Latest comment: 4 years ago28 comments5 people in discussion
Perhaps we could use the talk page as the ghetto subsection ... for ad homonym hominem sniping suggested by David Eppstein[1]. A brilliant idea even if I do say so myself. Perhaps someone could inaugurate it by moving the collapse section here. EEng 18:27, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Obviously I will be taking no part in this review given the poisonous and insulting atmosphere created by certain individuals, and one in particular, except to say this. It seems very clear to me that EEng is not complaining about the accuracy of this article but rather its citation density. When this was promoted an FA, the requirement for one citation per sentence - which is effectively what it has become - didn't exist. But everything here is easily verifiable by anyone who is not merely trying to stir a pot, and I could point to where additional citations can very easily be found. But I won't, as I am completely indifferent to the fate of this bastardised version of the Moors murders. EricCorbett 17:24, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps we can make a separate ghetto subsection of this review for ad hominem sniping so that the rest of us can concentrate on the article content? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:05, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Comment. On the article talk page and in the history of the article (but repeatedly removed with the claimed justification that tagging featured articles is inappropriate) is a listing of some 20 claimed sourcing errors in the article. I think that a FAR provides the perfect opportunity to discuss these claimed errors, one by one, and preferably fix them all (or reach a consensus on each of them individually that no fix is needed) in order to maintain FA status. On the other hand, I am seriously underwhelmed by the tone of the FAR nomination, which appears to take the point of view that the recent attempts to clean up overly verbose language and badly sourced claims are "degradation" and pre-judges that the status quo ante is optimal. We should judge this impartially and with fresh eyes, rather than taking such predetermined positions. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:18, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Nice (slight) misrepresentation of my position, that fails to take into account poor use of the tags (many of which do not fail) and an attempt to "clean up overly verbose language" that ends up misrepresenting the source and the situation. Still, good to see such impartiality from fresh eyes. - SchroCat (talk) 20:29, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Again, it is inappropriate to make blanket judgements like "many of which do not fail" without any evidence on the talk page or elsewhere that anyone other than the tagger has actually seriously and individually considered more than one or two of them. This FAR provides an opportunity to perform that serious and individual consideration of these claimed problems. It is inappropriate to use FAR, as you attempt to be doing, to make blanket judgements without evidence in order to advance one side of the dispute into a new forum. If you're going to set up an FAR, set up an actual review. If, as you claim, the article was already in FA state before the recent changes, there should be nothing to be afraid of. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:38, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
"without any evidence on the talk page": go through the talk page history from here to here. Most of my edits there (and they are the majority of them in that spell), were removing the tags that passed verification. (I.e., they shouldn't have been posted the first place). That's was just going to be the beginning.
"an opportunity to perform that serious and individual consideration of these claimed problems": see above. Each of them were being dealt with individually. I swapped out one source for something that didn't fail, and removed a paragraph added by an IP. I had hoped to continue, but after the last diff shown above, EEng decided to delete the text and added it to the article.
"If you're going to set up an FAR, set up an actual review": what on earth do you think this is? Sure, I could re-hash the entire nonsense at the talk page, but that's such a clusterfuck, I'm not going to begin trying to rehash the lot of it here.
"If, as you claim, the article was already in FA state before the recent changes, there should be nothing to be afraid of". 1. I've not made any claim of the sort (and don't forget, I'm the person that opened the review for it to be discussed); 2. Why on earth would I be afraid? What of? I was trying to sort out some tags that had been placed, and working in as neutral a manner as possible, and all of a sudden I'm the one that should be afraid? I really wish I'd not bothered with the bloody thing at all: it's been nothing to do with me for my entire Wiki 'career', and now I'm getting grief for trying to sort out some tags? FFS... - SchroCat (talk) 21:16, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
This is pretty sad. Your evidence for many of which do not fail is you edits ... removing the tags that passed verification. (i.e., they shouldn't have been posted the first place) Well let's see. Before you started there were 20 {failed verification}s in that section; when you were done there were 12. So (one might think) that sloppy EEng posted 8 {failed verification}s that shouldn't have been posted the first place. But think again:
In one case you resolved 1 {fails verification} by correcting the text, and 2 others by simply removing the unverified text [3]
In a second case you resolved 1 {fv} by replacing the inadequate source with an approriate source [4]
In a third case you removed the {fv}, supplying a date in your edit summary which supports the text, but still the source doesn't give that date; therefore verification still fails [5]
That's a total of 5. In other words, of the 8 {failed verification}s you removed, at least 5 certainly don't qualify as shouldn't have been posted the first place. That leaves 3, and for the sake of argument let's say all of those indeed shouldn't have been posted the first place. That's 3 out of 20 = 15%. That hardly supports your many of which do not fail claim. Flipping back and forth through all these books is a dizzying process, and I'm looking for a negative; 15% of the time the source support was there but I missed it. So sue me. Now what about the other 85%? EEng 01:44, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
I disagree with your some of your points above, but the best place to talk about any of them would have been, well, on the TALK page. You didn't bother, but cleared it all out without discussion, then re-added some, without bothering to discuss. As I've made clear on the talk page and elsewhere, I was still working through the others (the ones I could get hold of some information), so your talk of percertages is pointless: it was a work in progress, but your bull-in-a-china-shop approach stopped all that, and stopped me seeing if there were further errors in the tagging or, where appropriate, where alternative sources should have been used instead (and yes, I had started doing that, and posted my intent in the very edit before you decided to stop the party pooping. It was pointy and disruptive, but this comes as no great surprise. You can talk about "pretty sad" if you really want, but when another editor is helping clear up tags, don't fuck them off even more than you manage to normally do. - SchroCat (talk) 08:08, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
What are you talking about? I moved the tagged section into the live article (see in the very diff you give above, the words TEXT RETURNED TO LIVE ARTICLE), where all the other tagged sections were, and you could have continued resolving tags one by one there. The percentages are meaningful: you're claiming that many... do not fail... shouldn't have been posted the first place, when in fact it's at most 15%. EEng 12:55, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
David Eppstein, opening this nomination was my suggestion, here, I spoke to Casliber about it here and when I woke this morning the nom had been opened. Please direct any ire at me, and honestly this situation has become so polarized for reasons I don't understand (I'm not involved, haven't edited the article, looked at the talk page and made a bold suggestion) that I didn't really want to get sucked into it. But if people want I can rewrite the nom statement & will make the necessary notifications - as soon as I have time. Victoria (tk) 20:45, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
off topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Thanks David Eppstein that's helpful and easier to parse. I've not had time to look closely but will tomorrow. EEng can you provide bibliographic info for the books you have, i.e date of publication, publisher, place of publication and ISBN so as to determine whether the same editions were used. Thanks. Victoria (tk) 03:24, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Victoriaearle, I know you're trying to be careful but that's just a bit too patronizing; I'm a graduate of [name of stunningly prestigious institution of higher learning redacted] so you're just going to have to take my word for it that I know how to tell I've got the right edition. I've got Birch, Carmichael, Cowley, Gibson, Lee, Ritchie, Staff, Topping, Williams (Random House, 1967), Potter. I can get Keightley on ILL but even at [stunningly prestigious institution] libraries are feeling the pinch so I'm gonna wait on that. I also have access to essentially any serial. EEng 04:49, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
It's not patronizing to confirm to everyone which edition you're using, so that if other have access to the works they can check that they are looking at the right edition too, or if there is additional information in a subsequent edition that would be better. - SchroCat (talk) 08:10, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
They're the editions in the article's bibliography, obviously, otherwise all the page numbers I listed would be meaningless. Asking "Are those the editions in the bibliography?" would be fine; asking me to list dates, publisher, place of publication, and ISBN, like I'm a schoolboy, is a bit much. (I'm not mad at you, Victoriaearle, not even annoyed, but I just wasn't in the mood.) BTW, David Eppstein, I hope you won't mind but I'm changing Disputed text to Unverified text, because I don't doubt that 90% of this stuff can be verified; but as of now it's not verified. I also numbered them for reference. EEng 12:53, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
I was looking for Staff in my library catalog and it doesn't exist, zero, nada, nothing. So I have to put in an ILL request & I realized there are multiple editions. I don't know where you live but I'm in the US. Presumably the edition listed in the bibliography is the UK edition but I'd most likely only be able to find a US edition. Then I realized WorldCat lists multiple editions but not the 2007 one cited in the article, so I went to g-books and found these editions. To fill in an ILL form I need pub date, location, publisher & ISBN & I was too lazy to write out this big long explanation. Anyway, now you know. Thanks for answering because I almost certainly would have ended up with the 2013 edition which is 100 pages longer than the 2007 one and the internet tells that "in this new edition of his bestselling book he is able to present, for the first time, compelling new evidence about the Moors murderers' system for hiding their victims' bodies", which would have really screwed things up. Will see if I can locate a 2007 edition. Victoria (tk) 13:22, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
You have to be very careful with worldcat -- you have to search multiple ways to be sure (?) of finding everything. (The Find all editions link is your friend but even then, if you're not finding what you think should be there, or you want to raise your confidence that you're seeing everything, you should try some variations on the search terms. In general it's a good idea to use the shortest query that doesn't flood you with false hits.) So, for example, the 2007 edition actually is in there [6].But I still don't understand: other than establishing that this certainly doesn't qualify as an FA anymore (never did, actually, since these problems have always been there -- and the list above is for only about 1/2 the article), what is the function of this exercise? EEng 14:51, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
I was hoping it could be: impersonally discuss and correct all the problems to bring it back up to FA status. So. while I'm here: I think there's a much bigger problem. I'll highlight it below with an outdented bullet so that it isn't buried in the discussion: — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Eppstein (talk • contribs) [Broken off into separate subthread, "Concern about lead"]
Obviously I will be taking no part in this review given the poisonous and insulting atmosphere created by certain individuals, and one in particular, except to say this. It seems very clear to me that EEng is not complaining about the accuracy of this article but rather its citation density. When this was promoted an FA, the requirement for one citation per sentence - which is effectively what it has become - didn't exist. But everything here is easily verifiable by anyone who is not merely trying to stir a pot, and I could point to where additional citations can very easily be found. But I won't, as I am completely indifferent to the fate of this bastardised version of the Moors murders. EricCorbett 19:29, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
This has nothing to do with citation density or one citation per sentence but rather WP:V, which has always been policy. There can be just one cite for a whole section, if it supports all the material there. Instead, above is a list of 55 points at which the source doesn't support the text (and that's after a review of only half of the article, and doesn't include the 5 or so instances which have been fixed and removed from the list), most of which seem to have been there since you nominated the article for FA. I have little doubt that 90% of that material is correct and verifiable; but that leaves the 10% that isn't and needs to be removed, and there's no way to know which is which without the citations. If it's all so easily verifiable you should have done it ten years ago before nominating it for FA; now others are going to have to do it, and you can either help or get out of the way. Articles often have problems like this, but they're not supposed to be FAs, and this constant heaping of abuse on those now doing what you should have done is transparently defensive. EEng 12:59, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
See the talk page for responses to this off-topic comment which EC has insisted in re-incorporating into the review process despite his simultaneous insistence that he will not be participating in the review process. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:38, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
It is hardly "off topic" for the accused to state why he will not be defending himself. EricCorbett 19:42, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
the accused – The first reference to you anywhere on this page is your own post above. EEng 12:59, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
It is off-topic, because this review is about the article. It is not about you. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:35, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
You have your opinion, I have mine. So why not get back to the evisceration and leave me alone? EricCorbett 22:39, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
You keep injecting yourself here with the stated intent of not assisting but only talking about yourself.
I propose that someone neutral collapse everything from Obviously I will not be participating (above) to here, or move it to the Talk page. EEng 12:59, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
And I propose that you extract your head from your arse and get on with all your "improvements". EricCorbett 20:51, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
