Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ryan White

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 18:02, 30 January 2008.

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Ryan White

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Ryan White: the 1980's poster child for AIDS. This was thoughtfully reviewed by User:SriMesh several months ago when it was listed as a Good Article and also been to Peer Review. Though short, I am confident that it is well-written, engaging, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable. Because it describes someone who died tragically at such a young age, it is quite brief for an FA; but such was White's life—far too brief. In addition to news coverage (note that AP stories don't always have bylines) this includes the important perspectives of Randy Shilts, Susan Resnik and Larry Kramer. Also a special thanks to User:Wildhartlivie who provided a nearly impossible to find freely-licensed photo of White. As a personal aside, I remember watching White's funeral on TV when I was 5-years-old and being deeply moved and upset—the first time I understood what death was—his story has been with me ever since. JayHenry (talk) 06:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment I am about halfway through the article, but the prose so far has two issues: it needs further copy-editing for phrasing and punctuation, and facts are partly restated in different sections, which I found confusing and wordy. For example, at the end of "Early life and illness", one reads that "[a]fter the diagnosis, White was too ill to return to Western Middle School in Howard County, Indiana...". The next section, "Battle with schools", begins with the sentence "When the public school that he attended, Western Middle School in Russiaville, Indiana, learned of his disease..." Readers will probably assume that the point was to show that Russiaville is in Howard County, but that is not really the point of the sentence, and therefore I think it is a distraction. Other than those issues, the article is good.-Fsotrain⁰⁹ 18:08, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks, I fixed this, and the highly competent User:Scartol also gave the copy a once over. Hopefully that got it? If you see anything don't hesitate to let me know or of course feel to fix it yourself if it's something simple. Thanks for checking in! --JayHenry (talk) 23:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

  The prose has improved, and I apologize for disappearing from the discussion. There is an external link embedded in the prose of the "Legacy" section. Perhaps it can be used as a citation instead? --Fsotrain⁰⁹ 00:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support: While I generally don't care for blue quote boxes, and have made some suggestions on the talk page, I found this to be very comprehensive, well-referenced, and professionally written. (I've done a bit of copyediting, so perhaps your concerns have been remedied, Fsotrain09?) The timeline was a nice addition to the prose, and the legacy section is particularly well-organized. Kudos for your work on this very important article. – Scartol • Tok 22:45, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

  Before the boxes the article was like the gray wall of death. Computer text, in my opinion, really needs that visual element to be readable. Really wide columns of text are just very reader unfriendly. I'm normally not wild about quote blocks, but presidents don't write many eulogies, and the significance of Reagan's change of heart, as exemplified by the eulogy, was touched upon in many of the sources. --JayHenry (talk) 23:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment, already improved from my first look earlier when I didn't comment. I did have one question, though. What is the source on the first paragraph about the Battle with the Schools? Collectonian (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

  Uh-oh! I forgot to include it when I wrote the article, and now I have no idea. I'll have to dig through the sources again to find it. I'll do that soon. Good catch! --JayHenry (talk) 23:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comments by Moni3
• The lead: I wonder if the term "poster child" is itself POV. In my experience a poster child is an object of pity or even derision, someone who begs for attention in the name of a cause. It's not quite a positive thing, and although Ryan White could be under this category, it's not really objective to refer to him in such a way in the lead. To me it would make more sense to refer to him in the lead as a public figure with HIV/AIDS whose experiences drew attention to the discrimination and poor treatment HIV+ people received in the 1980s.

  He's sort of the archetypal poster child, so I'm reluctant to remove this language. Poster child isn't derisive in the literal context of a child with a deadly disease who raises money for the disease. It's derisive if you're talking about Terrell Owens being the poster child for supporting your quarterback. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• Is hemophilia a congenital condition? Can someone not be a lifelong hemophiliac, like developing it early and it going away or developing it late? I don't actually know, but I was under the impression that hemophilia is congenital and the term "lifelong" is redundant.

  You're correct. I'll fix that. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• In early life and illness, it's better to say that White was infected with HIV during Factor VIII transfusions rather than "an unknown point in time".

  At an unknown point in time is in response to a previous reviewer asking when he was infected. I think for the sake of completeness I have to say it is not known. Sorry. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok. I just thought it sounded odd the way it was explained. --Moni3 (talk) 14:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

You're right that it was awkward, I have reworded. --JayHenry (talk) 06:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

• You don't need parentheses to explain about AIDS and t-cells. Just state it.

  It's a parenthetical explanation. It doesn't fit into the flow of the paragraph otherwise. And in my considered opinion it'd be less elegant to say "Whereas a t-cell count of..." I understand a general aversion to parentheses, but not an absolute prohibition. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• You have no citations int he first paragraph under Battle with schools. Your timeline is cited, but the paragraph needs them, too.

  Thanks to both you and to User:Collectonian for pointing this out. This was an error in writing. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• You need to find multiple ways of stating HIV and AIDS was poorly understood. You have it in those exact words at least three times.

  Good catch. I hadn't noticed the redundancy. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• It might help to state that a press release was written by the American Medical Association on May 6, 1983 with the title "Evidence Suggests Household Contact May Transmit AIDS" and it was picked up by the Associated Press. The full text of the press release I read in And the Band Played On (p. 299), but you may be able to find it in other places.

  Good idea! Thanks! Where do you think would be the best place to add this? I think it's important to give examples of the sort of "information" that was out there in the early 1980s. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

You might want to include a background section. You do have a bit of information about how it was understood primarily as gay-related immune deficiency. If you make the point that it was viewed primarily as a gay disease, and the AMA released this flawed press release near the beginning of the article, and subsequent media and public reaction to this news - I think that gives readers a background as to what White was in for in the 1980s. --Moni3 (talk) 14:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• I saw at least one reference to AIDS being fatal and incurable in the past tense. Is there a particular reason you have it that way?

  Probably just the tense of the rest of the paragraph. I'll figure out where this is and figure out how to word it more clearly. I certainly don't want to give the impression that AIDS is now curable! --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• In National spokesman, you have "poster boy" in quotations - did someone call him that? Is there a reason that term is in quotations? Goes back to my point in the lead.

  Clarified this whole bit. Hopefully this addresses the mention in the lead as well. --JayHenry (talk) 06:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

• What did White say when he addressed Reagan's AIDS commission?

  Will add a brief explainer. There's also the link to a verbatim transcript. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• I'd like to see more about what White did in his stint as spokesman. He went on Donahue, but what did he say? What did he do to attract the attention of all those celebrities besides be a victim of discrimination? I see you have his biography cited only three times. I would have thought he would have gone into more detail about being proactive. --Moni3 (talk) 18:54, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

  Yeah, I will clarify what he spoke about. It's largely similar to his testimony before Reagan's commission -- his own story. I didn't cite his autobiography much because it's really a primary source, and we start to get into Original Research issues with creating a portrait from the autobiography that's not really supported by the other material. What exactly do you mean by "being proactive"?

  Thanks a lot for looking in Moni. I'll sit down and make as many of these fixes as I can to the article tomorrow (hopefully), but I didn't want to leave you hanging. Your input is very much appreciated. --JayHenry (talk) 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I remember being impressed with White when he was alive, but I can't remember exactly what for. I hope it wasn't, as I stated, because he was simply a victim, but that he did something. Good luck. I'll keep checking back. --Moni3 (talk) 14:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll look for sources to add a bit more about this to the article. But he wasn't simply a victim. I mean, he didn't have to try to go back to school, he could have just played video games. He didn't have to go on national TV -- goodness knows I wasn't brave enough to do that in Middle School -- and say, "Yeah, I have this stigmatized disease, but it's okay and you need to know that you don't need to quarantine people with AIDS." And he didn't have to say -- in my mind this is the biggest one of all, from a middle schooler in rural Indiana -- "It doesn't matter how anyone got this disease, we have to fix it." White was quite a contrast to Kimberly Bergalis who always said "I'm an innocent victim." And he didn't stop even when he got really sick, co-hosting an AIDS benefit just a few weeks before his death. He was a really genuinely amazing person. I'm not a sissy but I teared up once or twice researching this article. --JayHenry (talk) 06:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support: According to FAC, points are covered, and length is 27 k. According to Summary style and article size 30K is on average what is easy to read. SriMesh | talk 01:29, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks SriMesh, it's nice to have an FA on the shorter side as I think people are more likely to read the whole thing in one sitting. This one would be a pretty good TFA on April 8, wouldn't it? /me Winks at the powers that be. --JayHenry (talk) 06:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. There's a lot of repeated wikilinks e.g. Elton John and other celebrities are wikilinked nearly every time they are mentioned. For me this is overlinking and distracting, as per WP:MOSLINK. Lou.weird (talk) 14:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

  Oh geez, you're quite right! I had Elton John linked 6 times, Reagan about 5... don't know how I missed that. Embarrassing! I tried to remove as many as I spotted. If you catch anymore don't hesitate to just chop them out. (The only ones I knowingly left in are people who appear in the lead and the body, as I think it's okay to link in the lead, and then again when it comes up in the flow.) Most readers aren't going to remember who exactly was mentioned back up in the lead. Thanks! --JayHenry (talk) 06:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment
• I'm concerned by the use of the word "tainted" to describe the blood supply. To me the word carries a connotation of deliberateness.
• "AIDS is diagnosed once HIV infection has reduced the count below 200" - this only became true in 1993, not in 1984 when White was diagnosed.
• "His mother asked if he could return to school, but was told he could not." By whom?
• "His speech was the only one to receive applause from the committee during months of testimony." - if true needs a cite but seems like rather a trivial detail.
• "The Indiana University Dance Marathon, started in 1991, raises money for the Riley Hospital for Children. Over the past 17 years, this event has helped raise over $5 million for children at Riley." - needs a citation.
• The dedications of the various songs to White should be cited. Otto4711 (talk) 23:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks for looking over the article Otto, and thanks also for the good copy-edits. I changed "tainted" to "contaminated" and added a sentence explaining that it was contaminated because neither doctors nor donors knew to screen for the disease. I added citations where requested, removed the sentence about applause, and clarified the part about his return to school. I didn't realize that the 200 t-cell count became true in 1993 (though I should have known there wouldn't have been clear guidelines in 1984). I want to give the reader relevant context to understand what a t-cell count of 25 means, because I think the number will be out of context for a lot of readers. Can you think of a better way to give the context, or should I perhaps just cut the sentence and wikilink to t-cells or AIDS#Diagnosis? Thanks again for your review. --JayHenry (talk) 05:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

• I think that just cutting the sentence works. Anyone reading that his t-cells were at 25 when an uninfected person's are at 1200 is going to understand what that massive a reduction means. Otto4711 (talk) 01:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
• One other quick thing. A photo caption includes "Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006" but I don't see an explanation in the text as to what that is and what if any relationship it bears to the Ryan White Care Act. Otto4711 (talk) 01:52, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

• I cut the sentence. You're right, it's clear how massive this reduction is and what that means. Also clarified that the photo is him signing the reauthorization of the original act. --JayHenry (talk) 05:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support: this is a very good and succinct article about a highly inspiring individual. I can't believe it's been that long since he's passed; it feels like yesterday. Anyway, a couple suggestions and comments to better improve on the great work that has already been done:

• his T-cell count had fallen to 25 (A healthy individual without HIV will have around 1,200): lowercase "a".
• A February 1986 study in the New England Journal of Medicine of 101 people that had spent three months living in close but non-sexual contact with AIDS patients, concluded that the risk of infection was "minimal to nonexistent," with some of the people studied even sharing toothbrushes, razors, clothing, combs and drinking glasses; sleeping in the same bed; and hugging and kissing: the last part of the sentence is somewhat confusing, although I trust it's grammatically correct. Could this sentence be broken into two for flow and easier comprehensibility?
• Neilsen estimated that the movie was seen by 15 million viewers: this could possibly need sourcing for verification.

And that's all I've got. Great job, Jay, as always. :) María (habla conmigo) 16:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.