Talk:JC's Girls

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:JC's Girls/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Prhartcom (talk · contribs) 22:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd be happy to undertake this review. Please give me some time to get started. I wish to say I have the highest respect for the previous reviewer and will certainly be carrying aspects of that review over. Cheers. Prhartcom (talk) 22:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   See below.

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Citations to reliable sources, where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Reviewer's comments

1a

• Lede assumes we know the definition of the word Christian. It needs to be mentioned explicitly and immediately, probably in the first sentence, with a link provided. Same with first sentence of the article body
• "Theresa Scher—a former stripper and call girl—and social worker Sheri Brown founded" : What do you think of: "Former stripper and call girl Theresa Scher and social worker Sheri Brown founded"
• "for free" : a little too colloquial; can you rephrase
• "was not a Christian" : I wonder if "was not religious" is even better; it may describe his personality even more accurately; also, shouldn't it be present tense
• I was surprised that the term "sex industry" was not mentioned very early in the article body such as in the third sentence (it appears in the sixth sentence); this may be fine, but when it appeared I felt like it should have been mentioned and linked earlier
• JC's girls is referred to as "it" then referred to as "they"; pick one and stay consistent (may possibly need to humanize the organization more by saying "the women volunteers of JC's Girls" or similar); check entire article for this
• "help them in transitioning out of it" : perhaps "help them transition out of it"
• The word "there" followed by the verb of the sentence is often a sign of weak writing. Search for every occurrence of the word "there" and decide of the sentence could be rephrased to be stronger without it. E.g. consider changing "there are Christians who" to "Christians are nearby who" or similar; check entire article for this (I count five occurrences of "there" followed by a verb in this article)
• The word "having" followed by a past-tense verb: consider dropping the "having" and making the verb have the "ing" form instead, e.g. "having appeared" : "appearing", "having lost" : "losing", "after having converted ... and having left" : "after converting ... and leaving"
• The comma followed by "and" is often redundant and incorrect grammar; instead the comma should often be dropped (unless this is the close of a list of items). When writing a sentence we do not insert a comma just to indicate this is a moment where we would pause if we were speaking the sentence. The "and" alone is usually sufficient without a comma before it. Check entire article for this and consider each occurrence
• "she converted to Christianity ... although no one attempted to tell her about Jesus" : This is an odd statement for a few reasons: 1) I didn't think it was possible to do the first without the second 2) it implies that the article will soon inform us that this issue in her life will be corrected, but the article never returns to this 3) "Albee suggested that they start telling other strippers about Jesus" is not possible because "they" don't know about Jesus. Suggest dropping the troublesome phrase
• "invited women from other churches in the area to join JC's Girls, and approximately 90 churches responded with interest" : I'm confused: We were just talking about women in the sex industry who were being evangelized to and who began responding to JC's Girls, so who are the "women" from this sentence who are "to join"; I was naturally assuming the sex industry women. If it is instead church women who are joining, this may need to be rewritten to properly introduce and differentiate them from the other women
• "in December" : remind us that it is still 2005
• "had a booth" : find a better word than "had"
• I assume the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo is in Riverside, the name of this section, if not please say location
• "strip club booth" : Do you mean "strip club"; would also help remove redundancy; not sure what is the definition of this term otherwise
• "wished to take pictures with the JC's Girls volunteers, and Veitch was interviewed" : Separate into two sentences after "volunteers"
• "booth had received visits from thousands of men who read about the gospel there" : I suppose it would be men now that I think about it as probably no women attend the convention, but it is jarring to suddenly learn that only men were affected. I expected to learn that generic people were affected by the JC's Girls booth; perhaps change to this unless the idea of men only is properly introduced. Also, it was odd to learn that they "read" about the gospel there at the booth instead of "hear" about the gospel there; how did they read it, did the men/people approach the booth, were handed a Bible or something to read; or perhaps you mean they read about JC's Girls on the XXXchurch.com website; this may need to be reworded to be clearer
• "become more physically fit to show that she could still be working in the sex industry and that the organization's message is not motivated by jealousy" : The sentence would be stronger, allowing us to focus on the important "not motivated by jealousy" phrase, if the "she could still be working in the sex industry" phrase is dropped; reading about Veitch considering returning to the sex industry is quite jarring; it can be dropped because the next sentence, said in her own words, communicates this additional message better than this sentence does
• The section does not say why the Riverside chapter closes; do the sources provide this
• "at that year's AVN Adult Entertainment Expo" : Again, we are assuming the expo took place in Las Vegas, the name of this section, if not then clarify
• "Veitch's experiences in starting JC's Girls" : Drop the "in"
• "pornographic film actor" : change to "actress" (while keeping link to "actor"); also fix in photo caption
• "One Church for One Girl, which encourages churches to help women to leave the sex industry" : It's a different organization I know, but I thought the whole idea was to not encouraging women to leave it but to meet them where they are
• The section does not say why the Las Vegas chapter closes; do the sources provide this
• "Theresa Scher, a former stripper and call girl, was looking for a way out" : Please provide the location of Theresa Scher as she is doing this; I assume we are in San Diego (especially confusing since this sentence mentions Riverside)
• "allowed Scher to found" : It's accurate writing but, as we don't encounter this definition of the word "found" very often, consider changing to a more easily understood word such as "create" (besides, "founded" is in the next sentence so this would help with the redundancy)
• "She had been sexually abused ... she found" : Change one of those occurrences of "she" to "Brown" (probably the second occurrence) so we don't forget who we're talking about
• "had also had those experiences" : Change to "also had those experiences"
• "and have a prayer team praying for them while they are out" : "The "have" is weak; change to "while a prayer team is praying for them while they are out" (also remove the comma before this phrase)
• "as did George and his club's strippers" : Consider changing to "and George and his club's strippers returned to their counter-protesting" (also remove the comma before this phrase)
• "Within the a few months of founding JC's Girls" : Do you mean "Within the first few months of founding JC's Girls"
• "received messages through its website from pornographic film actors" : Do you mean "actors" or "actresses"
• "who said that JC's Girls had changed their lives and had introduced them to Christianity" : Consider dropping "and had introduced them to Christianity"; more powerful without
• "Because of the controversy surrounding JC's Girls" : Consider changing to more specific and less wordy "Because of this controversy"
• "in reaction against JC's Girls" : It is not clear enough why an organization would be founded "against" JC's Girls; the next two sentences begin to explain it but it still does not truly explain why/if they are "against" them
• Find a way to end the Reception section and the entire article with a statement of positive reception of the JC's Girls organization in order to end the article "on a chord", as I like to say—something that causes the reader to feel an emotion. There are some positive reception sentences already in this section so perhaps some simple restructuring is all that is needed

2b

• I'm doing a spot check of many of the references and they appear to be good. I found one reference that contained good information but was only being used for one single footnote (Michelle A. Vu "Film on Ex-Stripper Turned Preacher Stirs Controversy") where elsewhere you use multiple number of footnotes per source. And it is not required, but I tend to go a step further and use multiple number of sources per footnote; I wish you would consider doing that
• Please provide the page number for each of your book references; just providing the entire book for a citation is not good enough (I believe you know this). This includes citations from Grecco 2007 (the page has not yet been supplied) and Prejean 2009 (one of the two pages has not yet been supplied)

6b

• Hey, the photo of Veitch in the Heather Veitch article is a more "flattering" photo and also has the JC's Girls logo behind it; why not use that one and ditch the one in this article that the previous reviewer's friend had a problem with

Summary

This is an extremely interesting article and I believe it would rock the main page. The research for this article appears to be excellent. Great work on it, Neelix. I look forward to seeing your improvements to the article following this review and reading your responses to my comments. Cheers. Prhartcom (talk) 13:17, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the review and the encouragement, Prhartcom! They are much appreciated. I have implemented most of your suggestions with only a few exceptions:

• I retained the phrase "was not a Christian" because I don't want to depart from the relevant source, which simply refers to DiGiorgio as "not a Christian"; he may have been religious but an adherent of another religion. I kept the past tense because I don't wish to presume that DiGiorgio continues to not be a Christian; the source was written in 2006, and plenty of things could have happened to him since then.
• I removed all the extraneous commas you mentioned except one: the one in the sentence beginning with "The peace treaty..." In this case, the comma is important because it prevents the sentence from being ambiguous. Without the comma, the sentence could be taken to mean that the church's members only resumed picketing after George and his club's strippers returned to their counter-protesting, and the sources don't make this claim.
• I have retained the word "actor" instead of "actress" because "actor" has become the politically correct word to use in reference to both men and women. I can make this change if you feel strongly that readers will be confused, but I think it good practice to avoid female-specific occupation names wherever possible.
• Unfortunately, I have not been successful in finding any sources that explain why the defunct chapters closed. My best guess is that the Riverside chapter closed because it was left leaderless when Veitch moved to Las Vegas and that the Las Vegas chapter closed because it was left leaderless when Veitch resigned from the organization. Beyond their mere existence and the fact that they no longer exist, I have been able to find no information at all about the Austin and Sioux Falls chapters.

I believe that I have made all the other changes you recommended, but if there are others that I have not made, or not made sufficiently, please let me know. I would also be glad to continue the discussion with you about the four items on which I have not taken action. Thanks again for the thorough review. Neelix (talk) 18:50, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Neelix, Thanks for making all the changes and these exceptions are fine. I just completed re-reading the article and it looks good. Did you notice I added a new section of review above. Let me know when that is done and I believe we're good to go. Prhartcom (talk) 18:58, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate your comments relating to citations, Prhartcom. I haven't added multiple citations per footnote because I believe that it makes it more difficult for readers to ascertain which part of the relevant sentence has been taken from which source. I know that you and I have different methods of going about citations, and I can understand that you have reasons for preferring your methods. I tend to think both can coincide on separate Wikipedia articles in the same way that some articles are written in Australian English and others in Canadian English, etc. If there is any information in the Christian Post source you think should be included in this article that isn't already, please let me know. Both of the Prejean page numbers are already included; one is page 22 and the other is page x. Books often include both Arabic and Roman numerals to differentiate between the body text and the preface, as in this case. The Grecco book is unpaginated and therefore no page number can be provided. I hope this clarification satisfies your concerns. Please let me know if it does not. Neelix (talk) 20:02, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah, that explains it! I honestly was starting to think you had forgotten to add the page numbers, placing some sort of place holders for yourself ("page x", etc). I was surprised that I was finding myself having to point this out to you, so now your explanation makes more sense. As long as we are doing everything we can to help others who need to locate the passages in the books of the bibliography. And I wasn't insisting on multiple references per footnote, especially for a GA, it was just a suggestion; something I believe is good practice. In that case, this article is good to go, I am very happy to say. What an enjoyable and positive experience this was, reading about this organisation, which I really hope succeeds. Congrats on this GA! Prhartcom (talk) 20:17, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Length

As with Tara Teng, this article is ridiculously long and seems intent on pushing a Christian message. Can we not trim it? Knock off about 30 per cent and it would probably be more in keeping with the notability of the subject matter. - Sitush (talk) 13:57, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

One specific issue is that an awful lot of the claims made in this thing are quite obviously source-able only to JC's Girls, albeit via media interviews etc. We don't do press releases, slavish interviews and the like: they are not truly neutral. - Sitush (talk) 14:19, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I disagree strongly that the article is too long or that it is pushing a message; the information is presented in an encyclopedic manner and fairly from reliable, secondary sources. Are there particular sources to which you object? If so, I would recommend that you bring them up in the current FAC for this article. Neelix (talk) 13:36, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Like Neelix creepy stalker version of Tara Teng this article needs a good cleanup. Way to detailed, so I'm going to trim it and others should too. Legacypac (talk) 03:38, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Repetition

As I read/skimmed down the article just now, I kept feeling that I was seeing the same phrases and expressions over and over. I think much material about the organization may have been repeated in several or all of the sections about the individual chapters.

On analysis, there's some of that, but mostly I think I was remembering the version on the front page. --Thnidu (talk) 06:22, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

on the front page, really?

Just curious as what method dictates an article appearing on the front page. I wonder if it was not chosen by someone with a religious agenda and if you ask me such articles should be limited in appearing as front page article. I just find it a bit offensive not the fact on the subject (pornography) but someone who used to work in the industry is trying to demonize it while still wearing tight attractive (and low cut) outfits doing so. Im amazed the adult awards let her and her group even enter. Ok sorry personal thoughts aside but just wondering what Icriteria was made to make this a featured article.......I just personally think shes full of ...well ill try to keep it civil...

Well, Evenios (you're supposed to sign your comments, you know, with four tildes), if you had read the article (not the front page abridgement) you would have seen answers to many of your challenges, as issued by many critics of the group, notably including many church folk. And if you paid attention to the first section of this page, you'd have a better idea of "what method dictates an article appearing on the front page". Certainly you'd understand that it's not somebody with a religious purpose deciding to put it there.

It's stated several times that they dress like the women they're trying to reach out to in order to be more acceptable to them. What, do you think they should dress like nuns or Victorian ladies?

They are not "demonizing" the industry either. And did you notice that they've had a number of successes in encouraging women to leave the industry and develop healthy lines and self-respect? Think that just might have something to do with the fact that they're not preaching sin and damnation at them like all the other evangelists?

I'm Jewish, and I strongly dislike evangelism, but I found myself pleasantly surprised by what JC's Girls are doing with and for these women, many of whom are stuck in sex-related industries because they feel that nobody outside the industry will have any respect for them. I wonder how they would feel about your attitude, as expressed here? I have a hunch it would sound to them like the same old same old, and that they wouldn't listen to you any more than I listen to street-corner preachers. --Thnidu (talk) 06:13, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Well said, Thnidu. Congrats again, to Neelix, it looks great on the front page today! Prhartcom (talk) 22:56, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I tranlate this wonderful article to Chinese wikipedia, and just promoted to featured article at August 1st, and I haven't seem any comment like this, or any complain against to the subject, so I guess... truth just speak for themselves. --Jarodalien (talk) 10:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Criticism from non-evangelicals?

This is an interesting article, but has the group really only received criticism from other, more conservative evangelicals? I think it would make the article more balanced if more information on how the group has been received by non-evangelicals (other than those they have converted) were added. Given how unusual this group is, surely there has been discussion of it in mainstream media? JC's Girls seems to endorse the view that the sex industry is always bad for women, and that a better option would be for them to leave it, and to adopt a more 'traditionally Christian' lifestyle, even if they do it in a way that preaches 'acceptance' over fire and brimstone. I would find it odd if the group had not been criticized by non-evangelicals for this reason, given evangelical Christianity's general views on gender roles and the fact that not all women who work in the sex industry are victimized or want 'a way out'. TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 12:05, 2 September 2015 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

Thanks for your interest in the article, Susie! I have done as thorough a search as I can for criticism of the organization in reliable, published sources, and all that I have found is already included in the article. You may notice that the "Reception" section includes criticism of the organization by Raëlians, who are non-evangelicals who make the kinds of arguments you have indicated. If you know of or find reliable, published sources that provide additional criticism of JC's Girls, please feel free to add them to the article! Neelix (talk) 13:50, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Correcting word?

Can the word "Actor" be changed to "Actress" in the description of the second pic? RadPig94 (talk) 07:34, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

The word "actor" appears six times in this article. Is there any reason you would like this particular instance of the word to be changed? "Actor" is a gender-neutral profession term, and Wikipedia's guidelines on gender-neutral language state that we should "use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision." Please see Actor#Terminology for additional discussion of the gender neutrality of the word "actor" and the history of its use. Neelix (talk) 12:21, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Sioux Falls chapter? Really?

Of all the places that come to mind for a chapter of this group, this is not one that readily comes to mind. I'm guessing that it is because Sophia Lynn works there, but, still. I would be interested in seeing maybe some content regarding that "chapter" in this article (like, maybe, is it just one person?) and maybe any other "chapters" which might exist. John Carter (talk) 23:28, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Heather Veitch

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was no consensus. John B123 (talk) 20:46, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

---

<Start of discussion>

as suggested at the afd close--no independent notability DGG ( talk ) 08:05, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

As no comments have been made in 6 months, can we assume this proposal is now dead and remove the merge templates from both pages. --John B123 (talk) 19:02, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

<End of discussion>

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.