Wikipedia:Peer review/Eunice Newton Foote/archive1

Eunice Newton Foote


I've listed this article for peer review because I am thinking of nominating it as a featured article candidate. A note on preparations for it to be reviewed as a GA is worth noting again. Physics is far beyond my wheelhouse, prior to nominating it for GA I had XOR'easter and Ipigott review the science, which was further improved by GogtheMild's suggestions during the review. When I started work on Foote's article, I had no way of knowing if the material modern researchers were reporting had been verified, or if they were simply regurgitating what others had written. Thus, I was fairly meticulous in trying to confirm in primary sources of her era the biographical information stated by current scholarship. On the other hand, since the science was not understood in her era, I used modern analysis to evaluate her works and had friends with a far clearer understanding of the science, as noted above, review what I had written about that. I have never submitted an article for peer review, though I have reviewed several, so I am unsure whether I did this nomination correctly. Thanks, SusunW (talk) 15:48, 21 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Suggest you install https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Headbomb/unreliable
 * A few sources show red so you either need to change them or have a good answer to say why they are in fact reliable when you put it in for FA Chidgk1 (talk) 07:03, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No pics of any of her inventions? Chidgk1 (talk) 07:11, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks I have that gadget installed and the sources are not unreliable. In case of point, I would argue that FamilySource is no more unreliable than google books in that some sources are curated and published, while others are not. (For example, census records in the US are published by the government routinely after 70 years have lapsed.) Caution must always be used in evaluating references. Primary sourcing is not inherently bad and per WP:Primary can be used on a limited basis. Like I said in the intro, I used primary sources to confirm that the biographical facts being restated 200 years later hadn't been "prettied up" or mistaken, repeating errors of each other. As with any source, one must do proper due diligence to ensure that the subject in the reference is indeed the topic at hand and evaluate the reference itself. The sources which show with red highlights, with the exception of the one tied to Facebook, are government documents and anyone can verify that they say the family lived at the place the doc says they did, describe her as the passport record says, confirm her death, etc. They weren't created as promotional material or by her, but by government entities who weren't likely to fabricate recording the events that they document. They meet our guidelines for limited use. The Facebook link is a post from an academic who has published elsewhere in reliable sources and is the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, in other words, it meets our guidelines: WP:selfpub "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications". Hadn't thought about photos of the inventions, will see what I can find, thanks! SusunW (talk) 13:50, 23 September 2022 (UTC)


 * As for illustrations of her inventions, there are two images from her patent applications here although I could find nothing on her climate-related experiments. It seems to me there should also be a lead image although I have no idea what. Maybe an artist familiar with the type of equipment she used could put something together.--Ipigott (talk) 08:48, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks problem is that blog is too recent to use as the source. Clipped the paper making machine from the 1864 patent filing and added it to the article. The only thing I am not sure of is the license. I put published prior to 1927, assuming she had to submit the application with a model and a sketch. This link says the application must be filed with a drawing, so I deduced that it was unlikely the government made the drawing, but of course the rules might have changed.  SusunW (talk) 13:12, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I also added the passport description of her as a lede image. It can always be removed if someone objects. SusunW (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Really great you're bringing this to FA! I did a accessibility review, but don't have time to do a proper full review here (plus I believe the only thing that may need further improvement is prose, and I'm not good with that)
 * Please ensure the images meet WP:ACCIM: two of the images are missing alts and one alt is probably too long (see WP:Alternative_text_for_images)
 * Fixed that, all now have alt text. Yes, I get what the guideline says, but it is contrary to what I have been taught in actual courses on accessibility. Our examples in that guideline seem to be more like captions or titles than descriptions. SusunW (talk) 12:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Please use the upright parameter, rather than a fixed width, for the images. I see you've got 350px somewhere. That should be something like upright=1.4. That way, people can rescale the image sizes if they prefer
 * Thanks! fixed that. SusunW (talk) 12:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)


 * The second sentence is overly long and possibly too circumspect.
 * She was the first scientist known to have examined the warming effect of sunlight on different gases and to have suggested that an increase in the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would change its temperature and have an effect on climate
 * She was the first scientist to detail how certain gases warm when exposed to sunlight (correct?), and the first to suggest rising levels would change the temperature of the atmosphere and climate. Femke (talk) 16:05, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Maybe: "She was the first scientist to detail how certain gases warm when exposed to sunlight, and the first to suggest rising levels would change the temperature of the atmosphere and have an effect on climate."--Ipigott (talk) 09:06, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Personnally I much prefer the original wording to either suggested alternative, which both seem a little unclear. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:10, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * To me the initial wording feels very 19th century. Modern texts use CO2 levels/CO2 concentrations, rather than proportion. The sentence has 43 words, which raises some readability red flags too. I'm sure there are people who can do a better job than me though. Femke (talk) 12:21, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I've taken a stab at it, i.e. "She was the first scientist known to conclude that certain gases warmed when exposed to sunlight, and that rising CO2 levels would change atmospheric temperature and could impact climate". Open to other suggestions. SusunW (talk) 14:01, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * That's an improvement. I believe we typically don't say 'known' for people that discovered something first, even though there is of course always a chance of forgotten discoverers. Is there a particular reason to include it here? Suspicions that others may have come before? See for instance Lise Meitner and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Femke (talk) 14:22, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * In general, I don't believe in absolutes? But, mostly because of the controversy over Tyndall's credit it seemed prudent, but it always can be removed. SusunW (talk) 14:27, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I think the rest of the sentence is sufficiently clear that she didn't do a measurement of infrared, so that this is not necessary I believe, to clarify Tyndall's credit. It's a bit of stumbling block for me when reading the sentence. Femke (talk) 14:31, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The word known, to me, implies that somebody may have come before (as it's closely placed to the word first). The controversy was more about research quality, right? That Tyndall had more appropriate machinery to demonstrate the greenhouse effect? Femke (talk) 14:33, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I've removed known. The issue was that she wasn't credited at all for noting the possibility of climate change. History did not remember or record her scientific work. Tyndall was given credit for the link with climate change, not just the link with infrared. Reed recognized Foote's work re climate change in 1992, and then that was lost again until Sorensen was credited with "discovering" her in 2011. Sorensen's contribution is that he was first to recognize she preceded Tyndall. SusunW (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2022 (UTC)