A fact from Jean Webster (cook) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 22 March 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Jean Webster daily served hundreds of people free food directly out of her home kitchen for over a decade?
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Latest comment: 2 years ago22 comments3 people in discussion
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.
ALT2: ... that Jean Webster(pictured) daily served hundreds of hungry people free food directly out of her home kitchen for over a decade, before her charity operation moved to a formal soup kitchen? Source: Same as the original hook, just makes more clear that she continued cooking after the decade from her home. (But was trying to keep the original hook brief and punchy.)
ALT2b: ... that Jean Webster(pictured) served hundreds of free meals a day directly out of her home kitchen for over a decade, before her charity operation moved to a formal soup kitchen?
Comment: No pressure, but it would be nice if this is reviewed promptly enough to go live in February, which is Black History Month in the US. The QPQ is old but I haven't used it for a DYK nom yet.
Overall: The article is new enough, long enough and well written. qpq is done and the hooks are interesting, but I'm not sure about the sourcing. I don't see the year that she moved her operation to Victory First. BuySomeApples (talk) 07:32, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
@BuySomeApples:: Sorry, there's a better source that was added since I made my DYK nomination in the article on that sentence - [1] . " Then, just before moving operations to the church in September, she was cooking breakfast and lunch for up to 200 people in her Indiana Avenue house, by then condemned." Article is from Dec. 18, 1997 so should be clear it means September 1997. [2] Also has a similar statement (doesn't say September, but says that the move happened in the previous months and was written in November 1997.) I get the impression that the move-in was a gradual process hence the vagueness and the fact that most of the news stories are from November / December 1997 after it opened. SnowFire (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Comment. Actually, if you can wait a little... I didn't think I'd get permission, but I might actually have a freely licensed picture to go with this. Give me a little bit. SnowFire (talk) 20:39, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Nice work @SnowFire:! Those new sources seem good and the pictures are great additions. I'm not 100% sure if you have to forward permission to Wikimedia Commons, maybe someone else can weigh in? Otherwise, this nom looks good to go if you're ready. BuySomeApples (talk) 22:25, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
I can file an URTS ticket with the emails worst comes to worst, but I'm pretty sure it's fine - DYK routinely features random pics from Flickr of questionable provenance without URTS tickets, so this pic (Which, while annoyingly lacking a named author, is at least not questionable for who has the rights) should be fine too without it. SnowFire (talk) 22:39, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
DYK does try to make sure most pictures are free to use, I've seen a couple get removed because the provenance/license ended up not being right. I'm sure some slip through the cracks but an effort is made. It might not hurt to file a ticket if it wouldn't take but I think it's fine to approve the nom like this. BuySomeApples (talk) 23:51, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
I'll see if I can get a ticket filed then. (Also I misremembered what they changed their name to: I knew it wasn't ORTS anymore, but apparently it's VRTS now, not URTS.) SnowFire (talk) 00:05, 19 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
@BuySomeApples: Unfortunately, the executive director of the foundation is on vacation at the moment (I didn't want to pester him over Presidents Day Weekend), so I suspect the VRTS ticket might take awhile. Maybe for the best to just promote this now so it can get in for Black History Month. (I still think that the pictures are 100% fine even without a ticket but can just promote without the picture like the original nom if you'd rather play it safe.) SnowFire (talk) 19:29, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
@SnowFire and BuySomeApples: So, I've been doing quite a few promotion rounds recently, but I've been skipping over this one—just trying to give myself more time to mull over what's been putting me off about it. So, in the end, if I seem stupid on this one, know that at least it wasn't an impulse decision.
Hopping into my issue, this article is written too promotionally for my taste. I'll leave some examples here, but what tripped me up for a while is that while none of these are egregious, they together create a pattern that makes the article feel a bit on the heavy side.
In 1986, Webster saw a homeless man searching for food in a garbage can. She used $5 to buy a meal for him at a nearby pizza restaurant, but also invited him to her home for dinner the next day. She would later attribute this moment to when she felt called by God to start a mission of feeding people. She let it be known that if anyone was hungry, they could stop by her place and be fed. Word spread of this among Atlantic City's community, and soon lines were forming outside her home on Indiana Avenue. ... I don't know, it feels like something the source might have put in as human interest—but while the story does deserve a mention, something feels off.
This meant no limitations for guests on repeat visits, making it attractive for the most desperate parts of society such as the homeless.
Webster disliked the term "soup kitchen", as aside from her kitchen serving more than soup and having a quick-and-dirty connotation, she also emphasized the community and spirituality aspect. She preferred "house of happiness" or "mission", as well as referring to attendees as "guests" and treating them with respect. Again, this isn't an unimportant fact, but aren't there lots of corporations that have fluffy names for their generic services and followers? Webster wasn't mundane or generic, of course, but this is based off of a quote from her daughter.
She staunchly defended her work
Around 40% of Atlantic City residents have incomes below the poverty line. While the casinos host substantial economic activity, most of the better compensated workers live in adjoining towns and suburbs. As such, poverty was and is a major concern in Atlantic City; Webster's work had a substantial positive impact in lessening the burden on Atlantic City's poor. This might not be a neutrality concern, but this does feel like unnecessary detail—This could probably be squished down to a sentence or so. In fact, it seems like a lot of the legacy section could be spun off, if the kitchen had activity independent of webster...
After Webster was too sick to continue working late in her life, Sister Jean's Kitchen continued its mission. "continued to operate", maybe? as long as it doesn't become repetitive...
@Theleekycauldron: I get that the story of the trash can & pizza order might seem like something out of "inspirational literature", but in this case, it's factual. Every single news article I dug up includes the story of the pizza restaurant and there's no indication it's false. It's relevant, too - when and why did this work start is a basic question the article should explain.
"No questions asked" is, again, true, and a relevant distinction, not just puffery. It's a genuinely different way of operating that has implications, mostly in that it's gonna cost more to operate under such rules. For example, the Star Ledger article talks about how a minor controversy happened after a bus transporting gamblers started dropping people off for a free lunch there for awhile, which was accepted rather than turned away on the spot. Every source is very clear that the main users of her soup kitchen were AC's homeless, so saying that outright is, again, consonant with the sources.
Webster's terminology preference isn't, strictly speaking, super-important to talk about, but where are you getting that this is sourced to just her daughter? It's in all the sources - The Press's obituary includes "Webster never referred to her home, and later the church, as a soup kitchen. She preferred the term 'house of happiness.'" The Inquirer's obit also says this albeit mentioning mission, in the newspaper's voice. This is attested to uncontroversially in articles earlier than the obits as well.
She did defend her work? Again, this is absolutely a relevant point to talk about. To quote the Star-Ledger: "It was a classic case of NIMBY -- not in my backyard. People in the city adore Webster. But nobody wants to live or work next to a soup kitchen." So yes, she did indeed have to defend doing her work where she did, and not on a barge out of view or something. I'll edit the sentence to make clear that it's the downtown location that was being defended.
So you raise an interesting point. Yes, it would be a valid editorial choice to consider this strictly a biography and stop entirely at her death. However, it is also IMO a valid editorial choice to have a "legacy" section and talk about how the person's work interacted with society. WP articles routinely include such "legacy" or "background" sections. Again, for someone not familiar with Atlantic City, they may very well believe it to be a ritzy place of ultra-wealthy gamblers like Monaco. That is not actually true, so I feel this is relevant background to discuss, as well as Webster's ongoing impact from what she directly built. Put another way: when there's articles on ultra-wealthy people who set up charitable foundations with their cash and some sort of charter, it's not unreasonable to discuss what those foundations did, right? Because their dead hand is guiding the organization, even from beyond the grave. It's the same thing here, except instead of money, it's more volunteering.
Sure, if you want to change "mission" to "operate", it's fine. I suspect you're reading the wrong sense of the word "mission" though: it didn't mean it as in "inspirational goal", but rather the more literal "religious operation" (wikt:mission definition 2, not definition 1). Webster did in fact consider her work as religiously-ordained, so calling missionary work a "mission" is in fact valid here.
More generally: if someone comes across as a syrupy saint, sometimes it's because that's what's really going on. This was a balanced presentation of all the sources, and there's just almost nothing bad anyone said about her except for the extremely minor part of "the lines outside make the tourism district look bad", which is covered in the article. SnowFire (talk) 23:57, 23 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Theleekycauldron and SnowFire: I do see where the page could use some copyedits, so I made some minor changes to help with tone and trim down any unnecessary details. I didn't remove the story about the homeless man, but I rewrote it to be shorter / more encyclopedic. I'm not sure whether the soup kitchen would merit a page on its own. For now it makes sense to leave information about its continued operations on this page, although it could be spun off into a separate page. BuySomeApples (talk) 06:59, 24 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, BuySomeApples, that's pretty much exactly what i was looking for :) Webster was absolutely a phenomenal woman, no doubt about it—but I always prefer to write the article in a way that lets the reader come to that conclusion on their own. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 00:11, 28 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear. I gave up on attempting to get clearance in time (remember, I'd been looking to get this done in February) above, hence the comment about "Maybe for the best to just promote this now" above due to the rights-holder involved being on vacation at the time I contacted him (and thus was deeply embarrassed at having called them up while they were on vacation). I had no idea you were still waiting on this after I gave clearance to promote anyway. I can give it another shot I suppose, but per above, I'd also be happy with just using it as a normal hook. (if you do want to wait, I can swallow my pride and ask again, but it'll probably be a week or so to wildly guess if it works out. Which it very well might not.) SnowFire (talk) 20:02, 15 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
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The article is new enough, long enough and well written. qpq is done and the hooks are interesting, but I'm not sure about the sourcing. I don't see the year that she moved her operation to Victory First. BuySomeApples (talk) 07:32, 18 February 2022 (UTC)