Wikipedia:Featured article review/Assata Shakur/archive1


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

The article was delisted by Casliber via FACBot (talk) 3:17, 1 January 2018 (UTC).

Assata Shakur

 * Notified: User talk:Savidan, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography

Review section
I am nominating this featured article for review because:

While it is obviously the product of a great deal of work, I found a number of areas where it did not live up to FA standards. It seems likely that there are more problems, as I didn't look very hard.

1) Accusing a BLP of perjury in wikipedia's voice, with flimsy sourcing. 2) Sourcing information to assatashakur.org and then repeating it in wikipedia's voice. 3) SYNTHing "police authorities" and "prosecution" - may seem small but should have been picked up.

More detail on talk. NPalgan2 (talk) 22:40, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * "Shakur dropped out of Cathedral High School[ambiguous] to get a job and live on her own but later earned a General Educational Development (GED) with her aunt's help.[12] Before dropping out of high school, she attended a segregated school in New York, which she discusses in her autobiography. As the only black student or one of a few in her classes, Shakur said that the integrated school system was poorly set up, and that teachers seemed surprised when she answered a question in class, as if not expecting black people to be intelligent and engaged."
 * This sounds as if the high school was "integrated" but "mostly white", not "segregated".
 * FIXED NPalgan2 (talk) 23:44, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * What she learned of history was sugar coated, because students were taught a version that ignored the oppression suffered by people of color, especially in the United States. As a child she performed in a play about George Washington's birthday, and said that she was to repeatedly sing “George Washington never told a lie.” In her autobiography she later wrote: “I didn’t know what a fool they had made out of me until i grew up and started to read real history” (Pg 33).
 * POV phrasing, wrong citation format.
 * FIXED NPalgan2 (talk) 23:44, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Shakur attended Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), when she was introduced to the Golden Drums and then th
 * What were the golden drums?
 * FIXED, just avoid mentioning them as the name not important.
 * " Their relationship was damaged by Louis’s marriage ideals, including a wife to properly cook and clean. "
 * This article may have been "well-written... [with prose that is] engaging and of a professional standard", but that is not the case today. Needs a thorough rewrite
 * "That same year Chesimard changed her name to Assata Olugbala Shakur". The NYTimes referred to her right until her escape as Chesimard, so I assume that she did not change it legally - at least not until she reached Cuba? Article should clarify ambiguity.
 * https://books.google.com/books?id=QPUVBAAAQBAJ This book was published in 2015 (after the article was raised to FA) but got good reviews in NYTimes, Chicago Tribune, etc and should be included as a source (compared to the many pro-Shakur ones)
 * One of the biggest questions of the article: did the jury convict AS of personally firing the shots that killed Shakur or was she deemed jointly responsible because she was in a car with other BLA members with guns? This is really something the article should answer. NPalgan2 (talk) 21:36, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, the nyt noted that the jury convicted her of taking the cop's pistol, so maybe they convicted her of shooting him? on the other hand the police claimed she shot zayd, but the article says that conviction was thrown out when the supreme court of NJ narrowed the application of the law, so it looks like the jury DIDNT say she personally shot Zayd. NPalgan2 (talk) 04:17, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

I feel that I have cleared up most of the remaining problems; the article could do with some more trimming of extraneous details per WP:NOTNEWS. The major reamining problem is sourcing:


 * 7 times: Riley, Lisa (March 26, 2008). "Assata Shakur". The Langston University Gazette.

Riley is not an RS, just an undergraduate newspaper from a disreputable university. Churchill was fired by Colorado for acadmic misconduct, so a better source needed. I have read Kirsta's article, she doesn't seem to have reread the trial transcript or anything, mostly just parrots AS's supporters claims uncritically. Deserves some weight but citing 14 times is over the top. Wolf is not RS. Williams is AS's aunt and lawyer. Should not be used for statements in wikipedia's voice.
 * 4 times Churchill and Vander Wall, 2002
 * Paul Wolf's word doc on COINTELPRO
 * 14 times Kirsta, Alix (May 29, 1999), "A black and white case – Investigation – Joanne Chesimard". The Times.
 * 6 times Williams, Evelyn A. (June 25, 2005). "Statement of Facts in the New Jersey trial of Assata Shakur". The Talking Drum Collective.

The overall problem with this article is the problem mentioned by Burrough - most of the stuff on AS is either skimpy press clippings from the 1970s or nonRS advocacy from AS's supporters who recycle the same claims endlessly. Unfortunately Burrough's book does not rectify this in his brief mentions of AS. Trying to write a FA on AS with the lack of good sourcing is an uphill battle. NPalgan2 (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

FARC section

 * Moving to get some additional opinions on the status of the article. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:58, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Delist. The problems with POV sourcing outlined above are far too great for retention as FA. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:14, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Keep Listed In my view the potential issues are not to great that you could not fix them quite easily, and since POV is always subjective, I don't think we should rush to delist. We are looking at some content that is poorly sourced, because the authors to said sources are in some way or other considered unreliable by NPalgan2. We should at least attempt to either replace the sources or remove the content. POV content can be removed from an article without impacting its overall quality and by extension, not delisting it. Dysklyver 23:32, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * If you think it can be done "quite easily", perhaps give it a try? NPalgan2 (talk) 02:13, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I can see you've been editing the article since you listed the problems above. Do you feel you're making significant headway and have enough enthusiasm to keep going? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:35, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The article is much better now. Some of the sourcing still needs to be improved, the other main issue is that, according to FA criteria, the article is supposed to be "comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places", but, as I said, the sources available do not answer some basic, important questions. NPalgan2 (talk) 16:31, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah yes. I can see that the Days of Rage book has quite a bit about her in it (even material such as her family's nickname for her, among other things). So just to clarify, when you say "sources available" you mean sources already used by the article and not sources available overall. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:58, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, having given the article a readthrough and thought it over, I think that it's now of (or near) FA level. I've removed Riley as a source. Wolf is cited for one fact, Vander Wall and Churchill is cited for tangential uncontroversial points (so probably it doesn't matter that Churchill was later dismissed for academic fabrication). Williams (AS's lawyer and a SPS) is cited for a few points but probably a R2ndaryS has the same info or the points could be dropped. However, the article has changed a lot since I started editing it, and it's not the same article that was promoted in 2008. It should probably be checked again. My interest has waned in this article, but I could be somewhat involved in the process. NPalgan2 (talk) 02:49, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, I think the best thing is if a couple of impartial people look it over for prose and balance then. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:37, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Delist. The sources used to write this article strike me as poor overall and bordering on fringe. A library search reveals a substantial body of peer-reviewed scholarship about the subject that should be reviewed and used to revise the article. -- Laser brain  (talk)  11:31, 20 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Delist – There appears to be some proseline in the last section from additions, and I spotted some of the sourcing issues that have been raised before. At least one reference (number 201) is to a Wikipedia page, which is an obvious no-no, and in general this seems heavily weighted towards 1970s newspaper stories and the like. This would be okay if they were reliable and the best sources available, but if Laser is correct about the existence of stronger sources, and I assume he is, this doesn't meet FA criterion 1c. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 23:24, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:17, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.