Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Ralph Flanders

Ralph Flanders
Ralph Flanders was an American mechanical engineer, industrialist and Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Vermont. Flanders used his experience as a successful industrialist to advise Vermont and national commissions on public economic policy. He was noted for introducing a 1954 motion in the Senate to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy for his sensational, but largely unfounded, accusations that many public figures, especially those in government, were Communists.

I have substantially upgraded this article to include Harvard references to his autobiography. I would like it to be considered as a Good Article within Project WikiProject Biography. It has already been rated as an A-Class article of Mid importance in WikiProject U.S. Congress. HopsonRoad 17:13, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Review by Lumbercutter
Holy frijoles! This article, formerly very nice, is now awesome! It is said that the "primary objective [of this review process] is to encourage better articles by having contributors who may not have worked on articles to examine them and provide ideas for further improvement." This in fact has already been going on in the case of Ralph Flanders, as HopsonRoad, RedSpruce, and I discussed the referencing system. Well knock my socks off, this article now has some of the better referencing found anywhere on Wikipedia. Countless thanks, HopsonRoad, for donating the time to make this article so great. This is the kind of thing that will make Wikipedia sublime.

Personally, if I woke up next Tuesday, opened the Main Page, and saw Ralph Flanders as the day's featured article, I would find it most fitting. — Lumbercutter 00:50, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply to review
Thank you for your advice and assistance along the way, LumberCutter.HopsonRoad (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Review by User:AndyZ

 * A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click here. Thanks, APR t 04:21, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply to review

 * I have implemented seven of nine suggestions. The other two await human review. HopsonRoad 14:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I have implemented nine of nine suggestions.HopsonRoad (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Review by CApitol3
Well written, organized and solid referencing. Not to mention the great picture research and usage. I am also happy to see an article where wikilinking is done judiciously, with the purpose to add context. Thank you HopsonRoad for a really well written and polished article. CApitol3 13:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply to review
Thank you, Geared Bull, for taking the time to review this article. Based on other input, I’ve done a bit more style editing.HopsonRoad (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Review by Billy Hathorn
This is a well-written article for the most part. It assumes that Senator Flanders was right on communism and that Senator McCarthy was wrong -- the traditional view.

See this from Wikipedia.org under Joseph McCarthy

[New scholarship] cites new evidence, in the form of Venona decrypted Soviet messages, Soviet espionage data now opened to the West, and newly released transcripts of closed hearings before McCarthy's subcommittee, asserting that these have vindicated McCarthy, showing that many of his identifications of Communists were correct. It has also been said that Venona and the Soviet archives have revealed that the scale of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s was larger than many scholars suspected,[81][82] and that this too stands as a vindication of McCarthy.

Some responses to these viewpoints have been written by Kevin Drum[83] and Johann Hari.[84] Historian John Earl Haynes has also argued against this 'rehabilitation' of McCarthy, saying that McCarthy's attempts to "make anticommunism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened [the post-War] anti-Communist consensus," thereby ultimately harming anti-Communist efforts more than helping.[85]

Of the many individuals that figured in McCarthy's investigations or speeches, most were already suspected of being Communists or at least of having leftist politics. There are several cases where Venona or other recent data has confirmed or increased the weight of evidence that a person named by McCarthy was a Soviet agent. However, there are few, if any, cases where McCarthy was responsible for identifying a person, or removing a person from a sensitive government position, where later evidence has increased the likelihood that that person was a Communist or a Soviet agent.[86]

Below are listed the names that various authors have alleged were "correctly identified by McCarthy." As the footnotes show, in almost all cases this assessment is questionable or demonstrably incorrect.

Solomon Adler[87] Cedric Belfrage[88] T.A. Bisson[89] Lauchlin Currie[90] Gustavo Duran[91] Theodore Geiger[92] Haldore Hanson[93] Mary Jane Keeney[94] Owen Lattimore[95] Leonard Mins[96] Annie Lee Moss[97] --Senator Symington's defense of Moss has been refuted. Franz Leopold Neumann[98] Edward Posniak[99] William Remington[100] John Carter Vincent[101]

The article might should have a paragraph or two saying that Flanders underestimated the communist conspiracy even on the assumption that McCarthy overstated it.

There is another book which exonerates McCarthy written by a conventional American liberal about 2000. I unfortunately cannot remember his name but will try to find it.

Billy Hathorn 23:32, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

This scholarly book rejects the conventional view on McCarthy, written by a liberal: Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator by Arthur Herman. Ann Coulter's book is more opinion and informal; this is fully documented. If true, Herman has found a whole generation of faulty scholarship on McCarthy.

Billy Hathorn 23:40, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply to review
Thank you for taking the time to review this article.

You suggest that the article "assumes that Senator Flanders was right on communism and that Senator McCarthy was wrong." I feel that either assumption would be a POV. In augmenting the article, I drew on published sources available to me. If you have published sources that you can recommend to further describe how others reacted to Flanders's assessment of McCarthy's approach to fighting communism, I feel that they should be included for completeness. You could leave such suggestions at Talk:Ralph Flanders.

You suggest that "The article might should have a paragraph or two saying that Flanders underestimated the communist conspiracy even on the assumption that McCarthy overstated it," especially in light of Venona. I’m unaware of any literature where is there a statement about how large Flanders estimated the internal Communist threat to be, so it would be impossible to state that he underestimated it. The record is clear that Flanders felt that the external Communist threat was extremely serious&mdash;so tremendous that it would leave the US and Canada isolated as free nations&mdash;and that he felt McCarthy’s actions distracted the nation from it.

I feel that estimation of the internal threat of communism is a more appropriate discussion for the Joseph McCarthy or McCarthyism articles. The scope of this article should be limited to what Flanders thought and whether others agreed with him.

I have rephrased the lead paragraph that you edited to state: "He was noted for introducing a 1954 motion in the Senate to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy had made unsubstantiated claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government. Ultimately, his tactics led to his being discredited and censured by the United States Senate." The first sentence is undisputed, the second and third ones have stood the test of time in Joseph McCarthy. HopsonRoad (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Review by Miranda
The citations need to have page numbers. Miranda 06:13, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply to review
Thank you for looking at this article, Miranda. You will find at Harvard referencing that page numbers are optional, not required. In this case, I’ve used them where a passage is buried in a book, not when casual perusal of a reference would quickly find the discussion.HopsonRoad (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Review by N-J Seigel, non-Wikipedia reviewer

 * I still am hoping someone will look at this article with the depth of a college professor&mdash;still giving the high grades, but also making further, specific remarks/suggestions about length, organization, and style.
 * Although the content, as a comprehensive article, is undeniably excellent, and a major contribution to Wikipedia, there remain punctuation errors, repetitions and long sentences, which need work.
 * As to length, it is easy to justify including everything. However, a little bit less might be better.  I think some deletions would improve the article as a whole, and make it a better "read"&mdash;for example, leaving out all of REF's  Senate committee assignments.

Posted for N-J Seigel by HopsonRoad (talk) 14:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply to review
Thank you for looking at this article, N-J Seigel. I have received your independent style edit and have implemented most of your suggestions in the next revision. I have received no comments from other reviewers suggesting issues with length, beyond the need to expand the lead paragraph.

HopsonRoad (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Review by BDell555
An impressively comprehensive article. Flanders' views on liberalism and conservatism, as further described at http://www.vpr.net/episode/31630/ may be of particular interest to many readers. My concern is just that it is a rather fluffy. For example, most short biographies of politicians wouldn't note that "He wanted to signal to the world at large that all nations “should work together toward human betterment...". Not because it isn't true, but simply because politicians say those sort of things all the time. The "Doing “what no one else was willing to do"" section might be another example. A more critical, skeptical tone would give the article more gravitas.  I note that according to the Vermont Encyclopedia, "His voting record, more popular with conservative constituents than that of his colleague George Akin, reflected his business orientation."  That's the sort of observation that is very useful, and inclusion of something like that would help diversify your sources, which at present are rather overconcentrated to Flanders' own book. You could also cite Time's August 2, 1954 article ("The Dispensable Man") which says that Flanders won the support of a group of 23 top businessmen, labor leaders and educators for the censure motion, but the article should not be lengthened further, in my opinion.Bdell555 (talk) 06:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Reply to review
Thank you for taking the time to review this article. Your observations have been helpful to make the article more suitable for Wikipedia. Here is what I have done in response to your suggestions: I understand the concern for an over-concentration of sources in Flanders's autobiography. Fortune wrote a puff piece on his pre-senate career. There are diverse news articles that pertain to his McCarthy role. I'll look into adding an American Society of Engineers biography on Hartness as a source pertaining to his engineering career. I'm afraid that, for a minor historical figure, that's probably the best we can do. In addressing your concerns, I have shortened the article slightly. Sincerely, --User:HopsonRoad 17:16, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Because the views on liberalism and conservatism, as further described at http://www.vpr.net/episode/31630/, were quotations from Flanders's autobiography already referenced in the article, I simply added the link.
 * To address the "fluff" factor, I have deleted the "Doing 'what no one else was willing to do'" section and added the Vermont Encyclopedia citation in a revised section, Senate record and committee assignments.
 * I have added the Time reference to the section, On Joseph McCarthy.