Template:Did you know nominations/USA Freedom Act

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The following discussion 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 Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:45, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

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USA Freedom Act[edit]

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Created by Petrarchan47 (talk), HectorMoffet (talk). Nominated by HectorMoffet (talk) at 19:58, 19 January 2014 (UTC).

  • Article is of sufficiently length, new, appears adequately sourced throughout. I do not see any copyvio/paraphrasing issues. The hook is interesting and is adequately sourced by fn.8 directly as a WP:RS third-party source, by the legislative bill as an impartial primary source, and indirectly by other sources. The hook itself is neutral, however its requested/desired usage as part of a collective project to raise awareness of government surveillance and intelligence gathering might not be. (see below)

FYI: Be advised that this edit is associated with Wikipedia:Surveillance awareness day which some editors would like to take place on 11 February-- Some editors, myself included, have pointed out that the effort of coordinating projects to raise awareness of the social issue on that day poses the problem of political advocacy. While there are no apparent problems with the hook itself, the neutrality of its use ought to be examined before scheduling to ensure that there are no issues per WP:NOTADVOCATE, WP:POINT.

Respectfully submitted.--ColonelHenry (talk) 15:36, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Check WP:NOTADVOCATE, which prohibits
"Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind: commercial, political, religious, national, sports-related, or otherwise. An article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to describe the topic from a neutral point of view. You might wish to start a blog or visit a forum if you want to convince people of the merits of your opinions.[2]"
That's the established policy. And that established policy allows, every single time the section for the Olympic Games. Even if you think somehow political issues are more offensive, which the policy refutes, I should point out that the Olympics are hardly neutral, nor do they deserve to be treated as if they were some kind of common humanitarian endeavor. They make a fortune for IOC offiicals, and you're not allowed to see any of it unless you pay, or some TV company lands the chance to air a few snippets in exchange for a fortune in ad money. Just ask the Maccabees what they think about the Olympics and their Olympian Zeus. We are not going to be told that this policy prohibits us from having a special day for our topic of interest, as long as the hooks are neutral and otherwise within guidelines, even while these commercialists are allowed to take over most of the month! Wnt (talk) 16:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
Template:Did you know nominations/Black-breasted Thrush was already reviewed by someone else. Another nomination will need to be reviewed for QPQ purposes. --PFHLai (talk) 05:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
PFHLai, this is HectorMoffet's first DYK self-nomination, so by DYK rules there is no QPQ requirement. You're right that the review would not be eligible, had it been required. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:15, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I'd say that the article violates WP:Recent and is borderline WP:NOT#NEWS. This Act is not yet passed. There seem to be partisans on either side, but the article does not represent both sides equally. The bill is controversial and has too much rhetoric opposing it. If there was an article every time a bill is sent to one of the houses. The existence of the stated purpose and the Leahy quote are equivalent to mission statements that I routinely remove from articles. -- Ohc ¡digame! 08:19, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
  • To be begin with, you can't violate WP:Recent because it's an essay. Not to mention that it contains a defense of documenting events as they happen! Moreover, the DYK review is not an all-encompassing platform to demand that anything you don't like about an article be changed/deleted. There are just a few basic, easy to satisfy criteria set for what are very early drafts of articles being presented to a broad audience for others to join in on. Wnt (talk) 19:10, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Nothing wrong with articles about high-profile legislative proposals. This is long enough and new enough, but I have other review concerns.
I'm concerned about the author's lack of clear inline support for the idea that Sensenbrenner was "author" or "a key author" of the Patriot Act. Because legislation often has many authors, that kind of fact requires a footnote close to the place the statement was made. I find a claim to authorship in this statement by Sensenbrenner, but even that isn't sufficient support, since it's only a claim. At least one source calls him a co-author; we need to be careful about this part of the hook fact.
The lead section cites one source (this). That footnote looks like it's there to support the entire lead, but actually it is only there to support the point that Leahy supports this bill -- and it is not a particularly good reference even for that. Better to remove all ref citations from the lead (which is supposed to simply summarize information in the rest of the article) and put this information into the article body, with a better source (instead of or in addition to this one). The fact that Sensenbrenner and Leahy introduced this bill together needs to be in the article body, not just the lead.
Article has several bare-url references, which need to be fixed for DYK.
In the hook and article, I've replaced "submitted" by "introduced", which is the standard term for talking about proposed legislation.
I've not yet looked for copyvio and close paraphrasing. --Orlady (talk) 20:36, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
I found a New York Times ref (in their voice) that Sensenbrenner "introduced" the bill [1] so that should be taken care of. I've also addressed the bare refs and moved one ref out of the lead. Wnt (talk) 23:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I still have some serious concerns about this article, as well as with the proposed hook. The basic information in the article lead (i.e., the name of the bill, when it was introduced in Congress, and who introduced it) is still not supported by sources anywhere in the article. Much of the body of the article consists of direct quotations -- and in some cases quotations of people's opinions about NSA and surveillance, not necessarily related to this bill. Long quotations are not original content, and it's not obvious that all those opinion statements belong in an encyclopedia article about proposed legislation.
I find that many of the factual statements in the article are sourced to opinion pieces, which can be unreliable as sources for facts. Typically, I would expect an article like this one to include objective information about the provisions of the bill, based on sources like this one, not just politicians' and editorial writers' statements about why they sponsored or support (or oppose) it. I'd also expect to see information on the status of congressional action -- in this case, that would be an indication that it was referred to the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations on January 9, 2014.
The article is based almost entirely on news reports, but the reference citations don't include publication dates and in some instances don't identify the publication. Inclusion of publication dates and names is not an official DYK "rule", but that information can be critically important in an article like this one.
I located the Politico source that didn't have a URL and found that the article mistakenly describes the piece in Politico as being the words of Leahy, when in fact it lists Leahy and Sensenbrenner as coauthors.
The main fact in the hook (i.e., that Sensenbrenner introduced this bill) is not supported by reference citations in the article. Additionally, it is misleading in suggesting that Sensenbrenner was alone in introducing the bill, when he and Leahy introduced it together. --Orlady (talk) 04:24, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Orlady, the nominator of this hook retired in pure WP:DIVA fashion after being indefinitely blocked and hasn't edited in about a month. I doubt there is any expectation of further action on this hook.--ColonelHenry (talk) 04:47, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I am well aware of the nominator's departure. However, User:Wnt responded to my earlier comments here, and User:BlueMoonset posted on my talk page, asking if I was planning to review the changes that Wnt had made. --Orlady (talk) 06:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
To address the DYK issues you mention:
  • Even without the quotes, the length is calculated as 2967. If you look at the source of this you'll see I've chopped out (I think) all the long quotes to get that number (though a few stray bracketed numbers inflate it just a little); I really don't think it should be in doubt that it is over 1500.
  • As for Sensenbrunner, the New York Times Editorial Board wrote that "On Thursday, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, who introduced the Patriot Act in 2001, said..." It also quotes Sensenbrenner as saying "“As the author of the Patriot Act." That's the source I cited in the article. Maybe it takes a village to raise a child, but it still only comes out of one of them. Really, I feel like I did my part on this one.
You make some other valid criticisms of the article, and I'll try to implement most of them since this actually is meant to be read. I have a personal preference for letting a biography subject have his say, and admittedly I might take it to a bit of excess in one or two places, but my impression has been that by the rules it is not required to fix stylistic details like that or completing references or having the entire article perfectly sourced for DYK nomination. But I want to be clear that I'm not blowing off the process here, and I think it was already ready to pass DYK. P.S. it's been a matter of doubt before, but today I actually did receive user notification that I'd been mentioned on this page. Wnt (talk) 14:01, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree with you Wnt, the article has been ready. A new-article DYK candidate doesn't have to be perfect. I think Orlady there's been too much nitpicking over waste-of-time detail that is more appropriate for GAN than a new-article DYK. My only issue with the article was its potential use as advocacy in a planned protest on 11 February, in my judgment the other hurdles were met. Now that those plans of protest have failed and this DYK hook would be essentially on its own, the issues of its potential use as advocacy are moot and no longer cause for alarm or caution. My green checkmark above still stands, IMHO. --ColonelHenry (talk) 14:28, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Fresh eyes on this from a non-American. My view is that this is long enough and has reliable sources to the hook facts. I understand that the origin / authorship of legislation is a complex matter, but i don't think having a hook summarise this as "author of the X Act" is misleading. Rather, it draws attention to an interesting feature of the topic, which is exactly what hooks are supposed to do. Is the "reaction" section somehat one-sided? Yes, but not because the text is written in a POV manner. It is because editors have been able to locate and present more of the views from one side than the other. For us to have an issue with the article, someone would need do demonstate that the balance violated WP:UNDUE, and I don't see evidence of that. On the contrary, there appears to be a relatively wide, and somewhat unusual, alliance of interests supporting the bill, a fact which the article reflects. I agree with ColonelHenry that, beyond these matters, this entry is getting bogged down in a discussion appropriate to GAN, not DYK. I think this is good to go. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:08, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

  • Sorry, but I'm pulling this out of the prep area. My concerns about this article were not related to some perceived imbalance of "pro" vs. "con" opinions. I have had concerns about misrepresentation of facts and sources, including misrepresentation of opinions as objective fact. I hoped the author(s) would re-examine their work, but that hasn't happened. Just one example:
The article says The bill's stated purpose is: "To rein in the dragnet collection of data...". Not true. That's a statement about the bill on Sensenbrenner's website. The stated purpose given in the actual bill is: "To reform the authorities of the Federal Government to require the production of certain business records, conduct electronic surveillance, use pen registers and trap and trace devices, and use other forms of information gathering for foreign intelligence, counterterrorism, and criminal purposes, and for other purposes." Admittedly, Sensenbrenner's statement makes more sense, but it's not what's in the bill. If you want to describe Sensenbrenner's statements about his purpose for introducing the bill, use his website statement and describe what it is, but don't call it the stated purpose of the bill. --Orlady (talk) 01:28, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
That's a petulant nitpicking appropriate for GAN, not DYK. You seem to like pulling hooks for specious reasons.--ColonelHenry (talk) 02:08, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Much better. :-) --Orlady (talk) 05:02, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Excellent. Will you put it back across to a prep queue, or does that need to be left to someone else?hamiltonstone (talk) 05:11, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
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