Template:Did you know nominations/Tenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Allen3 talk 09:36, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Tenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida edit

  • Comment: Expanded article. I'm exempt from review requirement (<5 DYK credits...I've only nominated one DYK that's approved, but yet to be featured). Note "Juvenile Court" is capitalized as that is the way the division is capitalized in the 10th Judicial Circuit (article subject), ie. it's referring to the Juvenile Court, whereas the link is not capitalized because it's referring to the generic term for a juvenile court.

5x expanded by AHeneen (talk). Self nominated at 23:13, 16 January 2015 (UTC).

  • This articles relies solely on the circuit court's official website. Information must be changed; secondary sources must be added. Primary sources don't have to be replaced, but I can't pass this nomination. George Ho (talk) 02:03, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
OK. I'll try to source more of the information from other sources within a few hours. AHeneen (talk) 03:20, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Hopefully this issue has been resolved and no longer hinders a DYK. I've had a lot of trouble finding non-primary sources for the "Divisions" section and no non-primary source that lists all the judges. The only way I could think of fixing the refs in that section would be to find a reference for every single judge being part of the circuit, but not a reference that covers all of them. This was the case for the courthouses section, I could only find references for the individual courthouses being part of the circuit, but not the opposite: a list of all courthouses within the circuit. Reliable primary sources may be used on Wikipedia, as long as they cover facts that are straightforward and not exceptional; the information in the "Divisions" section is straightforward and presents nothing exceptional, so I think that the primary source is ok here. The history section relies largely on two PDF files hosted on the website of the article's subject, but I don't believe they are primary sources. One is a short history of the local courts, written by a historian from a local historical society. The other is a transcript of a ceremony held for the circuit's centenary, during which historian Dr.Canter Brown, Jr. gave a presentation about the history of courts in the area; the material in the "history" section that this source supports comes from Dr.Brown's presentation. So, despite being hosted on the circuit's website, I believe both of these are secondary sources. AHeneen (talk) 05:21, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Another issue would be the writing itself. Perhaps it needs massive cleanup and copy editing. However, this would affect the size of the article. Will you clean up the writing? George Ho (talk) 05:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
The writing should reflect the sources. On the other hand, cleanup may not be required. If I'm mistaken about the writing, I will add the red(irect) icon. --George Ho (talk) 05:33, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't understand what you are talking about. The writing does reflect the sources. As mentioned above, in the case of the "courthouses" section, I found and added to the article non-primary sources that say that the courthouses are part of the tenth circuit, but only the primary source (8) says that all of these are part of the circuit. The only other references that may not be clear are the map (6) used to support the present-day counties (it doesn't show/name the present-day counties, but shows the old boundaries and is used with ref 7 which does show the boundaries & name both the former and present-day counties) and the source in the footnote, which does state "History-...chs. 6197, 6198, 1911" at the bottom of the first section (since the state statues have been re-ordered many times, "History" is basically a footnote in sections that lists the sections/chapters in former versions that the section supersedes). So I don't really see what major issues would require a cleanup or re-write. AHeneen (talk) 06:52, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Never mind. I'll leave this to another reviewer then. At least the sourcing issue is resolved for now. George Ho (talk) 07:16, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Without having looked at the individual points, let me say that in a case like this there's a bit more flexibility than usual in the use of primary sources. A court's official website can be cited for straightforward, official statements of how the court operates, who's on the bench, and so on.
  • I've struck the original hook because not every accused person is a criminal -- that's a really serious slip.
  • Let me suggest:
ALT1: ... that in the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida's Teen Court, high school students act as defense attorney, prosecutor, clerk, and bailiff, and the accused is required to admit guilt?

EEng (talk) 18:52, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Full review needed. Note that the first and second sentences of the article's Teen Court paragraph will need to be individually cited for ALT1 to be approved. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:04, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
(I must have overlooked the recent comments in my watchlist, sorry for the delayed response) Actually, they are all criminals, because they are being sentenced for a crime/criminal offense (as opposed to a tort or case arising under property law, contract law, Constitutional law, etc...see Law#Legal subjects for types of law) and to be sentenced in teen court, they must have agreed to plead guilty. From the Court's website ([1], used as a ref for this part of the article): "The offender must admit guilt...and agree to complete any sentence handed down by their peers." Because of that, I've unstruck the original hook. Furthermore, since they've agreed to plead guilty, I don't think "accused" is the most accurate term for the juveniles that appear before the Teen Court and a term like "juvenile offender" is ambiguous. The alt1 proposed by @EEng: leaves out an important fact: that the accused are juveniles. I think the original was and still is fine. AHeneen (talk) 05:48, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
I think the reader will surmise, from the fact that HS kids are taking on the stated roles, that the accused are juveniles as well. Your impressive-sounding enumeration of branches of the law, and the mighty links behind them, have nothing to do with whether, technically, juvenile offenders who plead guilty therefore qualify as "criminals"‍—‌surely you know that judicial matters involving juveniles are rife with special provisions about the disposition of those cases and the legal terminology applied to them, and these vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Unless you can give a definitive and authoritative source specifically showing that the word "criminal" is rightly applied here, WP needs to stay away from it. EEng (talk) 04:25, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't think a reader will surmise that the accused are juveniles and think that the word should be included in the hook. Furthermore, the youths appearing before the court are criminals. The 10th Circuit's website states ([2], which is also a ref in the article): " Most of these misdemeanor or minor felony cases are sent directly to teen court by law enforcement. This allows youth to bypass the traditional juvenile court process, thereby eliminating or minimizing a damaging criminal record." As explained above, they have agreed to plead guilty and the charges are crimes, thus they are criminals (definition of 'criminal', wiktionary). AHeneen (talk) 05:32, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
You're reinforcing my point. The fact that the goals of this process include avoiding giving the accused a criminal record is precisely the reason we shouldn't be calling the accused "criminals". Furthermore, it's not true (as you say -- and as the article said until I fixed it just now after consulting the court website you so helpfully linked just now) that the accused is required to "plead guilty"; what the source says is
The offender must admit guilt, be accountable for their negative actions, and agree to complete any sentence handed down by their peers.
An "admission" is different from a "plea" -- again, part of the reason for all this parallel terminology is the court's desire to avoid the stigma of criminality. I've restruck the original hook and you need to accommodate yourself to the fact that, given that the sources don't refer to the accused as "criminals", WP isn't going to either. EEng (talk) 17:54, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

EEng (talk) 01:18, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Approved for ALT 1. Earwig's tool brought up no copyvios, the article was new enough at time of nomination, long enough. It could use some more third-party sources, but it has enough to prove notability. Alt 1 does not have a direct citation for each statement in the hook, but all statements are part of the same paragraph that's directly cited by two reliable sources. As expressed in this discussion, I don't think we should be applying arbitrary citation rules that are not use elsewhere on Wikipedia for DYK - the hook is sourced, and that's good enough for me.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:28, 11 April 2015 (UTC)