Talk:Rotnei Clarke/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 18:09, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review; initial comments to follow in the next 1-5 days. Thanks in advance for your work on it! -- Khazar2 (talk) 18:09, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I look forward to it. Thanks for taking he time to review it. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:21, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Review
Overall, this is well written, well researched, and clearly comprehensive; I really appreciate the work you've put into it so far. I do have some quibbles and then some bigger suggestions, listed below.


 * I think it's worth mentioning his birthplace in the lead and in the article body as well as in the infobox.
 * "Verdigris is a small town consisting of fewer than 4,000 people. Enrollment at the high school is 300 students" -- these stats need a year; might go out of date
 * "distantly related to Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe" -- well, very distantly, in the sense that they both have some Native American ancestry. I think this phrasing is a stretch. I'd suggest cutting this, or at least rewriting it.
 * "honor roll" needs DAB


 * I think this article's heavy reliance on the Sports Illustrated and USA Today articles needs to be reduced. You've done a good job of rewriting and combining with other information in most places, but it still feels like those articles have been mostly reproduced, beat-for-beat, in our article. I realize all this was done in a good-faith effort to give a comprehensive look at the topic, but I still think this unintentionally rises to the level of a copyright issue.

Here's an example of a paragraph that seems only superficially rewritten (though, believe me, I understand the temptation to preserve the word "clobbered"!):


 * Source: "His coaches ordered him not to dribble two steps into the foul lane because they knew he would be clobbered. A nurse traveled with the team carrying glue, stitches and butterfly bandages for the inevitable blows he would take in the face and around his eyes."


 * Article:"Verdigris coaches ordered Clarke not to enter the foul lane for fear that he would be clobbered. The team traveled with a nurse who carried bandages, glue, and stitches to treat the frequent blows to the face that Clarke suffered."

Here's a more extended example:
 * Source:"But before he could really test his wheels, little Rotnei got a plastic toy basketball goal for his second Christmas. "That's when he became addicted, right there," says Conley. By seventh grade, Clarke was shooting 500 shots a night at the gym of whatever high school employed Conley, then a basketball coach, and Chris, a volleyball coach and business teacher. "We moved around a lot," says Chris. "But we always had keys to a gym." When Clarke was entering eighth grade, his family (Rotnei's sister, Cassie, just finished her final season playing volleyball at St. Louis) moved from Oklahoma to Denison, Texas, where Conley's brother, Kelly, had landed a head basketball coach position at Denison High School and offered Conley the assistant's job. In one year, Clarke wore out the school's new Gun machine."
 * Article:"For his second Christmas, Clarke received a plastic basketball set and was quickly hooked. "That's when he became addicted, right there," Conley Clarke said.[2] By the fourth grade, Conley and Rotnei were shooting together on an almost daily basis.[4] Clarke's parents, who were both sports coaches, moved frequently as he was growing up. Wherever they went, they made sure Clarke had access to the school's gymnasium. By the time he entered seventh grade, he was attempting 500 shots a night.[2] Before eighth grade, the family moved to Denison, Texas, where Clarke's uncle Kelly had landed a head basketball coaching job and had brought along Conley as an assistant coach. Within a year, Clarke had worn out the school's shooting machine."

This becomes more of a problem when the same USA Today and SI articles are quoted forty more times apiece. Ideally our article should read more as a summary (and therefore significant reduction) of those pieces rather than a remix of them, if that distinction makes sense--even if it comes at the cost of omitting minor detail. As a side note, some of this detail is overdetailed enough that it also appears to me to be an issue under criterion 3b.

I've listed below a few examples that I think could be trimmed, or more briefly summarized, without significant loss to the article. This isn't comprehensive, but it'll give you an idea of what I'm looking at:
 * ""(Anderson) was fast, and I wanted him to have a fast name," explains Clarke's father."
 * "That's when he became addicted, right there," says Conley Clarke. -- already clear
 * "distantly related to Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe"
 * "Wherever they went, they made sure Clarke had access to the school's gymnasium. "
 * "where he was asked to play up an age group during a tournament"
 * "When the team got back home, Clarke stayed up to 3 a.m. shooting. "Dad, I can still feel it," he commented at the time."
 * ""After that it was hard to get into our high school gym for games," recalls Conley Clarke."
 * "Although the Verdigris gym holds 2,700, fans had to show up several hours before games to get a seat."
 * "Clarke continued to work hard returning to the gym nightly for shooting practice, even on days of hard team workouts."
 * "Kids from diverse social groups swarmed Clarke for autographs after games. "He just affected all different kids like that. It was a cult following," says Conley Clarke."
 * "Some fans even tried to give Rotnei Clarke cash gifts"
 * "When the originators, two local boys, were found the Clarkes did not press charges but instead asked the perpetrators to apologize at the sheriff's office."
 * "During a playoff game, 2,800 fans showed up to watch Clarke play, 300 more than capacity."
 * ""You couldn't get in there sideways," recalled an observer."
 * ""It’s a great feeling and it’s truly a blessing," Clarke said after the game"
 * ""When I think back on [my high school days], it was a crazy deal," says Clarke. "It was fun. But at the same time, there was a lot of pressure on every game.""
 * "His work ethic was an inspiration to younger players, and he was happy to help them work on their games."
 * ""He made it OK to give glory to God and not be selfish about things," recalled a teacher."
 * "Clarke missed Butler's next three games and was not allowed to engage in strenuous activity such as basketball practice.[2] "That was the worst thing for me," he remarked."

Reply
Thank you for the review and specific suggestions. I know this was closed already, but want to leave a few comments to explain my thinking in case a future reviewer reads this. First of all, the specific suggestions are very helpful and I will certainly work on those. It is almost certainly a fair critique to say I used too many quotes. I have a habit of doing this because 1) I read a lot of news reports and quotes are normal for news coverage. Thus it feels natural to me, even if somewhat abnormal for this (Encyclopedic)  type of writing. And 2) it is a way to show the original source of the material. Obviously, this is not always necessary so I will trim/paraphrase some of the less important quotes.

I do apologize about the too close paraphrase issues. I am normally diligent about rewriting information, but apparently a few thing slipped through. I do not believe anything rises to the level of a copyright problem (facts aren't copyrightable, even if an entire article is repeated), but do understand there are style problems at minimum. As to the heavy use of the two sources, it is in part because I started the article using those two, then filled it in. A lot of the info appears in other sources as well, so had I started with other sources and then used those they would have less cites numerically even if the article was exactly the same. (As an aside, counting the number of cites can be deceptive - both sources actually started out with a much lower # and then rose as other info got added and the article became less dependent on the two... Say a paragraph was originally A. B. C.[1], all supported by one citation.  Then I refine B with better info from another source and suddenly it becomes A.[1] B.[2] C.[1] Now source [1] is used for less material, but appears more times in the citation list.)  Additionally, both articles in questions are pseudo-biographies so are very much themselves a summary of all available info. That said, I am sure some details can be cut - you have provided some good suggestions.

I do, however, want to make it clear that Clarke's high school career has unusual significance to his biography. I have written many player bios and this is the only one I felt a need to write more than 2-3 paragraphs about the player's early life+high school. Clarke was an absolute media phenomenon in high school, with literally hundreds of articles being written about him in Oklahoma. Arguably, his high school days are more important than his college career, which itself will, most likely, be substantially more significant than his pro career. --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:52, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks; all that makes sense, and I honestly don't think you have anything to apologize for-- it's obviously all good-faith work. I agree that his unusual high school career is clearly important here and needs to be discussed in all its Linsanity-like glory; my suggestion moving forward would be just that the article be more selective/summaryish about what detail (and especially quotations) are used to represent that career, if that makes sense. Most of all, though, I want to apologize to you if the review in any way seems to disrespect your work, which is definitely not my intent; I really appreciate what you've done so far here, and your willingness to take a second pass at it. I'll look forward to seeing it as a GA! -- Khazar2 (talk) 18:19, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No worries. I appreciate the review which I am sure will help improve the article.  My only annoyance was that the review was closed, rather than put on hold, and you adequately explained that decision at your talk page. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:19, 7 August 2013 (UTC)