Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1

Comments moved from main FAC page

Comments by Nikkimaria (addressed)

• Oppose - significant overquoting going on in this article - nearly a full third of the readable prose consists of direct quotes, including 10 blocks of 40+ words (none of which are properly blockquoted). There are also a number of citations missing page numbers, repeated links between the article and the See also, formatting issues in the article and in citations - in general, significant cleaning up needed. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:46, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your helpful comments, I'll do my best to get right on this and get back to you. — Cirt (talk) 19:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to suggestions from Nikkimaria

1. I've gone through and removed a significant amount of quotes from the article.
2. Additionally, for those quotes that remain, I've trimmed a good deal from them.
3. Also, I left one large quote, that of Jeremy Waldron, in the Reception section. This because it helps to provide NPOV balance to have some space to criticism of the book, and it's best in this particular instance to leave that criticism to Waldron's own words. Per suggestion above, I've formatted this one quote with blockquoted formatting.
4. I've gone through and added page numbers to citations that were missing them. The rest did not have page numbers in the news archive databases I used to access them; this was predominantly NewsBank.
5. I removed any repeated links between the article and the See also section.
6. My thanks to the following users for recent help with formatting issues in the article and in citations, and with copyediting: Baffle gab1978 (talk · contribs), Crisco 1492 (talk · contribs), Curly Turkey (talk · contribs), Vegaswikian (talk · contribs), and Ohconfucius (talk · contribs).

Thanks again for the helpful recommendations, we've made changes to address them, and I believe the article is much better for it. — Cirt (talk) 04:00, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Better, but still some issues to be addressed here. I would suggest adding a subscription link to the articles without page numbers, if possible (with a subscription-needed tag). I'm still seeing bibliographic inconsistencies - for example, you include a publisher location for FN5, but none for FN23. There are still long quotes not blockquoted, for example "Those who won our independence...", and other MOS problems like concluding ellipses. Looking a little closer at prose, it appears some copy-editing is also needed - for example, second para of Contents, you have three sentences beginning with "Lewis" and the second switches tenses. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:09, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah, okay, thanks very much. I appreciate this, I'll address those promptly. — Cirt (talk) 16:15, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to 2nd set of comments from Nikkimaria

1. Thanks for stating it's better, I appreciate that!
2. Gone ahead and added some subscription links to the cites remaining that didn't have page numbers.
3. I've added {{subscription required}} to those cites that have links where a subscription is required.
4. Added a publisher location for FN23, thanks, it happens to be the same location as that for FN5, heh.
5. Blockquoted the quote "Those who won our independence...", thanks, it looks better this way.
6. Removed all instances of concluding ellipses.
7. Copyedited the article a bit more. Fixed the tense switching. Removed the repeated use of "Lewis" in the 2nd paragraph of the Contents section.

Thanks for the good suggestions, — Cirt (talk) 20:27, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

I've struck my oppose given improvements made to the article. I am not supporting at this time as I think the prose could still use more work in general - perhaps consider bringing in an independent copy-editor? Or just see if other reviewers can offer more suggestions in that regard. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:46, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thank you, I'll seek out additional independent copy-editors. — Cirt (talk) 20:01, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to 3rd set of comments by Nikkimaria

1. We've had some additional helpful copy-editing to the article by Crisco 1492 (talk · contribs), Neelix (talk · contribs), and Noleander (talk · contribs).
2. I've gone through and done a few more passes of copy-editing through the article, specifically with respect to punctuation, colons, commas, and quotations.
3. I went ahead and trimmed down even more significantly the use of quotations in the article.
4. The article now contains a total of two (2) quoted sentences in its entirety of the body text.

Thank you for your attention to this matter, — Cirt (talk) 01:25, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Comments by Neelix (addressed)

Issues moved here from main page after having been addressed:

Comments by Neelix

• There should be no space between the last word of a quotation and the quotation mark.
• Make sure that all sentences end in periods.
• Quotations that are tacked onto the end of sentences that refer to those quotations should be introduced with a colon rather than a comma.
• The "Author" section does not fall within the scope of this article; none of the information contained within that section is even phrased in such a way that it ties into the article's subject. That section should be removed and any information not already located on the Anthony Lewis article should be moved there. A "Background" section should contextualize the subject of the article, but this section does not currently serve that purpose.
• In scholarly writing, "quote" is a verb, not a noun. "Quotation" is a noun.
• There are several instances in which commas should be inserted to offset phrases (ex. there should be a comma after "the writer of the United States Constitution" and before "James Madison").
• The phrase "government attempts" should either be "the government's attempts" or "governmental attempts".
• In scholarly writing, "where" is a location word and should not be used in place of the phrase "in which".
• Quotations integrated partway into the prose of a sentence in the article should begin with a lowercase letter, except in the case of proper nouns.
• "The Alien and Sedition Acts were used for political impact against members of the Republican Party." - As someone unfamiliar with the subject material, the relevance of this sentence to the surrounding text is lost on me. Is there a way of rephrasing the paragraph to make it clearer why this sentence is included?
• "Fomented" is an uncommon term; can it be replaced by something more recognizable by the average reader?
• I agree with Nikkimaria's comments above; the in-text quotations are too long, particularly in the "Release and reception" section.
• Placement of the period at the end of quotations is inconsistent.
• The last sentence of the "Contents" section should not switch subject from "He" to "I".
• The phrase "brought across" is awkward.
• What did John Paul Stevens have to say about Freedom for the Thought That We Hate?
• It would be nice to have an "Anthony Lewis" navbox at the bottom of the article.
• There are too many links in the "See also" section for my liking.
• The caption for the infobox image should specify the edition.
• There should be hard spaces between the cover artists.

Neelix (talk) 03:36, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I'll address these as soon as I can and update back here. — Cirt (talk) 03:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to comments by Neelix

1. Removed space between last word of quotation and quote marks.
2. Went through and made sure all sentences end with period punctuation. If I missed any, please do let me know or change it yourself, no worries, either way is fine by me.
3. Changed introduction of quotations to colon instead of comma.
4. Per recommendation above by Neelix (talk · contribs), I've gone ahead and removed the Author section. I made a note of this at the talk page for the article and the talk page for the article on the author at Talk:Anthony Lewis, should editors wish to utilize this sourced material in the future.
5. Changed use of "quote" as noun to use of "quotation" as noun in the article.
6. Added comma after "the writer of the United States Constitution" and before "James Madison". Copyeditors may have gone through and removed some commas that were viewed as superfluous in some cases. If there are others, feel free to add them back in yourself or suggest it and I'll gladly do so.
7. Changed use of "where" to "in which", in places where "where" was being used but not as a location term.
8. Edited to make sure quotations that start in middle of sentences in cases where first word is not a proper noun, now start with lowercase letter.
9. "The Alien and Sedition Acts were used for political impact against members of the Republican Party." - added more info into this paragraph to further ground the reader with background info on the Alien and Sedition Acts.
10. Removed word "fomented", with "agitated".
11. Trimmed use of in-text quotations. Removed all blockquote quotations from Release and reception section. Removed entirety of quotes by Jeremy Waldron, summarizing instead.
12. Went through and re-checked for uniformity with regards to placement of period at ends of quotations. I've been informed in multiple prior FACs that a period is necessitated inside the quote marks for full sentences, and outside the quote marks for partial clauses. If I missed any, please let me know, or feel free to change it yourself, either way, no worries.
13. Fixed last sentence of the Contents section. Just trimmed it out. This way, it also complies with earlier recommendations by Neelix (talk · contribs) and Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), above, to trim down quotations usage.
14. Removed phrase, "brought across". Changed to "presented".
15. Added more info on review by John Paul Stevens.
16. Created a navbox for {{Anthony Lewis bibliography}}. Added this new navbox to the bottom of the article.
17. Trimmed out links from See also sect. Reduced number of links in this sect, and focused more on the topic of this article itself, with the links.
18. Specified the edition in the infobox, for the caption for the cover image.
19. Added breaks between artists that designed the book cover, in the infobox field. If there is another way that is preferable for coding, please feel free to do it yourself, or just specify how I can change it, either way, no worries.

Thanks very much for these helpful recommendations, I've attempted to address them all, hopefully this is satisfactory. :) I think the article is much better for it. — Cirt (talk) 05:50, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Response by Neelix - Some great fixes; I like the navbox and I appreciate your willingness to remove the "Author" section. Still some issues as follows:

• Placement of the period at the end of quotations is still inconsistent; some are before the quotation marks and some are after. A simple search function using your browser or word processor should locate them all immediately.
• The sentence beginning "The book starts with..." still does not end with a period.
• "Rosen commented, 'He is not..." should read "Rosen commented that 'he is not..."
• It is only quotations that act as standalone sentences tacked onto the end of already-complete sentences that should be introduced by colons; quotations that complete yet-uncomplete sentences should not be introduced by any punctuation and the quotation should begin with a lowercase letter. Uncapitalization should not be surrounded by square brackets.
• The paragraph regarding the Alien and Sedition Acts is still not clear. The first sentence of that paragraph does not mention the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the second sentence mentions them in vague reference to some unidentified portion of the first sentence. It is unlikely to be clear to the average reader what Adams' statement and the Alien and Sedition Acts have to do with each other.
• The images are taking up too much space in the "Release and reception" section and are pushing down the content of the subsequent section; I recommending only using one of the two images.
• Only the first instance of Woodrow Wilson should be linked in the body.
• Does Ken have a slash in his surname? "Cedeno/Corbis"? Are we not sure which is his surname?
• I recommend reviewing our guidelines on commas, particularly the portion on delimiting parenthetic material; there are still issues of inappropriate inclusion and exclusion throughout.

Neelix (talk) 22:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks much, Neelix, for acknowledging the fixes I've been doing in response to your comments. I am quite willing, indeed, to make changes to the article in response to such helpful recommendations! I will go ahead and look this latest set of comments over and go through them in the article and update back here. — Cirt (talk) 23:32, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to 2nd set of comments by Neelix

1. Standardized placement of period at end of quotations for uniformity throughout the article; this should now be consistent.
2. Added period to end sentence "The book starts with ..."
3. Changed "Rosen commented, 'He is not..." to "Rosen commented that 'he is not..."
4. Fixed quotations for standalone sentences as recommended above. Fixed capitalization as recommended in same point.
5. Clarified paragraph regarding Alien and Sedition Acts. Moved introduction of this term to the first sentence of this paragraph.
6. Per recommendation by FAC reviewer, Neelix (talk · contribs), went ahead and just removed one of those two images outright, leaving one image remaining in that sect, that of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. This goes along with another comment, above, by Crisco 1492 (talk · contribs), that the image removed, File:Jeffrey Rosen.jpg, was not best quality anyways, so this all turned out for the best with this suggestion.
7. Made sure that only the first instance of Woodrow Wilson is linked in the body.
8. Ken's full name is Ken Cedeno. Removed "Corbis". Full credit for this person is simply his name, "Ken Cedeno". Thanks for pointing this out, I agree it is now clearer this way.
9. I reviewed our guidelines on commas, particularly the portion on delimiting parenthetic material. I went back through the article section by section and copyedited for comma usage, with our guidelines on commas in mind.

Thanks again for these helpful comments, — Cirt (talk) 18:14, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Second response by Neelix

• There are still many grammar/punctuation errors regarding quotations. Perhaps I haven't explained the issue clearly enough. Given a sentence "Jack said that x" where x is the quotation, there should be no punctuation that precedes the quotation; there should be no comma and there should be no colon. The quotation should also start with a lowercase letter unless the first word of the quotation is a proper noun. The only case in which a quotation is preceded by a colon (which should be a rare occurance) is when the entirety of what precedes the quotation could stand alone as a sentence unto itself.
• I recommend more copyediting with respect to commas. For example, there should be a comma after "In 1798", and there should also be commas offsetting the phrase "in times of strife".

Neelix (talk) 20:58, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Understood, I'll go back over it again with respect to these new comments, thank you, — Cirt (talk) 22:19, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to 3rd set of comments by Neelix

1. Went back through and copyedited with respect to quotations.
2. Given a sentence "Jack said that x" where x is the quotation = removed punctuation that precedes the quotation; removed commas in these situations.
3. Given a sentence "Jack said that x" where x is the quotation = removed punctuation that precedes the quotation; removed colon punctuation in these situations.
4. Performed more copyediting with respect to commas.
5. Requested a few copyeditors with WP:FA content experience, familiar with the topic of freedom of speech, to help with copyediting.
6. Added a comma after "In 1798".
7. Added commas offsetting the phrase "in times of strife".

Thanks for these helpful specific suggestions. In all cases of specific suggestions, I have directly implemented these recommendations for specific changes. — Cirt (talk) 22:28, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks good. I have copyedited the article for the remaining grammatical errors. Support - Neelix (talk) 15:10, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Comments by Noleander (addressed)

Support Comments from Noleander

• Two topics mixed? - paragraph "Lewis questions the actions of the media with regards .." starts off talking about privacy rights (esp relative to press), then segues into a discussion of authorities suppressing criticism during "periods of heightened anxiety". Those seem like two different topics: the first is celebrities/privacy/press; the latter is government silencing critics esp during times of crisis. Maybe split into 2 paragraphs?
• Clarify: "He observes that public expectations regarding morality and what to keep confidential from the press has changed over time." - seems like an important sentence: but I cannot quite see what Lewis is driving at: the first part of the sentence: public expectations about morality? meaning that over time the limits on what is acceptable for newspapers to print about celebrities has changed? Or about non-celebrities? and "keep confidential from the press"? Should that be "what the press should keep confidential?" Or "what constitutes an impermissible violation of the right to privacy"?
• Lead info: Lead already states: "Lewis warns the reader against the potential for government to take advantage of periods of fear and upheaval in society to suppress freedom of speech and criticism by citizens." - Would it be accurate to amend that to mention post-9/11? I presume that Lewis was motivated to write the book because of post 9/11 free speech issues? I might be wrong about that.
• Interview? - "Lewis pointed out that, .." - There is a tricky tense issue here: if describing what the book says, shoudl be present tense; but if re-stating his responses from the Solomon interview, should be past tense. If the latter, the paragraph should make it more clear that the Lewis assertions are from the interview, not the book.
• Slang? - "... the United States has the most unreserved speech of any civilization on the planet." -- "planet" is too slang-y. If Lewis used those exact words, put in quotes; otherwise change to "... speech of any nation" or "... Lewis ranks the US as having the most unreserved speech compared to all other nations" or similar.
• "See also" section - Some FA reviewers have stated that the ideal FA article should not have a See Also section, because any article worth linking-to from within See Also should be explicitly mentioned (and linked to) from within the body of the article. I'm not one of those reviewers; but it is worthwhile asking yourself if any of those SeeAlso articles could/should be mentioned (and linked) in the body of the article.
• Improve? " ... including President Woodrow Wilson's support of law criminalizing speech critical of the draft during World War I, and McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare agitated by a fear of communism." - I dont have Lewis' book, so I'm not sure about this, but I think it would be better if it focused on the specific laws/policies that were anti-free speech. In other words, deemphasize Wilson & generalities; and focus on specific crazy laws. E.g. "... including the Sedition Act of 1918 which effectively out outlawed speech criticizing the government's conduct of WW I; and the McCarran Internal Security Act and Smith Act, which were used to imprison US communists who where critical of the government during the McCarthyism era." The latter, if Lewis indeed mentions those, is more informative than the present text.

End Noleander comments. --Noleander (talk) 15:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much, Noleander (talk · contribs), for these helpful comments, I'll get on addressing them soon, it might not be for a little bit because I'm going to be picking my friend's cat up from the kitty hospital and then cat-babysitting without access to a computer for a short while. — Cirt (talk) 17:32, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Changing to Support, based on recent improvements. Have not spot-checked sources. --Noleander (talk) 00:52, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to comments by Noleander

1. Done. Split paragraph in two, per suggestion by Noleander, above.
2. Done. Clarified with recommendation from Noleander, to "what constitutes an impermissible violation of the right to privacy".
3. Done. Added link to "post-9/11 society", to lede/intro. Thanks for this good suggestion from Noleander, above.
4. Done. Interview - specified that this was part of the interview, minor copyedit here, made this clearer, per good recommendation by Noleander.
5. Done. Changed word from "planet", to "speech of any nation", per suggestion by Noleander, above.
6. Done. Trimmed out three (3) more links from the See also section. Moved portals to bottom of page using {{Portal bar}} template.
7. Done. Improved sentence, per suggestion from Noleander, incorporated recommended text, "... including the Sedition Act of 1918 which effectively out outlawed speech criticizing the government's conduct of WW I; and the McCarran Internal Security Act and Smith Act, which were used to imprison US communists who where critical of the government during the McCarthyism era."
8. Also, thanks much to Noleander (talk · contribs) for recent helpful copyedits to the article, I agree with all of them. :)

My thanks to Noleander (talk · contribs) for these comments, — Cirt (talk) 00:43, 8 May 2013 (UTC)