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 delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 3:32, 1 October 2022 (UTC) [1].

Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy[edit]

Notified: nominator has retired from Wikipedia. Talk page notice 2021-11-16
Nutez, please notify anyways, and also other active editors and potentially interested WikiProjects. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:35, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nutez notifications have still not been done. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:44, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Belated notifications on 2021-12-29; please hold in FAR for at least two weeks from this date. Fritzpoll, WP:BIO, WP California, WP Death, WP Elections, WP Politics, WP US, WP Crime SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:51, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Review section[edit]

I am nominating this featured article for review because I think it has prose and style issues. There are tags for ((colloquialism)) in the text, and many paragraphs have no citation whatsoever. The article does not reflect the most recent discourse surrounding the assassination. It does for instance not relay his son, RFK jr.'s thoughts on the murder, or the debate around Sirhan Sirhan's tentative parole by Gov. Newsom.[2] Nutez (talk) 23:30, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a goodly number of reference formatting problems, with one source being simply "California State Archives" and a number using "Archived copy" as the title. Hog Farm Talk 00:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Most of those images are credited to other sources - you would need to track those down in order to determine status. Some have a copyright notice in the caption. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:32, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Kavyansh.Singh made significant edits to the article on March 15. Is work continuing? Z1720 (talk) 20:59, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Following on this and this, a thorough and independent source-to-text integrity check will be needed if this article heads towards Keep territory, in addition to a rigorous copyedit. That said, I don't see it heading for Keep territory. Here is the Background in the version that passed FAC; the current version is bloated, veering off-topic, and over-quoting. The prose is not at FA level: sample "In 1964, polls showed that various Democrats wanted Kennedy to be Johnson's running mate in the presidential election." Similar bloat and prose issues are found in the next section. Overquoting here, and this is not FA-level prose. Unless more editors plan to step in here to do address the original FAR concerns without bloat and marginal prose, I think we should be in Move to FARC territory, to keep this on target. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @SandyGeorgia. I'll again assume good faith on your comment that it was meant to be constructive criticism. But a few fundamental points:
  • The sources used in the article with associated page numbers are mostly from the FA version a decade ago (promoted by you). I don't know how the two FACs you link are important here to demand a "thorough and independent source-to-text integrity check". I have no objections at all with the check being conducted, but what significance does that example of FACs of 2021/22 have on a 2008 promoted article?
  • As for the prose, I very much appreciated anyone copyediting the prose. But for the off-topic background section, I disagree. That section now is not off-topic. Everything in the first sub-section is important:
    Visit to Palestine - important as Sirhan Sirhan was from Palestine and that visit made impact on Kennedy's views on Israel (later mentioned in the article)
    JFK's election and RFK as Attorney general, cuban missile crisis - important as to specify what led to RFK becoming, from President's brother to national leader and an influential figure which ultimately led to his presidential campaign.
    JFK assassination - important to mention as to specify, so called, "Kennedy curse"
    Johnson and RFK senatorial campaign - important as (1) to specify RFK's relations with LBJ (2) Kennedy mentioned his views on Israel in a speech in senatorial campaign.
    Vietnam War - important to specify why a Democrat would run against a Democrat president in primaries.
  • As for the second sub section, it specifies events that lead to RFK becoming the front runner and ultimately being assassinated. Please let me know what else is "veering off-topic", because in few political articles as this, background is very important. Suggesting to see Cross of Gold speech#Background.
  • I will still work on the article, but if others feel my work (from this version to this version) is not leading the article towards the "Keep" territory, feel free to move this to FARC.
– Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 04:50, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The prose is not at FA level, and the article will need a copyedit by a fresh set of eyes. The relevance of two recent FACs, in similar territory (politicians)--supported in spite of copyedit and source-to-text issues--is that the person(s) undertaking a copyedit are advised that the task at hand is more than just prose smoothing; it is also assuring that the text is supported by the sources. It is frustrating, and not a good use of time and resources, for a copyeditor to smooth prose only to find out later the prose was unsupported by sources.
On the other hand, who promoted the article over a decade ago, and what was in it then, is unrelated to the purpose of this FAR. Standards have changed, sources evolve, and beyond even that, a given FAC could have received faulty or incomplete review, or could just be a bad promotion. To wit, you offer as a counterexample an article (Cross of Gold speech) promoted by Raul (five days after I resigned, unclear why he was promoting then, as that was rare) on three supports, one of which was from an editor who edited only briefly and never before or after reviewed any other FAC. Do you consider that a strong FAC? WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a valid argument in content review. Me promoting the article in 2008 has no relevance to what we accept and expect in FAs today.
All of this considered, I will not likely find myself entering a Keep declaration on this article unless independent collaborators work on the prose and analyze the source-to-text integrity. Again, not a criticism: my own writing is awful, so I know I always need collaborators to review it. I am suggesting the same applies here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:38, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia: Thanks! I very much appreciate the feedback, and yes, I'll appreciate other editors collaborating, copy-editing, and spot-checking sources (preferable before ce). The only thing I still disagree is about the length of background section. I did offer a counterexample, not with intention of OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but just to show the importance of occasionally long background section. I also provided reason why each thing in that section is important, for which I received no feedback. Just to specify, I had no intentions whatsoever to imply that your promotion was wrong. I humbly apologize if it was received that way. It was just an interesting fact I found (how you found out that Cross of Gold speech support). I still believe that the article is salvageable, and I will still continue to work. If the improvements (from this version to this version), covering sections till "Sirhan Sirhan" are not leading the article towards the "Keep" territory, be bold and help fix the issues. Because I don't think moving this to FARC would, in any way, help the article. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:46, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No apology is needed; of course I have some bad promotions (no comment whether this one is, as I haven't even looked closely enough to say). On the issue of whether there is too much background, removing text is easier than adding text, so I'll hold off on that until sourcing and prose is examined. Since you seem aware of the work still needed here, I will debold my declaration to move to FARC, and check in later. But when serious copyediting is needed, I'm not the best person to do that work; I am always willing to do some copyediting, but I recognize my own prose limitations. Perhaps when Z1720 is back up to speed, they will look in here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:02, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Back to the article, I'll appreciate feedback on the following issues:

Thanks! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:46, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My feedback:
  1. The "Assassin's gun" section is an example of the kind of off-topic bloat I mentioned above. There are some relevant bits (illegal for alien to own gun so bought it clandestinely), but there is an extreme amount of unnecessary background detail, like: "The Iver Johnson .22 caliber revolver that Sirhan used to shoot Kennedy was initially owned by Albert Leslie Hertz, a resident of Alhambra, California. Hertz initially bought the gun to protect his business during the 1965 Watts riots, but never used it and kept it in its wrapping paper and box. His wife decided the gun was too dangerous and gave it to her daughter, Dana Westlake. Westlake did not use it and gave the gun to her next-door neighbor, George Erhard. Erhard later sold the gun to Sirhan's brother, Munir Bishara Sirhan, known as "Joe", who George knew was working at Nash's department store at the corner of Arroyo and Colorado in Pasadena. At the time, Erhard was looking to seek more money from the gun sale to finance some work on his car." Holy moly, it goes on and on. It reads like a student editor was getting credit by the number of words added. I agree with you that much of it can be removed, but there are some relevant bits.
    Checking further, the entire section was added by one editor, and the "who Wrote That" tool indicates it has been relatively untouched in the three years since (including the whopping 11-sentence quote). In other words, no FA-level eyes were watching this article. The upshot seems to be to debunk conspiracy theories; that can be done without the blow-by-blow detail. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:26, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I am indifferent on that one; someone may find it relevant.
  3. On those contemporary sources, I believe they are typically OK unless (and this is the key) more recent scholarly sources cover the material better or differently. This is where knowledge of all sources comes in to play (survey of the relevant literature). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:12, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Sandy, I have an internet archive account (if I can remember the password). I'm willing to spot-check things in a few days, but I'm out of town for the weekend. Hog Farm Talk 13:53, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah ha ... I also have an internet archive account, so we can split the work (if/as I find time, with Rowling heating up); how about if you start at the top of the book sources, I start at the bottom, and we'll see where we meet ? I'll do mine on the talk page here. But many of the books are not available at archive.org ... in a case like this, that is concerning. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:44, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Few are available at Google books and have preview. Rest journals can be accessed through WP:TWL. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 15:46, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so as of April 25, 2022, I feel that as long as content and source reliability is concerned, I have tried to fix most of the issues. It has also been updated with the most recent information. There may still be few prose issues and old verifiability issues. At this stage, I'd appreciate others commenting on the state of the article and what could be done to improve it. For comparison:

Pinging everyone associated with this FAR: @Nutez, Nikkimaria, SandyGeorgia, Hog Farm, Sdkb, Buidhe, and Z1720: – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:46, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The lead is a long way from featured-quality prose and will need a lot of work; I haven't read beyond that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:03, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the FA version lead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:05, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. A set of comments outlining issues from the lead with the changes you suggest would be much more helpful for me to improve the lead. And I think this is within the radar of the FAR process. Best regards, Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 20:53, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've done some source-text integrity checks on talk; I have a couple queries (one of which is pretty minor). Hog Farm Talk 04:13, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Those minor issues have been resolved. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 09:05, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Z1720: Would you kindly be willing to give the article a review and let me know what issues to work on? It appears that this FAR has stalled from last 45 days or so. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 11:59, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Summoned here by the above ping: I did a copy edit of the article. Here's some notes:
Those are my thoughts. Source checks, spot checks and image copyright checks were not conducted. Please let me know if you have any questions. Z1720 (talk) 00:08, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Z1720: Thanks for taking a look. I have tried to address the concerns. How does it look now? – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 13:10, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Kavyansh.Singh: Additional comments below:

HF

All of the sources look okay enough. Democracy Now! isn't great for something adjacent to the Arab/Israeli conflict but what it's citing is acceptable.

I checked most of the Witcover refs and one of the news sources, my only real concern is if the pagination issues are more extensive than the two noted above and one I already fixed from Witcover. Hog Farm Talk 23:04, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I guess to make myself clearer, I don't intend to support keeping until I'm confident that the pagination errors have been cleaned up throughout the whole article, and would like an assurance that this has been thoroughly looked into before continuing reviewing. Hog Farm Talk 02:15, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. I intend to check the pagination for all the sourced. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 19:35, 14 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since it looks like the book sourcing issues are addressed, I'll move onto the journal articles and other refs I can access.

@WP:FAR coordinators: - I haven't checked anything besides the citations noted above, and while most are okay, I'm rather uncomfortable with the citation to Clarke 1981, as the source is vague to where in Clarke's ~25 pages this is found, and what I read in Clarke on pp. 99 and 101 would seem to contradict our article's statements. I'm also concerned by the misquoting and probable misattribution of a statement from Newsweek 1968. Kavyansh, I keep finding a few source-text issues every time I look at this, and as it's still my busy season with work, I don't think I can commit to checking every citation I can get ahold of. My inclination at this point is to delist so that FAR can remain more focused and then have this worked up outside of the FA-sphere and then eventually resubmitted to FAC once the source-text issues can be verified to be cleared. Hog Farm Talk 01:53, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Scholarly articles

Magazines

News sources

Web sources

With that, all sources, top to bottom, have been verified and the few issues found (mostly minor, one major) have all been fixed. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 13:11, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Close without FARC - I've been through a significant number of references since the last redoing by Kavyansh, and I didn't note any issues. The fact that those issues existed that late into the FAR are quite concerning, but they seem to have been addressed, given the spot checks I just did. Hog Farm Talk 02:09, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FAR break

I looked at one section only: Legacy. First, I found the section starting with a centered quote (oddly unencyclopedic, highlighting a statement by one worker on the scene). The first sentence in that paragraph isn't punctuated correctly:

More problematic is the paragraph structure. What is the third paragraph about, and why does it start out about a movie, and then circle back to the topics in the second paragraph? What does "attempted to recreate the scene of the assassination through a fictional account" even mean? I suspect if I were to get drug in to this FAR, I'd continue to find more of same, so ... I won't. Still at Move. To. FARC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:06, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Then move to farc, I guess. I'm not sure how this one is ever going to get resolved. Hog Farm Talk 01:21, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Someone has to take on an overhaul, not just of sourcing, but also of writing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:32, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What did you find unencyclopedic? The direct quotation, or it being center aligned? – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 12:29, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another random sample: "In August 2021, two of Kennedy's children, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Harriman Kennedy, supported Sirhan's parole, while many others disagreed.[108] The same month, the California state parole panel recommended Sirhan's parole.[109] Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, denied the parole in January 2022, asserting in an opinion piece for Los Angeles Times that "Sirhan has not developed the accountability and insight required to support his safe release into the community."

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another sample: "Kennedy's assassination was one of the four major assassinations in the 1960s, the other three include the assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963), the assassination of Malcolm X (1965), and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)."

Plain vanilla grammatical issues: "During a re-examination of the case in 1975, experts examination of the possibility of a second gun having been used, and they concluded that there was little or no evidence to support this hypothesis.[117]" SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:06, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 12:29, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the flow in the Second gunman section.

Second gunman --> introduce Prusynski recording --> re-introduce the Prusynski recording --> re-introduce second gunman theory! This whole thing needs disentangling. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:18, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What can be done with this?

First, it appears that "some scholar" = Dershowitz. Second, the way the sentence is put together leaves the idea that some don't, which begs the question, then what was? Fixing this requires reading the source and coming up with a sentence that makes sense of what the source says, which this sentence does not.

What we can do is either remove the scholar part, and rephrase it as 'The assassination is viewed as one of the first major incidents...', but it would be a bit less accurate. What would you suggest? – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 12:29, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
These samples are only from glancing at a few sections of the article. This is a short article whose prose should shine; the prose is nowhere near FA level, and I don't believe this star can be saved unless a new editor steps in to rewrite. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:36, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot, User:SandyGeorgia, for the findings! Comments like this are much more helpful than just stating that the article is not near FA standard. Please understand that I won't be able to fix the issues if I don't know what the issue is! I would appreciate if you could give the article another detailed read and list out all the issues you find with the article, be it prose, structure, anything. I'll try to fix the issues. I would further request that when you list an issue, also suggest what you think would be better phrasing or would be a better way to address the issue. We may have our differences at few places, but our motive is same: to improve the article. And as always, I am still willing to work on the article! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 12:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fixing the issues is above my prose ability level, and I don't really have the time or energy for that type of rewrite anyway, so I'm going to have to bow out of working on this further unless I'm specifically needed to review something with this. Hog Farm Talk 15:10, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nutez are you following your nomination here? Feedback would be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:33, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No. Nutez (talk) 11:48, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section[edit]

Prose/style seem to be the remaining sticking points. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:51, 17 September 2022 (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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