Wikipedia:Featured article review/1880 Republican National Convention/archive1

1880 Republican National Convention

 * Notified: Nishkid64, Coemgenus, Billmckern, Tilden76, Devonian Wombat, -A-M-B-1996-, WP Politics, WP Chicago, WP Illinois, WP USA, WP Elections and Referendums, noticed in December 2023 with prior issues raised in 2015

As originally promoted, this 2007 FA included a number of references to varied sources. However, in 2015, it was discovered on the talk page that essentially the editor just read the Ackerman book and threw in citations from Ackerman's notes, even though those sources did not entirely support the cited content. I ran into a similar problem from this same editor when I rewrote Thomas C. Hindman, another old FA promotion, several years ago. resolved many of the issues in 2015 but the article is still very heavily reliant on Ackerman alone. I also, in December 2023, found that there are still a number of smaller source-text integrity issues and that the citation placement is messed up.

Awhile back, this article was suggested to potentially rerun as TFA with the upcoming Republican National Convention later this year, but I don't think that is a good idea given the sourcing history here. Given my experiences with Featured article review/J. R. Richard/archive1, Featured article review/Lee Smith (baseball)/archive1, Talk:Thomas C. Hindman, and Talk:Stede Bonnet I have grave concerns about the sourcing from any FA nominations by this nominator. Hog Farm Talk 17:57, 4 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Move to FARC no major edits to address sourcing concerns. Z1720 (talk) 16:37, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I did not write this one, though I have edited and have access to the sources. Is the concern here that some particular sources are inaccurate, or just that there might be problems? I'd be glad to run a spotcheck on the citations and see if it's good. --Coemgenus (talk) 14:12, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * - I compared passages to parts of Ackerman several months ago and have found that the big ideas are all supported, but a number of the smaller details are not. I'm also generally uneasy with the content here after my experience with re-writing Thomas C. Hindman, another FA by the same nominator, where the article was based only on one book to the neglect of information in other sources, omitted major information (Hindman being suspended from command for awhile), and contained factual errors (incorrectly claiming that Hindman was present for the Chattanooga actions after Chickamauga), in addition to the sources failing spot-checks. A spotcheck here would be greatly appreciated. Hog Farm Talk 14:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Are you still planning on looking at this? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:02, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, yes, I will look at it this week. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:43, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I looked at every tenth citation to see if they lined up with what was being cited:
 * fn.10 -- Hesseltine p. 432 contains the quoted language and the sentiment it expresses.
 * fn.20 -- Ackerman makes both points on p. 74 and the quoted headline is there.
 * fn.30 -- Ackerman pp.66-67 does say this.
 * fn.40 -- Cites Ackerman p. 58 for two points. the phrasing is a little awkward, but it's accurate.
 * fn.50 -- Cites Ackerman p. 83 for two quotes, both accurate.
 * fn.60 -- Cites Ackerman p. 91 for three points and two quotes, all accurate.
 * fn.70 -- Cites Ackerman p. 103-104 for two points, both accurate.
 * fn.80 -- Cites Ackerman p. 116 for two points. Both accurate, but the parenthetical near the second point wasn't in the source (it is true, though). So I moved the citation to the right spot.
 * fn.90 -- I had trouble accessing this -- the Questia page wouldn't load. I found the book on the Internet Archive, though, and it's correct.


 * Since most of those random citations were to the same book, I picked out a few others to check.


 * fn.53 -- Cites Muzzey p. 169 -- the quotation and the meaning of the sentence are both accurate.
 * fn.59 -- Cites Clancy pp. 104-105 for two points including quotations. This is the first problem I found. Clancy and Ackerman both cite a letter from Joseph H. Geiger to John Sherman, but where Clancy summarizes the content, Ackerman quotes it directly. The author of this article uses the direct quote, as found in Ackerman, but cites it to Clancy, which is incorrect.


 * I think this article relies too heavily on Ackerman's book, but where it does so, it does so accurately. Where it cites other sources, in at least one instance, it does not do so faithfully. There's not much to fix here, but it should be fixed. I have nearly all of these books, so I guess I should be the one to fix it? --Coemgenus (talk) 18:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Coemgenus, it does not appear anyone else is stepping forward - is this something you're willing and able to do, or should this proceed? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Nikkimaria, I apologize, I've been swamped. I'll get started on it this weekend. The Ackerman citations are all good, it's just the others I need to clean up. Shouldn't take long. I hope! --Coemgenus (talk) 02:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)