Talk:Rosa Smester Marrero

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle (talk) 11:24, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that Rosa Smester Marrero, a schoolteacher and feminist writer from Santiago de los Caballeros, protested against the American occupation of the Dominican Republic by writing in the national press? Source: https://revistas.uasd.edu.do/index.php/ecos/article/view/154/88 page 23 (other sources offered in the article); https://epdf.tips/contemporary-caribbean-cultures-and-societies-in-a-global-context.html pages 163-4.
  • Reviewed:

Created by Rafird (talk). Nominated by MB190417 (talk) at 22:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Rosa Smester Marrero; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

will review this FuzzyMagma (talk) 12:26, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: (hook brainstorming) Well-written article and kudos MB190417 for rescuing the article . Learned a lot. some minor comments (1) re-upload the image as a non-free image if you do not know if it is free or not given the that the subject is dead. Use this link and take this image as a reference of how to fill the required info. here also some alternatives. (2) can you address the reliability of reference no. 6 and 9 (preferably on Talk:Rosa Smester Marrero and why you think it can be accepted, or please provide a better reference?

• ALT1: ... that Rosa Smester Marrero protested US occupation of the Dominican Republic and refused to speak English so Americans would not also occupy her mind? FuzzyMagma (talk) 13:14, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @FuzzyMagma, thanks for your very kind review. I've reuploaded the image, and removed the claims previously tagged with "better source needed" (further explanation is provided on the talk page). Please note too that I came across another book which - thank heavens - published two of Smester's works, so the article has now been further expanded, and may require further copyedits. New additions mostly discuss her views of feminism, motherhood, gender roles, and teaching; here is the diff since your review. As for ALT1, this now includes a claim retracted from the article, so here are some other alternatives:

• ALT2: ... that Rosa Smester Marrero protested against the US occupation of the Dominican Republic by refusing to speak English?
• ALT3: ... that Rosa Smester Marrero protested against the US occupation of the Dominican Republic by writing in the national press?
• ALT4: ... that Rosa Smester Marrero said that without women, men would live the life of a turnip? _MB190417_ (talk) 01:34, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

@MB190417: great work, thanks for adding the picture and for elaborating more on your sources in the page talk. Truly great work. if you improved the lede and dug some details about her early life, I think there is a chance this can be a good article. I might come later and help. As for now, I did some light copy editing and removed some typos. All new ALT are referenced, and I like ALT2 and ALT4. We can make it more dramatic/controversial by ALT5: ... that Rosa Smester Marrero, a prominent Dominican feminist, believed motherhood is a woman's "true mission" and a woman's life devoid of maternal work is "useless"?

I will leave it to you to decide between ALT 2, 4, and 5. FuzzyMagma (talk) 09:41, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• Far from making it dramatic/controversial, I would say ALT5 just makes it both tedious and offensive to those of us who have heard this far too many times. There are lots of catchy alternatives, let's use them. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 14:33, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok let's go with ALT4 then FuzzyMagma (talk) 11:06, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Notes on sources, March 2023

In their encouraging review of this article, I have been kindly asked by the reviewer at Template:Did you know nominations/Rosa Smester Marrero to provide some comments on the sources used. I edited much of this article since it was first rejected at AfC, and my notes here refer to the current version of the article.

Background

• The rejected first and second drafts at AfC closely followed the Spanish-language entry, which cites minimal sources. The first phase of my work was to reference the claims made in the article.

• One of my major obstacles here is that while many Dominican sources include Smester in lists of influential educators or mentioning her very favourably in passing, they presume knowledge of whom she was. This leads me to believe that the online penetration of Smester's life and works has not matched her local recognition, and unfortunately, I do not have access to sources that might exist in the Dominican Republic. (Indeed, two sources point out that Smester's publications are quite scattered. This also speaks to her notability as a conference speaker, which receives somewhat more emphasis in the Spanish-language article.)
• On that note, some disclosure: Most of the available sources are Spanish-language. The translations of these sources in the article are my own, but I speak limited Spanish. Most of the available sources are from the Dominican Republic. I am not from the Dominican Republic, nor have I ever visited.

• It seems like the most comprehensive source on Smester could be a book by Julio Jamie Julia, to which I do not have access. It is referenced in some sources, and twice in the article have I copied their reference in citations. In both of these cases, there are other reliable online references cited that are sufficient.
• Much of the article collates together sources that individually discuss different aspects of Smester's life in isolation, e.g. sources on her work at the St Vincent de Paul hospice, or a chapter in her book discussing her writings, or passing mentions in newspaper articles.

Sources

• The most substantive and reliable sources come from mentions of Smester in PhD theses and published books (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4).

• In this category, the reviewer asked for a comment on the reliability of this book; it seems like a published book, the cited chapter being from an American academic, Dr. Valentina Peguero. The URL merely provides a link to where the book has been published online. I have now added the ISBN in the reference. The same applies for this book, which appears to have been published by the Dominican national archives.

• The article makes extensive use of a publication by a local history institute in Monte Cristi. This was a town where Smester resided for many years, and the organisation seems legitimate.
• The article also draws on an entry from the Dominican Geological Institute. In terms of reliability, other than that this seems like a legitimate organisation, the claims in the article are referenced by historical archives (to which I do not have access), and the entry was also published in a Dominican newspaper.
• There are a few sources (1, 2) from an academic journal published by the Institute of History at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.
• There are also some newspaper sources, including from El Caribe (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4), a national Dominican newspaper (Spanish-language Wikipedia entry here), and from La Información (1), which seems to be centred in Smester's home city of Santiago.
• Finally, there are some self-published sources, e.g. from the St Vincent de Paul Society's website for the Dominican Republic and the Dominican Constitutonal Court, for rather specific claims relating to her life and legacy for which these organisations can be considered reliable.

Claims still in need of verification

• Collectively, the above sources were able to reference almost fully the claims in the Spanish-language entry, and indeed add further content. It also qualified the rather improbable claim that Smester founded the St Vincent de Paul society; as the current version reads, it seems she chaired the local chapter and then set up a branch for the foundation of the hospice.
• Three claims from the Spanish-language article, however, still needed verification:

(1) that Smester wrote about her opposition to the American occupation in newspapers/journals in Barcelona;

(2) that the Amantes de la Luz society founded the first library in the Dominican Republic; and

(3) that the reason why Smester refused to speak English was because then the Americans would also have occupied her mind.

• Claim 1 receives some support from Peguero's book chapter, which talks about Smester and Abigaíl Mejía writing in literary journals and newspapers including Noticias de Barcelona. Unfortunately, however, it is not clear from the source if Smester, Mejía, or both writers published in Barcelona. It doesn't seem improbable that Smester did, given her later connections to the city's university and Lyceum Club when she lived in Paris. Equally, though, this source records that Mejía published in La Vanguardia in Barcelona during the occupation. I have now retracted the reference and removed the claim from the article, but I would be delighted to come across a reliable source showing that Smester was active in Barcelona's journalistic scene during the occupation.
• Claims 2 and 3 were previously referenced by this French-language publication and tagged with "better source neeed". I have likewise now retracted this reference and removed the claims from the article. The publication in question was written as a project by a language school in Santiago, whose only stake in reliability is if it has access to local sources which we do not (see Background above).

• Amantes de la Luz is only ever mentioned in very vague terms in the sources, such that I'm still not sure entirely if it was anything more than a library/archive with an attached literary/intellectual circle. Nevertheless, that it was the first public library in the Dominican Republic feels implausible (and contradicted by a blogger here).
• There are sufficient reliable sources that Smester refused to speak English. Whether this was lest she felt the Americans would also occupy her mind, who knows. Again, I would be delighted to come across a reliable source to verify this claim.

_MB190417_ (talk) 01:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)