Talk:Robert C. Michelson

trimming
A good lede should not be too short -- but it should summarize and not include every fact in the article. There is a lot of unimportant "stuff" here, and the lede was getting a tad filled with material not essential to it. Collect (talk) 14:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Proficiency
Might we have a cite for a claim of "proficiency" in Spanish and Turkish? It can cover a vast range, and without a cite we do not know whether it means he can hold a rapid conversation in the languages, or whether it mean he can read the local tabloid newspaper, or just that he knows how to ask the time. All are values of "proficiency" last I checked. I figured "studied" meant he could operate at a normal college level course in the language. Proficiency does not require any studying, depending on how proficient you mean. Collect (talk) 16:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The connotation of "study" is that one is attempting to learn something and is making an effort to do so, but it does not imply that the subject studied has or ever will be mastered to any degree. That is why I suggest that "proficiency" is a better word to describe the level of ability with regard to a given endeavor.  This is all very subjective, but to say that someone is "studying something" is probably not relevant to a Wikipedia article.  We are all studying something at various times and with varied results.  To say that one is "proficient at something" imparts information to the Wikipedia reader that there is some substance or reasonable skill level to the personal being referenced.  As you say, a measure of one's proficiency is not easily quantified in print unless it can be related to a grade level (for example, he completed a four year college course in xxx).  In the case of languages, many are self-taught, and yet one can be not just proficient, but fluent. &#8259;  Fire wall   17:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Either way, it still needs a citation. I'd also like to see references for the two paragraphs in "Early life" - I suspect that it will be difficult to verify his status as a boyscout etc. While that information isn't uninteresting, it isn't crucial to a biography and should probably be removed if it can't be cited. Nathan  T 18:26, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Working on it... publications about such things are difficult to find and of course people did not make web references in that era.  &#8259;  Fire wall   16:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Image copyrights
I'm concerned about the copyright status of the images on this article. For the infobox image, it is asserted that the image was intentionally posted without a copyright - but this is not equivalent to releasing it under a Creative Commons license, and generally speaking when no copyright is stated we infer "All rights reserved" as opposed to "Public domain."

Additionally, it seems somewhat dubious that User:Firewall was present at multiple stages of the life of the subject and took each photograph; the most likely conclusion is that the user is the subject himself, which as fine as far as it goes - but for copyright purposes, it indicates that the user doesn't have standing to claim ownership of these images. Can the provenance of the images be addressed, please? Thanks, Nathan  T 18:43, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

(Should note that I don't intend the above message to be antagonistic; while we generally discourage notable individuals from actually writing their own biography, it isn't prohibited... And we certainly need and appreciate the presence of subject matter experts on Wikipedia! The more the better. Nonetheless, certain issues still need to be addressed.) Nathan  T 18:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No problem. Should it not be expected that parents or siblings would have pictures of sons/daughters/brothers/sisters throughout their life time?  I think rather than being "dubious", that should be "expected".  But as pointed out, individuals can also have photos of themselves which are not available through any other source (making them subject matter experts in terms of access to pictorial information). The original images used in this article are all taken by or taken at the request of User:Firewall and are released into the public domain for use in Wikipedia and other web sites.  User:Firewall owns all of the images and as indicated on the copyright pages, releases them.  The infobox image is a promotional image that had already been released into the public domain.  Perhaps the description is not sufficiently worded because "this photo is intentionally provided without copyright" was intended to convey the fact that no rights are claimed and that it was already in the public domain.  As a promotional photo, it is hoped that it is distributed as widely as possible in conjunction with discussions of the Entomopter.  I'll change the copyright notice to something more acceptable if that is possible once the picture has been placed (is that possible?)  &#8259;  Fire wall   21:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * If you can have the website where the image is originally found place a copyright notice releasing it under a compatible license (GFDL 1.3 until June 30, I think, and then CC-by-SA 3.0 afterwards, or PD) that would be ideal. As for images taken by others... Sure, family members can be expected to have taken photographs of an individual over a lifetime. Even so, the license to those photographs is owned by the photographer - not the subject. I'll ask an images admin to come by and give an opinion on whether the assertion that the images are currently owned by you is sufficient - it may be, for our purposes, I'm not sure. Nathan  T 14:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Some of these photos are scanned from the original and do not exist at web sites, so adding copyright notices is not applicable in those cases (for example the picture taken at the Chr. Michelson Institute). Regarding the license to photographs being owned by the one who pushes the shutter button, I do not think that that is entirely true.  For example, in copyright law, "works for hire" belong not to the photographer, but to the one commissioning the photograph.  In the case of family photos, a child directed to snap a picture of a parent does not have rights to the photograph if the child is commanded to take the picture with the parent's camera as a familial duty (a sort of "work for hire").  I am familiar with the process of getting written permission from the owner of photographs sent to "Wikipedia OTRS permissions" as I have done that with the John Portman (architect) picture on Wikipedia.  In the case of the pictures in this article however, the highest resolution and paper originals are all owned by User:Firewall as indicated in the release statements.  After we have stabilized the text of the article (so that none of the pictures change), I'll be happy to send the OTRS folks an E-MAIL confirming this, but it will be redundant with the certification on the picture itself.  &#8259;  Fire wall   00:43, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok. OTRS confirmation was the route I was told to suggest, so that works fine for me. Nathan  T 15:16, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Removal of section subheadings and part of the lead
First of all, I do appreciate that (copy)edit, but would like to discuss the above issues. (i) IMHO, subheadings only clarify the content, even though the paragraphs are small (besides, they might expand, who knows) and this opinion is widely shared in scientific publishing. Why removing ? (ii) What was the reason for cutting that sentence off the lead ? I foresee a future GA delisting on the famous ground "the lead is too short". Consequently, I shall not pass this GAN like that and shall ask the author to expand the lead, to which he might ask the same question - what was wrong with the previous ? Materialscientist (talk) 22:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I have now seen a number of peer reviews and the like -- and to a one they all say that where a section is a short paragraph at most, and you have a whole bunch of them, that it is best to not have separate section headings for each.  The aim is to make the article easier to read, and having lots of minor headings can rather confuse people.   "During his career, he concentrated on application of remote sensing (especially radar) to diverse fields ranging from the tracking of endangered species to automated wargaming, threat systems, and eventually focusing on unmanned vehicle systems." was in the lede.  The lede is supposed to be at most a summary of what one will find in the article. Finding a long sentence which is basically iterated under "career" does not meet that standard in my opinion. The information is still there under "career" - the question was it should also be given almost verbatim in the lede.  I trust this answers your concerns. Collect (talk) 22:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining the edit (an important note there on current WP presentation standards). This now bounces back to the author and comment 2) of GA review - the introduction should be expanded to include a summary of the major topics of the paper. Materialscientist (talk) 23:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The lead has been (re) expanded to come closer to what I think the GA standards are looking for. This time the topics included are summary statements covering all of the sections found in the article.  Expanded discussion of these summary statements are found in the body with appropriate citations, but for reader convenience (for those only scanning the introduction) I have "wikified" various words/phrases/names even though some of these are also "wikified" in the body of the article.  &#8259;  Fire wall   01:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of interest
Has it ever been noted that this article was created and heavily edited by the subject of the article? I'm referring to his edit at which seems to claim that he is Michelson. Dougweller (talk) 17:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * A quick answer, yes, this fact has long been known and discussed. The author was guided to keep NPOV to the best of their ability. Materialscientist (talk) 00:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It has been known, but I don't see where it has ever been discussed. I tagged it with COI about 9 months ago here, but it was remove here with nary an acknowledgement of the issue. Being NPOV is not the same as being conflict-free. If User:Firewall is indeed Robert C. Michelson, I believe the tag is certainly warranted. IMHO, having an untagged article with such a conflicted editor hurts Wikipedia's credibility. It doesn't help that the article was created by the subject himself, has been extensively edited by the subject himself, and was promoted to GA status largely by the efforts of the subject himself. This is basically an autobiography, and such articles are "strongly discouraged". --Evb-wiki (talk) 02:34, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've tagged it for the sake of transparency and honesty. I agree with Evb-wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 17:21, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * After carefully reading this article, I can not say that I see any hint of conflict of interest. Everyting is very well documented with relevant citations.  It seems to me the article simply state biographical facts for a person that is clearly notable. In no way do I see that this article "hurts Wikipedia's credibility".Pulsopapel (talk) 00:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * COI is not about how well written the article is, or how well sourced. Please read WP:CONFLICT. The fact is, this article should actually be tagged with autobio. --Evb-wiki (talk) 01:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, the abundance of footnotes in the article is misleading. About one-third of them are primary sources, i.e., articles, papers, books written by Michelson himself, which must be used with care. Here they are usually being used (over-used, IMHO) to support the claims of the subject's specific accomplishments. --Evb-wiki (talk) 01:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It has far too much detail - reads more like a CV than an encyclopedia article. For instance, it seems to list every course he taught. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 11:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup needed
I placed several cleanup tags on the article addressing by biggest concerns regarding the state of this article in hopes that it will attract the attention of multiple editors. I don't particularly feel that at the moment this article meets the standards of a Good Article, but instead of delisting it or putting it up for reassessment right away (or at all), I thought I'd point out my biggest concerns informally first.


 * Reference placement: The placement of references needs some serious cleanup to improve readability. There really isn't a tag for that, but it is related to the Manual of Style. Citations should not be in the middle of sentences. They come after end-of-sentence punctuation. Any sentence that makes a claim of fact should have a citation, even if the same citation was just used. There are large swaths of text without citations, including the lead, which the MOS now requires to be cited.


 * Source quality/neutrality: I noticed that there are several sources that list the subject of the article as an author. Even if they are published in a refereed third-party source, I have concerns about some of the statements in the article having only those sources as references. It sets in a bit of a grey-area policy-wise, so my recommendation is to shore up some of those references with sources that are not (co)authored by the article's subject. If it's that important, someone else will have mentioned it somewhere.


 * Undue weight: I have concerns that the length and detail that this article goes into is a little much for the summary format of an encyclopedia. In particular, the "In popular media" section could stand to be pared down to the most significant two or three items. Likewise, the "Avocations" section could probably benefit from the same.


 * Reads like a resume: This article has a lot of chronological laundry lists that read very much like expanded versions of resume bullet points. Consider picking and choosing from these or organizing the prose in an alternate way.


 * Puffery: Considering that the main contributor to the article is the subject of the article, the prose is generally pretty neutral. However, there are some instances of puffery and weasel words throughout the article.

I may try to go through the article later and clean up some of these things myself if I have time. But I figured I'd leave this here for the benefit of other editors. LaMenta3 (talk) 05:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

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COI tag (March 2024)
Author Firewall appears to have admitted to a COI here without formally disclosing per WP:DISCLOSE. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 21:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)