Wikipedia:Peer review/Charles Lindbergh/archive2

Charles Lindbergh
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because… I think that it is a trifle bloated and quite oddly written. It may also contain material of trivial or no relevance to the biography, or which may be a copyvio.
 * Previous peer review

Thanks, Collect (talk) 13:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Please explain what exactly you mean by "oddly written" and identify what specific material are you claiming as being in copyright violation. Thank you. Centpacrr (talk) 23:11, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Collect, PR is for eliciting feedback for article improvement, not for dispute resolutions. It seems like you think you know what may or may not be wrong with the article, although Centpacrr (one of the major contributors) seems to disagree. What do you wish to accomplish here at PR? María ( yllo submarine ) 22:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Question
 * See the extensive discussions here and here where I have addressed User:Collect's issue with a well sourced single word ("fleeing") in great detail. His/her posting here thus seems to me to be more for the purpose of canvassing and/or forum shopping then any improvement of this long standing and mature article. Centpacrr (talk) 22:21, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC) I haven't read the article in detail -- the nomination statement confused me, which is why I commented. Like I said before, PR isn't for dispute resolution, so this really isn't the place to discuss such things.  Unless Collect wishes to partake in the review process, perhaps this PR should be archived so that proper dispute resolution can take place on the talk page. María ( yllo  submarine ) 23:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's fine with me (closing this discussion) as here is clearly not the right place to address this matter (which has already been discussed at great length in the two threads linked above), and User:Collect has also failed to answer the questions I posed to explain what he/she means by "oddly written", copyright violation, etc. Holding a third parallel discussion here over the use of a single word seems to me to just be a waste of time. Centpacrr (talk) 23:25, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * By his/her silence, this request appears to have been abandoned by its proposer. Centpacrr (talk) 16:02, 26 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Amazingly enough - no one notified me of the "closure" which I feel is not only inapropos, but errant. The purple prose syndrome runs through this, and asking for "peer review" is the exact proper course.  /The idea that the OP must somehow engage in a debate is not part of the normal process.  Cheers. Collect (talk) 01:00, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There is nothing to discuss here because the OP's "nomination" is so vague and nonspecific as to be all but meaningless. The OP was asked several times (on February 17, 20, and 26) by two editors to specify what he/she meant by "oddly written" as well as what he/she claims to be "copyvio" but remained silent. The OP has also failed to be specific about what he/she claims to be "material of trivial or no relevance" to the article, and has provided no support for any of these allegations. The only specific issue, in fact, that he/she has has ever raised regarding this article was the sourcing of the word "fleeing" which was fully addressed in extensive discussions here and here in which multiple reliable published sources (both contemporary and from historians) were provided supporting its use as appropriate and verified. The OP was also asked multiple times in both of those discussions to provide support for his/her claims that these were either not reliable and/or to provide specific sources countering them but continually ignored all those requests as well. Centpacrr (talk) 01:34, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * All that is needed is for a third party to read the article - which is now at 118K in length, with such "important" items as a lengthy quote from "We",  emerged suddenly from virtual obscurity to instantaneous world fame ,  This eventually led to the Lindbergh family being "driven into voluntary exile" in Europe to which they sailed in secrecy from New York under assumed names in late December 1935 to "seek a safe, secluded residence away from the tremendous public hysteria" in America (in the lede),   to California during his childhood and teenage years (none for more than a full year) ,  unfortunately, the 20-year-old student pilot was not be permitted to "solo" during his time at the school because he could not afford to post a bond which the company President Ray Page,  After just half an hour of dual time with a pilot who was visiting the field to pick up another surplus JN-4, Lindbergh flew solo for the first time in the Jenny that he had just purchased for $500,   few weeks after leaving Americus, the young airman achieved another key aviation milestone when he made his first nighttime flight near Lake Village, Arkansas,  Although that initial time limit lapsed without a serious challenger, the state of aviation technology had advanced sufficiently by 1924 to prompt Orteig to extend his offer for another five years, and this time it began to attract an impressive grouping of well known, highly experienced, and well financed contenders. Ironically, the one exception among these competitors was the still boyish Charles Lindbergh, a 25-year-old relative latecomer to the race, who, in relation to the others, was virtually anonymous to the public as an aviation figure, who had considerably less overall flying experience, and was being primarily financed by just a $15,000 bank loan and his own modest savings, five long paragraphs on the 4 years in Europe, including " By late 1935 these concerns finally led him to decide to take his family into voluntary self exile in Europe[60], and thus in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, December 22, 1935 they "sailed furtively"[61] from Pier 60 (West 20th St, Manhattan) for Liverpool, England[62] as the only three passengers on board the United States Lines freighter SS American Importer. To help maintain the strict secrecy that Lindbergh had insisted upon for their departure[63], the family traveled using assumed names and under diplomatic passports which had been issued the week before they left through the personal intervention of Treasury Secretary Ogden Mills.[6,  The Lindberghs' sudden self exile resulted in immediate wide spread editorial and public commentary which "was overwhelmingly but not unanimously with the fleeing Lindberghs."[61] Although he had "offered no public explanation" for the family's unannounced departure from the United States[61], shortly before sailing for England Lindbergh explained to the Times' Lyman that he felt that he was being forced to leave the United States because he found that: "We Americans are a primitive people. We do not have discipline. Our moral standards arw low. It shows up in the private lives of people we know — their drinking and 'behavior with women.' It shows in the newspapers, the morbid curiosity over crimes and murder trials. Americans seem to have little respect for law, or the rights of others."[66][67] Lindbergh also told Lyman that he was taking his family into voluntary exile in England to "seek a safe, secluded residence away from the tremendous public hysteria" that surrounded him in America.[65] The Lindberghs arrived in Liverpool on December 31, 1935 where they went into immediate seclusion.[68][69]'', twelve paragrphs on his thoughts on "Race and Racism",  enumeration of his illegitimate children with names and other identifying information (a bunch of paragraphs on all of them),  etc.  Note that a fully reasonable biography of Lindbergh on Wikipedia in 2007 weighed in at under 50K, which is a far more reasonable article length on Wikipedia.  I trust this ends the "requirement" that I somehow provode "evidence" that the article is bloatred with purple prose and material which is not actually biographical in nature.  And note also that a copyright violation using an extended quote from a source was, and is, a copyvio.  One does not fix a copyvio by saying it was not long enough to be one .  Cheers. Collect (talk) 02:29, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Everything quoted immediately above from the article is fully sourced as accurate and has been included by the many editors who have been developing this article over the past ten years (none of which appear to have been the OP) to describe the many important aspects of the life and actions of a man who was one of the most famous, influential, controversial, and intensely watched people in the world between his non-stop solo flight to Paris 1927 and his death in 1974. The OP is, of course, perfectly entitled to his/her own personal opinion as to whether or not this information is "bloated", "purple", "oddly written", or "trivial" but he/she has still provided no evidence whatsoever that any of it is inaccurate, unverified, or not reliably sourced.


 * As for the brief three sentence boxed quote from Lindbergh's 1927 book "WE", it is directly on the key point (and in his own words) of Lindbergh's view as to why he considered his year of Army flight training to be the critically important one in his development as both a focused, goal oriented individual, as well as a skillful and resourceful aviator -- something without which he would have never been able to make the non-stop solo flight to Paris which changed his life and made him world famous. The quotation is fully identified as to its origin, and its brevity and manner of use falls fully within the meaning of 17 USC §107, the "fair use" provision of the U.S. Copyright law. The use in this article of a three sentence excerpt from a 318-page book published 85 years ago is most assuredly not a copyright violation within the meaning of §107.


 * As for the article's 118K length, it is, for instance, 45K shorter than the article Winston Churchill (163K), 32K shorter than Franklin Roosevelt (150K), 29K shorter than Douglas MacArthur (138K), and only slightly longer than that of the Wright Brothers (104K), all individuals of similar fame and public interest who were roughly contemporaries of Lindbergh. The fact that the Lindbergh article was 50K five years ago (or 1K when it was started in 2002) is a red herring and a completely irrelevant and specious argument. It is the length that is because of the significance and complexity of its subject and certainly does not need to be pablumized. Centpacrr (talk) 03:29, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The book is still copyright, the use is not needed in the article, is not covered by "fair use" and a willful violation of US and International copyright law, as well as violation of Wikipedia policy on copyright is not a "specious argument" Nor is the existence of a copyright violation made non-existent by continuing to exist.  Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:10, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * As any individual's opinion as to whether something is either "needed" or "not needed" in an article is purely a matter of his or her personal subjective editorial view, this is not really a meaningful basis to support the OP's position that it should not be included. Among the correct objective criteria for inclusion of such material are accuracy, relevance, appropriateness to the topic, reliability of sourcing, and the like. This three sentence quotation from "WE" (which constitutes 112 words out of the 52,000+ word volume's text) has been in place in the article for almost four years without the issues of accuracy, relevance, appropriateness to the topic, reliability, or copyright infringement having ever been questioned by any reader or editor. The excerpt is also objectively not an infringement of U.S. copyright law as it more than conforms to both the spirit and the letter of all four criteria of 17 USC §107 as spelled out above that constitute "fair use" of such a quotation. Centpacrr (talk) 13:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Per Peer review/Request removal policy, this peer review should be closed as it is about a content dispute: ''To keep down the size of the PR page, every editor is invited to close inactive discussions. Please only do so with the following kinds of requests: 1. Requests that aren't appropriate for peer review, for instance requests for help in ... resolving an edit war, or detecting a copyvio. These should be removed promptly in the interest of the requester, since he/she is unlikely to get adequate response to them at Peer Review.'' Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 14:23, 1 March 2012 (UTC)


 * As I noted earlier above, I fully agree that this is the wrong forum for the OP to have brought this issue which was already fully addressed in extensive discussions here and here and thus it should be closed. Centpacrr (talk) 14:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * And I demur as the concept of Peer Review is to get skilled editors to state in what ways the article ought to be improved - which is exactly what I sought. It is, unfortunately, Centpacrrr who views it as a "content dispute" when it is much more properly considered a "style dispute" about use of florid language and, in some parts, overt copyright violations which are absolutely disallowed by Wikipedia policy.  Cheers.  Collect (talk) 03:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * See 17 USC §107 above. QED. Centpacrr (talk) 05:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Read Wikipedia policies. Your reliance that extended quotes are allowed as "fair use" is not accepted by the community here, or by the WMF.    Cheers - and READ THE DARN POLICIES. Collect (talk) 13:53, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You have made your point (as to what you consider to be a "copyright infringing extended quote") and I've made mine, however as noted above this discussion has also already been closed -- twice -- so there no reason for you to continue to beat this dead horse here and you are now free to move on to other windmills. Centpacrr (talk) 15:39, 2 March 2012 (UTC)