Talk:Ted Stevens

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Ted Stevens Military.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

NPOV Concerns re: Gravel

I just found a failed verification issue that makes me concerned that this article might have some NPOV issues regarding Gravel. The specific passage is:

On October 13, 1978, the last day of the 95th Congress, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, an act to protect and conserve a third of Alaska as 'America's last huge, untouched wilderness', an act which Stevens championed after providing a compromise with Mo Udall, was killed by Gravel, in an attempt to spite Stevens. The day before, Gravel had written to Stevens that he intended to oppose any attempt of a compromise, wanting instead to completely kill the bill.

The source cited at the end is an AP article, which supports few of those claims and almost contradicts some of them. It says:

[Gravel] had the unenviable position of being an Alaska Democrat when some residents were burning President Jimmy Carter in effigy for his measures to place large sections of public lands in the state under protection from development.

Gravel feuded with Alaska’s other senator, Republican Ted Stevens, on the land matter, preferring to fight Carter's actions and rejecting Stevens' advocacy for a compromise.

In the end, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, a compromise that set aside millions of acres for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protected areas. It was one of the last bills Carter signed before leaving office.

What was probably meant to be cited is the old Lemann article, which is cited at the end of the paragraph. But even that article is far more equivocal than the Wikipedia text—which is problematic. Lemann never says definitively that Gravel killed the compromise to spite Gravel. He says that's one theory of why Gravel killed the compromise—and he even suggests it was a minority theory:

There are several other theories as to why Gravel killed the bill. One is that he did it just to torment Stevens. Another is that his brief support of it was an aberration brought on my intense pressure from home-state politicians. Yet another is that the compromise was favorable to the timber interests but that the oil and mining interests, whose support Gravel values, really didn't like it.

What most people believe is that Gravel killed the compromise as part of his own reelection campaign strategy.

To use that source to say, definitively, that Gravel killed the bill to "spit Stevens" raises both WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE issues.--Jerome Frank Disciple 15:00, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

will reword AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 13:14, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Great work so far!--Jerome Frank Disciple 13:58, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

thank you!!! i'm not too sure what else is missing, but if you spot anything, please point it out! i intend to renominate the article by the 1st of june latest, but i won't rush anything, and if it goes past then, then fair enough. i do think that i'm getting close enough though. i also want to find some more sources on some issues and clean up all those remaining dead links ^^ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 20:55, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Every dead link has since been removed, I'll just review the Gravel section now to see if anything else may violate WP:NPOV. AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 21:16, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Great! I do recommend using citation templates where you can—since they're used through most the article, they should probably be used everywhere. (Just look at the other references in the article for examples, you'll usually be relying on {{cite news}} and {{cite web}}, maybe a {{cite book}} or {{cite case}} here or there). Plus, you never want bare URLs.

I've probably been involved enough here that I shouldn't do the second review, but I'm happy to try to chip in and help out as it goes!--Jerome Frank Disciple 15:38, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

alright, ty. i used to use citation templates, no clue when or why i stopped, should get back in the habit, heh ^^ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 15:57, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Ted Stevens/GA3. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ganesha811 (talk · contribs) 19:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello! I'm happy to review this article. I'll be using the template below. If you have any questions as we go, you can just ask here or on my talk page, either's fine! —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

• Seeing as this is the third review within a year, I will be scrutinizing the article to make sure all issues raised in prior nominations have been addressed. —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:41, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I hope we've made it for now, third time's the charm. ^^ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 22:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Alright. I'll get to trimming unnecessary details and fixing copyvio issues ^^ ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 12:50, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Hey! Can you direct me to some of the more egregious issues? I'm not the most intelligent, hehe. O_o ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 14:00, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Take a look at the Earwig comparison here - we're still not at an acceptable level of summarization. The similarities in word choice and structure are pretty egregious. I'm happy to continue pointing out areas for improvement, but bear in mind that fixing copyvio issues is something that should have been done before the article was renominated, given that it was brought up by a prior reviewer. Usually, copyvio issues like this would result in a quickfail. As nominator, it's your responsibility to make sure the article is a reasonable shape before nominating it. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:13, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Also, look at this - Arlington Cemetery's page on Stevens and this article are practically identical for long passages. Now here, I suspect they borrowed from Wikipedia, but the fact that they did so means we should now avoid citing them to escape WP:CITOGENESIS, so that source will have to be removed and another one found.

This Earwig page shows a number of borrowed phrases, such as Eisenhower's opinion, Seaton's back problems, the paragraph about cultivating the city's Republican establishment, etc.

This long quote on climate change needs to be significantly shortened.

Borrowed phrase here: "may have enriched a former aide"

Looking for more issues. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:24, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

This paragraph borrows a lot of phrases from the NYTimes story and needs to be rewritten ("ordered Trident and other seafood companies..." etc) —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:27, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

@AlaskaGal, I also wanted to note that there's nothing wrong with vivid language (or as you put it, "poetic wording"). In fact, I'm explicitly in favor of lively, interesting writing on Wikipedia - it just has to be our own, not borrowed from a newspaper or other source. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:45, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright. Thank you so much; I will get right to it. I'll save Arlington for last likely, finding sources is not my strong point either. Thank you! ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 15:44, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

One thing I think could trip me up is many of the names of the actual bills or the positions he holds get flagged too. AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 16:07, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Same with direct quotes. AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 16:07, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Earwig will flag those, but unless direct quotes are very long, they're not generally an issue. Same with proper names or bills. —Ganesha811 (talk) 20:05, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright. Thanks! AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 15:01, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Let me know when you are finished making edits and you are confident that there is no copyvio to be found in the article. Given the severity of the issues, it'd be best to have it all fixed within the next couple days, say by the 5th of July. —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:14, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright. I am a bit slow because my health is very poor, hope this isn't an issue ^^ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 21:18, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, a number of copyright issues are still extant, including some I listed above. While I would like to give more time for these issues to be fixed, I really can't, in the interest of fairness. They should have been fixed before the article was nominated again, since issues like this were brought up in the last review. This review should have been a quickfail, both because of copyvio standpoint and unfixed issues from the prior review, but I decided to allow a week to fix the issues quickly. AlaskaGal, I strongly urge you to go through the article and its sources carefully and remove all copyvio before you renominate this article. The more GA reviews find issues, the more skeptically any future reviewer will scrutinize the article. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:55, 6 July 2023 (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.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
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.
	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).
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Earwig turns up nothing obvious (although some long quotations did trip the bot's filters), but given the copyvio concerns raised in GA2, will be carrying out thorough manual spotcheck. Hold for now. Ok, so we've got an issue. Earwig's general search didn't pick it up, but a URL comparison makes it obvious. Large chunks of the article, four or five paragraphs in a row, are essentially lifted from the 1979 WaPo article. A few words are changed here and there, or phrases moved around, but sentence after sentence copies the structure and narrative of the WaPo piece. I don't think this is intentional copyright violation - I think whoever wrote it felt that by changing some words to synonyms, they were not directly lifting the WaPo's writing. But that's not how copyvio works. And it also raises another issue. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be a *summary* of what reliable sources have to say, not a recreation of them. We should be able to summarize 5-6 paragraphs of a good newspaper story in a paragraph or two of our own writing, incorporating other sources as well. Writing 5-6 paragraphs at a newspaper's level of summarization means that they are probably too detailed. Please fix this copyvio issue ASAP, and then immediately see if you can find any other instances of the same or similar issues elsewhere in the article, and fix those too. Otherwise, this will have to be a quickfail for copyvio concerns. I'll check back again in a couple days, but feel free to ask me any questions to clarify or if you're not sure what to do with a section. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:07, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
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.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.