Talk:Richard Walter Thomas

Writing advice

Just including here what I wrote about the article on Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard:

The lead in particular is extremely long - Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section says "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs". Currently the lead is six, very long, paragraphs - at over 1200 words, it is twice the length of the lead of United States of America, which I think most people would agree is a more significant topic. This should be cut down a great deal, to a summary people can read in a minute or two which explains why Thomas is a notable and significant person. The first sentence should also be devoted to his significance - at the moment it only mentions his race, nationality, and birthplace, none of which are relevant to this.

In general, it's a very long article. It's impressively referenced, but I think some of the material may be of dubious relevance - for example, the details of who organised a 'hootenanny' at MSU before Thomas even attended. There are also some very long quotes - the "Joined the Bahá'í Faith" section contains four long paragraphs from the same book, which I think may even be pushing legal copyright limits, as well as not being the best way to communicate the subject.

"Writings and projects" should be cut down to just a list of publications, and placed after the biography. Things like teaching and other projects should be mentioned in the biography, there's no need for a separate list of them here.

In general, I think it would be worth glancing at some similar articles on Wikipedia, such as those in the literature biography featured articles and religion biography featured articles, to get an idea of style; at the moment, this doesn't feel to me very accessible to give an idea of Thomas' notability, largely due to length. TSP (talk) 12:28, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

• lead: Perfectly willing to have it cut down. In the midst of deeply doing research one tends to see all the trees and less the forest.
• dubious relevance

before Thomas even attended - my approach was to give a context of what he was coming into as a Baha'i student at the college, the atmosphere and situation. I think this is relevant in biographies but should not be long of course. It was brief.

four long paragraphs - the whole chapter on his joining the religion is 10 pages long. Four (trimmed! note the "…") paragraphs from that seemed fair to me.

• "Writings and projects" - ok, can do.
• question of notability "due to length" - being "impressively referenced" from reliable sources is, as I understand it, the very substance of WP:N. I'll admit there are no published biographies of Thomas - but there is a breadth of material about him and his work. I'll agree some of the biographical content is autobiographical which is why I go through newspaper mentions of him which is secondary - he's done a bit of work that has been noted in the public eye which again goes back to notability. So I'm not sure what to do about his issue. Smkolins (talk) 12:45, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

being "impressively referenced" from reliable sources is, as I understand it, the very substance of WP:N - in a sense; but with quite a number of caveats:

• WP:N applies to "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". It's possible to reference things in ways that are perfectly acceptable references for the facts, but do not establish notability, which is the case for a lot of the references here - e.g. author bios, Thomas' own books and videos and passing mentions in articles primarily about other people or events.
• Notability is an inclusion policy, not a content policy - Notability guidelines do not apply to content within an article. So if there is significant third-party coverage of a person, Wikipedia should mention that person either in their own article or in a more general article; it doesn't follow that absolutely everything that can verifiably be said about that person should be on Wikipedia. For example, every thing mentioned in Randolph Churchill's 9.2 million word biography of Winston Churchill is verifiable to a reliable third party source; nevertheless, Wikipedia should not have a 9.2 million word article on Churchill.

Wikipedia is admittedly bad at defining exactly what should and should not be in articles, but Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is informative: "Information should not be included in this encyclopedia solely because it is true or useful. A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject. Verifiable and sourced statements should be treated with appropriate weight." I feel that this article may currently be some way from being "a summary of accepted knowledge"; and perhaps belongs more in an academic journal at the moment, with a significantly shorter treatment, omitting a lot of the information that is there for context rather than actually about Thomas, remaining here on Wikipedia. TSP (talk) 16:05, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

• First just a quick note that I've seen this and am pondering. I understand the idea of this research being in a journal somewhere else - but it is also true that wikipedia covers things like news events even though no one has written some kind of summary about it in official contexts. So what you see as Wikipedia is admittedly bad at defining exactly what should and should not be in articles could in fact be an avenue of serious good work you are missing the point of in wikipedia. I agree Churchill's article should not be 9.2 million words - trimming for relevance in a broader overview of someone is sensible to me - but where such depth has not been developed elsewhere and keeping to reliable sources exactly as a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject makes some sense to me. But these are very high level questions "wikipedia" can decide on and individuals can and should try to make wikipedia better and being bold (not irresponsible) is encouraged and keeping things balanced in an arena with appropriate weight. Smkolins (talk) 17:13, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Thoughts

I've had a read through after being asked to do so on my talk page. It needs a lot of tightening up, I've copyedited the lede a bit more, but there is a lot of information in the lede still that really doesn't need to be there and should be just in the body of the article. As to the body of the article itself, it's written in an overfamiliar way at times (he's, instead of he is, for example - avoid contractions). There's a lot there that seems to be a "so what" - for example, "at the same time the Lansing Bahá'í assembly contributed some books to one of the local libraries,[91] and the community held the observance of the Birth of the Báb,[92] followed by the community observance of UN Day with the cooperation of the MSU Bahá'í club.[93]" - so? What's the relevance to this article? The article is about Richard Walter Thomas, and perhaps a lot of the content about the Bahá'í faith at MSU could be moved/repurposed to create an article called Bahá'í faith at Michigan State University or similar. By section:

• • Biography - mostly fine, but the first quote (under "Joined the Bahá'í Faith") is far too long, that's not a quote, that's a copyright violation. Should be cut down to one paragraph tops, or removed - I don't see what value it actually adds.
  • Michigan State University - do we really need an entire section for each year of his studies? What aspects of his studies were particularly notable? That whole section should be condensed into one paragraph.
  • Professional academic and married - personal life stuff (e.g. marriage) should be in a "Personal life" section. This reads like a chronological laundry list of everything he's ever done, written, or talked about, with the bullet points removed. Very flabby, needs cutting down to what is notable and relevant to an encyclopedic article giving an overview of his life and work.
  • Projects - All the content is already covered in previous sections, this whole section could be removed entirely (anything particularly good could be moved, I guess).
  • Publications - fine.

Hope that helps! Fish+Karate 09:28, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

extended quote on conversion

Can we discuss this? There are two points made about it. I welcome comments on the particular points…. To be clear I'm very open to tweaking but I don't agree yet on wholesale chopping approach on this. Doesn't mean I'm right - I just did this for particular reasons and I'm open to other reason being specifically addressed in this. Smkolins (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Relevance

First in general why quote this at all. I believe the words speak of a dramatic important process according to his own words - thus significant and worth presenting (at least until some scholarly publishes some account that establishes an academic view of it being important.) One could summarize the events it is true, but I side with using his own words to establish the importance and the points of his conviction and the challenges it manifested in his life quickly. Smkolins (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Copyright

The second is that it must be a copyright violation because it is long. I commented above and here repeat that it is my attempt to summarize 10 pages of his story published and with several ellipsis (…) in the text. It is also 39 paragraphs. So the four paragraphs are close to 10% of the whole story published - a threshold pointed at such as this school's guidance [1]. Smkolins (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

school years

As for summarizing the school years into one paragraph - I think the depth of information should be based on sources. If there was only a source reviewing his life in the period so be it but there are instead many newspaper mentions of him. The idea is to get a grasp of what the man was doing and saying. That's the point of a biography. It also pretty clearly continues the themes he had before and would after - involvement in black issues and race, involvement in poetry and scholarly work (award winning paper in there,) and putting words into actions with various initiatives and the relevance of Baha'i activities in his own choices and actions. I do struggle with the list kind of approach of this happened, this happened, this happened, but I'm trying to avoid OR. I'd welcome summaries people could contribute by copyediting that respects the content but I've no idea how that could be down to one paragraph. Smkolins (talk) 18:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

But this isn’t meant to be a biography. It’s meant to be a biographical encyclopedia article. You don’t need to include every reference you can find. There are a billion references out there on Stephen Hawking. Movies have been made about his time at university. And his education section is still shorter than this. Fish+Karate 18:51, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the broad strokes of what you are saying but there is a changing landscape of information availability - source availability. In times past only paid scholars could have the time to sift old newspapers - now they are very increasingly online. Now there are college based edit-a-thons sponsored in relation to libraries and their archives. What was "true" by consensus even 5 or 10 years ago has a shifting world to deal with. I'm not saying ignore what scholarship or editorial review has to say - I'm saying the context of this work is changing and the assumptions of experience might be dealing with the old ways of things and not adapting to the times. In particular to this case there are no biographies of Thomas but he seems a reasonable significant individual worth an article which leaves us with mining the available content in reliable sources. Not including a source is a bias - the people who made these sources in the first place whether in authorship or editorial review or publishing have already made those decisions. And avoiding OR means following the sources. That's what I tried to do. Smkolins (talk) 12:14, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Very flabby

I don't disagree. I'd welcome someone doing copyedit to make it more readable. Its just devilishly difficult to avoid getting into OR. And we're sitting here in the context of deciding what comes out of draft to mainspace vs what is worthwhile in mainspace vs what is an A article. I realize that an article about a living person must be careful in some ways but I don't see any of those concerns relevant in if this should be the article as it stands. Improving it to be an A article is another whole thing. Smkolins (talk) 12:19, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Projects

The point of that section was to illustrate what is found in sources - that he didn't just do academic publications but rose up into actual practices and services. That's a pretty significant thing. Yes it also fits into the narrative of how his life proceeds but it is also a specific list of actions and resonates with other parts of his life and concerns. Originally I had the two merged - actions and writings or some such verbiage - and that was torn up (and in the process ripped up a bunch of citation usages.) So if they have to be separated I thought both deserved space. These are not just what he did some Sunday or Tuesday - these were judged by the people writing the articles to be worth mentioning. Smkolins (talk) 12:23, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I also think running the narrative of his wife through the story is also relevant because it speaks to a family context and shared values - two PhDs in pretty close to the same time and at the same time has having two kids plus a lifetime of achievements on both sides. It's a pretty significant thing to my reading - and documented in available reliable sources. Not to make the article about her but that her achievements exist as part of the context of their life and his work which exists outside the university too. Smkolins (talk) 12:31, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

And for that matter that letter to the editor about racism in medical practice that both parents and son wrote speaks to all these themes too. Smkolins (talk) 12:34, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

My issue with this section is that there are already several thousand words of biography, which should cover the important things Thomas has been involved in other than writing. If this isn't clear enough from the biography, I'd suggest that the biography should be made shorter and clearer to highlight these important activities; not that the information should be duplicated in another section. TSP (talk) 12:34, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree on not duplicating - I had a similar thought this morning before reading your comment - I moved several of the reviews summarized from the biography section to the relevant project. Not sure they need to stay in the biography section at all but was being more gradual in my editing. I had the thought the biography should mention things in context but not get stuck there. Smkolins (talk) 13:11, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

progress

@JzG: Allot of progress has come along correcting style issues that some thought highly problematic, along with finishing some rough sections, and polishing content among the particular issues (above) and others responded to. Several people who've contributed to the article have had complimentary things to say. I believe the article is worth putting up now. Your thoughts? Smkolins (talk) 17:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

It still reads as a PR job. Guy (Help!) 11:56, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I'll see about improving the article further. Smkolins (talk) 10:43, 21 March 2018 (UTC)