Wikipedia:Featured article review/1880 Republican National Convention/archive1

Notified: Nishkid64, Coemgenus, Billmckern, Tilden76, Devonian Wombat, -A-M-B-1996-, WP Politics, WP Chicago, WP Illinois, WP USA, WP Elections and Referendums, noticed in December 2023 with prior issues raised in 2015

As originally promoted, this 2007 FA included a number of references to varied sources. However, in 2015, it was discovered on the talk page that essentially the editor just read the Ackerman book and threw in citations from Ackerman's notes, even though those sources did not entirely support the cited content. I ran into a similar problem from this same editor when I rewrote Thomas C. Hindman, another old FA promotion, several years ago. Coemgenus resolved many of the issues in 2015 but the article is still very heavily reliant on Ackerman alone. I also, in December 2023, found that there are still a number of smaller source-text integrity issues and that the citation placement is messed up.

Awhile back, this article was suggested to potentially rerun as TFA with the upcoming Republican National Convention later this year, but I don't think that is a good idea given the sourcing history here. Given my experiences with Wikipedia:Featured article review/J. R. Richard/archive1, Wikipedia:Featured article review/Lee Smith (baseball)/archive1, Talk:Thomas C. Hindman#Uncited paras/sentences etc, and Talk:Stede Bonnet#Featured article review needed I have grave concerns about the sourcing from any FA nominations by this nominator. Hog Farm _Talk 17:57, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC no major edits to address sourcing concerns. Z1720 (talk) 16:37, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I did not write this one, though I have edited and have access to the sources. Is the concern here that some particular sources are inaccurate, or just that there might be problems? I'd be glad to run a spotcheck on the citations and see if it's good. --Coemgenus (talk) 14:12, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Coemgenus - I compared passages to parts of Ackerman several months ago and have found that the big ideas are all supported, but a number of the smaller details are not. I'm also generally uneasy with the content here after my experience with re-writing Thomas C. Hindman, another FA by the same nominator, where the article was based only on one book to the neglect of information in other sources, omitted major information (Hindman being suspended from command for awhile), and contained factual errors (incorrectly claiming that Hindman was present for the Chattanooga actions after Chickamauga), in addition to the sources failing spot-checks. A spotcheck here would be greatly appreciated. Hog Farm _Talk 14:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

- @Coemgenus: Are you still planning on looking at this? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:02, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sorry, yes, I will look at it this week. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:43, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  - I looked at every tenth citation to see if they lined up with what was being cited:

fn.10 -- Hesseltine p. 432 contains the quoted language and the sentiment it expresses.

fn.20 -- Ackerman makes both points on p. 74 and the quoted headline is there.

fn.30 -- Ackerman pp.66-67 does say this.

fn.40 -- Cites Ackerman p. 58 for two points. the phrasing is a little awkward, but it's accurate.

fn.50 -- Cites Ackerman p. 83 for two quotes, both accurate.

fn.60 -- Cites Ackerman p. 91 for three points and two quotes, all accurate.

fn.70 -- Cites Ackerman p. 103-104 for two points, both accurate.

fn.80 -- Cites Ackerman p. 116 for two points. Both accurate, but the parenthetical near the second point wasn't in the source (it is true, though). So I moved the citation to the right spot.

fn.90 -- I had trouble accessing this -- the Questia page wouldn't load. I found the book on the Internet Archive, though, and it's correct.

Since most of those random citations were to the same book, I picked out a few others to check.

fn.53 -- Cites Muzzey p. 169 -- the quotation and the meaning of the sentence are both accurate.

fn.59 -- Cites Clancy pp. 104-105 for two points including quotations. This is the first problem I found. Clancy and Ackerman both cite a letter from Joseph H. Geiger to John Sherman, but where Clancy summarizes the content, Ackerman quotes it directly. The author of this article uses the direct quote, as found in Ackerman, but cites it to Clancy, which is incorrect.

I think this article relies too heavily on Ackerman's book, but where it does so, it does so accurately. Where it cites other sources, in at least one instance, it does not do so faithfully. There's not much to fix here, but it should be fixed. I have nearly all of these books, so I guess I should be the one to fix it? --Coemgenus (talk) 18:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coemgenus, it does not appear anyone else is stepping forward - is this something you're willing and able to do, or should this proceed? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nikkimaria, I apologize, I've been swamped. I'll get started on it this weekend. The Ackerman citations are all good, it's just the others I need to clean up. Shouldn't take long. I hope! --Coemgenus (talk) 02:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nikkimaria, I've gone through and checked the cites, especially those not to Ackerman. After a few changes, I think everything is accurate now. --Coemgenus (talk) 01:16, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Hog Farm: ↑ Nikkimaria (talk) 21:53, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to take a look at this over the weekend. Hog Farm _Talk 02:28, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This looks mostly fine, but I'm a bit concerned about the heavy reliance on Ackerman. Coemgenus, noting that you've done work on a number of articles related to this election, do you think that this article is a "it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" as required by the featured article criteria? Hog Farm _Talk 22:22, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is. If I were writing it from scratch, I'd vary the sources more, but everything seems accurate since the last changes I made. I could change a few of them to other sources, but it wouldn't change the text, since multiple sources all say the same thing. --Coemgenus (talk) 23:45, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If Coemgenus, wikipedia's subject matter expert on the 1880 election, is okay with this, then I think I'm at a keep. Hog Farm _Talk 01:12, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Z1720: Given the above, what are your thoughts? Nikkimaria (talk) 17:25, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am still concerned about the overreliance on Ackerman as inline citations. I did a Google Scholar search for "1880 Republican National Convention" and found additional sources that might be used in the article. Has there been a search for additional sources that could be added to the article? I also went through the article and removed repetitive, subsequent refs to the same citation and I'll change images from px to upright momentarily. Z1720 (talk) 19:59, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coemgenus? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:06, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I said above, I think the cites are now fully accurate. I could change some of them to other books, if I have to, but they all say the same thing — these are mostly undisputed facts about the convention. —Coemgenus (talk) 21:51, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have examined an arbitrary few of the footnotes:

n 12: the Evans article confirms that the three political bosses backed Grant.
n 22: the quote is accurately reproduced from pp.75–76 of Ackerman (2003).
n 33: Ackerman, p.67 directly asserts that that lawyer was hired by Garfield.
n 43: examining Ackerman, p.58–66, it seems clear that ruling, the word used in our article, does not quite capture the nuance of Gorham's involvement. This was a committee meeting of a political party conference. The chairman was determined to exclude the nomination but he was not experienced in parliamentary procedure, so he was advised by Gorman, who was specially present at the meeting and filling a sort of clerk–participant–gadfly role, in a way that to modern eyes would seem intolerably unprofessional. The source says that the nominee's team would make a motion and Gorman would speak his view on why, procedurally, the motion had to fail or was out of order. After Gorman, the chairman would each time say afterwards, "So ruled". Cameron therefore gave the rulings and relied on the advice or the reasoning of Gorham. I am inclined to think this a one-off case of misunderstanding the nuanced meaning of so ruled rather than a genuine academic error. I think that any non-native English speaker could misuse ruling to describe Gorman's involvement. Word choice aside, the sentence is factually accurate.

The concern underlying this FAR was that the article's original nominator possibly has a record of sourcing misuse. I have to say that nothing of the sort seems to have happened with this article. While we could carry on checking the footnotes, I am not sure that anything found so far suggests that the article would not pass FAC today, and I don't find that likely to change. This review should end here. arcticocean ■ 00:00, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]