Talk:Richard Gerald Jordan/GA2

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: OliveYouBean (talk · contribs) 09:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I've had a quick read of the article and read through the previous GA review. Seems like there shouldn't be any issues since the last review was almost complete. I'll still give all the criteria a look to make sure it's all good, but hopefully that doesn't take long and I can just focus on seeing if there's any copyvio issues. OliveYouBean (talk) 09:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	No problems with spelling and grammar, the prose is generally clear and precise. I just have a couple of notes that may or may not need action, happy to hear your thoughts if you disagree. First trial (1976): I'll be fully honest, I had to look up what the word "impanel" means. It's pretty clear from context what it means, but for dummies like me it might be helpful to wikilink it to Jury selection? Completely up to you whether you think that makes sense. Fourth death sentence (1988): "Justice Sonia Sotomayor was joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan on a dissenting opinion that criticized the other justices for ruling on the underlying merits rather than issuing a COA." I think using the passive voice here makes the sentence a bit difficult to read. Is there a way to re-write is along the lines of "Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, wrote a dissenting opinion..."? All good.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	Going through the manual of style guidelines, I've got a couple of minor notes (all from the lead section): Per MOS:CONTEXTLINK, I think "death row" and "murder" should probably be wikilinked in the first sentence as they both directly relate to his notability. From MOS:REALTIME I think that the second sentence should be qualified by "As of 2022" or something similar. He's not going to stop being the longest-serving until he's taken off death row or he dies, but he's going to stop being the oldest as soon as someone older is given the death penalty which could hypothetically happen. Looking at paragraph 2 of the lead section, "Jordan said that..." feels a little too close to MOS:ACCUSED to me. It seems a bit weird to phrase it like that (almost implying it's his own unverified claim) when the body of the article treats it as a fact that he was desperate for money. Is there a reason it's written like this? All good.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	Thank you so much for archiving most of the sources. The only one I can't access is #13 because it's not archived like the rest. 28 (ref to "Mississippi justices reject challenges over execution drug") has a different date format to the rest of the refs. That's the only issue I can see. All good.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	All the sources are reliable. :)
	2c. it contains no original research.	All good here too. :)
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	All good!
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Covers everything really well.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	I'm curious about the final few paragraphs of the article because it feels like it starts to lose a little focus when it talks about Missippi's struggles to get the right chemicals for lethal injections (there's two whole paragraphs with barely any mention of the article's subject). Is there another article on this that could be wikilinked here? Happy with this now.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	Fantastic neutral tone throughout.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Definitely stable, no edit wars.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	No images used, which is fine as they're not mandatory and it looks like there's valid concerns about potential copyright problems with the images that could be used. There's always the chance to add more if images come up but that's definitely not an issue here.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	No images.
	7. Overall assessment.	Having checked everything except 2d, I gotta say that at this point there's only one or two changes that I think would be absolutely necessary. Most of my notes here are just as much questions as they are suggestions, because you clearly know much more about the topic than I do so I want to hear your thoughts instead of just declaring things problems. I'll get started on checking the copyright stuff, hopefully that won't take too long :) Everything looks great!

On a sort of unrelated note, I just want to say I appreciate the amount of work that's gone into this article. It was an interesting read and the writing is really good. OliveYouBean (talk) 10:47, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your review! I think I have incorporated the points you mentioned above. Good observation on the use of "Jordan said that he was unemployed and desperate for money", as you're right, those aren't contentious points anyway. I archived the source you mentioned; for some reason IABot (the tool I use for archiving) didn't want to archive that one, so hopefully I did a reasonable job by hand.

On the last point, I tried to tighten up the passages near the end. I assumed that the reader would wonder why Jordan hasn't been executed yet, as his fourth death sentence was handed down nearly 25 years ago, so I thought it was relevant to explain why Mississippi seems to be so far "behind" on its executions (for example, going almost ten years without any executions due to the legal challenges to the protocol). I have tried to cut down on the wordiness and establish better links to Jordan in these explanations. Let me know if you have additional suggestions there. As you point out, a wikilink -- maybe to the ethics of lethal injection or to pharmaceutical companies and lethal injection -- could be helpful for the reader who wants to know more about this, but these links don't exist yet. We do have Participation of medical professionals in American executions, but that's not the issue delaying executions in Mississippi. (In the American South where executions remain legal, usually there are no significant problems finding physicians who will participate. The issue is that the drug companies who make the medications used in executions - companies largely based in Europe, where there is strong anti-death penalty sentiment - don't want to be associated with the death penalty and don't want to sell their products to entities involved in the death penalty.) If I end up writing one of those red-linked articles, I'll link to it in the Jordan article.

Thanks again for your help! I'll be happy to address any additional concerns. Larry Hockett (Talk) 17:51, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your edits! I don't have any additional concerns, and I think all the changes you've made are good. (Sidenote: I am kind of surprised that there aren't more articles talking about the current problems with lethal injections, I thought there would be more based on what little I know about that topic)

The copyvio checks all came back clear, so I'm happy to say that there's no issues left that would prevent this from passing. Great work, this was a really good read. :) OliveYouBean (talk) 06:20, 23 October 2022 (UTC)