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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:15, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

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Finis Alonzo Crutchfield, Jr.

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  • ... that Bishop Finis Alonzo Crutchfield led a secret life as a closeted homosexual for many years and died of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)?
  • Reviewed: Gerrards Cross Memorial Building
  • Comment: Although this nomination may be one day late, I hope it will be considered. The subject is important to one denomination of the Christian religion in America, because it relates to the conflict between religious dogma and a major social movement.

5x expanded by Bruin2 (talk). Self-nominated at 21:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC).

  • Just a few comments that are not meant as a full review. First, the hook isn't sufficiently interesting. He is hardly the only AIDS victim of whom that is true. It might be more significant if he spoken out against homosexuality at some point in his life. Second, there's some sloppiness—the "death" section goes to great pains to tell us what day of the week he died (unencylopedic information, IMO, without some reason for its relevance in the text), but gets the year ten years off from what the rest of the article says. Daniel Case (talk) 05:23, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Some further observations.
  • The lede gives the dates of his life in the DMY format; while the rest of the article properly uses the American MDY format.
  • I checked for copyvio, and did not find any. But the prose still seems like it handles the subject of Crutchfield's homosexuality in a sort of dated way (I mean, could it use "gay" at some point?) I realize that may reflect its sources, but still ...
    • Consider the hook, for instance: "led a secret life as a closeted homosexual" A closeted person is already understood to be living a secret life by definition; this is thus needlessly wordy. I also think that, in this day and age, everyone who needs to know what "AIDS" stands for already does.
  • I have flagged the last sentence as OR. If "this suggests", we need a source that says that, clearly attributed as a statement by that source in the text.
  • After further reflecting on the hook and the issues it's raised, here's my take:
  • ALT1: ... that Methodist bishop Finis Alonzo Crutchfield, Jr., a closeted gay man who later died of AIDS, attended a service for victims of New Orleans' UpStairs Lounge arson attack in 1973? Daniel Case (talk) 05:43, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Full review needed, but the issues noted above need to be addressed. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

  • Cited: No - The article (and I believe the sources) represent his homosexually as rumours, not as fact. The hook seems to be suggesting it as fact. I would appreciate some help in pinpointing where exactly this news article says he was gay. It seems to rely on the fact he caught AIDS and must therefore be gay.
  • Interesting: Yes
QPQ: Done.

Overall: I would like some clarity on whether we are dealing with fact or rumours on his homosexuality. Jolly Ω Janner 04:46, 22 January 2016 (UTC)


Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your very helpful comments. I intend to incorporate most of them into the article itself, as well as amending the DYK nomination.

  • I had completely rewritten the lead paragraph, but forgot to delete the one that was in the original article. Hence the mixup in date format. I customarily use the MDY format, rather than DMY. I appreciate your reminder and will correct this shortly.
  • Actually, I thought that the concluding sentence, which you have marked "OR", was not original research, but a rather obvious conclusion after reading the cited sources. Perhaps this was an erroneous conclusion on my part. I will try again to find a source that describes the situation so succinctly. If I can't find one, I will delete the sentence.
  • I agree that the original hook is not very satisfactory, but I was having difficulty thinking of something that was both self-explanatory and fit the 200 character hook limit.The original hook has only 150 characters. I really like your proposed ALT1 much better, but it has over 200 words.
  • I propose trimming your suggested hook as follows, so that is below 200 characters:
ALT2: ... that bishop Finis Alonzo Crutchfield, Jr., who later died of AIDS, attended a memorial service for victims of an arson attack in 1973 on a New Orleans gay bar, the UpStairs Lounge? (180 characters)
  • According to another viewer, there is still doubt whether the bishop had been proven to be gay, since AIDS can occur among non-homosexuals. I have not found a definitive statement about this. Maybe an altogether different hook should be used, as in ALT3.
ALT3: ... that the death of Bishop Finis Alonzo Crutchfield from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) fueled public concerns that the disease could be transmitted among humans by casual contact? (192 characters with spaces)

Thanks again for your comments. Bruin2 (talk) 23:15, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Bruin2, all three ALT hooks have valid lengths; what's counted is the displayed characters (including spaces but excluding the initial ellipsis and space). ALT1 is 186 characters; ALT2 is indeed 180 characters; and ALT3 is 190 characters. However, I have struck ALT1, as the article does not make the case that Crutchfield was, in fact, a closeted gay man. The entire Secret life section is problematic, and the first and last sentences of its second paragraph especially problematic, because the first is clearly assuming he was (otherwise why would he have been careful not incriminate himself if there was doing nothing wrong?), and the last has an OR tag. ALT2 doesn't claim that he was closeted, which is an improvement. ALT3 has no bold link to the article, and unnecessarily writes out AIDS in full (a regular wikilink, as in ALT2, is more than sufficient). I'm not sure whether "Methodist" needs to be included in either surviving hook; it might or might not add interest. There are also serious chronological issues with the article, as I just discovered when trying to fix the dates in the infobox and lead. Crutchfield retired in 1984, not 1974, and the chronology in the Service as bishop and Death sections is clearly a decade off in some places. This all needs to be straightened out before the nomination can proceed. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:30, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
BlueMoonset I agree that the hook should not state that the bishop was gay, because this is an unsubstantiated allegation. I would prefer using ALT3. I've also corrected the erroneous dates pointed out above. There is a lengthy discussion of the period when Crutchfield actively promoted the reunion of Oral Roberts with the Methodist church. It was one of his most high-profile and risky adventures as a clergyman. Bruin2 (talk) 02:02, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Bruin2, if you wish to use ALT3, then you need to clean it up: all hooks must have a bold link to the article, and I strongly recommend that you use a linked "AIDS" rather than the long form: just about everyone knows what AIDS is, and are more likely to recognized it. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:08, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
BlueMoonset: OOPS, I corrected this yesterday, but obviously forgot to upload it before quitting. Here is the revised version, per your comments. Thanks for catching it. Bruin2 (talk) 15:56, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
ALT3a: ... that the death of Bishop Finis Alonzo Crutchfield, Jr. from AIDS fueled public concerns that the disease could be transmitted among humans by casual contact?
@Bruin2: can you give me a page number for the following claim "This resulted in some measure of popular panic that AIDS was communicable through casual contact, later disproven." I've checked page 200, which seemed like the logical place for it to be, but cannot find it. Based on the number of pages dedicated to him, I would also recommend you use page numbers in your article, but not neccessary for DYK. Jolly Ω Janner 01:35, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I cannot verify the hook. I'm presuming the nominator has given up. Jolly Ω Janner 03:56, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I haven't given up on the article yet, and I still think it is worth keeping the DYK nomination active. While I cannot find a specific reference to verify ALT3a without a lot of caveats, I think that ALT2 should suffice, and it didn't draw any objections previously. I propose to do a slight reword, as shown in ALT4 below.
ALT4: ... that bishop Finis Alonzo Crutchfield, Jr. attended a memorial service for victims of an arson attack in 1973 on a New Orleans gay bar, the UpStairs Lounge, later died of AIDS?
I'd like feedback on this version. Thanks for your time. Bruin2 (talk) 04:28, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure how interesting it is for a bishop to attend a memorial service. The other issue is that it seems to subtley tie in the fact that he died of AIDS to the event. Also "later" in this context would probably mean a few days after the event, but he died of AIDS in 1987, so the two cannot be connected unless it was contracted at the event. Jolly Ω Janner 05:54, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
ALT5 separates the memorial service from the cause of the bishop's death. The hook is a little long, but it's about the best I can do. Bruin2 (talk) 01:59, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
ALT5 ...that Methodist Bishop Finis Alonzo Crutchfield, Jr. allowed a church to host a memorial service for victims of a gay bar arson attack after many other churches had refused using their facilities? (33 words, 199 characters)
  • It doesn't look like any work has been done to address my original concerns on original research over the past three weeks (please refer back to my original review). I don't think it's worth my time assessing any more proposed hooks until this is resolved. I marked this for failure five days ago and that still stands. Jolly Ω Janner 04:58, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
I have added a couple more citations to try and clarify that there is no OR in the WP article, which seemed to be a major concern. I believe that all other verbiage that suggests the WP article presents a conclusion about the subject's private life have been deleted tor specifically cited. Have I overlooked something else? Bruin2 (talk) 03:41, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm still not sure on the purpose of the second paragraph in secret life; this is why secondary sources are preferred on Wikipedia. Anyway, most of the hook is backed up, but there are some issues. It needs to have inline citations at the end of the sentence containing any information that the hook is based upon. Also, the hook needs to be properly formatted (e.g. bolding the article and without linking to redirects); a wikilink to the fire would be good too. Finally, the hook calls the fire an arson attack, yet the Wikipedia article has no mention of this and the Texas Monthly describes it as "suspicious". This will need to be clarified. Jolly Ω Janner 05:34, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Jolly, I presume you are talking about the paragraph containing a quote from the Methodist Book of Common Discipline. I had included that to inform readers why the church authorities did not act on the rumors about Crutchfield's private life. The quote shows the constraint under which the church authorities must act. There was no confession, therefore, as I interpret the passage, there could be no disciplinary action. During this follow-up, I found that a very small Episcopal church in the French Quarter held a memorial service the day after the UpStirs Lounge fire. The rector was criticized by his bishop, who strongly disapproved. As far as I can tell, that was the only other church in New Orleans to hold such a service. I have amended the hook accordingly. Also, I have bolded the article title in the ALT5 hook. If the hook length is acceptable, I think all outstanding issues are now resolved. Bruin2 (talk) 17:13, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
I think the Methodist Book paragraph is fine by DYK standards, but I would still advise you try to seek secondary sources rather than relying on your own interpretation, especially if you were looking to promote this article to GA or FA. In light of your edits around the arson attack, I would suggest changing the hook slightly to say "suspected arson attack". The final point is an unfortunate technicality of DYK. While using one citation per paragraph is fine in most situations, DYK requires that every sentence containing information pertaining to the hook must have an inline citation at the end of each sentence. You are more than welcome to restore it back to the one citation per paragraph style after it has featured on the Main Page. Essentialy a few sentences in the 3rd paragraph of service as a bishop will need referencing to Yoffe. Footnote d seems to be suitable for the suspected arson, however. Jolly Ω Janner 19:42, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
  • There is no inline citation at the end of the sentence about the date that this occurred. Indeed, the sources I have reviewed so far to check that this happened only go as far as stating the year. Jolly Ω Janner 01:59, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Please look again. I just fixed the link to Google books. It should be linking to p293 rather than p294 of the ref. Thanks. --PFHLai (talk) 03:45, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Good, ALT6 is cited and of suitable length and interesting. Rest of the article's concerns are now passable and the date is suitable for special occasion holding. p293 was originally unavailable when I first clicked the link. I've crossed out the other hook, leaving ALT6. I still suspect Bruin2 is inserting original research by way of commentary, which I recently highlighted in the paragraph, but it would be a mammoth task to go through and check every sentence according to the sources. Jolly Ω Janner 08:33, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
I heartily approve of ALT6 as the most acceptable hook Thanks to PFLai for thinking of it. Do you think adding the word Pentecostal in front of the word televangelist would be useful to emphasize the significance of the event. There may be a few readers who have no idea who Oral Roberts was in terms of American culture. Thanks to PFHLai, Jolly Janner and Bluemoonset for all your work on this DYK, Bruin2 (talk) 16:31, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
You're welcome, Bruin2. Good idea on adding 'Pentecostal' to the hook. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 08:42, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
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