable source that said the exact same information, nothing more, nothing less - it wasn't a deep citation verification that 100% of the content nearby went to the FBI source, too. I'm sorry that it was taken the wrong way. SnowFire (talk) 07:48, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

• I think at this point it's clear this article has some significant verifiability issues, and that significant work will be required to resolve those. On that basis I'm going to close this. Anyone can of course look at addressing the concerns/tags listed outside of this process, if interested. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
• Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.