The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Dana boomer 02:03, 12 December 2010 [1].


Grace Sherwood[edit]

Review commentary[edit]

Grace Sherwood (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Notified: Risker, Virginia WikiProject, Occult WikiProject,

I am nominating this featured article for review because see the talk page of this article and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism and copyright concerns on the main page, original nominator retired because of this unfortunate incident. Fails unstability as this mess is being sorted out. Secret account 03:25, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Recent changes in FAR rules regarding pre-discussion (Off topic)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
FAR recently changed its rules regarding pre-discussion of article issues on article talk pages before listing here: "1. Prior to nomination, raise issues at talk page of the article. Attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article. Articles in this step are not listed on this page." I have no strong opinion in relation to this article, but other editors may wish to consider this. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Also, as a procedural note, this was a TFA yesterday (for a shorter time than usual, but still) and was promoted to FA less than 3 months ago - circumstances which would normally preclude its eligibility for FAR. Given the circumstances, I can see an argument for IAR, but I'll leave that to the delegates to decide. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:45, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • That part of the procedure (relating to TFA) is long-standing, but Raul, Dana and YM may want to waive it in this case. It is as yet unclear how the article can be fixed, but because of the copyvio issue, it doesn't look good. See here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:49, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Yea I knew about the rule about TFA, but this is a special case that should be waived, three sections of the article with copyright concerns? That's clearly worriesome, even though I don't think the article writer did it on purpose, because he is experienced and knew a copyright violation wouldn't go past FAC. Secret account 04:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Back on topic: having a FAR page open may allow for a place to consolidate the work needed and get feedback from the copyvio people on how to proceed, and either 1) assure that we end up with a still-FA quality article if it can be salvaged, or 2) delist it if not. We have FA quality material with a copyvio problem: we need guidance on how to fix it, and time to do that. This could be the place. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:22, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is the copyright issue not a bit of a red herring now? Key parts of the article are based on an Associated Press article that was referenced 29 times, and it based its article on a local woman who was trying to raise money. Shouldn't we use Uncle G's academic sources to rewrite it, for reasons unrelated to copyright? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 17:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For what it's worth, what I've gotten from the historians for User:Uncle G/Grace Sherwood is subtly different to what is in Grace Sherwood. She wasn't tried three times. She was tried once. The other two (actually four — another difference) actions involving the Sherwoods were where they brought suit against someone else. She wasn't forgotten until Louisa Venable Kyle wrote a children's book about her, but in fact was remembered in folklore for three centuries. Her "good name" wasn't "restored" because she didn't have a bad one, even in the first place. At least one historian concludes that Virginians of the time didn't actually widely condemn witchcraft, or Sherwood in particular. And all of this "Before the day be through" stuff appears, since I've yet to find it anywhere else, to come from the re-enactors. Uncle G (talk) 11:37, 4 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

WOW. Hans Adler 11:54, 4 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Note

I have restored the section Grace Sherwood#Cultural background – after removing the alleged plagiarism and claimed copyright violations. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 21:11, 6 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for working on it, Petri, but it's still problematic. For example, the sentence: "Unlike Massachusetts, made infamous by the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693, Virginia never experienced a "witch craze"" is sourced to four separate sources, none of them really appropriate:
  • 2006 Associated Press story in USA Today, which does say it, but they are not historians: "Virginia never had a witch craze like that in Massachusetts, where 19 colonists were hanged for witchcraft in Salem Town in 1692."
  • 1934 Richmond Times Dispatch story, not online.
  • Something from the cellar by Ivor Noël Hume, Colonial Williamsburg, 2005, pp. 86–89, and I can't see where it says that.
  • Someone's MA thesis, no page number, so it's hard to check; and is an MA thesis a reliable source?
The MA thesis is actually a source for the next sentence, rather than the source that's there, and it uses identical wording without in-text attribution:
  • MA thesis: "To protect the social fragility of their colony, Virginia’s political and religious leaders consciously chose to prosecute offenses that they felt threatened the social cohesion of the colony, such as fornication, gossip, and slander, and dismissed those, such as witchcraft, that threatened to tear it apart."
  • Wikipedia: "Virginia’s political and religious leaders consciously chose to prosecute offenses that they felt threatened the social cohesion of the colony, such as fornication, gossip, and slander, and dismissed those, such as witchcraft, that threatened to tear it apart."
The latter is sourced not to the MA thesis, but to Bond, Edward (2000). Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia. Mercer University Press, pp. 53, 91, 125 (but which page?).
SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:35, 6 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The original claim was that it was plagiarism or copyvio of USA Today, I have worked on that only. The two statement that still are sourced to the article are, I believe, proper use of sources. I take no position on the unfree-by-origin thesis, nor on any of the other sourcing problems brought forward in this discussion.
You are right about the misplaced reference. It was misplaced already in the version I started working on – which incidentally also had the USA Today reference placed before the statement it was used to source. I have corrected the placement. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 16:39, 7 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Checking Bond 2000, he says nothing like "To protect the social fragility of their colony, Virginia’s political and religious leaders consciously chose to prosecute offenses that they felt threatened the social cohesion ..." etc on pages 53, 91, or 125. Petri, I think it would be better to remove that section for now, until it's clearer who said what. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:36, 6 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I moved the article half an hour ago into the FARC stage of the discussion, but Nikkimaria has informed me that only FAR delegates should do that, so I apologize for jumping ahead, and I've reverted myself. This was the edit I made. I do think it would be helpful to move quickly to a delisting, given the multiple issues, but I'll wait to hear from the delegates. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • MA thesis, p. 48: "[Sherwood] had a longstanding reputation in the community for malefic behavior and ill will. Her trial demonstrates how members of seventeenth-century society considered untrustworthy could quickly become scapegoats for social and economic tensions."
  • Wikipedia: "Sherwood had a longstanding reputation for malefic behavior and ill will. Her trial demonstrates how those considered to be untrustworthy could quickly become scapegoats for social and economic tensions ..."
The sentence cites the thesis in footnote 16. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 00:38, 7 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Even if the photograph is freely-licensed, the sculpture itself is still copyrighted, if I understand correctly, and that may be why it has to be used as a fair use exemption. The first of the license tags on the image page covers it.   Will Beback  talk  01:32, 7 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Okay, thanks, that makes sense. We should probably check that Rlevse is the author, and make that clear on the image page. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:17, 7 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think that rather than mucking about with unblanking parts of Grace Sherwood and finding yet more problems with text that matches the sources, you would be better off looking at whether Secret, who volunteered for rewriting duty above, is able to take User:Uncle G/Grace Sherwood and run with it. (I can give a few pointers as to what more is needed. It's mainly on the folkloric Sherwood. I've concentrated on the historic.)

There's an artist's impression of Sherwood's court appearance in a source somewhere, by the way. So there's possibly more than just that statue to be had (dependent from who the artist is). I haven't really been thinking about illustrations, and I've lost track of where I saw it. I do think, however, that it's possibly a bit misleading to use images of the Salem trials in an article whose subject the experts say wasn't quite the same. Uncle G (talk) 04:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is pretty much a de facto de-listing at this point, as observed a while back. The article itself no-longer has the little star, for starters. Uncle G (talk) 14:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I see most of the article work is being done by Slim and Uncle G, and both of them opine that it can't be salvaged. For the FAR delegates to be able to decide whether to move this to FARC a wee bit sooner than the usual 14 days, it would be helpful to know if anyone reasonably thinks they can salvage FA status here or need more time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Featured article criteria of concern noted in the review commentary include copyright violations, plagiarism, sourcing and images. This is being moved slightly early due to the discussion above, with the agreement of Raul as Featured Article Director. Dana boomer (talk) 13:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I reviewed the article tonight, and although there were some minor MOS issues, what is there looks to be in good shape. Are the remaining concerns that a survey of the relevant literature and high quality sources need to be incorporated, that is, the sources now listed in Further reading? Before editors opine whether the article should be Kept or Delisted, is anyone willing and able to do that work? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:59, 13 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • That's part of why I asked-- my impression there is that the "Further reading" comprises sources that should be consulted for the article to be comprehensive, while External links are not (and that's why I prefer the typical layout). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hi Dana, you asked me to comment here. I feel the same as I did when I first suggested on November 6 that it be delisted. My view is that it has changed so much it should be prepared and nominated for FAC, assuming anyone wants to do that, and reviewed in the normal way. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.