Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cal Ripken, Jr./archive2


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ian Rose (talk) 01:53, 26 July 2014 (diff).

Cal Ripken, Jr.

 * Nominator(s): Oriolesfan8 (talk) 11:36, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

This article is about Cal Ripken, Jr., Hall of Fame baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles. No major issues came up in the last FA review, so I am hoping there is enough input this time to get it to featured status. If you find problems with it, please check back periodically to see how I have corrected them. Oriolesfan8 (talk) 11:36, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. No major issues came up!?!  Two editors opposed the article for failing the well-researched criteria because the majority of the biographical information in the article is based on a single book written before the subject's career had even ended.  No featured article should have ninety-two of its first ninety-six citations coming from a single source.  No work has been done to address this issue since the last nomination; in fact it looks like no work has been done by the nominator at all since that nomination.  I am confused as to why the nominator appears to be attempting to engage in some form of subterfuge. Indrian (talk) 18:02, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't see a problem in the use of the book as the main source for the first part of his career. It's a reliable source, and sums that part of his career up fine. There isn't any more recent book on him. If that's your only reason for opposing than I have to question it. The other oppose in the FAC does hit on the same points I saw on a skim, and those concerns still need to be addressed though. Wizardman  02:16, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Cal Ripken wrote an autobiography (still before the end of his career, unfortunately) that is not referenced here. He was one of the four subject's of George Will's best-selling and well regarded Men at Work, which is not referenced here.  He is one of the players featured in the book Baltimore Orioles: Where Have You Gone? Cal Ripken Jr., Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, and Other Orioles Greats discussing the post-playing careers of prominent Orioles, which is not referenced here.  There is a book specifically covering his MVP and World Championship season called Oriole Magic: The O's of 1983 (he wrote the forward) that is not referenced here.  There is an oral history called From 33rd Street to Camden Yards : An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles that includes Ripken and is not referenced here.  I am not a scholar of Ripken or the Orioles and have only read some of these books myself, so it could be that not all of them contain useful information, but the point is there are other monographs that discuss aspects of his career, and I am not even getting into newspaper and magazine profiles that have undoubtedly appeared over the years as well.  By viewing the majority of Ripken's career through the lens of a single author, this article risks inheriting any biases of said author by not surveying a larger swath of the relevant literature, which is not limited to the narrow realm of "full-length biographies of Cal Ripken, Jr."  Unless the nominator can demonstrate that these other sources precisely duplicate all of the relevant information on his career found in the single book he has chosen to cite to, then he cannot claim to have satisfied the well-researched criteria of FAC. Indrian (talk) 03:50, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to referencing more sources for the early part of Ripken's career; in fact, I would have, if that had been in the Featured Article criteria. But, it is not. In fact, if you take a look at Rogers Hornsby and J. R. Richard (related precedents), you will notice that they mainly use a single source for their careers. Hornsby relies heavily on the same book, and Richard relies heavily on Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference, both statistical sites. You do bring up the valid point that, by using the Rosenfeld book so heavily, I may have missed aspects of his career. That is true... in a way. However, this is an encyclopedia article, not a book. This article should just cover the main points of his career; it can't cover every single-game performance or minor detail relating to Ripken . Books may differ in specifics of Ripken's career, but all biographies will cover all the general information an encyclopedia article requires. There is nothing notable enough for an encyclopedia article that would not be found in a biography, including Rosenfeld's. And if there were anything important not mentioned in the Rosenfeld book, I would have found it in at least one of the articles I looked at while writing this article.


 * In addition, I don't have access to many of the books you list, except the autobiography, which I avoided because it is a primary source that should be assumed to be biased towards Ripken. (Also, Baltimore Orioles: Where Have You Gone? Cal Ripken Jr., Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, and Other Orioles Greats would not have helped with the pre-1995 part of Ripken's career, which is what you are concerned about.) However, in order to address your concerns, I did manage to find SABR bio and Britannica bio. The Britannica bio contributed nothing new from Ripken's pre-1995 career, and the SABR article contained only about two facts not mentioned by Rosenfeld which were relevant enough for the article (Drago and the ASGMVP-HR Derby significance, both of which I have added). If you can demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that other sources contain information about Ripken's early life which should be mentioned, I will add it. But, based on Richard, Hornsby, and the FA criteria, this article cites enough sources about his early life to be promoted. In addition, correct me if wrong, but you were the only editor to raise this as a concern in the last nomination. User:Neutralhomer supported it (based on references, by the way), and User:maclean just wanted some articles and books to be mentioned, which I did. Oriolesfan8 (talk) 23:04, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I also made a request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball for editors who are knowledgable about Ripken to check and see if anything important is not mentioned in the early part of the article. Oriolesfan8 (talk) 23:24, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You are absolutely correct that we need to be careful about using autobiographies because of the potential for bias, but they can be helpful for early life information and providing a player's own viewpoints on events. Regarding the Hornsby article, it should be noted that it has more than one book source, unlike this one; the major biography of him is heavily used, but there is more sourcing diversity there. Richard doesn't have a biography that I can find, but there are several books and articles that at least show that multiple perspectives were considered. You'd be amazed what any given source can leave out. I just finished substantial work on a broad baseball article, and I'm glad that I had multiple major books on the subject on hand because each one offered something that proved valuable. The book you are using is a great source, but Indrian is right in saying that we need more evidence that the article "is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" per FA criterion 1c. Even a simple Google Books search of the books listed above should allow you to reduce the massive weight being placed on the one book, and perhaps discover new material that would be worthwhile to include. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 00:55, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree with Indrian and Giants2008 re criterion 1c. hamiltonstone (talk) 13:35, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I did a Google Books search and posted all the relevant information I could find. If this article still needs additional sourcing to reach featured status, tell me, and I will see if I can find any newspaper articles too. I can get Ripken's autobiography, but that would probably take a week because I would have to put it on hold at the library. Oriolesfan8 (talk) 11:03, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have not yet gotten the autobiography, but I did search archives of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times for more information about Ripken, getting the best results with the New York Times. Would the editors that have commented so far mind informing me whether this is enough to bring this article to featured status, or whether there is still more I need to do? I don't want this review to die like the last one did because of inactivity. Oriolesfan8 (talk) 12:13, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * My view is formed on the basis of reading the discussion - i know nothing about the sport of the literature. If there are, as Indrian suggests, several books that are directly relevant, then that literature should be being surveyed, and a bunch of newspaper articles, useful though they may be, are not really a substitute for checking out at least some of those books. Also, of all the books, i would suggest the autobiography is the least useful - reliability is enhanced by finding other people writing about the person, not by them writing about themselves. Regards, hamiltonstone (talk) 12:19, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input. I already surveyed other books directly relevant to Ripken; this article now cites three additional ones. I looked at others as well but failed to find anything in them not already covered in this article. Oriolesfan8 (talk) 11:31, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I did get the autobiography, but there did not seem to be anything relevant about Cal's early life not already covered by this article. However, this article is now based on four books (not counting ones I looked at but found no new information in), and I have supplemented the books with newspaper articles. I think this meets the recommendations of the users that have commented so far. Oriolesfan8 (talk) 11:28, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Closing comment -- Aside from the concerns raised above, this review seems to have stalled after remainiung open nearly a month so I'll be archiving it shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:52, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 01:53, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.