Talk:Pam Hupp/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Daniel Case (talk · contribs) 04:39, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK, since this is the GAN with the longest tenure among current noms, and I had a GA promoted a few weeks back, I will dive into this one.

I will be printing it out, doing a light copyedit, and then hopefully within the week getting back here with my thoughts. Daniel Case (talk) 04:39, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK ... that's done.

Ah ... true crime. A subject I've written a fair amount about, including another Missouri murder case that got national attention. And another long and convoluted story around a murder that also got national attention. So I know what it's like to research and write these stories in an encyclopedic fashion. (I usually prefer the unsolved cases, though).

So what I liked about this article was that it did explain the story of two homicides, one of which got the subject convicted of murder, the other she's suspected in and an unsolved death that might be a third homicide by our gal. Across overlapping time frames, yet. I don't feel like anything major has been left out.

And the research ... many sources were used, and to good effect. I should particularly praise the citations as consistently and properly formatted, something I see too little of when reviewing GANs. There are no marks from my red pen on my printout in the footnotes.

The author's command of grammar, punctuation and spelling was also better than average. The article also read from beginning to end like it was pretty much written by the same person, another thing I like to see but don't always.

That said ...

My copy edit took about 4K out of the article. As a general rule I have found that if an article becomes more than 1K shorter after I go through it, that means there was fat in the prose. Even before I got to taking out four references that supported birth-year info for the victims and Russ Faria, which we don't need in the article, there was still about 2.6K ending up on the floor.

I knew this was going to happen as I went through it with the red pen. The author, as I noted, paid heed to the grammatical rules of the English language ... to a fault. The writing was excessively formal and wordy at many points. I found many examples of the passive voice, unnecessary IMO relative pronouns, redundant phrasing ("multiple different stores") and other sins that seem to result from overzealous high school English teachers living in fear of standardized-test scores.

Most particularly, there appeared to be little recognition of the concept of second reference and how the writer's awareness of it makes it easy for the reader. So many times the writer kept using people's full names, contrary to MOS:SURNAME and MOS:SAMESURNAME, and for that matter so many other style manuals, say, as well repeating titles they had already been introduced under. The article also kept reminding us that the police did all these things in the Faria investigation—well, I think that we can generally assume that readers understand that the sanitation department is not the agency that executes search warrants, interviews criminal suspects and administers polygraphs.

This is contrasted in some cases by the writer's short bouts of amnesia, where the text referred to "the judge in the Faria case" even though her name is used in the preceding and following grafs. Why? It felt like, as I often say in GARs, that no one sat down, printed the text out and read it through before the nomination, which would have likely caught a lot of these things. There were, I'm guessing, a lot of sentences added just one at a time, with little if any effort to look at what kind of forest the trees were making (which could probably explain some of these elephantine grafs that I broke up as well).

But beyond that, I don't know what possessed the writer to use 24-hour time, not commonly used in the US outside the military, law enforcement and many computer networks' timestamping, rather against MOS:TIME and most US-subject articles. I caught two Commonwealth spellings; perhaps the writer is/was not American. That might also explain the unusual legal terminology ("Depositioned" ... now that's one I haven't seen before).

I also had to mend the fragmented information in a couple of places. Betsy Faria was introduced and her terminal illness alluded to before it was discussed at the beginning of the next section. Barely have we learned that she was found stabbed to death, an apparent suicide, then we learn what the "murder weapon" was (Got a little ahead of ourselves there).

Also, speaking of the use of "murder", which I took out except where it refers to the charges against Russ Faria and the death of Gumpenberger (God, like Dave Barry said about the similar-sounding Samuel Gompers, you just want to say that name over and over) ... this is, I grant, not formalized but it's something I do, and which I should again take the time to explain why: "Murder" in the United States (unlike the UK) refers specifically to an offense that a defendant can be convicted of or plead guilty (or no contest) to. It thus should not be used so casually by responsible media to refer to any killing or homicide, even one a suspect has admitted or confessed to, in the absence of a conviction by a trier of fact or a guilty/no contest plea.

So for that reason I have edited this article so it refers to only Gumpenberger's death as a murder ... because Hupp was convicted of it. Betsy Faria's death led to a murder trial because that was the charge her husband faced and was convicted of. But after his acquittal at retrial its current status is "homicide" or "killing" until and unless Hupp or some other person is convicted or pleads to it.

All that notwithstanding, the copy edit, I think, has put the article in range to get promoted. I will be back, probably later today, with my punch list of what needs to be done for that to happen. Daniel Case (talk) 05:32, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Daniel Case:: thank you for all of your hard work on this. As someone who has made quite a few edits to the article, most of the sins you have noted are on me - all good points that I'll try and avoid in future. The point about a start-to-finish read through of the article picking up these issues is a good one. I will look out for your punch list. Thanks again. McPhail (talk) 08:50, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@McPhail: Yeah, sorry about that ... it's always when you think things will go the most smoothly that they don't. Another article intervened. I should have it up, I hope, by the end of tomorrow. Daniel Case (talk) 14:19, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Punch list

Well, so much for me and my promises ...

Sorry about the delay, maybe it will make things work out better. But here's my list of improvements that, if made, could probably get us to GA here, if done within the usual timeframe (Or at least started).

Expand the intro: It reads like, like so many article intros I see in GA noms, someone didn't expand it as they expanded the article. So as a result it tells the story the article does, at least it does that, but in a rather rushed and cramped way.
Per MOS:INTRO we can go to four grafs here. Let's do it and use them. Tell the story in a more relaxed fashion that's going to make people read the article.
I have done this with many articles I've expanded, so I have a lot of experience ... if you'd be more comfortable with me doing it, just ask.

I've extended the introduction but would welcome any improvements you would like to make. I find the geography and overlapping chronology of the various events can be quite confusing. McPhail (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Cut back on promoting Fox 2 News reporter Chris Hayes so much. As it is this article reads somewhat like it was written by Hayes' publicist. It seems like he's mentioned in every other graf, and always with his employer and title, as if he were a member of some peerage. I do realize he's important to the story—a lot of these facts wouldn't have been reported if it hadn't been for him, Faria thanked him when he was ultimately released, and really it is a great story of a crusading journalist righting great wrongs, freeing a man jailed for a crime he didn't commit, identifying the real suspect, and holding officials accountable for their wrongdoing. But still ... it doesn't need to toot Hayes' horn like this.

I've trimmed this back. McPhail (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Move the part in the parentheses casting doubt on the authenticity of the Word document supposedly outlining Betsy Faria's fears about her husband into an endnote. As it is it sort of interjects itself and interrupts the narrative flow at that point, It's a very complicated, intertwined narrative of two crimes and one possible one that already requires a few jumps back and forth in time for the reader to adequately understand ... throwing that "It was later revealed ..." in adds IMO more of this than necessary.
If we put into the {{efn}} template and add a notes section with {{notelist}}, it will appear to the reader who mouses (or, these days, fingertips) over the note, and that's a better way to explain what was wrong with the document. Again, I can do this if you'd like.

I've done this. McPhail (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything in the sources about why Hupp decided to kill Gumpenberger? Were they at least acquainted? Granted it seems like she didn't think the killing through, but why did she pick him as her potential fall guy in trying to push blame back onto Russ Faria? If I were doing this I'd probably have picked someone who could more plausibly kill me, but I can't imagine that even Hupp just picked some random strange man in her neighborhood and hoped for the best.
This isn't actually something that's a make-or-break for the article, but it is something that occurred to me while I was reading it. So, if there's an answer, we should include it.

The police suggested it was totally random, which was a factor in the death penalty being sought. I've made this clearer in the text. McPhail (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another non-dealbreaker, but something down the line we should think about: images. As it is we have one image of a gun like the one Hupp used to kill Gumpenberger. There's enough of a wall of text in the article already that it wouldn't hurt its overall readability to have some more images to break up the grey columns of marching characters.
If I had written this article, and I lived in the St. Louis area, I'd go get some easily available (I would imagine) shots of the Faria house and the apartment complex where Hupp's mother lives. I bet the addresses have been mentioned in some of the sources (and if not it would be easy to get the police files naming them). We have this sort of thing in other true-crime articles (cf. Ramona Moore homicide, where I was able to get a picture of the corner where her remains were found, as it's in the county I live in). And, if Chris Hayes is willing to pose for a free image, yes, we could have one of him too.

I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic to take photos myself unfortunately but I can add some requests at the Wikimedia Commons. I've added photographs of Renee Zellweger and a knife similar to the Faria murder weapon (seen here). McPhail (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK, maybe if I get to St. Louis one of these days ...

. Daniel Case (talk) 04:57, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that's what I have. You have the usual week to at least get started working on this. I think you can do it. Daniel Case (talk) 03:05, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Daniel Case:: thank you for these further points, that's all very helpful. I've done some more work on the article - I've provided specific responses above. McPhail (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

✓ Pass And it's enough IMO to pass the article. Good work!