Talk:Cone Mills Corporation/GA3

GA review

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Reviewer: Sammi Brie (talk · contribs) 05:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

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This is a quickfail. While suggestions are provided for prose improvement, there are serious content deficiencies that were not addressed but whose existence creates tone and coverage issues.

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

By-section copy changes

Lead

• Remove "in" from "business in that"
• Add comma after "into a corporation"
• The last three sentences that end in "The company" and "The corporation" are choppy; consider rewording to improve variety.

Early history

• Add comma after "in 1873"
• Add comma after "teens"
• I'd reword the C. E. Graham section: the C. E. Graham Mill Company, a manufacturer of cotton plaids in Asheville, North Carolina
• Add comma after "in 1895"
• Add comma after "became wealthy"; remove colon after "included"

Turn of the century

• Remove comma after "1915"

Mergers and reorganization

• Add semicolon after "workforce" and remove the "and" that follows

Company towns

• Make the references to "African-American workers" or "African American workers" consistent in style
• Remove comma after "hired nurses"
• "They" starting paragraph 3 is weird. The same choppiness from the lead is in paragraphs 2 and 3 here; review.

Cone Mills comes to an end

The White Oak closure section should be a subsection of this one. It was added by another editor, so I can see why it was placed out of order.

Other issues

• References should be archived; use IABot to do this.
• Images all have alt tags, which made me happy. I added one for the infobox as it was missing and it might not have been apparent what to do.

Appraising GA1 and GA2

This is the third time in 12 months that Cone Mills Corporation has been GAN'd.

• GA1 was quickfailed because of copyvio issues from a UNC source. This does appear to be a case of copying that was addressed by the nominator in GA2.
• GA2 was abandoned by its reviewer, but not before eliciting a comment from Drmies that attracted my attention. It identifies several chapters in company history that are inadequately covered or not covered at all, mostly about labor and environmental policies. These seem to be vital missing links in the article's tone, which in sections may be overly positive without their inclusion. I am reproducing that comment here.

I think that the article just isn't ready. A quick look at the sourcing and at Google Books shows that there is a lot more to be said about the company's size and power, and its policies towards its workers--not to mention its Black workers. I just read that it was the fourth largest cotton manufacturing plant in the country, and that's not in the article. Worse, Cone Mills (see this book) was at the heart of labor unrest in the 1970s, it already set up machine guns during a strike in the 1930s, it was sued by the EPA for environmental problems (that's all in the Love and Revolution book). And there was a huge strike in 1951. There was labor unrest in 1938. And on the note of company town and paternalism, in combination with labor unrest, there's this article, and there's a ton more that I'm looking at in JSTOR, many of them about the mill villages and the workers--so I just don't think one can say the article has "broad coverage".

I don't know if you saw this comment when it was posted in August, Doug Coldwell, but it went unaddressed, and it is what unfortunately dooms this nomination. This is the roadmap to fixing the article's issues. It's clear enough that I might make the improvements myself, and until you take this road, this page simply cannot be a GA. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 05:54, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Sammi Brie, since you failed the nomination, Doug Coldwell has re-nominated it, despite having added only a single sentence. That said, you made some edits yourself, and indicated that "the roadmap to fixing the article's issues [is] clear enough that I might make the improvements myself". Given this, are you comfortable with the re-nomination? Thanks, --Usernameunique (talk) 23:16, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@Usernameunique, I had started by doing what I knew I could do that Doug couldn't, adding more of the newspaper citations. However, I have not gotten to the heart of the material (the JSTOR/labor strife). I am not comfortable with the renomination until that particular section is fixed. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 00:08, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Sammi Brie. Given this—and that the current (fourth) nomination would presumably be failed under the fifth immediate failure criterion—I've reverted the nomination. --Usernameunique (talk) 00:13, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sammi Brie@Usernameunique, before committing to reviewing the third GAN: how do you assess the progress that has been made on this article? JBchrch talk 00:16, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@JBchrch: I don't see as much of the tonal shift I think is necessary. I would have liked to see more mention of paternalism, for instance. The lead section is still a bit too glowing of Cone's record. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 00:55, 7 February 2022 (UTC)