Talk:1966 New York City smog/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: SilverplateDelta (talk · contribs) 13:49, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Pollution Scale?
The article references multiple times the use of a pollution scale and a first stage alert. I would recommend linking a source or Wikipedia page to these as I did not understand what the importance was. SilverplateDelta (talk) 13:58, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Copyright/Plagiarism Results
I have reason to believe that a large part of the article was copied and restated from a website. The Copyright vio (Plagerism checker) link the the result can be found here: Results

Replies
First, thank you for taking the time to review this article. I want to address the plagiarism point first, since it seems more serious (but also thankfully more easily dispensed with):

Since, as you said, results came back so high, I was a bit alarmed and wanted to carefully review my own work. However, looking at the results more closely, I think you'll be reassured that there was no plagiarism.
 * Plagiarism

The first source, with a 66.1% confidence, is most concerning: however, the checker identified a block quote of Lyndon B. Johnson from a formal address to Congress. In the address, the president discussed this smog event at length to motivate a major legislative action, so an extended quotation is warranted. Further, there are no fair use concerns to balance here because a presidential address of this nature is categorically public domain: If I really wanted to, I could have quoted the whole speech, and while it would be totally irrelevant in its entirety it wouldn't be a copyright violation.

Other sources that got pinged are only brief phrases and the source titles themselves (for instance, I apparently plagiarized the phrase "The 1970 Clean Air Act"). I checked about the first five and didn't see anything that I thought was worth changing. If you want to review them more comprehensively, I'm happy to reword or reparaphrase any wording that is judged too similar, but in my view it's not worth the effort for these small snippets of text that are difficult to reword in this context (e.g., "shortened the lives of 366 people" — there are only so many ways to say this, and I'd rather not adopt a mangled passive-voice rewording just to dodge a robo-checker).

I'm glad you brought this up, because it is a difficult issue I was mindful of as I was researching and writing.
 * Pollution scale

Imagine you're me, in the process of researching this. In some preliminary source that summarizes the event, you find that New York City had an air-pollution reading over "50". Wow! "50"! That sounds bad and high, and obviously it must have been a bad and high number since it triggered a city-wide alert. But, wait a minute: 50 what? What the hell is this unit? What is this "alert" system anyway? Has anyone else ever used the same system — is this something like a metric system for air quality?

The answer, unfortunately, was not easily forthcoming, and the answer to that last question is a very sad "no". There is no article on it (nor should there be, honestly, because this was a makeshift method not noteworthy in its own right). The index doesn't seem to have a proper name; it's not the New York City Air Quality Index, it's just some index that they used for ~20 years. There is a source: after digging through the New York Times archive, I finally found an article that formally defined the alert system and index (citing a city scientist). Other than perhaps combing through old city documents in some archive in New York City (far away from where I am), there is likely no other reasonably accessible record of this method. My earlier question, "What the hell is this unit?", is one that I anticipate most readers would have. But the relative obscurity of their system, combined with its technicality, and combined with its idiosyncrasy, make it difficult to quickly sum up. (Not to mention that the nature of reading on Wikipedia is often skipping around to whichever section interests the reader.)

My attempted solution was to introduce the index (its use and historical development in the city) in the background section, and to more extensively define the index and alert stages in this footnote, deployed throughout. I've now put the footnote alongside the first mention of the alert in any individual section, expanded the footnote, and tweaked some of the wording in the background section. I hope that these serve to clarify what the hell this index is, but let me know if you have another recommendation. I've considered putting the entirety of that footnote in the background section, but I'm again wary of readers who might skip around but still want to have the work shown when they see this strange "index" or "alert" mentioned. There is a source, the one cited in the footnote and elsewhere, but unfortunately it's behind the New York Times paywall and not accessible to any reader without a paid subscription.

More of my of my general considerations:


 * 1. The pollution index used was highly technical. The footnote outlines the three alert stages, the conditions to trigger each stage, and the required action. As you can see at the note, there's a careful and precise balance of measuring three different sources of air pollution in parts per million. Those three readings are then converted, by some arbitrary formula, into a single digit reading. I don't know precisely what their method was but on that reading they considered 50 to be the "danger" or "emergency" point that triggers the "first-stage" alert. The formula was probably designed so that readings judged to be sufficiently harmful would correspond with the nice round number "50".


 * 2. The pollution scale used was not standardized — that is, it was used nowhere else other than New York City. At the time, there was no single method (national or otherwise) to measure air pollution and convert it into a single number (there may still not be a single method, I'm no expert on the scientific side of this). The scale is very idiosyncratic — it is an "air quality index" (probably not a familiar term to every reader, but at least linkable), but "air quality index" is to "[New York City's unnamed index]" as "length" is to "meter" — saying what it measures is not the same as defining how it is defined as a method of measurement. It's totally unlike what we see today and was not even widely used at the time, as it was only used in New York City. The scale is not in use anywhere today; in fact, their scale was revised because of this smog event, which allowed New York City scientists the mandate and the resources to scrutinize and update their air-monitoring methods (as described in the article). Therefore, it's not sufficient to rely on the number alone, the way we can take for granted that "meter" is so standardized, formally defined, and ubiquitous that few would have difficulty understanding its use as a unit. But, because of its technical nature outlined above, it is so complicated that it would be unwieldy to define it every time; I tried to solve this problem by using footnotes.


 * 3. As you can infer from the previous two, the system was antiquated, overly complicated, and not actually very useful. It was "good enough" for the time, but this smog event revealed some obvious blind spots that led to improvements and simplification. The same problems we're having now probably led to many similar head-scratching sessions among city scientists working in early 1967. The fundamental problem is that it is extremely difficult to have clarity while explaining a system that is itself totally lacking in clarity.

Let me know what you think — as you can see it really is just stupidly stupendously complicated, so any suggestions about how to make all this mess easier for the reader are greatly appreciated — and I'll be available to follow up on any further comments asap. —BLZ · talk 18:32, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Response to Response
Thanks for responding so quickly! First off, sorry for being a bit terse with the comments, I had just gotten out of a rather frustrating class :). A few things to know:


 * 1. I had also looked at the results, and I was very confused on how that quote warranted a 65%(ish), so I assumed that I had misread the tracker and there was an issue. After reading your reading your response I have concluded that I'm not insane and that the article is should be good to go.


 * 2. Ive done some research on the scale, and came to the same conclusions. If anything, I would make it known to the readers that 50 was very bad, and that the real scale has been lost to time. I would recommend, if anything, to make a foot note, or small section about the scale and what little we know about it.

In conclusion, I am going to resume the review and pass the Plagiarism section. I have marked it with the + sign and will be trying to complete sections 2-4 today. Thanks, -SilverplateDelta (talk) 13:32, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

@BLZ Forgot to mention you in the post, my bad.

I had a bit of a noob moment, and forgot about the review due to IRL time constraints. Its good to go, and will be promoted to GA status.