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Wikipedia:Featured article review/Barbara McClintock/archive1

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

The article was kept by User:Nikkimaria 08:47, 12 April 2013 [1].

Barbara McClintock

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Review commentary

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Notified: PDH, WP Women's History, WP Missouri, WP Mizzou, WP History of Science, WP Biology, WP Genetics, WP Biography/Science and Academia

I am nominating this featured article for review because this article was promoted in 2005 and has never been re-reviewed. In the past seven years, the featured article criteria have become more strict, and unfortunately this article has not kept pace. Specifically:

  • It is significantly under-referenced, with many sections and paragraphs being partially or completely unreferenced. There is one cleanup banner and several in-line tags related to this issue.
  • There is a relatively large proportion of references to works written by the article's subject, in spots where third-party referencing is needed.
  • The size of the further reading section makes me wonder if the article is comprehensive, or if it is just that these articles need to be worked in to the in-line citations to rectify the referencing issues.
  • More minor issues, such as page numbers needed for books, date standardization and a clarification needed tag, also exist.

Overall, this article doesn't meet the featured article criteria as they stand today. Dana boomer (talk) 16:32, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dana, I think WikiProject Women scientists may be taking this on. How much time do we have? Thanks, Keilana|Parlez ici 16:21, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If work continues, as much as you need. Good luck, and let me know when you need further comments/review. Dana boomer (talk) 16:30, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Dana, I'm hoping that we'll get started this week. I'll ping you when we're looking for more review. Thanks for your patience! :) Keilana|Parlez ici 01:58, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do not have access to the sources, but will help with reference formatting. It looks like approximately half of the items in Further reading were used as references and could, with careful auditing, be deleted from Further reading; willing to do this as well. Maralia (talk) 02:38, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC, uncited text, tags, and not enough progress. Why is this still in the FAR stage after many months? FAR lasts two weeks. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:37, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • This article has been at FAR for over two months, where it has received only a handful of edits in spite of massive undercitation. It is past time to be moved to FARC for futher evaluation, and it is past time to Delist. Substantial work is not underway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:04, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Further reading needs to be pruned. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:38, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I will get to this - the refs need to be standardized too; there's a couple of {{Harvnb}}s floating around. The rest should already be in the reflist, so they can be removed. I'm about to run out of the house but I'll try to get some more done tonight and tomorrow. Keilana|Parlez ici 21:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Much improved, but there are still some cn tags, indeed at least one added. Better take to FARC. Johnbod (talk) 17:45, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Concerns raised in the review section include sourcing and comprehensiveness. Work has been ongoing (and review can be extended to allow more time if needed), but some issues regarding sourcing remain. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:22, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - Per sourcing issues. GamerPro64 19:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Is work still ongoing? There are still several fact tags and one banner on the article... If these are going to be addressed, I can start a full review of the article, as there are other, more minor, issues that I can see. If not, I'll be entering a delist vote, based on the current state of the article. While Keilana has done a great job in improving the article so far, it's still not quite up to featured quality. Dana boomer (talk) 23:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, I'm still working, I apologize for the pause - I just began a new semester at university and I've been completely inundated with schoolwork. It's letting up and I had planned to take care of the last few citation needed tags this weekend with a new source I picked up. I would really appreciate a full review, if you can! Thank you so much for your patience, I'm very sorry that I've neglected it recently but I've just been totally swamped. Keilana|Parlez ici 00:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • My apologies for taking a while to get back to this - you've done some fantastic work. I'm re-reading the article now, and will post follow-up comments below. I'm not finding much to complain about, though :) Dana boomer (talk) 15:42, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Final comments
  • Education and research at Cornell, "During this period, she demonstrated the presence of the nucleolus organizer region on a region on maize chromosome 6, which is required for the assembly of the nucleolus.[19][24][26][27]" Why does this statement need four references?
  • I removed the fourth reference as it wasn't needed. I think the primary source is also expendable, but I did want to keep the link to the original paper; I considered putting it in "Key publications" but I kind of like the idea of having the original paper linked in a footnote. What do you think? Keilana|Parlez ici 15:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • University of Missouri, "Recent evidence reveals that McClintock more likely decided to leave Missouri because she had lost trust in her employer and in the University administration." How had she lost trust in them?
  • I removed the superfluous source and clarified from the real source that she discovered that her position there depended on Stadler's presence; at one point he considered an offer from Caltech and the university retaliated by threatening to cut his research group. McClintock got pissed and left. That should be clear in the text now. Keilana|Parlez ici 15:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • University of Missouri, "McClintock accepted his invitation despite her qualms" What qualms?
  • Unfortunately, the source doesn't say. Fedoroff just says [p.221] "Though hesitant to commit herself, McClintock accepted" and "McClintock was quite reluctant" about the position. The substance of her objections isn't there; I looked through the other couple of comprehensive accounts I've got and none quantified what exactly she was worried about. I think that it's OR to say that she was hesitant because Missouri gave her a counter-offer to get her to stay (according to Kass p. 1257) because all Kass says is that she was "ambivalent" about which offer to accept. Unfortunately there's a fair amount of disagreement between her biographers' interpretations of events. Keilana|Parlez ici 15:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cold Spring Harbor, "N. crassa has since become a model species for classical genetic analysis." Can we get a reference for this that is 1) More recent and 2) Not a primary source?
  • Discovery of controlling elements, "the paper she presented was called "The origin and behavior of mutable loci in maize"." As you just described an article of the same title, why not say something like, "In summer 1951, she reported on her work on gene mutability in maize at the annual symposium at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, presenting a paper of the same title."
  • Discovery of controlling elements, "Based on the reactions of other scientists to her work," Is this referring to the "puzzlement, even hostility" described earlier, or were there other, worse, reactions?
  • Legacy, "(McClintock was also sometimes met with derision" I can't find the closing parentheses for this statement, and I'm not completely sure parentheses are needed here.
  • The references need to be pruned to remove those that aren't actually used as references. For example, I can't find "Geneticist B. McClintock Dies; Nobelist, Washington Post" used as an inline reference.
  • I found a couple while going through on my own, the Washington Post one is reference #61, used twice. I checked with the Harvard referencing script/tool/thingy that highlights the references that haven't been used and I think I've gotten them all now. Keilana|Parlez ici 15:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • A bit of work is needed on ref format standardization. For example, the four "Barbara McClintock Papers" refs have a variety of formats, in both the citations and references sections.
  • File:McClintock family.jpg - The tag for this is pre-1923 publication, but the source does not support this. It doesn't say that it has been published at all, and in fact says "In this instance, however, it has either not been possible to identify or contact the current copyright owner.". The same is true for File:McClintock family 1907.jpg.
  • Ergh, I'm not sure at all what to do with these. The source of McClintock family gives 1916 as the date "supplied", which is what I suspect is the basis of that pre-1923 tag. The other image has 1907 as the date supplied, so I think whoever uploaded it assumed the same thing. I can contact them and see if there's anything I can turn up if you want. I'm the first to admit that image policy is not in any way my forte so I'll defer to you and the other experts on this one. Keilana|Parlez ici 15:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overall, you have done a fantastic job on this article. It is quite close to featured status, and I think will be there with just a bit more work. I'm going to ping the rest of the people who have commented at this review, so that hopefully we can get more comments and get this moved through the process! Thank you for all of your work here, Dana boomer (talk) 16:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In response to Dana's nudge, I've done some work on the reference formatting today, including standardizing the cites to the Barbara McClintock Papers at NML. There are a few stray refs that could use better formatting still (Letter from Barbara McClintock to Maize geneticist Oliver Nelson and The golden age of corn genetics at Cornell as seen though the eyes of M. M. Rhoades) and I did not prune for listed-but-unused references. I am all for list-defined references and happy to see them in use, but my experience with them is limited thus far, so I tried to be extra careful with my changes; hope I've not botched anything. The article is certainly looking much better. Maralia (talk) 19:29, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Maralia, I don't think anything got lost with the references, so that's great! I took care of a couple of them that weren't working for whatever reason, and I'll get to the rest later. I've got a break from university this week so I should be able to take care of the rest of the issues this week. Keilana|Parlez ici 23:10, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keilana, it looks like there is currently a student editing the article (see their post on the talk page). I think the majority of their edits are OK, but some introduced some language that's a bit unencyclopedic. Perhaps you would mind taking a look through to make sure they didn't change any meanings or disrupt any sources? Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 20:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I'm checking it over. Then I'll get to the comments - sorry it took me so long! Keilana|Parlez ici 14:03, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, all of my comments above have been satisfactorily resolved with the exception of the image question. The issue is that for a pre-1923 tag to be valid, an image has to have actually been published - book, journal/newspaper article, etc. In this case, my understanding from the source page was that the images were taken in 1907/1916, but taking =/= publishing. If the National Library of Medicine (where the images are currently hosted) has more information, it might help to determine if these were ever published, or if we know who took the images - if they have been dead for more than 70 years, we can just use a different tag and it'll be all good. It's unfortunate - they are great images to have in the article - but at this point the source material does not match the information provided in the tags. Dana boomer (talk) 11:52, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great! I wish we had a good image of her to use in the lead. I sent an email to the NLM asking about the copyright status of the images but I'm not expecting much. I've removed them for the time being and if they clarify the status later, we can always put them back. Is that fair? Keilana|Parlez ici 17:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That works for me! Entering an official "Keep" vote below - thank you so much for all of your work on this article! Dana boomer (talk) 18:30, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much! Keilana|Parlez ici 20:46, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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