Talk:Robert S. Nelsen

Early life

The information regarding where Nelsen was raised and his working as a janitor should be properly cited per WP:BLPSOURCES. In addition, the sentence "Like the majority of students at UTPA, Nelsen faced great financial hardships while seeking to get his degrees." not only is also something that needs to be properly sourced, but also seems a little like WP:OR. Unsourced material such as this can actually be "removed immediately and without discussion" per WP:BLPSOURCES and WP:BLPREMOVE. The information may be true, but being true does not me it does not have to be properly supported by reliable sources so that it can be verified. If no sources can be found to support this information, it should be removed from the article. It can always be re-added at a later date if and when such sources are discovered. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:19, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The last paragraph of this webpage cited as a reference No.2 does contain much of information that was added regarding Nelsen's early life. This seems like a primary source, however, because it is worded as if it was written by somebody closely connected to Nelsen or possibly even by Nelsen himself. It has the feel of a bio you would find on someone's personal webpage. Just a guess, but if this is Nelsen's official UTPA bio, then he probably got to personally review it before it was posted which calls into question its neutral point of view.

In addition, the statement"Like the majority of students at UTPA" seems like a bit of puffery. This might be OK on a university website, but doesn't seem very encyclopedic at all. Stating "Nelsen faced great financial hardships while getting his degrees" is perfectly fine if verifiable; however, there is no need to try and relate his experience to those of UTPA students. That's not relevant at all to Wikipedia. Furthermore, the stuff about selling western clothing and fish hooks to put himself through school may be true too, but it does seem like a bit of an embellishment designed to make Nelsen more relatable to UTPA students, etc., doesn't it?

I googled and found this article from yourvalleyvoice.com which also contains some information regarding Nelsen's early life. This is a third-party source which appears to satisfy WP:RS. It also seems to be more neutrally worded, and the information given about Nelsen's hometown, etc. seems much more encyclopedic and neutral. I also found this bio from the 2010 Latino Education Conference and this bio from The Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy which also contain information about Nelsen's early life, but the information given in both sources is pretty much exactly the same word for word, which leads me to believe that they both are based upon the same source (the UTPA bio page, perhaps?).

Finally, there is one more problem with the added text. The article currently reads as follows:

Nelsen was raised on a small cattle ranch in the "Big Sky Country" of Montana near Madison Valley just outside of Yellowstone Park. Like the majority of students at UTPA, Nelsen faced great financial hardships while seeking to get his degrees. He put himself through college by working as a janitor in the predawn hours before classes and by selling fishhooks and western clothing in the evenings.

This is exactly what is written on the 2010 Latino Education Conference page, see above, which says:

Nelsen was raised on a small cattle ranch in the "Big Sky Country" of Montana near Madison Valley just outside of Yellowstone Park. Like the majority of students at UTPA, Nelsen faced great financial hardships while seeking to get his degrees. He put himself through college by working as a janitor in the pre-dawn hours before classes and by selling fish hooks and western clothing in the evenings.

They are exactly the same (the lack of hyphenation for "predawn" is irrelevant) which raises serious concerns about possible copyright violations. Even if this was added to the article in good faith, it is still contrary to Wikipedia copyright policy unless it is verified that the material can be reproduced verbatim per WP:COPYOTHERS. Because of this last issue I have added a {{copypaste}} to the "Early life" section. - Marchjuly (talk) 05:07, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Bare urls

This is not a comment on the reliability of sources cited in this article, but rather only regarding the way they have been added.bare urls are better than nothing at all, but they are not very desirable because of link rot. The more information provided about a particular source per WP:CITEHOW, the better. WP:CITEVAR says that the citation style chosen by the first major contributor to an article should be deferred to unless there is a consensus for changing that style. Leaving the bare urls as is not really a good idea, so they should be fixed. There are a few ways this could be done. I suggest using citation templates, but there are other ways as well. Please discuss. - Marchjuly (talk) 03:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Infobox: birthplace, residence and wife

The infobox says Nelsen's birthplace as Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah, USA; his residence is McAllen Texas, USA; and his wife is Judy Nelsen. None of this information is found in the body of the article.

An infobox is generally for summarizing key information found in the article; It is not really for introducing new and possibly unsourced information not suitable for the body of the article. For this reason, the information in infoboxes typically does not require citation. If, however, the infobox does include information not covered in the body of the article, such information does need to be cited per WP:INFOBOXREF and WP:BLPSOURCES. Personally, I think this infobox is not really needed because the article is fairly short and most of the information it summarizes is found within the first few paragraphs of the lead. It seems more of a disinfobox to me, but that's another discussion entirely. Regardless, the information about Nelsen's birthplace, residence and wife should be added to the body of the article and cited appropriately. If such information is not important enough to warrant even a brief mention in the body, then it should also be not important enough to be mentioned in the infobox.

One other minor point about the infobox is the use of "USA". WP:NOTUSA says that "USA" should not be used unless it is part of a quotation or proper name. So, either "US", "U.S." or "United States" should be used instead. Furthermore, whichever version is selected it probably should not be wikilinked per WP:OVERLINK.

Please discuss. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:53, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

External links

This page is listed as an external link. The content on it, however, is exactly the same as reference no. 2 links to this page which seems to qualify as primary source. Both links are to UTPA webpages. Although they have different names and URLs, they provide exactly the same content. Since both are official primary sources for the same information, it seems to me that only one is really needed per both WP:ELMINOFFICIAL and WP:PSTS. My suggestion is to keep the external link and remove reference no. 2 because the information cited by no.2 is already be supported by another source. - Marchjuly (talk) 11:32, 28 August 2014 (UTC)