Wikipedia:Featured article review/James K. Polk/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 removed 17:40, 9 May 2008.

James K. Polk[edit]

Review commentary[edit]

Notified WikiProject Biography, U.S. Presidents, U.S. Congress, North Carolina, Tennessee, United States presidential elections

  • The article was passed in 2004, and hasn't had a review. This article needs more inline citations, as whole sections go without any. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 22:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll see if I can come up with some citations, both for sentences with fact tags and paragraphs without. Is this the only issue with the article? Also, are there any specific sentences you want sourced that are not already labeled? Thanks. Rufous-crowned Sparrow (talk) 18:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria concern is referencing (1c). Marskell (talk) 16:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove 1c Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • This might perhaps become a useful process, if reviewers would actually read the article and see what claims were indeed controversial or difficult to find, thus answering Rufus' question above (as nobody has bothered to do). Since, by my count, it cites five standard lives of Polk, these should not be difficult to check. Some of the existing {{cn}} tags are frivolous (I've dealt with one); it would be laborious but not really difficult to find, from our own articles, which presidents were survived by their mothers. Ignore as not actionable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not familiar with Polk and his life, and thus the potential controversies there might be. I would assume that someone who is familiar with Polk would reference the salient points and thus help keep its status, as has been done with Emsworths articles in the past. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 19:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still planning on working on this article; however, I agreed to before checking my school's library, which does not have a bio on him, making this somewhat problematic. Do online databases which require passwords to get into count as Wiki-able sources? Thanks. Rufous-crowned Sparrow (talk) 22:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
JSTOR? Yes, certainly (include the citation to printed form of the article, please); the books cited in our article, some of which must be dead-tree only, also count. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Judge: you have an exaggerated idea of the virtue of footnotes; we could note every comma, and that still would indicate nothing about where the controversies on Polk lay. Fortunately the major one is "Was Polk a great President?", which is not our business; the article has one sentence on it, which should probably be removed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No. I hold this article to the standard that all Featured articles are currently held to, and it is expected to be very well referenced, which means lots of inline citations. I am not mistaken about this. If you don't like the criteria, perhaps you should discuss it with the appropriate talk page, because this argument against the citations hasn't worked before and won't work this time either. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 05:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This comment is inconsistent with
  • The instructions at the top of this page. Nominators must specify the featured article criteria that are at issue and should propose remedies. Judge has failed to do this. Participants may declare "keep" or "remove", supported by substantive comments, and further time is provided to overcome deficiencies. I have asked for substantive comments and recieved none.
  • WP:V:All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. That qualification is bolded in the policy itself; it is intended to limit what needs inline citation.
  • WP:FAC: Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. Again, emphasis in the original.
  • WP:WHEN: Not every statement in an article needs a citation.
  • This FAC, which was denied chiefly because the article in question had "lots of footnotes" (a meaningless demand: How many is "a lot"?)
But Judge could indeed be very useful if he would list additional statements which fulfill the criteria carefully listed at WP:WHEN - for which an eye which knows nothing about Polk would be a distinct advantage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a forum to attack me for nominating FA's for review, and I will not engage in a fight about it. I have nominated dozens of articles here with the same rationale "insufficient inline citations", and it has been acceptable to the FAR directors, and until they say otherwise, what I stated is sufficient. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 04:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, there are other fora for dealing with disruptive edits. We can get to them if necessary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Retain and hold: I believe I have dealt with all the specified substantive complaints to the article except the total cost of the Mexican War. I will continue; but that should be soluble, but if anyone else can find it, so much the better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:28, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove I think there are other issues, regardless of the citations debate. I have concerns over the prose (e.g. choppy sentences, short and/or listy sections, repetitiveness and confusing grammar in the "Investment in slaveholding" section) and comprehensiveness and focus (e.g. his term as Speaker is covered in two sentences, but the election of 1844—which has its own article anyway—is given seven paragraphs and two images). DrKiernan (talk) 11:40, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks; I'll see what I can do. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:30, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Rewrote the two paragraphs named. There isn't all that much to say on Polk's speakership; he didn't decide policy, and his party was a disorganized minority, so he didn't get much passed.
    • The overall prose doesn't look that bad to me; examples would be helpful again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the changes I have a few other queries/requests:
  1. I've only checked one printed source on Polk (an encyclopedia), but it says his operation was for gallstones rather than urinary stones. Though urinary stones seems more likely given the medicine of the time, this point is important as the suggestion of impotence only makes sense if it was urinary. If there's a dispute in the literature about what the operation was for or whether it was capable of causing impotence, then this should be pointed out.
    • done Seigenthaler consulted several doctors, whom he names. He asserts unanimity that "gallstones" is a nineteenth century error. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Wasn't he a student at the University of North Carolina, where he graduated in 1818 at the head of his class? There's no mention of this in the article.
  3. For the brief period he was in the Tennessee legislature, should we mention William Carroll?
  4. Wasn't there tension between Polk and his generals, Taylor and Scott?
  5. I recommend merging the earlier slavery section into the later one.
  6. "Department of the Interior", "States admitted to the Union", "Supreme Court appointments", and "Congress" are short, listy sections which I would prefer to see as tables, infoboxes or merged into other sections or each other or expanded. The problem with these sections is that they break up the flow of the narrative and serve to distract from reading the actual article.
  7. Please update the image pages, some of them are missing sources or use deprecated tags. DrKiernan (talk) 07:19, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I got as far as two paragraphs into the lead, and the following already sprung out at me:
    • "mostly lived in and represented the state of Tennessee." Mostly lived in and mostly represented Tennessee?
    • "the last 'strong' pre-American Civil War president." What's meant by this?
    • "his foreign policy successes." Is threatening war with Britain, and then backing away, a foreign policy success? Is it useful to call the Mexican-American war a "foreign policy success"? Presumably, not as far as the Mexicans are concerned...
    • "he was the first president who retired." The first president to retire, surely?
  • My (soon to be) patented jbmurray rule of thumb would suggest that so many problems in the lead are already a bad sign for the article FAR prospects. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My comments are given below:

  • His wife's influence as noted in the sentence "Sarah was said…" should have a cite. The cite in the sentence that follows is to a Biography website with no author indicated. Instead one should use a solid, reliable, peer reviewed source. The same with Polk's final words to his wife which gives another website with no author as a source.
  • Controversial statement "He even proposed, unsuccessfully, that the Electoral College be abolished" should be cited.
  • "although he maintained the facade of traditional bipartisanship" sounds like something from a historian's analysis. Should be cited. Same with "Clay seemed more equivocal and vacillating".
  • The quote by Polk "It has been well observed…" should have a cite.
  • Why is "Incumbent Whig President John Tyler…" a parenthetical element? Same with the Fifty-Four Forty slogan.
  • "According to a story told decades later by George Bancroft…" declares that Polk had pre-defined goals that he eventually fulfilled. I would like to see the source for this, in particular his desire for expansionism. Did he give these in a public speech or did he write these down? As this lead to the Mexican-American War, questions can be raised concerning his motives.
  • His views on slavery should be expanded. It just says that he was unpopular about it. What did he specifically say or promote other than the territorial boundaries of slavery? On his diary, the article says "most historians accept it". Who said that?
  • "Democrats believed that opening up more farms…" refers to the Manifest Destiny article, but we should not use Wikipedia itself as a source.
  • On the Texas section, this is mostly about Tyler and almost nothing on Polk. Why is this here?
  • The War with Mexico section is basically a recounting of the War and the treaty results and not about Polk's views, motivations, etc. There are very few specifics about Polk's role other than his statement to Congress.
  • He was exhausted by years of public service, but the article does not really tell the story of what happened in the White House that caused him to suffer.

This article is really not comprehensive enough on Polk, the man himself. With the exception of his early life and post-presidency, it is more like a general US history article with some bits thrown in from his presidential record. --RelHistBuff (talk) 09:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Following on my comments above, I vote to remove based on non-compliance to the Comprehensive criterion (1b). --RelHistBuff (talk) 17:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate that PMA did try to work on this one but a week to ten days is generally the waiting time for work. Nothing doing since Apr. 30 so removing. Marskell (talk) 17:36, 9 May 2008 (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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