Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bring Us Together/archive1

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

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 23:23, 10 October 2010 [1].

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Bring Us Together

Bring Us Together (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Bring Us Together/archive1

Nominator(s): Wehwalt (talk) 02:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because... I believe it meets the criteria. Another in my ongoing Richard Nixon series, this is a short piece about a slogan Nixon used supposedly derived from a sign carried by an Ohio kid after the 1968 campaign. It is not without humor, and not hard on the eyes. It's a Good Article, and had a peer review. Pass your own judgment on it.Wehwalt (talk) 02:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

• Comment—no dab links, no dead external links. Ucucha 03:25, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support by Ruhrfisch - I peer reviewed this and almost all of my concerns were addressed there. This is a well-told story about an incident I knew a little about, but learned much more about from this article. I have a few quibbles, which do not detract from my support.
  • Layout - on my monitor at least, the school image and the bottom of the infobox sandwich text between them, and the top of the Nixon speeches and inauguration section has four paragraphs and a block quote without an image. I wonder if the school image could be moved down to the Rally and sign section (it fits in better with the text there anyway, and would avoid the text sandwich), and the train station image could be moved down to the top of the Nixon speeches and inauguration section (keeping them justified left and right, respectively). The first part of the Nixon speeches and inauguration section discusses the stop in Deshler, so it would still be OK there. Please note that I like the infobox and very large images as they are.
  • I think Safire got it wrong about Lima being the next stop (and he spells it as "Deschler") - the article that appeared in The New York Times the day after the whistle stop has Nixon referring to the trip from Lima to Deshler in his speech in Deshler, and the article says that the last stop of the night was in Toledo. Lima is much further from Toledo than Deshler is too (so Lima to Deshler to Toledo makes much more sense than Deshler to Lima and then back to Toledo). See R. W. APPLE Jr. "Nixon Intensifies Blows at Humphrey On Ohio Train Tour" The New York Times October 23, 1968. Maybe the article could have a note that Lima was actually the stop before Deshler?
  • What happened to the Joe the Plumber comparison?

Nicely done, and glad to support, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:14, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I got rid of Joe, decided it had more to do with the individual, Cole, rather than the "Bring Us Together" concept. I am sure you are right on the train itinerary, I will strike Lima and look at the images in the morning. Thanks for the support.--Wehwalt (talk) 04:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I am fine without Joe. The layout is your call, though my preference would be what I described. The NYT article does not explicitly sat Deshlet was after Lima, but everything it does say is consistent with that (and makes more sense). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:54, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

• Image Review - all images either taken by the nominator and freely licensed or have an OTRS ticket (note - I am not able to check OTRS tickets but assume this is valid). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:54, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the large image was taken by the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee. The Nixon Library has a hard drive full of images by them. I got one of their staff interested in this topic and she came up with this. It is also encoded "Public Domain". OTRS was sent confirmation of the image's origin and status by the Nixon Library.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:03, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the OTRS works are licensed PD-USGov. Sorry not to have said that, I just know image checks are often the slowest step at FAC, and was trying to indicate that all seemed to be in order for these images. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:48, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem. You are right, Toledo followed Deshler, I've found coverage in the Toledo Blade on Google news archive, which unfortunately doesn't say much about the Deshler stop and doesn't mention Nixon's use of the phrase at Toledo.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:54, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I've rearranged the images as Ruhrfisch suggests.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:23, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Random things

• Just a thought: instead of "The phrase "Bring Us Together" was used by the Democrats when Nixon proposed policies which they opposed. In using the phrase, they took the position that Nixon's policies were not bringing the nation together, but were instead divisive.", how about "The phrase "Bring Us Together" was also used ironically by Democrats when Nixon proposed policies they considered divisive."
• "amidst": Chicago (16th) says to avoid "amidst" (at 5.220, under "between"), but "amid" doesn't sound right to Brits. - Dank (push to talk) 18:50, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I changed it to "among". I adopted your other change with a slight modification.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:18, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Sources comments:

• Various Newspapers (NYT, Washington Post, Columbus Dispatch etc) shood be linked within references
• Be consistent about publisher locations (some shown, others not)
• Consistency also preferred in "Retrieved/retrieved", though this may be one of those template things.

Otherwise all sources look OK. I have been looking forward to this tasty bit of Nixonia, and I'll read through and comment further. Brianboulton (talk) 15:34, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Those things are done. I can't do anything about the retreived bit, they are the artifices of templates. Looking forward to your review.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Support: I have had a useful sandbox discussion with Wehwalt, in the course of which a number of minor points concerning the article were resolved. See here if you're interested. I'm still not fully convinced that a case has been made for the size of vast image (800px) that dominates the article. The case seems to be that even without a thumb, the "Bring us together again" is not decipherable and Nixon's face not recognisable. My belief is that that is why we write descriptive captions. Also, in the crop of the image used in the infobox, the writing is readable. As a firm believer in th principle that text should dominate images rather than the other way round, I'm worried that this may set a precedent. As a trial I reduced the image to 400px and thought it looked OK. I'd be interested to hear the opinions of others. Brianboulton (talk) 12:05, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Support Comments: (Disclosure: I reviewed and passed this article for GA.) As far as I understand it, this article is about Nixon's campaign theme in 1968. I passed it as a Good Article because I believe it passes the criteria, a broad but focused coverage of the subject. Bringing this to FA, however, made me look a bit beyond what sources were used at GA (comprehensiveness), and I notice that some things seem to be left out and I would like some answers before making a decision.

• William Safire's Before the fall: an inside view of the pre-Watergate White House: Safire pointed out that the slogan was at odds with what Nixon's administration was in reality, and that the only unity brought was of like-minded individuals.
• Louis Liebovich's Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the press: a historical retrospective: Backs Safire's opinion.
• Garry Wills's Nixon agonistes: the crisis of the self-made man: Wills, however, states that Nixon has the qualities to enact the slogan.
• Mark Feeney's Nixon at the movies: a book about belief: Feeney, however, stated the slogan was at odds with the former President's character.
• Stanley Kutler's The wars of Watergate: the last crisis of Richard Nixon: Kutler disputes how the sign was remembered as conceived, and declares another sign was held. He also points that Cole was more of a Kennedy supporter.
• Elizabeth Drew's Richard M. Nixon: Drew wrote that Nixon's advisers were divided between those who supported the slogan and others who thought it should be abandoned.
• William Henry Chafe's Private lives/public consequences: personality and politics in modern America: Chafe pointed out that Nixon's 1968 campaign had elements that did not fit in with "Bring Us Together".
• Nixon also denied accusations that he abandoned the "Bring Us Together" theme Life in 1970. The phrasings "used ironically by Democrats when Nixon proposed policies they considered divisive" and "thrown in the face of the Nixon administration by Democrats each time something divisive was proposed," (and their earlier forms) in our article lead me to think that the slogan was used as ironic or sarcastic remarks. Life's report seems to indicate that the public was also holding the Nixon administration to that campaign promise.

I think the current article does not make the case of stating that the slogan had a substantial legacy on the Nixon administration (to the effect that the government was held to it like it was a promise). For an FA, I think there should be more on the significance of this slogan to the Nixon administration of '68.

I also share Brian's concern over the size of the image but to a lesser degree (I passed it in the GA after asking about it because I felt there was no ground in the GA criteria to oppose it); the Infobox has a crop at about the actual size, so a smaller overview of the scene would not be remiss. There is no policy that governs image size, only these guidelines:Wikipedia:Images#Consideration of image download size, MOS:IMAGES. The full-size parade image is 836 KB, so it is a matter of whether this image qualifies as an exception to the "generally be no more than 500 pixels tall and 400 pixels" recommendation. Jappalang (talk) 05:40, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I will work on this and get back to you.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I had actually looked at most of these. Kutler's book correctly states that Cole had originally supported Robert Kennedy (see this article, but I felt that was just too trivial for the article. He gets the sign that she originally carried (if she did) wrong, it is variously reported as "L.B.J. convinced us-vote Republican" and "L.B.J. convinced us to vote Republican" (I dismissed the second variant as unlikely to be given to a teenager to carry in an era when the voting age was 21). I will add a paragraph using the sources.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I have added a paragraph and a few sentences here and there using the sources that Jappalang suggests. I have reduced the size of the image to 400, which is within guidelines.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I believe I have no more issues then. This looks to me a pretty comprehensive article about Nixon's 1968 campaign slogan with appropriate photographs that satisfy the criteria to boot. Jappalang (talk) 06:54, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, thanks. And thanks to a day off in Toledo that let me take a trip out to Deshler. Three supports, no opposes, all checks done. Happy to take care of anything else required.--12:42, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• Empty parameters in citations need cleanup, and I can't decipher why the reader is told this info:

• by her own description, was on the honor roll but not the "super honor roll" of straight-A students.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

empty parameters and scholastic info deleted.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.