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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Joe West (umpire)/archive1

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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:Ian Rose 10:13, 8 February 2013 [1].

Joe West (umpire) edit

Nominator(s): AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 00:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel that although it was recently promoted to good article, it qualifies for featured article status. I have no real experience in this area, so I may be wrong, but I've decided it is worth a try. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 00:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I am sorry, but I must oppose the nomination at this time. Although this article certainly meets the good article criteria, as I reviewed it, I do not feel it is yet to be ready for featured article status. Its prose requires further work, but these concerns could be addressed fairly quickly, I did miss some of these previously:

  • Unlink "baseball" per WP:OVERLINK
  • Same goes for "umpire", "golf", "football", and "country music"
  • "re-hired" remove hyphen per MOS:HYPHEN
  • "that is endorsed" use "are"?
  • "helped to negotiate" remove "to", there is no need for use
  • "While in college West hoped to play both baseball and football, but spring football practice interfered with the baseball season" grammar problems throughout the whole sentence there
  • "and he was" name was clarified earlier in the sentence, and the "he" should be removed hence
  • "and umpired high school baseball games on the side" on the side, is that really a requirement?
  • Per MOS:NUM, do not use "th" after numbers
  • "Milwaukee, Wisconsin" should be linked per WP:UNDERLINK
  • "He has worn number 22 throughout his career. He has umpired" doesn't fit right, merge them together perhaps
  • "$500 (USD)" would suggest stating "$US500" rather. In any case, the first mention of the dollar is further above in the 'controversy' section
  • Merge two short paragraphs into larger ones
  • Place portals under the templates for readability
  • "Internet Ventures accessdate = November 24, 2012" there is a problem there
  • It is suggested that one should not "shout" in reference titles, regardless of if the actual title is like that
  • Check your link orders in references; "ESPN" is linked first in reference 5, but not above in reference 3
  • "ESPNBoston.com" change to simply "ESPN"
  • "Joe West (umpire) at the Internet Movie Database" remove the disambiguation from the title, in brackets
  • Throughout the article, I can see a bundle of sentences starting with "he" one after another, specifically the second paragraph of the lead, change it up a little and put some tune into it
  • Ref. 7 is missing the publisher

TBrandley (what's up) 00:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Not all of the above has yet been addressed (as far as I know), but I have couple objections. First, I don't believe "that is endorsed" should be changed to "that are endorsed". I could be wrong, but that didn't seem to be an improvement to me. Also, I don't agree that "and he was" should have the "he" removed, as it doesn't improve the sentence. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 23:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My concern with removing the "he" is that it would no longer be a compound sentence, so the comma would have to go too. I think that sentence needs a comma (or a rewrite). I could just be thinking about this too hard or misunderstanding the grammar rules for commas. EricEnfermero Howdy! 01:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm an experienced reviewer, so let me try to help. In response to your first question, if the phrase was in the Umpiring career section, I agree with you, although the phrasing is cleaner as is, without either. For the second question, I assume this is for the college section (not having sections identified in the review is making it hard for me to find the issues). In this case, I agree with TBrandley that removing "he" would be an improvement in the prose. When a person's name is out in front of a sentence, and there are no grammatical issues, the "he" is a redundancy, as it basically duplicates the name and is not needed in the context of the sentence. Often, knowing when to dump an excess word or three here and there can be the different between success and failure at FAC, and I think it should be done in this instance. If you have any other questions about reviewer comments, please let me know and I'll attempt to clarify them for you. And it shouldn't need another comma or major rewrite, although Eric may be looking at something else. Again, some of the shorter comments are hard to find. Giants2008 (Talk) 01:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe you are right. It's not that big of a deal anyway and I've removed the "he". AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 02:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you guys for your comments on that. EricEnfermero Howdy! 06:58, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • As for the "on the side" bit, I would say that is definitely a good thing to have in the article, as it helps to make the point that West was then focusing on football. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 16:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, does anyone have any idea of what to do about the "th" being used after the numbers? This might be a time to apply WP:IAR. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 17:31, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – I can't recall seeing a baseball umpire's article appear here before in the five or so years I've been here, and my curiosity increased when I found that one of the articles I created is linked to here. In that respect, I'm interested in seeing how the article fares. I didn't get to review all of it, but have looked at a fair amount and have come up with the following thoughts.

  • As a group, World Umpires Association should be linked in the lead. This is especially true since there is no link in the body.
  • Early life: "After high school graduation, West intended...". Wouldn't this be better and make more sense as "After his high school graduation"?
  • Is it Elon College or Elon University? The lead and body are inconsistent.
  • College football career: Could have some kind of link to the North Carolina women's basketball team. Also, in what year were West and Yow inducted into the Elon hall? If the MLB.com page doesn't say (I admittedly haven't checked), perhaps Elon has a page that lists its hall members.
  • Umpiring career: National Labor Relations Board definitely deserves a link here. Overlinking is capable of sinking an FAC nom, but don't be afraid to link something once if it is an important concept or group such as this.
  • "but West and several other umpires were rehired by the MLB in 2002." Two points here. First, it should be just "by MLB", not "by the MLB". This is roughly equivalent to saying "by the Major League Baseball", which is grammatically awkward and not seen in any baseball-related writing that I can recall. There are numerous other instances, from what I can see. Second, does the source say how many other umpires got their jobs back in 2002? I'd swear it did from memory, but could be wrong.
  • As potential baseball jargon, balls and strikes could use a link or two.
  • "and has worked in six League Division Series". Since you put an abbreviated version in the lead, why not use it here?
  • Reception: "a Sports Illustrated survey asked 470 MLB players to identify the best and worst MLB umpires." Two points here. First, since SI is a printed publication, it should be italicized in the lead and reference 8. Second, since there's one MLB for the players, the second MLB is a prose redundancy. It should be obvious to the reader that the MLB players are critiquing MLB umpires. You should be able to remove it and improve the prose without affecting the sentence's meaning.
  • Conversely, The Hardball Times is not a print publication, which means it should not be italicized. Also, I'm not convinced that Bleacher Report is a reliable enough source for this information; it has a lot of blog-type writing from what I've seen, and I'd only consider it reliable if the writer had some credentials. Maybe Hardball Times itself can be cited for its own review?
  • Incidents: Since Fay Vincent's first name was given earlier, it doesn't need to be repeated in full here. The last name alone will be sufficient.
  • Linking bat may be an optional one, but I like to err on the side of linking anything that may come off as jargon.
  • Full names of the Yankees and Red Sox should be given. While I'm here, was there anyone in the press who agreed with West's viewpoint? I'm a Yankees fan and I certainly did. Those games were painful to watch. Giants2008 (Talk) 01:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    In response to your last question, I don't know, but I think that most people were simply looking to take West's quote and run with it. After all, people love it when they think they have validation for their hatred of officials. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 02:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wallace Matthews (ESPN.com) did make that point in an article. He said that West should be rewarded for saying what everyone was thinking. I'm having computer problems and I'm editing from a mobile device for a few days, so adding sourced content is a bear. The article comes up in a search though. EricEnfermero Howdy! 06:58, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe most of the concerns raised by both of the above have now been addressed. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 01:32, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Notable games: Curveball is another item that could use an appropriate link.
    • "West's crew ruled Yankees batter Alex Rodriguez out for interference after Rodriguez appeared to swat the ball out of glove of opposing pitcher Bronson Arroyo on his way to first base." Needs "the" before "glove".
    • Terry Francona can just be referred to by his last name here.
    • "and NYPD officers in riot gear took the field to calm the crowd." Should there be "to" after "took"?
    • Ref 7 has a double period for the publisher.
    • Title of ref 14 shouldn't have any parts in all caps. The first word should be made into sentence case instead. Giants2008 (Talk) 03:20, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • After a second look at the article, I'm still uncertain about it. The main issue I have is the organization of the section on his umpiring career, the most important one in the article. It starts off with some background and his debut, which is fine, but then jumps 20 years ahead, skipping all of the interesting things that happened in games he umpired and saving them for later. For this article, I'd prefer to see a more chronological order, with the reception still as its own unique section. Just as troubling is the text on his most significant games umpired, which takes up only three sentences. That's not a lot for five World Series and numerous other playoff games. It would be interesting to see what positions he umpired during the Series, or at least which games he called balls and strikes for. Some of this could be combined with the interesting incidents mentioned already (Howell, A-Rod) to liven up the prose and expand it. For example, I saw in West's MLB profile that he was the youngest League Championship Series umpire. Something like that should be mentioned in a comprehensive article on him. As the article is now, I'm not sure the structure is at an FA level. Giants2008 (Talk) 00:18, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Along these lines, what about breaking up the umpiring career section into three or four chronological periods (maybe early career, the period leading up to his resignation, and the recent years since his rehire)? Reception could still stand on its own as well. I'm still plagued by connection issues and limited to periodic bursts of editing, so I wanted to discuss before I got the nerve to rearrange a key section of a Good Article. EricEnfermero Howdy! 01:46, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a great improvement over the current structure. Giants2008 (Talk) 03:04, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I gave it a shot. I'm not sure how it flows now. We can just revert if it's terrible or if someone has other ideas. EricEnfermero Howdy! 08:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from TonyTheTiger (talk · contribs)
WP:LEAD
Early life
Umpiring career
  • "appearance in 1976" - why did he debut briefly? Was he filling in for for someone in particular.
    • Yes, umpires in AAA commonly begin in MLB by being called up to fill in for ill, injured or vacationing umpires. Will clarify. EricEnfermero Howdy! 08:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Update: Just looking for a way to source this. It's the standard progression for umpires, but I'm looking for a source that says that's what he did. EricEnfermero Howdy! 05:48, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is it more normal to say "calling balls and strikes" or "umpiring home plate"?
    • Either way. "Umpiring home plate" might be slightly more formal, but to me it's just an issue of introducing some variety into the prose. EricEnfermero Howdy! 08:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • From whom did he acquire the role of "MLB's most senior umpire"?
    • We just mean most senior in the sense of the umpire with the longest tenure. I can clarify. EricEnfermero Howdy! 08:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do we know anything about the magnitude of his royalties?
    • No. I don't think he would be notable as a singer or songwriter without his MLB status. I'm pretty sure that he has to keep his day job. EricEnfermero Howdy! 08:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Update: Nothing on royalties in a pretty extensive search. I thought of incorporating reviews of his albums, but they've been panned by almost everyone except for the review posted on his website. EricEnfermero Howdy! 05:48, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • In truth, a proper summary of secondary sources for music that is broadly panned is a statement that summarizes this sentiment. WP is suppose to summarize secondary sources good or bad.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 20:31, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Does he have patents on the other gear?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:55, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Notable games
  • On occasion you say "on the field". Are records unclear as to which position he was umpiring?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:55, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • In some instances, our current sources don't specify, but that could be tracked down. I just didn't know if it was important to specify the position for each milestone. I can certainly add as many as I can find though. Good questions. Thanks for your help. EricEnfermero Howdy! 08:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Nice to see another Aggie! Good work here.

  • "West's suspension was believed to be the first issued to an umpire in MLB history" -- I see that this was the tense used in the source, but is this no longer believed?
  • "... when Chicago Cubs outfielder Andre Dawson bumped him after a called third strike during a game at Wrigley Field" -- grammar?
  • "tossed fourteen bats onto the field" -- WP:OVERLINK, is bats really necessary?
  • "He worked his 4,000th career game on July 30, 2009 at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; he ejected Washington Nationals manager Jim Riggleman from the contest." -- is 'contest' the same as 'game' here? I'm not familiar with much sports lingo.
  • "Reception" seems like a strange name for that section; this isn't a film or event. Is there any precedent for this? "Legacy"? "Criticism"?

Jujutacular (talk) 20:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of points: Contest is the same as game, yes. Also, it was suggested above that bats be linked. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 20:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The "bat" issue is a very small matter, so I wouldn't hold up support on it, but I fail to see how that could be considered jargon. I know very little about baseball, but I know what a bat is. Jujutacular (talk) 20:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. It appears that West is not the first umpire to be suspended. I have added a sentence to reflect that. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 20:27, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that it wasn't actually the first time an umpire was suspended, is it really relevant to say that one source believed that it was the first at the time? This is especially true given that you simply found examples of two earlier umpire suspensions, not a source that analyzes umpire suspensions in general. Jujutacular (talk) 22:00, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know. I'd like to hear some other folks chime in. It's a good question. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 22:14, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I remember reading an article on the suspension in which West himself actually asserted that he was not the first one suspended. I don't know if that article was ultimately one of our references, or whether we would even mention that aspect of it, but I thought I'd bring it up. EricEnfermero Howdy! 06:51, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I guess my issue is, we have one source that says "it was believed" to be the first umpire suspension. Believed by whom? We have no idea how widespread the belief was. It could have been a random off-the-cuff remark. It doesn't seem fitting for inclusion. Jujutacular (talk) 22:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments, Jujutacular - and gig 'em. In regard to the Reception section and precedent in general, we're a pretty small and new task force. This is the first umpire article promoted to GA via the work of the task force. We've made significant contributions to dozens of umpire articles, but each is still structured differently. In other words, there may not be a consistent precedent to follow. We had Controversy as the title at one point, but it didn't seem quite right for a BLP. I like Legacy and have used that one in other articles, but I think it's a better choice for a retired or deceased subject. I'm not sure what the answer is. EricEnfermero Howdy! 06:51, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I did find "Legacy" on one other BLP (Janet Jackson), but that seems more fitting there on such a notable figure. Striking that comment. Jujutacular (talk) 22:25, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the mention of possibly being the first umpire suspended. EricEnfermero Howdy! 10:13, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Procedural comment - nominator appears to have retired. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:58, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, tks Nikki -- even if it wasn't the case, a month without anything approaching consensus is long enough, so I'll be archiving this shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:56, 8 February 2013 (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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