Talk:Marjorie Paxson/Archive 1

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Archive 1

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Marjorie Paxson/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs) 17:14, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll take this one. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:14, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it well written?
A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:
All concerns addressed.

B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
All concerns addressed.
Is it verifiable with no original research?
A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:
No problems here; sources are solid.

C. It contains no original research:
Spotchecks clear

D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
Earwig's tool highlights quotes and names; nothing else of concern that I can see.
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:
No issues

B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
Is it neutral?
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
No issues
Is it stable?
It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
License checks out to the best of my abilities.

B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:
All concerns addressed, passing shortly. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:02, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Comments

Proseline

@Valereee: there are two issues here that I think it would be best to deal with before I embark on a full review, as they may necessitate some reorganization. First, the lead's a bit short, even for an article this size; I'd recommend one sizeable paragraph. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:35, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Second, there's a lot of WP:PROSELINE, which is also often a sign that the article is broken up too much. Fixing this shouldn't be too hard, because you have enough material, and it's good; but it does need to be fixed. I'll hold off on reviewing the rest until I hear back from you. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:35, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Vanamonde93, thanks for starting review! Those are both issues common to my writing, which tends to the short and direct. :) I'll take a look -- should I ping you when I've gotten to it? I likely won't be able to start until tomorrow morning. --valereee (talk) 18:03, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
@Valereee: A ping would be appreciated, yes, that way I don't worry about missing this; but please, take your time, there's no rush. I'm busy tomorrow in any case. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:12, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Vanamonde93, I've taken a stab at expanding the lead. It feels kind of blah to me, but I thought I'd see if I was even headed in the right direction before I tried to figure out how to make it better. Re: the proseline problem. Not sure how I should get started on this; simply removing dates doesn't seem helpful. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks again! --valereee (talk) 12:06, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
@Valereee: I made some tweaks to give you a couple of examples. There's a few different ways; combining short paragraphs; using different transitions; moving the date to the interior of the sentences, and generally varying sentence structure a little bit. I'm happy to do more, including broader restructuring that I may have recommended at GAN if you'd like me to; but at some point I stop being comfortable being both reviewer and editor, and would prefer to recuse from the review to do that sort of thing; so I thought I'd ask first. With respect to the lead; content-wise it's fine; I'd make some changes structurally, though. We can get to those later, those should be easier. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:01, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93:, ah, I see...we don't want all the paras starting with dates. I had no idea that habit of mine was a bad one! Okay, I think I've done the rest. I assume the awards section is included in that? I know we prefer prose to lists, but I've always put awards sections into lists, not sure if that's going too far? Anyway, I think I've completed what you started, and thanks for the example! --valereee (talk) 10:50, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Yep, that's exactly it. I'll move ahead with the rest now, focusing on organization first. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:05, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Organization

Again, the material here is solid, but some reorganization would help, I think before I focus on the prose. To begin with, I'm not sure the summary paragraph at the top of "career" is necessary. If that sort of summary goes anywhere, it should go in the lead; but this is too short an article for a section summary to be terribly useful.
The "Women in Journalism Oral History Project" can definitely be subsumed into "career"; you probably don't need a separate section, either.
I would place the material in "National Women and Media Collection" either in "Personal life", or in "Awards"; if the latter is chosen, I'd suggest retitling that to "Awards and legacy".
Within "Career"; I would suggest splitting the paragraph about Theta Sigma Phi into a separate subsection, since it is contemporaneous with a lot of the other material.
In the same section, I would suggest removing the sub-heading "Wire services", as it's not a term used in the prose, and is thereby confusing. That material is fine as an introductory paragraph, and can take the place of the current summary.
I think we could separate her career and her views, and thereby achieve more coherence in each. I would suggest retitling the "Women's movement" section "Views and advocacy" or something similar. Then (working off of this revision), I'd recommend moving paragraphs four and five, and the quote (with context) of paragraph six, of "career", into "Views and advocacy".
Then, I'd suggest moving paragraph 2, and the career details of paragraph 3, into "Career", leaving a summary of the first three sentences of paragraph 3 as context for the rest. @Valereee: I'll leave you to do these, but please feel free to ping me if anything is unclear. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:21, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93:, I've made a stab at moving everything around, crossing my fingers I haven't created a giant mess, and I decided to wait to do most of the necessary context changes until you had a chance to take a look! Let me know if I've gotten most of it. I left the wire services heading in for now because I added it into the section with a wikilink, but I'm open to taking that out! --valereee (talk) 15:25, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
@Valereee: Looks good, I made one other move (the material about her editing career was split). If you're happy with that I'll let you make context fixes and then come back to look at the prose (which is largely fine) and the lead. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:32, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93:, okay, I think I've done all the damage I can do! Let me know what's next! --valereee (talk) 16:31, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Prose

I'll make some minor copyedits as I go; if I do something you don't like, feel free to revert me and/or discuss it here.
"hard news" is a term that all readers may be familiar with; could you find links and/or add explanations?
Same for "feature story" later.
Link "copy-editor"
"that the paper was asked to retire from the competition" do we know if it was the award who did the asking, or someone else? The passive "was asked" is a bit odd, but fine if we don't know.
"women's section; when management discovered" The semi-colon seems to be linking two unrelated fragments. I would suggest breaking it into two sentences, unless there's a link I'm missing.
If "Women in Communications Headliner Award" cannot be linked, I think you need to say who was awarding it.
"a sorority for journalism students and was at the time the de facto professional organization for women journalists" "at the time" is a little ambiguous; "at the time of Paxson's tenure as President"? Or perhaps "at the time Paxson was elected President"?
" to become the paper's publisher" I have always understood "publisher" to be the company, or agency. If there's a more specific use, I wonder if you could find a link for it.
Might seem silly, but the last sentence of "publisher" doesn't have a source
I would suggest switching the third and fourth paragraphs of "views and advocacy", but it could work either way, not a big deal.
Last sentence of "Awards and legacy" needs a citation.

Lead

I think the first question to answer here is, do you think the bitterness about her demotions is representative of the "views and advocacy" section? Based on my brief readings, I wouldn't say so. Here's what I would suggest; three paragraphs.
First paragraph; current first sentence, followed by current second paragraph through "women's page editor".

Second paragraph; Rest of current second paragraph, followed by current third paragraph; but break that long sentence into two, and add a piece about her advocacy for women in journalism.

Third paragraph; current first paragraph, minus the first sentence.

Also, add a couple of links; generally, terms linked in the body should also be linked in the lead, at their first use.
Let me know if any of that is unclear, and/or if you disagree with any of it; happy to consider other ideas; at the moment, though, I don't think it's organized very logically.

Hey, Vanamonde93, I think I've covered all of these. I did after moving the lead around per your suggestions wondeer whether the hall of fame award might deserve to stand out more. It had started out as the final sentence of the too-short lead and had ended up buried in the middle of a long paragraph. I pulled it out into its own para, but not sure that's best either, suggestions appreciated! --valereee (talk) 14:33, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
@Valereee: I've done this; does that work for you? Vanamonde (Talk) 16:12, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Vanamonde93, yep! That'll work. Having it the last thing mentioned is fine! --valereee (talk) 16:35, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Everything looks good, passing shortly. Thanks for patiently dealing with all of my nitpicking. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:02, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Vanamonde93, not at all! The benefit of a GA review is getting thoughtful suggestions from another experienced editor! I sincerely appreciate the work you've put in! Thank you! --valereee (talk) 22:15, 21 September 2019 (UTC)