William L. Uanna

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review
Result: Keep This is coming up to a year now since it was opened, so it is well beyond time it is closed. This was nominated on three criteria 3a (Broadness), 5 (Stability) and 2 (Verifiabilty). It is not specified exactly what verifiabilty criteria it fails, but I feel it is safe to assume 2b and 2c. The broadness issue has been resolved during the review. Stability is not a good reason to delist an article; otherwise articles would qualify for delisting whenever an edit war broke out. It is more a convenience criteria for reviewers (it is hard/impossible to review an article that is constantly changing). In any case there has been no recent stability concerns. That leaves verifiability. The issue here relates to the use of primary sources. As has been pointed out primary sources are not disallowed so what we really need are instances of unreliable primary sources used for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons. No one has actually provided examples of this. Therefore I am closing this as keep. AIRcorn (talk) 06:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've commenced this reassessment because

1. The article fails GA Criteria No. 3 by focusing in excessive detail on non-notable and trivial biographical details, with insufficient attention - only one paragraph - on the primary reason for Uanna's notability, his role as security officer in the Manhattan Project, for which he was a subject of a number of movie portrayals and extensive mentions in secondary sources oddly not utilized in the preparation of this article. The article fails WP:UNDUE by failing to give appropriate weight to this aspect of his life. I would template for undue emphasis but I am not sure it's appropriate while this GA review is pending.

2. The article has been a subject of edit warring by a COI editor, is unstable and is tagged for major issues: excess reliance on primary sources and COI, as it was created by and was principally edited until a few days ago by a self-described connected editor, the son of the subject. More than four out of ten edits to the article were by the COI editor, more than any other editor. Because of these serious issues it fails GA Criteria No. 5 and meets criteria No. 3 for immediate failure. (Note also removal of "resume" cleanup tag after commencement of this review [1] by an involved editor. I believe this tag should not have been removed.)

3. It rather blatantly fails GA Criteria No. 2, "Verifiable with no original research." The majority of footnotes are to original research uploaded to Commons by the son of the subject.

There are problems with the following references:

Except for the first Ancestry link, which goes to user-created content, and the second Ancestry link, which goes to a census page, the remainder go to self-published primary source material uploaded to Commons by the son of the subject. WP:PRIMARY requires that primary sources must be "reputably published" and this is self-published original research.

--Coretheapple (talk) 13:09, 30 May 2016 (UTC) (revised 02:43, 31 May 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Primary sources are permitted to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source. The upload to Commons is merely to make it easier for us to collaborate and verify the source. The documents are all available through NARA. There is no question about their authenticity. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:50, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
They also have to be "reputably published." The COI editor's word processor is not a reputable publisher. NARA isn't a reputable publisher, it is a document repository where people go and request material via the FOI act in the course of their original research. And surely you're not suggesting that NARA documents are verifiable because you or I can file an FOI request, pay some bucks, and then wait a year or two for compliance? You're not seriously suggesting that I hope? Commons is not a reputable publisher, it is a conduit for any member of the public who wants to upload stuff. What we're talking about here is OR that he's put on Commons and that you've allowed to source the article. Coretheapple (talk) 21:18, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
NARA is a reputable publisher. Publication is defined as being made available to the public. I have spent a lot of time there, and you don't need an FOI request for material more than 30 years old. The documents are not being published by Commons, just being made easier for us to verify them. Commons, Wikinews and Wikisource were established precisely for this purpose! Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:39, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think we can accept that every government agency is a publisher because it makes documents available to the public. By using primary source materials to such a massive extent, you've deep-dived into his career to an almost absurd extent, with intricate details that really belong on a personal website. He is notable primarily for his work on the Manhattan Project, and there is all of one paragraph on that. That is what happens when a COI editor dominates the editing of an article and pours the product of his original research into the article. Come to think of it, that is actually a somewhat more serious issue than even the sourcing and I've added it above. Coretheapple (talk) 22:07, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have written over 200 biographical articles, and this is their nature. Most are famous for one thing but it was only a small part of their life. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:14, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A Google Books search for Uanna shows two books on the Manhattan Project, both of which contain much interesting material on Uanna related to his work on the Project. I find it odd to say the least that neither of these books is utilized in the preparation of this article. I would urge that you remove the excessive details that you have on his various duties and functions and focus on his work for the notable atomic bomb project, so that the latter is given proper weight. Since apparently it did not much interest the COI editor it got short shrift. This article is little more than a memorial website with great masses of trivial material, and I do not understand why it is so when there is source material to prevent that from occurring. With all due respect, I simply at a loss to understand why you leaned so heavily on the COI editor's hand-picked primary sources on minor details of his life, when there were not one but two perfectly usable secondary sources that delved into the most notable aspect of Uanna's career. The fact that you've done 200 bios just makes me even more mystified. Coretheapple (talk) 22:20, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The Manhattan Project has its own article, which I improved and took to FAC. Running the search myself turns up mentions of Uanna in several books about the atomic bombing mission, including Harlow Russ' Project Alberta, Paul Tibbets' Tibbets Story and Leslie Groves' Now It Can Be Told. More interestingly, Advanced Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Operations talks about his establishment of the Q Clearance, and four books mention his movie and television portrayals, notably Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film. This establishes his notability; but readers do not come to the article to find out about the Manhattan Project; they come to find out about Uanna. To be comprehensive, a biographical article needs to cover the biographical details, and the article does that. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:12, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Uh yeah, I imagine the Manhattan Project would have its own article. The fact that you don't see a problem in the little in this article on Uanna's role in that project is less than startling at this point. And by the way, I assume that he is in that "military images in film" book because of his work on the Manhattan Project, which is now given far less attention in this article than is warranted by WP:UNDUE. It really deserves a maintenance tag for that, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to do so while this is pending. I don't believe that it is in the "nature" of biographies to underweight major aspects of a subject's life. If there are multiple books on the project with references to Uanna, not just the two that turned up on the first page of the search, than the underweighting is even more inexcusable. Coretheapple (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

K.e.coffman (talk) 03:23, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Newspapers are down there on the list of RS unless written as an investigative report by a notable writer. Regardless, this still leaves about 30 citations to primary sources. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:27, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The point about edit warring is correct. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 16:10, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that everyone stop editing the article until the review is over. Bold editing is not the way to go here. It is clear that there are pretty entrenched differences of opinion, so the only way to move forward is to wait for a few other opinions to swing the consensus either way (to delist or not) and then accept it (whatever the outcome) and move on. The best way to achieve this may be a Request for Comment. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:01, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The absence of a Manhattan Project segment or barely a mention of that, a principal flaw and reason this reassessment was started, was rectified during the course of the reassessment. There are other flaws: primary sources, unencyclopedic detail, which has resulted in extensive instability in this article. Indeed, instability in the form of editing warring over trivia was the proximate cause of the ANI. The article is being improved and is halfway toward the goal of not being a personal website containing family nostalgia and patently nonessential material, like the reading matter of the subject of the article while studying up for a non-notable aspect of his career. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:27, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is worth noting that Uanna's Who's Who entry merely notes that he served in the Army during World War II. So that source considered him notable for his other work. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:29, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I believe Who's Who in America entries are written by the subject. Coretheapple (talk) 00:34, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note The above !vote is from an effectively new user and is clearly not based on the GA criteria, as well as apparently indicating not having read the OP's delisting rationale, which focused largely on GAC#3. This is not, technically, a case where Template:Single-purpose account can be invoked, but this user's edits to the Wikipedia namespace have almost uniformly been disruptive and should probably be evaluated on that basis. Their edits to other namespaces have almost all been minor, which makes it look like a troll attempting to cover their tracks by making a lot of kinda-sorta constructive edits but focusing most of their efforts on !voting against community consensus. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:44, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
None of my edits have been disruptive. The reasons for delisting this article are simply flawed. If you don't have anything constructive to say, then you don't need to say anything.Homemade Pencils (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  1. What confirmation do we have that Uanna himself is the writer of the Foreign Service essay, used for Ref 6, 7, 8, and 23? Was it ever published anywhere? Why was it written?
  2. What is the provenance of the FBI background check document on William Lewis Uanna? It's used to source 6 different statements. Shearonink (talk) 23:33, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Brava/bravo, @Shearonink:, spot on. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 07:22, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]


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