Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Ramón Emeterio Betances

Ramón Emeterio Betances

Folks, Ramón Emeterio Betances' 180th. anniversary of his birth is coming up (8 April). The original article wouldn't take more than two pages when printed. It had the WikiProject Biography banner added a while back, and a B classification added since the very beginning. One of WP's consistent editors, Tony the Marine, added a few paragraphs to have it improved. He then commended me for improvements on a few articles I've done or de-stubbed, but suggested that I improve at least one to at least A status (perhaps even to GA status) following all guidelines for it, which I've since done. I chose Betances because he's a gigantic historical figure to everyone in the Caribbean but us Puerto Ricans, for reasons (mostly political) that don't belong in here. I also chose him because a nephew of my wife's had to pick a similar article about José Martí since the Betances' one was so poor. Yet, Martí constantly told people that Betances was his mentor...

I don't know if I've overdone the article, so to speak, but to me Betances would deserve credit as a medical doctor and scientist alone. Four Caribbean countries claim him as being responsible as a leader and/or coordinator of their independence and/or sovereignty struggles. Before him, Puerto Rico wasn't a bleep on the screen to most of the world; after him, there's a Puerto Rican nation of close to 8 million people, all over the world, which recognizes itself as such. Based on this, I think he deserved a GA-quality article, and hopefully even a Featured article if it was improved well enough. Of course, I need your feedback... please give it a look and rate it! Demf 20:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Review by Awadewit

This is a good article and I learned a lot from reading it. Nice job contextualizing Betances' actions. Here are my suggestions.

• I added these comments after my exchange with Awadewit; my apologies to the confused, but I wanted to preserve his bullets. My comments for the time being are in blue. Demf 14:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• I think you should remove the "Dr." from the first sentence and just use his name. Check the manual of style for sure on this, though.

• You are correct; done.

• main leader of the Grito de Lares revolution - diction - "main leader" is a little vague - "primary instigator"?

• Point well taken. Betances, of course, was not physically in Puerto Rico at the time of the Grito, which was going to be a distributed revolt had its date not been hastily moved to an earlier date. He was definitely the instigator, logistics coordinator, and the rituals and communication style between the revolutionary cells all had Betances' imprint as a freemason. "Instigator" is too weak a word to describe his role, yet it is the best one I can come up with myself. Done.

Or "Inspired and planned"? Awadewit 16:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• he is considered by historians to be the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement - do Puerto Ricans consider him the father of the movement as well?

• Yes, even if may too many people tend to say: "Dr. Who?" Removed the reference to historians.

• Besides being a medical doctor and surgeon, he was also a diplomat, public health administrator, poet and novelist. - a little awkward; the "besides" makes it sound like you have referred to his medical career before

• Language deficiency on the side of the editor. Fixed

• I would suggest expanding the lead a little more so that it is true summary of the article. See WP:LEAD.

• Will work on it... I'm tempted to move some of the "Legacy" paragraphs here, but I'm also aware that they have to be brief and to the point. I'll let the world know once I do.

• There is no need to bold names within the article itself.

• I've seen bio articles where a key person in the character's life are put in bold. I did this with Betances' brothers and sisters, as well as his parents, his wife Simplicia and his fiancée, Lita. Tempted to remove them, but will think of it a bit.

• The "Studies in France" section jumps around a bit - try to make it flow more and try to avoid one-sentence paragraphs. It also contains information not related to Betances studies in France - try placing that information in a more relevant section.

• That's probably because the section's name is a layover from previous versions. In theory it should be split in three, and the "Studies" title be reserved to his M.D. studies, but his earlier grade school work would qualify in theory. Let me think this a bit.

• La viérge de Boriquen - what do you think about translating the heading title or putting the translation in paranthesis?

• You're the third person suggesting this. Done.

• I would suggest a thorough copyedit for this article. There are a lot of little mistakes (parallelism, verb tense matching, prepositions, etc.) that can easily be fixed. You might list it at the League of Copyeditors.

• I want to give quick closure to this, and am tempted to have a friend (native English speaker) proofread it first. By no means this means that I won't, but let me give it a pre-edit, so to speak.

• I wonder if the information in the section "Contributions to Mayagüez and environs" could be integrated into other sections.

• Maybe I added it because I already had in mind adding the pic I later added, and an extra section would suit that. However, you're right... the info there probably can be merged elsewhere.

• For FA status, the article will need a few more citations; I have added some tags (they seem to have a rule of thumb of at least one per paragraph).

• 38 to go... maybe this and the proofreading will prevent the article from passing GA status soon. We'll see if it can be done ASAP.

• When you eventually submit the article for FAC, you will probably want to fix the red links - either delink them or add pages.

• Probably will add stubs to the ones I can't delink, but a Velez Alvarado article alone would take quite some time to edit. Ouch.

When adding new pages, you don't have to provide a full description of the person. You can just add a sentence or two. You can create a "stub" article and then go back and write the full article at your convenience or wait for someone else to do it. I myself do not like creating stubs, but it is a way around the redlink problem. Awadewit 16:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Could you quote some of Betances' actual writings in "Betances in New York"?

• Point taken. Will a quote block be a good idea in this case?

Yes, or quote boxes, maybe? See Elizabeth Cady Stanton amd William Monahan for examples of how the quote box is used. Awadewit 16:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Because of his exposure to the liberal thinking prevalent in France through the second half of the 19th. century, Betances adopted ideas that were innovative to some, subversive to others, but radical nonetheless in the Puerto Rico of that era. His ideas on race relations alone had a major impact on economics and the social makeup of the island. - This is vague, could you explain?

• I guess I tried to imply he had a definite influence on Puerto Rican politics and economics, just because of his actions. No judgment call on them, of course, I'm trying to maintain a NPOV, which is difficult in my case because I admire the guy so much. But he had a definite influence in: public health, the social stratification of Puerto Rican society, politics and nationality. That is the truth... We'll see how I rewrite this.

• Could you list some further reading in English for the curious who do not read Spanish (and since this is the English wikipedia)?

• Commented on it below, thanks for your suggestions. I think I'll even try to meet Félix Ojeda personally or some other Betances expert and ask for a few. I can imagine the National Archives in Washington will probably have something online, but my best bet would be articles by Caribbean history buffs in a stateside (U.S.) university. Those are usually not Googable without some contrived search parameters.

• This is a rather long article. I wonder if some condensing could be done so that readers are encouraged to read the entire article (apparently they stop somewhere between 30 and 50 kb). One suggestion I would make is to bring together and condense the information on the Cuban revolution. Awadewit 17:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

• The Voz del Centro podcast service added another file, this time with an interview with Paul Estrade. Of course, the podcast is in Spanish (well, with a thick French accent, in Estrade's case), but the subject is precisely this. I'll listen to it and rework the section.

Thanks for your comments and thorough review. Almost everything here is fixable, but I do have one question:

"Could you list some further reading in English for the curious who do not read Spanish (and since this is the English wikipedia)?" Ouch, double ouch, triple ouch. Betances' main biographers outside Puerto Rico are French and Cuban. I, of course, don't claim my English to be stellar, but at least I did as good a job at translating and writing as I could. I did my research and couldn't find much in English, and that brings me to a Catch-22: there are hundreds of people of Puerto Rican ancestry (in New York, where there is at least a school named after him) who speak poor or no Spanish and would most likely welcome an article such as this one, precisely because there's so little written about the guy in English. Yet since I can't get many references in English, the article might not get as good a rating as it would get if they were available. Hmmm... how do I address this? Demf 21:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I did a quick search on WorldCat and Google scholar - I could find nothing in English. I wonder if you might list some books that talk about him in relation to the revolutions, then, if even that is possible. It's great that you are writing this article since the scholarship hasn't been translated yet. I think that the reviewers will have to make allowances since, as far as I can tell, you are correct that there is very little scholarship in English. Pages should not be rated according to the language of the scholarship. The only problem I can foresee (and it is one that I thought about myself) is that it is difficult for people who do not speak Spanish to review the reliability of your sources. I myself only read a tiny bit of French and German, so I am of no help, I'm afraid. Perhaps it would be good to try and find an editor who has not contributed to your page who speaks Spanish and ask them to post a review of your sources or something like that. Just trying to be helpful - I think that this article is important and I'm trying to think of ways to overcome obstacles that I can see arising at FAC. Awadewit 21:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)