Talk:Colorado Coalfield War/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Eddie891 (talk · contribs) 00:57, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I'll take this one on in the days to come. Please ping me if I lose track of the review. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 00:57, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Preliminary comments

• Sources should be formatted in citation templates, not bare URLs, as is the case in cite #9.
• Please take care of various CS1 maintenance tags (cite #49) and missing parameters (cite #31)
• If you cite an author (like Martelle) whose book is in the 'further reading section', the section should have a different name
• Pbritti this applies to all sources, not just ones I specifically mentioned. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 14:45, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Prose comments

• clarify in the lede where it took place, more specifically than just 'Colorado', if possible.
• It climaxed at the Ludlow Colony, which ended as a massacre when the Colorado National Guard attacked a tent city occupied by about 1,200 striking coal miners and their families this sentence doesn't flow very well
• You never mention how the strike ended in the lede
• really the lede needs to be expanded to at least two paragraphs that tell the full story of the strike
• began when the United Mine Workers of America organized southern Coloradan coal field workers when? what day?
• and state regulations on mining and for an eight-hour work day was the eight hour workday part of the federal or state regulations?
• The legal and political systems of the area were controlled by the mine owners, so using established government was not an option for the miners. Why wasn't it? Were the mine owners more powerful than the government? Otherwise, there are many examples of the government overriding powerful private interests.
• the strike was in full swing what does 'full swing' mean? Had it peaked? How many people were striking? Was anyone not? How long had striking been going on? Why wouldn't the company meet their demands? How did the company respond to the strikers besides evicting them?
• All of a sudden the company is mentioned to have been sold to Rockefeller! wouldn't it make more sense to put that before the reaction of strikers to their treatment?
• clarify what 'buying political figures' means and what relevance it has to anything.
• When was Bowers hired?
• Be somewhat more specific as to how, exactly, Bower's approach led to this happening, and what exactly was to the detriment of the workers
• Eight tent colonies were supposed to have been constructed constructed by who?
• informed soon after the strike began that between 40 how soon after?
• including Karl Linderfelt why does that matter? add a mention of his importance.
• The whole article generally reads a little disjointedly and seems to lose focus. For example The Baldwin-Felts and CF&I had an armored car nicknamed the "Death Special" which was equipped with a machine gun, as well as eight machine guns purchased from the Coal Operators' Association of West Virginia by CF&I. In all, 12 machine guns reached the strike zone by the end of the conflict. Death Special was constructed at a CF&I shop in Pueblo and passed on to the militia later in the conflict. Detectives were accused of firing randomly into and above the miners' colonies in the months preceding the Ludlow Massacre, including from the armored car.

It raises several questions:

1. where did the other three machine guns come from?
2. why does it matter that they were purchased from the Coal Operators Association?
3. why does it matter where Death Special was constructed?
4. why mention there that "detectives were accused of firing randomly..." and how does it fit into the rest of the paragraph?

• Fatalities during the strike were generally under-reported, as Las Animas County coroner's office reports more bodies related to the strike than appear in contemporary news reports. The office recorded 232 violent deaths from the beginning of 1910 to March 1913 with only 30 deaths resulting in a trial, which a later congressional committee suggested a pattern of disinterest in recording fatalities associated with the mining companies. chronologically this doesn't really fit in here?
• for me these problems with the prose continue throughout the article, Pbritti; and I'd recommend you do a thorough copy edit or request one at WP:GOCE/REQ/ You also need to address my concerns with the reliability of the sources and formatting before I can continue with the review. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 15:14, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
• Much of the prose actually looks quite good. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 02:28, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• All together, at least 18 of the union side had been killed. are there any casualties on the other side? Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 02:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• Pbritti I'd greatly appreciate if you could respond on this page and let me know the state of responding to my comments... I'll finish up the prose comments right now Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:05, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Eddie891 Hey! I've been going through your prose comments as methodically as I can and for the most part have rectified any issues raised as they appeared on this page. I believe that I have done most of what you have asked, though some others certainly appear to have picked up the slack elsewhere. Thank you for your work thus far! ~ Pbritti (talk) 16:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

  Pbritti, OK, sounds great! I'll try to read through the article again tomorrow and conduct another source spot check, and then hopefully pass. Sorry this has dragged on for so long, I really haven't been the reviewer I should be and the reviewer you deserve and for that, I apologize. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 22:53, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  Eddie891 No need to apologize–the extended time of this process has actually resulted in me learning much more about Wikipedia and inspiring me to greater interest. While a pass would be grand, I now know the process and what to look for when creating new pages. Thanks! ~ Pbritti (talk) 02:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

• The news of the massacre would reach the other tent colonies, including the large group of strikers in Walsenburg. in my experience, 'would' is generally not used in Wikipedia-space, it is somewhat deprecated in favor of a specific date (i.e. "the news of the massacre reached the other tent colonies on X MONTH YEAR..." or "the news of the massacre soon reached...")
• Was it the "10-Day War" or the "Ten Days War"? standardize between the two
• strikers at the loss of the mine's superintendent please rephrase this to clarify meaning a little more
• rightly fearing the strikers how do we know he was right? and there's no indication what he did after rightly fearing in the same sentence
• , only to relent after a 21-hour siege I think chronologically this is out of place...
• they observed the truce along what had become who's 'they'?
• all National Guardsmen to head for the strike zone all national guardsmen?! in the world?
• Seventy-six soldiers of Troop C out of how many? 76 out of 500 is comparatively small vs 76 out of 100
• For the most seems like an incomplete sentence
• is there a map we could put in the article to help readers keep the mines straight?
• refused President Wilson's offer of mediation, conditioned upon collective bargaining, was the offer or the refusal contingent on collective bargaining? clarify/
• would be a risky move exactly why would it be so risky?
• It has been suggested that this policy of under-reporting deaths by who?
• fighters died died or were killed?
• most quotes throughout the article need to be attributed (for example: official "Call to Arms" who said this and why is it in quotes?)
• Pro-union publications lamented such as? Which publications? when?
• multiple academic mediums such as?

second check

• I've copyedited, but please feel free to disagree with me wherever you feel appropriate
• That day, the strike peaked with up to 20,000 miners and their families being evicted from company housing that were planned to be moved into union supplied tents could you rephrase this sentence, please.
• On 17 December, the National Guard, under orders from Gov. Ammons from 1 December, allowed for the first strikebreakers to enter the strike zone following a brief moratorium on any workers other than those already present in Southern Colorado working. I thought there were strikebreakers as early as November?

sourcing comments

• What makes http://www.sangres.com/history/coalfieldwar01.htm#.Xn9SVXVKiV4 a reliable source?
• what makes http://www.folkarchive.de/werecomi.html#frank a reliable source

source spotcheck

• 42 AGF on book page
• 39 AGF on book page
• 80 AGF on book pages
• 90 the date in the article is wrong, should be 27 April 1914. The book doesn't source that they are memorialized in the Ludlow monument, and the book says it was an explosion, mentioning nothing about fire
• 19 good
• 88 please cite specific pages in the 24 page document, I fail to see it sourcing Pro-union publications would lament the failure to secure immediate significant structural change in the relationship between miners and the CF&I in addition to sharply criticizing the Guard and militia's response and actions at Ludlow.
• 24 similarly, citing a 68 page document, you need specific page numbers, once they are in, I will re-check this source
• 45 AGF on book pages
• 68 AGF on book pages
• 75 good
  • This isn't a the most promising spot check, once the issues are addressed, I will have to conduct another before I can be reasonably confident sourcing is reliable.
• 2: doesn't even mention "Victor-American Fuel Company
• 32: doesn't source "Accounts of who fired the first shot differ, but fighting raged all day. Families of the strikers sought shelter in cellars beneath their tents."
• 6: good
• 42: good
• 40: good

plagiarism

N/A (not an issue)

Other stuff

photos are fine

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Just pinging

I apologize for my impatience, but just wish to see this article off before I am unable to help. Thanks for your help, Eddie891. ~ Pbritti (talk) 02:49, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

final comments

Pbritti first of all, I want to thank you for all the hard work you've put into this article. It looks much better then it did when you started working on it, and at the end of the day, that's really what matters. I'm going to place this review on hold so you have time to go through and clean up the sourcing and address my final comments. Thank you for all your work and all your patience. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:51, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Eddie891. Hopefully the sourcing concerns can be rectified this weekend. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:07, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Pbritti, Any update? Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:50, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Eddie891–Addressed some of the citing issues you have raised in the article. I removed the Sangres source and replaced it with an academic source. I supplemented the .de source for Hayes's song with an academic source, though the material this academic source cites is no longer available online. I also attempted to add further citations to the Ludlow section upon your suggestion, as it is apparent in the Ludlow Massacre page that there is a need to heavily cite every aspect of the engagement lest controversy erupt. I hope that this is ample to get the article to the GA level and appreciate your patience during, particularly during this rather trying time. ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:13, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Final spot check

• There is a citation needed tag that needs to be resolved

61 sources; analyzing every fifth

• 1 (used MUSE free book). Ideally, there'd be specific page numbers, but given that it's only a 20 page range (equivelant to a journal article), I'm willing to let this slide.

• 1a : cited on several pages, none of which are in the given range
• 1b : found on page 148
• 1c : Y
• 1d : Y (circular entitled "call to arms")

In summary, Y, all the information is sourced, but not all under the page range given

• (5 inaccessible) 4

• 4a Y
• 4b Y
• 4c Y
• 4d Y
• 4e Y

In summary, this source is very well used

• 10 Y source says "bloodiest labor dispute in American history." and estimates 150-200 severe injuries
• 15 Y
• 20

• 20a Y needs page number; a google page search suggests p. 127, yet doesn't mention the demand unheeded
• 20b N needs page number, cannot find the source

• 25 N needs |journal= param filled out, appears to be a book, needs pg numbers
• 30 ? what report is this? I cannot find it
• 35

• 35a Y source says that the strikers were at danger of suffocation, not that they were suffocated
• 35b Y I can only find the deaths of two mine workers supported... perhaps I'm missing something

• 40 Y
• 45 N I'm concerned that this is not a reliable source. Try instead this book
• (50 inaccessible) 49 Y
• 55 N gives a 404 error
• 60 Y

Again, this spot check is not entirely promising. What I need you to do is not only resolve these issues, but also do the same check with the other 80% of sources, so that it can pass another spot check (which I'm going to need to do if I'm going to pass). If that's something you can't or are unwilling to do, let me know and I will close the review as unsuccessful and reassess the class of this article as B. It is very well done, and I'm sure all the information is correct, but I fear the sources have just become very convoluted. Understand that at the end of the day, a title like GA or FA is just a title, and what matters to the readers is that the article provides information they want, and it's abundantly clear this article does that. Of course, if you want to work through the cites and it will take a while, I can close this as unsuccessful and you can re-nominate it once you've checked the citations. In summary: A decent quality article (like this one) doesn't need the GA title to serve its purpose. Let me know if you want to continue this nom. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 23:31, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work, Eddie891. Through your help and those recognizing the need, this article has seriously improved over the last coupe months. I appreciate the process and would appreciate if you could close this article nomination process, as some of the more serious citation concerns (such as 55) are going to take time to fix (in the case of 55, the database hosting the cited interview has deleted it as they are updating their site and has yet to re-upload it). Thank you, again, and I hope that you good work continues elsewhere! ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:56, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Pbritti, Good luck to you in the future! If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on my talk page, or anyone at the help desk. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 20:18, 3 April 2020 (UTC)