Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/William L. Uanna/1

William L. Uanna

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Keep This is coming up to a year now since it was opened, so it is well beyond time it is closed. This was nominated on three criteria 3a (Broadness), 5 (Stability) and 2 (Verifiabilty). It is not specified exactly what verifiabilty criteria it fails, but I feel it is safe to assume 2b and 2c. The broadness issue has been resolved during the review. Stability is not a good reason to delist an article; otherwise articles would qualify for delisting whenever an edit war broke out. It is more a convenience criteria for reviewers (it is hard/impossible to review an article that is constantly changing). In any case there has been no recent stability concerns. That leaves verifiability. The issue here relates to the use of primary sources. As has been pointed out primary sources are not disallowed so what we really need are instances of unreliable primary sources used for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons. No one has actually provided examples of this. Therefore I am closing this as keep. AIRcorn (talk) 06:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I've commenced this reassessment because

1. The article fails GA Criteria No. 3 by focusing in excessive detail on non-notable and trivial biographical details, with insufficient attention - only one paragraph - on the primary reason for Uanna's notability, his role as security officer in the Manhattan Project, for which he was a subject of a number of movie portrayals and extensive mentions in secondary sources oddly not utilized in the preparation of this article. The article fails WP:UNDUE by failing to give appropriate weight to this aspect of his life. I would template for undue emphasis but I am not sure it's appropriate while this GA review is pending.

2. The article has been a subject of edit warring by a COI editor, is unstable and is tagged for major issues: excess reliance on primary sources and COI, as it was created by and was principally edited until a few days ago by a self-described connected editor, the son of the subject. More than four out of ten edits to the article were by the COI editor, more than any other editor. Because of these serious issues it fails GA Criteria No. 5 and meets criteria No. 3 for immediate failure. (Note also removal of "resume" cleanup tag after commencement of this review [1] by an involved editor. I believe this tag should not have been removed.)

3. It rather blatantly fails GA Criteria No. 2, "Verifiable with no original research." The majority of footnotes are to original research uploaded to Commons by the son of the subject.

There are problems with the following references:

• 1. "Uanna – Public Member Trees". Ancestry.com. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
• 2. "Anthony Uanna from Ward 3 Medford in 1940 Census District 9-318". Archive.com. Retrieved September 3, 2015.
• 6, 7, 8. pages from Uanna, William (November 19, 1956). "Bud Uanna Foreign Service Essay". Wikimedia Commons.
• 9. "William L Uanna". World War II U.S. Army Enlistments U.S. Army Enlistment Record. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
• 10. (six footnotes) "FBI background check on William Lewis Uanna". Wikimedia. March 31, 1947.
• 13. "Bud Uanna AEC FBI Armed Forces Special Weapons Project V.P. Keay to D.M. Ladd". February 2, 1948.
• 14. "Bud Uanna Armed Forces Special Weapons Project requesting investigations for personnel that will maintain the Atomic Bombs and the facilities where they are stored". July 1, 1949.
• 17. Uanna, William (November 19, 1956). "Bud Uanna Foreign Service Essay". Wikimedia Commons. p. 5.

Except for the first Ancestry link, which goes to user-created content, and the second Ancestry link, which goes to a census page, the remainder go to self-published primary source material uploaded to Commons by the son of the subject. WP:PRIMARY requires that primary sources must be "reputably published" and this is self-published original research.

--Coretheapple (talk) 13:09, 30 May 2016 (UTC) (revised 02:43, 31 May 2016 (UTC))

Primary sources are permitted to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source. The upload to Commons is merely to make it easier for us to collaborate and verify the source. The documents are all available through NARA. There is no question about their authenticity. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:50, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

They also have to be "reputably published." The COI editor's word processor is not a reputable publisher. NARA isn't a reputable publisher, it is a document repository where people go and request material via the FOI act in the course of their original research. And surely you're not suggesting that NARA documents are verifiable because you or I can file an FOI request, pay some bucks, and then wait a year or two for compliance? You're not seriously suggesting that I hope? Commons is not a reputable publisher, it is a conduit for any member of the public who wants to upload stuff. What we're talking about here is OR that he's put on Commons and that you've allowed to source the article. Coretheapple (talk) 21:18, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

NARA is a reputable publisher. Publication is defined as being made available to the public. I have spent a lot of time there, and you don't need an FOI request for material more than 30 years old. The documents are not being published by Commons, just being made easier for us to verify them. Commons, Wikinews and Wikisource were established precisely for this purpose! Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:39, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

No, I don't think we can accept that every government agency is a publisher because it makes documents available to the public. By using primary source materials to such a massive extent, you've deep-dived into his career to an almost absurd extent, with intricate details that really belong on a personal website. He is notable primarily for his work on the Manhattan Project, and there is all of one paragraph on that. That is what happens when a COI editor dominates the editing of an article and pours the product of his original research into the article. Come to think of it, that is actually a somewhat more serious issue than even the sourcing and I've added it above. Coretheapple (talk) 22:07, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

I have written over 200 biographical articles, and this is their nature. Most are famous for one thing but it was only a small part of their life. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:14, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

A Google Books search for Uanna shows two books on the Manhattan Project, both of which contain much interesting material on Uanna related to his work on the Project. I find it odd to say the least that neither of these books is utilized in the preparation of this article. I would urge that you remove the excessive details that you have on his various duties and functions and focus on his work for the notable atomic bomb project, so that the latter is given proper weight. Since apparently it did not much interest the COI editor it got short shrift. This article is little more than a memorial website with great masses of trivial material, and I do not understand why it is so when there is source material to prevent that from occurring. With all due respect, I simply at a loss to understand why you leaned so heavily on the COI editor's hand-picked primary sources on minor details of his life, when there were not one but two perfectly usable secondary sources that delved into the most notable aspect of Uanna's career. The fact that you've done 200 bios just makes me even more mystified. Coretheapple (talk) 22:20, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

The Manhattan Project has its own article, which I improved and took to FAC. Running the search myself turns up mentions of Uanna in several books about the atomic bombing mission, including Harlow Russ' Project Alberta, Paul Tibbets' Tibbets Story and Leslie Groves' Now It Can Be Told. More interestingly, Advanced Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Operations talks about his establishment of the Q Clearance, and four books mention his movie and television portrayals, notably Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film. This establishes his notability; but readers do not come to the article to find out about the Manhattan Project; they come to find out about Uanna. To be comprehensive, a biographical article needs to cover the biographical details, and the article does that. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:12, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Uh yeah, I imagine the Manhattan Project would have its own article. The fact that you don't see a problem in the little in this article on Uanna's role in that project is less than startling at this point. And by the way, I assume that he is in that "military images in film" book because of his work on the Manhattan Project, which is now given far less attention in this article than is warranted by WP:UNDUE. It really deserves a maintenance tag for that, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to do so while this is pending. I don't believe that it is in the "nature" of biographies to underweight major aspects of a subject's life. If there are multiple books on the project with references to Uanna, not just the two that turned up on the first page of the search, than the underweighting is even more inexcusable. Coretheapple (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

• Delist In addition to the given reasons, reads like a resume. 2600:1017:B40F:A478:44:8E3B:210:559D (talk) 11:01, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

  WP:GAR requires you to be logged in. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:34, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

  No, afraid not. See talk page. Coretheapple (talk) 22:01, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

• Keep (after tweaks): overall, the article seems to conform with what I would expect of a biography, having seen a few come through ACR and FAC. Remember we are telling the whole story of the man's life, so we need to be careful not to overload the article with too much detail on one aspect (remember also he was a pretty junior officer at the time, too). I would like to see a few tweaks, though, for instance:
  • some more references to secondary sources if possible;
  • references added to the Film portrayals section;
  • the imaging/description pages need work. For instance, "File:Bud Uanna State Department 3jpg.jpg" should include the date of when it was taken, not when it was uploaded or scanned. Same same with "File:Bud Uanna State Department 1jpg.jpg", and "File:Bud Uanna War 3jpg.jpg" and "File:Bud Uanna State Department 2jpg.jpg". Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:48, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
    • I have made the suggested changes. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:09, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
      • I hope that we can cut back on some of the material in the overlong postwar section. Were it not for the primary sourcing it would not be in the article, and I think it overweights, though not so dramatically as to warrant a tag at least in my opinion. Building up the section further as has been done recently makes this problem worse. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 21:32, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
• Delist. Traveling now so don't really have the opportunity to go into enormous detail, but I agree with Core's analysis. For some time I have been troubled by the COI editor's dominance of this article, and I agree that his influence has resulted in a ridiculous situation. Uanna is notable for his work at the Manhattan Project, where he was security chief. I agree, we don't want the entire article on that. But just a couple of sentences? Ridiculous. It is barely mentioned in this article at all! I am guilty as any for not previously even noticing that. Primary sources are overused, to be sure. That is a problem. The fact that there is insufficient material on the Manhattan Project to warrant a separate section is indicative of the extent to which this article fails to properly cover the subject. So I therefore agree that it must be delisted and I frankly am surprised that other editors fail to recognize this serious flaw, which clearly indicates a lack of broad coverage required for GA status. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 20:14, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

  Perhaps because the GA "broad in its coverage" criterion is significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles. It allows shorter articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail, and overviews of large topics. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:09, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

  Perhaps if persons other than fellow Military History Project coordinators commented on this article we might get a less self-serving view of the article's obvious imbalance. I would be curious to see the views of editors who perhaps are less steeped in the minutae to which this article is over-dedicated, to the detriment of material that would interest the general reader. Coretheapple (talk) 12:58, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

• Keep The article is well-written, well-sourced, broadly covers the topic and is illustrated by appropriate images. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:16, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

  I have added some more material on the Manhattan Project. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:33, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

  I am glad to see this, and the text that you added is interesting and useful. In my opinion this section needs to be fleshed out fully so that it receives its proper emphasis in the article. Obviously managing the security for the atomic bomb squadron is far more notable than anything else he may have done in his life. The article as currently written unfortunately is bogged down in trivia still, largely due to an overreliance on primary source material on secondary aspects of his career. Coretheapple (talk) 12:51, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

• Keep - for now at least. While I agree that there have been some valid concerns raised per Coretheapple's commentary above and Figureofnine, it seems to me that much of it has been addressed by a number of editors working in good faith to improve the article. At any rate GAs are not meant to be perfect, and this one does seem to be adequate enough to not warrant delisting, while further improvements can of course continue to be made. FWIW the article seems to cover the individual's life as a whole, which is what I'd expect from a biography, so I'd actually be concerned about UNDUE if it mainly focused on his involvement in the Manhattan project. Finally, if the COI issues were to reappear and become persistent then that might change the equation but at this stage it seems to be being managed. Anotherclown (talk) 23:27, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

• Comment The amount of material on the Manhattan Project was expanded sufficiently in my opinion to warrant removal of the undue weight tag. I am afraid that the other tags do point to issues in the article that unfortunately remain, and the Manhattan Project section definitely can be expanded perhaps into subsections too. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 21:29, 11 June 2016 (UTC) This is the type of nonsense that has kept this article a mishmash of trivia. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:21, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
• Keep I agree with User:AustralianRupert. The article conforms to what a Wikipedia biography should consists of, and I also agree that it is along the lines (in terms of similarity of content) compared to other Wikipedia bios. However, I feel like the "Film portrayals" section should be expanded (and could be expanded). The Above and Beyond "sort-of" statements should follow each portrayal; including with films Hiroshima and Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb. Most of what brought this article to the reassessment discussion has been handled, so I don't see the need to delist it, especially now. Regards, Carbrera (talk) 00:00, 15 June 2016 (UTC).
• Comment: I was invited to participate in the discussion by Figureofnine on my Talk page. While going through the article, I noticed that I relies to a large extent on primary source. Would this not be a concern for a GA article? Since it seems to suggest that the material being cited has not been noted by secondary sources, and thus could be not important and indeed unneeded intricate detail. There are close to 40 citations to such primary sources:
  • "Uanna – Public Member Trees". Ancestry.com. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  • "Anthony Uanna from Ward 3 Medford in 1940 Census District 9-318". Archive.com. Retrieved September 3, 2015.
  • "Tufts Quarterback is Due Back Today". Lowell Sun. October 18, 1932. p. 38. Retrieved October 22, 2013. (subscription required (help)).
  • "NCAA 1931" (PDF). National Collegiate Athletic Association. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  • a b c d e f g h i j k l "Security is his Job – William Lewis Uanna". The New York Times. July 26, 1958. Archived from the original on October 22, 2013. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  • Uanna, William (November 19, 1956). "Bud Uanna Foreign Service Essay". Wikimedia Commons. p. 1.
  • Uanna, William (November 19, 1956). "Bud Uanna Foreign Service Essay". Wikimedia Commons. p. 2.
  • Uanna, William (November 19, 1956). "Bud Uanna Foreign Service Essay". Wikimedia Commons. p. 4.
  • "William L Uanna". World War II U.S. Army Enlistments, U.S. Army Enlistment Record. U.S. Army. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  • a b c d e f g "FBI background check on William Lewis Uanna". Wikimedia Commons. March 31, 1947.
  • a b c d e f g h "Short Biographical Sketch of William Uanna". Archived from the original on October 22, 2013. Retrieved October 22, 2013.

K.e.coffman (talk) 03:23, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

• Newspaper articles are not primary sources. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:48, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Newspapers are down there on the list of RS unless written as an investigative report by a notable writer. Regardless, this still leaves about 30 citations to primary sources. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:27, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

• Delist: the article is not stable (subject to some edit warring) and some of the sources are problematic (heavy reliance on primary sources, indicating that the details cited may not be important). I'm sure the article can be improved and be re-nominated for GA in the future. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:40, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

The point about edit warring is correct. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 16:10, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

I suggest that everyone stop editing the article until the review is over. Bold editing is not the way to go here. It is clear that there are pretty entrenched differences of opinion, so the only way to move forward is to wait for a few other opinions to swing the consensus either way (to delist or not) and then accept it (whatever the outcome) and move on. The best way to achieve this may be a Request for Comment. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:01, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

• Keep The reasons have been well-established by the other keep reviewers. There is also some rather odd stuff going on here with some of the contributors to the review. Editors shouldn't be being BOLD while the review is ongoing, as that automatically affects the stability criteria and shows a distinct lack of respect for our processes. K.e.coffman once again demonstrates a lack of understanding of the notability policy and its application, comprehensiveness, the parameters of reliability, and the proper use of primary sources in articles. Regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 13:05, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

The absence of a Manhattan Project segment or barely a mention of that, a principal flaw and reason this reassessment was started, was rectified during the course of the reassessment. There are other flaws: primary sources, unencyclopedic detail, which has resulted in extensive instability in this article. Indeed, instability in the form of editing warring over trivia was the proximate cause of the ANI. The article is being improved and is halfway toward the goal of not being a personal website containing family nostalgia and patently nonessential material, like the reading matter of the subject of the article while studying up for a non-notable aspect of his career. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:27, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

It is worth noting that Uanna's Who's Who entry merely notes that he served in the Army during World War II. So that source considered him notable for his other work. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:29, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

I believe Who's Who in America entries are written by the subject. Coretheapple (talk) 00:34, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

• I believe that this article has been greatly improved since I commenced this GAR. References to the Manhattan Project have gone from nil to an entire section. The article still relies excessively on primary sources, which appear to be fragments of larger documents uploaded piecemeal to Commons. Though most trivia has been removed, there is still an overambundance of intricate detail. Coretheapple (talk) 14:09, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

• Strong Keep This is a well-written article about a significant individual. It seems like it was tagged mainly for using primary sources, but there's nothing wrong with using primary sources for basic information. There is a featured article on [Altgens] that also uses lots of primary sources for the same type of information.Homemade Pencils (talk) 22:25, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Note The above !vote is from an effectively new user and is clearly not based on the GA criteria, as well as apparently indicating not having read the OP's delisting rationale, which focused largely on GAC#3. This is not, technically, a case where Template:Single-purpose account can be invoked, but this user's edits to the Wikipedia namespace have almost uniformly been disruptive and should probably be evaluated on that basis. Their edits to other namespaces have almost all been minor, which makes it look like a troll attempting to cover their tracks by making a lot of kinda-sorta constructive edits but focusing most of their efforts on !voting against community consensus. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:44, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

None of my edits have been disruptive. The reasons for delisting this article are simply flawed. If you don't have anything constructive to say, then you don't need to say anything.Homemade Pencils (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• Comment. I am troubled by the usage of primary documents:

1. What confirmation do we have that Uanna himself is the writer of the Foreign Service essay, used for Ref 6, 7, 8, and 23? Was it ever published anywhere? Why was it written?
2. What is the provenance of the FBI background check document on William Lewis Uanna? It's used to source 6 different statements. Shearonink (talk) 23:33, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Brava/bravo, @Shearonink:, spot on. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 07:22, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

• Strong delist. There is no real question here. The only sound rationale based on the criteria, and emphasizing WP policies and Guidelines, is that of Core. We are not deleting the article, we are saying simply saying it is not Good. Because it is not. The preponderance of references to self-published (family-published), non-third part sources alone should make this clear. In the sciences, this would have been a 30 minute discussion and a unanimous delist. So delist it already, to give impetus to its improvements, so interested editors can sort the warring problems, and make clear to the "owning" editor that the citations to his families stories at the ancestry sites are not valid encyclopedic sources. Let the article work back to being Good. Don't redefine Good to keep things you like or want. If everything (like this) is good, nothing really is. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 07:27, 26 March 2017 (UTC)