Talk:Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: CodexJustin (talk · contribs) 14:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Review may take a day or two to prepare. It might me nice to hear why you were drawn to do the 19th Amendment if you could mention something about how and why you chose this article? CodexJustin (talk) 14:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi CodexJustin and thanks for the review. Wiki Education and the National Archives teamed up to run a series of courses to teach people to edit Wikipedia, focusing on women's suffrage for the centennial of the 19th amendment and women's right to vote in the US. Back in May, 7 alumni of those courses came together to focus on this article in particular. Elysia (Wiki Ed) and I worked with them as they applied the Good Article criteria. At the end of May, we felt it was in really good shape, so decided to take the next step and nominate it.

The course is now over, but participants know about this review. So you may hear from multiple people in response to questions/comments you have. Even if they are all busy, however, at minimum, Elysia and I will be around to respond. Thanks again. :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:16, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

That all sounds noteworthy and worthwhile, it will be nice to have multiple participants adding comments during GAN. CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Review comments

@Ryan (Wiki Ed) and Elysia (Wiki Ed): Could you look at the following comments:

(1) Lede is a little long and may need to be shortened later, I'll come back to this. Wording in 2nd paragraph "of the colonies" might look better as "of the pre-revolutionary colonies". Lede is normally limited to 4 paragraphs as a summary of the article, I'll return to this possibly as the sections of the article are dealt with later on. CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

(2) There is a difference in Wikipedia articles in general between "History of" articles and articles written about specific identifiable Subject articles. My impression is that this article reads as a "History of the 19th Amendment" rather than as a Subject oriented article dealing with the 19th Amendment as its main subject. The Background section is quite long and developed. It is also fairly well written, and my comment here is to deal with the length issues of these background section. It may be worthwhile considering splitting some of this into a History of the 19th Amendment article, and retaining a much shorter version of these individual subsections. Otherwise, I am going to be looking for significant trims to these Background sections, that is, significant trims to each section here. Let me know if you prefer to discuss this as an 'article split' issue or as a 'further trims' issue. CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

(3) As a Subject article, the other Wikipedia Amendment articles generally get straight into the functions, clauses and purposes which the Amendment is supposed to service upon ratification. See the 1st amendment article which gets straight into Establishment, Free exercise, Free speech as its subject domain, after it completes a short Background section. Given the immense importance of suffrage here, that 50 per cent of the population finally have a vote for their representative body, this is what seems the crucial issue. Although crucial, this issue among others seems secondary to your discussion of the History of the amendment rather than discussing it as the Subject of this Wikipedia article. Separately, would it be possible to refer to Sen. Sargent by his title in this article as a style point for clarity (See WWI patriotism section, for example). CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

(4) Ratification timeline. I'm not sure I am getting very much useful information from this list of dates which seems accurate but very, very detailed. Also, you do not discuss carefully why you are listing the post ratification dates with such meticulous detail as well. I could suggest 2 col format and also small font format, but could you think about reducing this section in the amount of detail presented. Something like "Between June 10 1919 and March 6 1923, the vast majority of ratifying States had signed on to the amendment. Several follow-up States joined them in case of reversals from previously ratifying States revoking their ratification." Something like that. Do you really need each and every date in the list for each and every State. CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

(5) I'm getting in-line links being printed out as http address in the Challenges section. I need to check if this is just my internet connection or something in the article as you have written it. Both Leser and Fairchild are doing this. CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

(6) At the start of the article your phrase "several of the early colonies" should read as "several of the pre-revolutionary colonies", similar to my previous comment above about the lede, but now in the main article. CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

(7) Section on Suffrage in Literature is looking a lot like being merely a list of titles and authors; was there any rhyme or reason to these books, or are they just random topical titles? Did any of these titles come close to having the impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Civil War era? Is it possible to add something to this section to make it more accessible to someone interested in possibly reading one of these titles and trying to make a learned choice? CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

(8) Looking forward to your replies and edits. Having said all that, your article is well-written in terms of narrative and well-researched, suitable I think for improvements and enhancements. CodexJustin (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Responses 7/27/2019

@CodexJustin: Thanks for the thoughtful comments. You make some good points. Some thoughts/responses before we actually set in to making changes:

1 - let's indeed circle back to the lead at the end. :)

Yes. CodexJustin (talk) 15:46, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

2 & 3 - This is what I most wanted to talk about before moving forward. If I envision a FA version of a topic like a constitutional amendment, I would expect to see a rich, well-developed account of the situation beforehand, prior attempts at legislation, people and organizations who advocated for it, important events leading up to it, the process of its proposal/discussion/passage/ratification, the role it played in public, what came after, how people viewed it then, why people wanted it, who opposed it, what it was criticized for, what its effects were, and so on. I consider all of these to be part of the subject, as well as all part of the history of the subject. It's entirely possible that there's enough to spin out to a separate article on the history, but instances when we separate articles like that are relatively uncommon (which isn't to say there aren't plenty of examples). That tends to be something that happens if we already have an article we think is very good, but it's just too big, or if one huge section dominates an article in a way that distracts from the subject itself. The size of this article isn't much different than many other reasonably developed amendment articles (e.g. 1 and 2 are both much bigger, and 4 is about the same size), and there's no shortage of even larger FAs/GAs (Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a relevant one that comes to mind).

The thrust of what I'm saying here is that if the content would be right for a history article, I feel like it should be right for this article pending a proposal to split/spinout on the article talk page. In my experience, that's not something GA reviews are intended for. On the other hand, if the text should be tightened up/edited in places and/or if there's WP:UNDUE weight on any part of it, we should absolutely be fixing that. (I don't want to make it seem like my response is to avoid improving the page! :) ).

I would also say that if we're going to talk about a separate article, there's one logical companion article that we talked an awful lot about while working on this one: women's suffrage in the United States. There's obviously some overlap between them, and we talked about whether some material would be best left for that article rather than in here. Ultimately we tried to focus on making this one as good as possible, and for that reason summarized not the current ephemeral text of that other article (someone else can improve it -- or we can come back to it later), but a hypothetical FA version of what that article should be, if that makes sense.

Let's take that thought and move it forward with the Women's suffrage in the United States article. My thought is that it may be possible to move some of the History oriented discussion to that article and out of this article as a way to get into the functional aspects of the 19th Amendment more expeditiously. See if it is possible to move as much pertinent history material to the Suffrage article as possible and add a 'See also' to the sections from which you split and then remove this material. Too much history discussion in an Amendment article is not how the GA for the 1st Amendment is set up. It would be nice if the History material which you do split and then remove can remove as much a 40-50% of the material in these History sections; its really just too long right now and even though its well-written, I think a trimmed version would be more useful for readers. Also, consider further splits and removes for the Women's rights article and for the general Women's suffrage articles as other possible useful venues for this. CodexJustin (talk) 15:46, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

4 - we retained the timeline because it's included in many other amendment articles (11, 12, 13, 14, 15..). Regarding post-ratification, are you saying there should be additional context along with the text "States that subsequently ratified the amendment"? That makes sense. The columns adjust based on your monitor, so for some it will be 2col. Small font to reduce the amount of space the section takes up? We could, I suppose. I tend to err on the side of using consistent sizes (sort of what MOS:FONTSIZE suggests, though it grants exceptions).

In the absence of a good summary of legislative debate prior to enactment, let's see what it looks like in small font, and with the post-ratification states separated from the rest with at least some small statement of why its important for them to be included and shown.

5 - Nope, not your connection! Fixed now, though. :) (Thanks, Elysia).

7 - When we talked about the literature section, I asked if it was one better left to the article on suffrage more broadly. The response from the person more familiar with the sources was that it contextualizes them as relevant to the lead-up to the 19th amendment in particular. I agree that it could use more context to better show the connection/significance.

Really need to see more than just a list of books. Were any of them best-sellers? Are any of them still in print? Do some of them merely make one passing remark about suffrage and then return gothic romance novels? You are really not giving potential readers any specific reason to choose one title over another. Why read the one novel you suggest in this list over and against the others? CodexJustin (talk) 15:46, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks again for the review and kind words. Looking forward to your response, and to learning more about your thinking regarding #2. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:04, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

New responses integrated into your responses above. CodexJustin (talk) 15:46, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Ok. So, next step as I see it is for us to go through and do some editing based on the above. We'll go through it to evaluate what's in there and see what we can move and/or cut. I do feel like it's highly unusual to suggest cutting a percentage of text without regard to specific policy issues with specific content, but there's not much point continuing to debate before we've even taken another pass post-review. :) I certainly wouldn't disagree with your underlying point -- that there's some material that could be moved/cut, so let's see where we land after we take another pass. It might take a few days to do (as you noticed, it's rather long :) ), and I'll ping when it's ready for a follow-up. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:19, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

That sound good. The per centage number was an estimate and after you are done with this step it will be clear if it is more or less than fifty per cent for the different sections. Ping me when ready to continue. CodexJustin (talk) 14:18, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@CodexJustin: Ok. Thanks for your patience. Elysia (Wiki Ed) has taken a pass to cut down some of the background section (along with some other edits). Among other things, she removed the literature section you mentioned above. It you feel that there should be more cuts, could you give some specific examples that are e.g. WP:WEIGHT problems or too off-topic?

Shrunk the ratification text per the above. I don't have particularly strong feelings about this one way or the other. I'm still weakly inclined to defer to MOS:FONTSIZE defaults, but happy to leave it if you think it's an improvement.

Added some additional context to the post-ratification state ratifications. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:56, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Responses as of 8/8/2019

Edits from Ryan and Elysia I think are pretty much on target for those early sections. There are still 2-3 redlinks coming up, for example "Philadelphia Suffrage Association", and you can check if they are really needed. Also, are you sure that you want to fully drop the Literature section; if there were 2-3 best sellers in that list, then I think I would like to know that. More importantly at this time is to now turn to the post ratification sections and some questions I would like to ask. This Amendment was a big step forward for women in culture and society. Really big, and I actually would like to know the extent of that.

Has there been a discussion or book written on the topic of the right to vote being a door-opener for women running for office. Was the 19th Amendment the linchpin needed for women to start running for office? Was the amendment also the first step for women to start fighting for equal pay for equal work? Did the fight for equal pay start after the 19th Amendment? Was the 19th Amendment also the linchpin which allowed women to start serving more effectively in the military as well? Etc.

The material you currently have there in Legacy about the ERA and other items are good, though I need to ask if they are only the tip of the iceberg? With your doing such a good job of trimming the pre-history sections for this amendment, my thoughts now are that there might at least a little more to be said about the Legacy. Hilary Clinton ran for President as part of this Legacy of womens rights, Elizabeth Warren is running now for President because of this Legacy. I think something along these lines would be useful to readers who are trying to grasp the full extent of the impact of womens suffrage as accomplished with the ratification of the 19th Amendment; can this material be expanded somewhat for after the ratification.

Your two bulleted sections at the end of the article might look better in a prose version if that's possible. All your other sections are in narrative and its not quite clear to me why the very end of the article switches to bullet point presentations. I think it will look better as simple narrative since both you and Elysia have a good narrative style of writing for expression of your thoughts and material. Let me know if I need to clarify any of this and ping me when ready to continue. CodexJustin (talk) 18:31, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

The above points have been factored for individual response. No response here after one week from nominating editors. CodexJustin (talk) 14:47, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi CodexJustin, thanks for the response. Ryan is in Sweden at a conference and I am in Louisville at another conference. Life has been busy! I think that the article as it currently stands meets the Good Article criterion of being broad in its coverage, staying focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail. There would definitely be more to do in terms of achieving the comprehensiveness of FA standard, should we choose to keep going. I don't want to lose sight of the topic of the article, which is the buildup to the amendment, its passage, and its immediate legacy. The Fifteenth Amendment article does not refer to Barack Obama, despite surely being instrumental in the idea of a black man running for president of the United States. Similar to how the background needed to be trimmed to stay within the scope of the article, I worry about including some or all of the 50+ women who have run for presidency in the United States would dilute the article about this amendment beyond its immediate outcomes. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:14, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I think there were three factored questions I left above and you have touched on one of them. At present, I am not sure I see something analogous to the very good post-reconstruction section which appears in the Fifteenth Amendment article on Wikipedia which covers several decades after the Amendment was passed. Could you at least expand the ERA section a little to indicate what the current state of possible ratification of it is at present, or, if it has been dropped as even a distant prospect for passage. Separately, there are several books written about the Nineteenth Amendment, usually in close relation to the Suffrage movement, and I am surprised not to see any discussion of the amendment serving as a linchpin for subsequent development of Women's Rights over the next few decades after its ratification. The Fifteenth Amendment article which you mention does cover several decades after the passage of the Amendment and it covers those decades well. As I previously stated, the Nineteenth Amendment article submitted here is well-written and its a matter of making it comparable to the other GA Amendment articles on Wikipedia before any FA-issues are considered. The focus needs to be to get this article to the state of development comparable to the other GA Amendment articles on Wikipedia before going forward to FA-issues. Also, the current form of the Popular culture section is still in power point format which should be converted to narrative to be consistent with the rest of the article; some of the items in that section look very 'informal' and might be to be dropped as not being notable. Let me know if I can clarify any of these items. CodexJustin (talk) 16:34, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Just FYI that I haven't forgotten about this. I've been traveling for Wikimania and hope to revisit this early next week. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:32, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good. Ping me when ready to continue. CodexJustin (talk) 14:25, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): September check-in. Its been nearly two weeks since your last note and edit. Could there by some update of status when you sign in? CodexJustin (talk) 14:22, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Some traveling and now a seminar taking up all my time, but hope to come back to this later this week. Thanks. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:14, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Good to hear. There was an interesting report on the PBS News Hour yesterday on the 19th Amendment here [1] which has some useful and up to date information. Ping me when you are ready to continue. CodexJustin (talk) 15:22, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Finally had some time to start on some of the above. I went ahead and made a significant expansion to the ERA section and reformatted the popular culture section (among a few other minor tweaks). Will come back to this again later this week. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:07, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Nice expansion from yesterday; your comment added "...pending in Congress as of August 2019", really brings things forward. Did you have a chance to take a quick look at the PBS link I added above. It was a short segment with what looked like some useful insights. Ping me when ready to continue. CodexJustin (talk) 16:42, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Some copy edits to look at in your new ERA section: First sentence, "...to ensure that men and women were treated equally, and in 1921 the NWP announced plans...". In second paragraph midway, "...set their efforts back and make sacrifices of what progress they had made." These are just suggestions to check your wording as quoted. CodexJustin (talk) 18:06, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Are there any updates the one way or the other since Sept 23. When you sign on could you look at Equality Act (United States) to see if there are any tie-in's? CodexJustin (talk) 15:09, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

@CodexJustin: Thanks for your continued patience. I know it's been a while. I'll be doing some work to this later this week and will ping you at that time. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:32, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@CodexJustin and Ryan (Wiki Ed): How is this going. Been a while since there have been any comments here. AIRcorn (talk) 08:09, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Let's say that if we haven't come back to this in the next two weeks, it can just be closed. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 12:56, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Are you saying you will withdraw the nomination? There are other options if the reviewer can no longer continue the review and you wish to keep it open. AIRcorn (talk) 08:23, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

There is no rush on this, and Ryan has not had the original back-up which he was expecting. Let him use what time he needs to complete the article. As I recall, he was planning some clean-up edits in the main body and then to present/update a 4-paragraph lede in accordance with the manual of style for completion. CodexJustin (talk) 16:30, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Its kind of your call on this, and if you would like to take the holidays to think about it, then that's fine too. The article seems fairly close to completion. CodexJustin (talk) 18:29, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@CodexJustin: Thanks again for your encouragement and patience. I'm back on it and just made several edits regarding comments above (and a few other things I noticed along the way):

• Made the two copyedits explicitly suggested above, which are indeed improvements.
• Copyedited the lead, removing a few bits of text, adding some information about the legal challenges and ERA which were previously missing, and condensing to 4 paragraphs.
• Added a few wikilinks.
• Fixed issue in lead regarding "[voting bloc] failed to fully materialize" (read as though it never appeared, which obviously isn't true).
• Added a line about a couple significant exhibits around the centennial.
• Delinked a redlinked actor.
• Added a couple things from the PBS source (e.g. unsuccessful interpretation of the 15th amendment)
• Noticed a line about Puerto Rico wasn't verified by the source cited. Added one and fixed date.
• Other minor copyedits.
• I looked at the Equality Act and did a non-exhaustive search for sources but didn't find much explicitly connecting it with the 19th amendment (insufficient to make a due weight claim anyway).

Am I missing anything else? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:31, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Closing comments

It all seems to hold together well now. The lede, the images, the narrative and the expanded sections. There is a double copy edit in the lede section which I will adjust before finishing here, which you can adapt as needed. There is also an abundance of images, possibly more than are needed if you go on to a featured article at some time. The images are generally informative and I am leaving them as is for now. Good timing on the completion of your edits just in time before the end of the year. Seasons greetings. CodexJustin (talk) 15:41, 18 December 2019 (UTC)