Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Jack Kemp/archive3

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 01:36, 16 September 2008 [1].

Jack Kemp[edit]

Nominator(s): TonyTheTiger
previous FAC (18:12, 4 May 2008)


As with all politician bios, I expect this to be contentious. Kemp was a Reaganite and Ronald Reagan took 6 WP:FACs and 2 WP:PRs (not to mention 2 WP:GACs) to achieve WP:FA. The main past FAC issues have been whether this is POV and whether it is too long. The article has been reduced in size about 10% and is in the same neighborhood lengthwise as several other FA-Class biographies of prominent leaders in terms of readable prose:

Harry S. Truman 68.5 KB
Ronald Reagan 61.5 KB
Jack Kemp 58.3 KB
Franklin D. Roosevelt 57.3 KB

I think I have addressed most concerns from the most recent FAC and PR.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 04:56, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

John McCain, 44.5 KB readable prose. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image comment - Seriously, far too many copyrighted images Fasach Nua (talk) 07:55, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My order of priority for inclusion would be:'

  1. Image:Kemp.jpg
  2. Image:Dole Kemp Time Magazine cover.jpg
  3. Image:Jackkemp1988brochure.gif
  4. Image:Russian Task 101.jpg
  5. Image:Dolekemp1996.gif
  6. Image:An American Renaaissance by Jack Kemp.jpg

Would the top four be O.K. and do you have a problem with this prioritization?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 15:52, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Kemp.jpg doesnt increase understanding WP:NFCC#8, "he played American football when he was younger" would convey basically the same information
This image is the only image that shows what he looked like in his athletic days. In most FAs an attempt is made to obtain pictures from different stages of a person's life. The next earliest image of him is as a young congressman. I have tried to make some callls about getting consent for this image.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:35, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If it is work of the US Congress (US federal government) then it is free Fasach Nua (talk) 18:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes we have a free image of him as a congressman and a FU image of him as a football player. However, indications are that others have been given permission to use this image. I am trying to track down the copyrightholder, but my contact is not available for another week.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 02:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Image:Russian Task 101.jpg looks like he is sitting at a desk, no real information there beyond the text "he sat beside John Edwards, at a desk", again WP:NFCC#8 Fasach Nua (talk) 14:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I kind of think this image is expendable for different reasons. It is included to show what he looked like in the 21st century. However, it offers little that the 2004 image offers in this regard. I will remove it.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now my list is:

  1. Image:Kemp.jpg
  2. Image:Dole Kemp Time Magazine cover.jpg
  3. Image:Jackkemp1988brochure.gif
  4. Image:Dolekemp1996.gif
  5. Image:An American Renaaissance by Jack Kemp.jpg

Any thoughts on going with four FUs.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:52, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Buffalo Bills media relations office put me in touch with the author of Image:Kemp.jpg. I have corrected the image description page. We spoke and he seems inclined to send me proper permission to use it in both Kemp and Carlton's articles. He also stated he is the author of most of the other photos at [2]. It was not clear what permissions he might grant on other photos, but I will seek some permissions if he grants proper permission for this one. --TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 04:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I got a permission, but he did not respond exactly as I instructed by saying which license to use. I sent permissions a copy of his response to determine the validity of his consent.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Issues resolved, Ealdgyth - Talk 18:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise sources look okay, links check out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from Maralia This needs major prose work. Following are some issues:

  • John Rauch era (1969) - An 'era' does not occur over one year. For that matter, the entire subsection's headers are problematic: why is the first section 'Chargers era' but the next 'Lou Saban era' with no mention of the change in team?
    • The entire Chargers era was under one coach. The Bills eras were under several different coaches. I changed the Chargers era for consistency. However, when I look up the word era I see nothing saying that the time period designated as an era has to me longer than a year.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:32, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • and set most AFL career-passing statistical records - 'and set most' is ambiguous; did he set many? did he set the most?
  • He has authored, co-authored, and edited several books. - really, can't the lead paragraph of a biographical article do better than 'several'?
    • If you want a different word feel free to suggest it. However, since he had a variety of levels of involvement that extends to writing forewords for some books, editing, co-authoring. If you want a number, I am not so sure that is a good idea because I can not assure completeness.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • although his mother attempted to culture him with piano lessons and trips to the Hollywood Bowl. - culture as a verb?
    • Culture can be a verb. Did I use it incorrectly as a verb here?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:37, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Technically, "culture" can be a verb, with the same meaning as "cultivate", but I can't remember ever seeing it used as such. In any event, it's curious usage in this context, when the two activities mentioned are totally diverse - piano lessons and going to sports fixtures. It sounds as though Mrs Kemp was trying to "broaden his horizons", and I'd suggest you replace "culture him" with those words. Brianboulton (talk) 10:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Whoops! I've just found out that the Hollywood Bowl is a concert venue, not a sports ground. That's Brit ignorance for you. I still prefer my suggested wording, though. 13:55, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Fairfax High School, which is known both for its historically high concentration of Jewish students and for producing celebrities. - unless the school somehow turns people into celebrities, 'producing celebrities' is inappropriate.
  • Boasting an alumni of notable actors, athletes, and musicians, Fairfax is noted by celebrity-seeking guides. - so? make this relevant.
  • Herb Alpert, Larry Sherry and Judith A. Reisman are among the 1935-born alumni of this school, which is located on Melrose Avenue. - again, so what? Did he know them? This and the previously listed sentence are fluff unless you delineate some relevance.
    • We could either say he obtained high school diploma or we could attempt to describe his environment and influences during his formative years. Which do you prefer? I kind of think an FA should attempt to do the latter. You clearly have taken some time to attempt to give good guidance on other issues. I would hope you might be able to help in this regard. Saying to chop all of his environment and influences is not helpful, IMO.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:52, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Kemp learned to embrace diversity and hard work during his experience working with his brothers - 'during his experience' is disposable.
  • Kemp's habit of rigorous reading, which would become important later, showed in high school where he read history and philosophy books. - I read in high school too; give this sentence more, if his reading is so relevant.
    • I will add this type of sentence to your wikipedia biography if you are feeling left out. Come on football players are notoriously stereotyped as having people do all their work for them. Here we have a guy who can'not read enough. Given that the article is on the verge of being too long, do we want an explanation why this is unusual for a football player.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 06:34, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • he considered himself to be too small to play for the major Southern California college football programs - 'to be' is disposable.
  • Joanne had grown up in Fillmore, California and attended Fillmore High School in Ventura County. - is this relevant at all?
  • Jeff, Jennifer and Judith are each two years apart and Jimmy is eight years younger than Judith. - is this a logic problem? really, if it's relevant, give the year, not a word problem.
    • We do not have further detail on birth dates. I.e., we only have age at the time of the article. Note the infobox adds a best estimate.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 19:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Kemp's opposition to abortion is partially affected by his wife's miscarriage. - this bears explanation, not a lone sentence hanging at the end of a paragraph.
  • Inconsistent use of serial commas throughout.
  • Kemp led the team to field goals on their first two possessions, but when the Houston Oilers posted a touchdown in the second quarter for a 7–6 lead, the Chargers would never regain the lead. - verb tense switcheroo.
  • In 1961, San Diego Union editor Jack Murphy convinced Barron Hilton to move the Chargers from Los Angeles to San Diego. - is this relevant? Why not just say the team moved to SD?
  • Kemp's 1961 Chargers roommate and Pro Football Hall of Famer, Ron Mix was denied a deferment - either remove this comma or add another to finish setting off the name.
  • He cited lingering effects from a later knee injury as the reason he had to fly first-class at Government expense as the Housing Secretary from 1989 to 1992. - this sentence is either misplaced or needs rewriting to flow from the rest of the paragraph.
  • Kemp won two AFL Western Division championships with the Chargers, but in a rare blunder by head coach Sid Gillman, Kemp was put on waivers to try to "hide" him when he was unable to play due to a broken middle finger after two games in 1962. - 'put on waivers' needs better explanation.
    • I created an article to link it to. Since the term is pretty complicated, the reader should look to the linked term for clarification, IMO.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 06:15, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • During his football career at Buffalo, he would become known for his love of reading a broad range of books including those by Henry Thoreau, which led to chidings from Saban. - can't we do better than 'football player actually reads books'?
    • It is actually quite an interesting point that he read intellectual books to the point where his coach derided him for it. It seems quite unusual compared to all the other athlete bios I have read. Do you find it to be a common claim?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • In 1963, a four-season battle for the starting quarterback position began that continued until Lamonica left for the Raiders. - poor grammar.
  • Lamonica felt he "... learned - why start a quote with an ellipsis?
  • rushing TD's - an apostrophe has been harmed in the creation of this plural.
  • Kemp was named as an AFL All-Star for the sixth consecutive year in 1966 (there was no 1960 All-Star game). - if you need parentheses to express something, it probably belongs in a footnote.
  • Kemp was named as an AFL All-Star in 1969 for the seventh of the league's ten years. - for the seventh time in the league's ten years.
  • he was the only AFL quarterback to be listed as a starter all ten years. - clarify what ten years.
  • Despite Kemp's AFL records, Joe Namath and Len Dawson were selected as the quarterbacks for the All-time AFL team. - very POV.
    • Not so sure this was POV, but I rephrased it assuming you were inferring some sense of entitlement that was not conferred.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

These issues are just from the first third of the article; I haven't even read past his football career. Maralia (talk) 17:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I can't read the Dark blue and black entries in the table in Election Results, and it's very hard to read the pink in blue templates down the bottom of the page. Ben (talk) 04:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I was using fairly standard election results table colors. Are you saying you want the background colors removed or you can not read the dark blue and black column headings?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If it is the background colors, I could remove the color or add a symbol.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 02:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
After reading WP:COLOR, I removed all shading in the table. However, I think some of the columns (those titled by party affiliation) could have kept the color and been compliant. If the background color was not the problem let me know because I am thinking I may want to at least partially revert for the party columns.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 04:02, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It was just the combination of dark blue and black. The two dark colours together made it impossible (for me) to read without highlighting the text in some way. Ben (talk) 09:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure which cells you were talking about because there were no cells with a dark blue background. Which cells were previously hard to read?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 14:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The conservative cells were hard to read. I took a screenshot of the page (as it was before the shading was removed) and posted it here. The light blue and pink are fine, just the dark blue cells I couldn't read. Cheers, Ben (talk) 14:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In Firefox on Windows Vista, the Conservative colors were not showing. I.e, the text was on a black background. I guess I will leave the thing uncolored because changing the color for conservative would signal another political party to others.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:15, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - As an inexperienced reviewer, I edited the last FAC 31 times! Let's hope this one won't be as much work for both of us. It probably won't be anyway, since I have much more on my plate than I did back then. Maralia has given the football career a close review, so I will be skipping to his political career. Here goes...

  • Can an article be created for the AFL Players Association? This is obviously not a criterion, but it's annoying to have one in the lead.
  • Just so reviewers know, the red link in the infobox is unavoidable. I don't believe it is designed for players who competed in the NFL and AFL.
  • Political career: San Diego Union needs italics.
  • "and Ronald Reagan's 1966 successful California Gubernatorial campaign." Flip 1966 and successful.
  • Two Barry Goldwater links in section.
  • Remove comma after John Mackey?
  • Remove the bare 1978 link by his Esquire magazine appearance. The prose there needs work too: "An early-career notable magazine appearances..."
  • "a The Wall Street Journal editorial writer..." I understand you want a non-piped link, but this reads awkward. Consider "an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal...".
  • In the paragraph on 1980, we have "tax cuts" and "tax-cuts". Not sure the hyphen is correct, although it would be for "tax-cutting".
    • Even tax-cutting is ambiguous. As an adjective it would be correct to say so and so is a tax-cutting liberal, but as a gerundive noun one might say his policy entailed a lot of tax cutting. This is my thoughts, but I may be wrong. I am going to go through the article looking at tax cut and correcting things.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 03:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Presidential bid: Social Security should be capitalized and linked to the United States program. Right now, the link is to a general term.

I want to come back, but it will take me some time, as I have a large backlog of planned reviews. One more note: Date linking was recently deprecated. Tony1 has been zapping links from all recent FACs that I've seen, so if you want them gone, just wait for him to do the work. If you don't want them removed, you'll need to let him know. Giants2008 (17-14) 04:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When I said some time, I didn't know it would be six days. Sorry about that. Anyway, I'm back now.
  • "In Bare Knuckles and Black Rooms: My Life in American Politics, campaign chairman, Rollins described Kemp..." Two things here: first, is it common to give an ISBN number in the text? Or is this done because the book itself isn't used as the source for this? I also think the comma after chairman should be taken out.
  • Two Pat Robertson links in the section.
  • Cabinet (1989-1993): "encouraged president Bush to endorse Kemp's Economic Empowerment Task Force." I'd think that President would be capitalized here, though "the president" could work as well.
  • "He cited lingering effects from a knee injury as the reason he had to fly first-class at Government expense as the Housing Director." Did he receive criticism for this? It seems implied but is not said explicitly.
  • This citation was the only mention of the fact that I saw. I am writing this totally ex-post. I did not follow Kemp's political career live. He was the congressman for the southern suburbs and I grew up in the north side of town. I just saw the article and felt it looked terrible. I have gone through about five different publications finding attributable claims. I do not know if he was criticized contemporaneously other than the single citation I have here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Post-HUD years (1993-1996): "and, unlike the most Republicans..." What is the doing in here?
  • Vice Presidential nomination (1996): Has Connie Mack been linked in the article yet? If not, please consider adding one here; I thought about the baseball manager of the same name when I first saw it.
  • "Dole convinced Reagan to support the reforms causing Kemp to summon allies to meetings to stop the act, which eventually passed in 1982." Comma after reforms?
  • "and even the democrats feared Kemp might lure voters." Capitalization.
  • "Kemp was a very positive runningmate... Is runningmate frequently given as one word? I'm not a political junkie, so I could easily be wrong about this, but it doesn't look right to me.
  • Here's something that I'm concerned about from a POV frame of mind: "Somehow, despite Kemp's voice on minority issues, Colin Powell's support and polls that showed about 30% of blacks identified themselves as conservatives..., the Republican's (fix needed) were unable to improve upon historical support levels from African-American voters. Somehow is over the line in my view. Despite would be fine for the beginning of this sentence.
  • Legacy: "Kemp continued to be considered along with Reagan as the politician most responsible for the implementation supply-side tax cuts..." Of missing here.
  • "After retiring from congress and serving in the Cabinet..." Capitalization again. Giants2008 (17-14) 01:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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