Talk:Judith Resnik/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 11:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Will take this one, expect comments within the next couple of days. —Kusma (talk) 11:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Progress and general comments

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

An enjoyable article about an important astronaut. I admit I had not been very aware of her (in contrast to my awareness of Christa McAuliffe since 1986) until about twenty years ago, when a crazy German decided to go for the most insane small plane stunt since Mathias Rust in her honour... (not necessary to add that to the article, just for context). General length and level of coverage seem about right, but I'll make some comments below on what I think could be improved. Neutral, stable, not copyvio. Images are all relevant and appropriately licensed (thanks NASA). I'll start going through the article in detail section by section in a while to comment on prose, content and perhaps sourcing. —Kusma (talk) 20:35, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Content and prose review

• Lead: Not sure about piping "died" to the Challenger disaster. (Pretty high density of similar links: the disaster, "Space Shuttle", the Challenger and the mission).

  Y Deleted Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• fourth woman in space worldwide I think "overall" is better than "worldwide"; we're talking nationality, not location.

  Y Overall" means "taking everything into account"; re-worded. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• IEEE award: not sure why this one is singled out as important enough for the lead given that there are so many other things named after her

  Y I dunno. I didn't write the article; I mostly added references. Deleted. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• at Carnegie Mellon add "University" so people who haven't heard of CMU know what you're talking about.

  Y Added. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Recognized while still a child for her "intellectual brilliance" this mention of her childhood seems out of place between her PhD and her work as an engineer

  Y Moved to beginning of paragraph. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• The lead is lacking in information about her successful space mission.

  Y Added a bit. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• research contributions to biomedical engineering as a research fellow of biomedical engineering try to say this without repeating both "research" and "biomedical engineering".

  Y Done. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Early life: The family paragraph needs a bit of re-sorting and clearing up.

  ? To do what? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Why don't you mention the mother's profession?

  Y Added. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Camp Ritchie not in source given (and archiving that source would be nice if possible, for example to avoid the anti-European geoblock).

  Y Deleted Camp Ritchie, although I believe it is probably true. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Could mention that Charles was her younger brother (and maybe find a reference for it that doesn't geoblock Europeans; in any case, add an author).

  Y added. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Her parents were Jewish immigrants originally from Ukraine. She grew up in an observant Jewish home in a family Suggest to put the "immigrants from Ukraine" bit right to the start where you introduce the parents, and to reformulate the other bit, maybe "Her family were observant Jews, and she ..."

  Y Done. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• She prepared and filed a court case That's pretty impressive; do we know at what age?

  Y At age 17. Added. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Letters from her mother were torn up unopened do we know who did that? she or her father? Did she ever have contact with her mother again?

  Y Judy. Clarified this. Her mother attended her wedding. Added this.

• She graduated as valedictorian and runner-up homecoming queen ... She graduated from Firestone in 1966 combine these two sentences in one.

  Y Combined. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• only 16 women at that time to ever have done so the "ever" doesn't quite work for me here.

  Y deleted. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• The paragraph about her studies also needs a bit of spring cleaning. electrical engineering is a bit repetitive, and Oldak gets introduced more than once. Reorder and condense.

  Y Cleaned. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Carnegie Mellon University Looks like she entered shortly before the rename, when it was still the Carnegie Institute of Technology? (At least that's how I read the Haaretz article). I have never heard Carnegie Mellon University abbreviated "Carnegie", but maybe I talk to the wrong kind of people. As far as I know, it's usually "Carnegie Mellon" or "CMU".

  Y That right; she entered in 1966 when it was still Carnegie Institute of Technology; it became Carnegie University the following year.

• She was a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu could you tell us a little what these are? Are these honor societies, general purpose sororities, the Jewish sorority or some engineering club?
• Suggest to rename the section "Early life and education"

  I normally put everything until the biographical subject earns their PhD or marries or both under "early life". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Seven years to PhD sounds long (we haven't been told yet that she was working at RCA while doing her PhD). Better to put this chronologically?

  Y Done. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• Bleaching kinetics of visual pigments link didn't work for me, and this very much doesn't sound like electrical engineering (it sounds totally like biomedical engineering) but it seems general consensus of the sources (CMU Community News isn't perhaps the best available source for this claim). Do we know who her advisor was? In any case, I've half answered my question by looking at this biography that you might want to check out: it did involve electrical currents in the eye, apparently.

  Added a bit. Thanks for that. I did not know about that book.

• Engineering: Perhaps some of this section needs to be combined with the previous one. (you could use graduation from CMU as the point to break, and perhaps move some of the personal stuff to a separate section about her private life).

  Y Done. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• While at RCA, she worked for the Navy ... and later developed for NASA ... An academic paper caught the attention of NASA sort this better. She did the work for the Navy, wrote a paper, this caught the attention of (who?) at NASA and she then developed something for NASA? Or am I misunderstanding the timeline?

  You have it right. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

• She was a senior systems engineer for Xerox Corporation in product development it reads as if this was also during her doctorate; if not, could you say when this was? (Looks like it was right after, and she moved to California for it).

Stopping here for now, will continue maybe tomorrow. —Kusma (talk) 23:23, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

• Astronaut corps: Len Nahmi: you could explain he was an ex-boyfriend and again became a romantic partner. (All of this is in the Bernstein book on archive.org, where it is easily accessible.)

  I don't have that book; if I had known of it I wouldn't have started on this article. I considered withdrawing the nomination, but we have actionable items from your review. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Angel G. Jordan: I'd say he also encouraged her to apply. The two encouragements are separated by the piloting section, which is a bit jumping forward in time; consider telling us in the astronaut training section that she flew planes during training. You could say that he regretted encouraging her after her death (he probably didn't regret her successful spaceflight)

  Moved text around. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• when she didn't become the first American woman in space maybe tell us that Sally Ride was the first and when?

  This could be added. Being the first American to do something makes you a footnote, not famous. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• The Sally Ride article (which by the way I think is quite a bit better than this one; I know you're involved there as well, but I didn't check how much) doesn't mention Resnik as a potential first woman in space, but has Anna Fisher as a potential candidate. Who did the assuming that one of Ride or Resnik would be first?

• I'll check. Since RMS expertise was required, the choice was narrowed to Resnik, Ride and Fisher. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• The CAPCOM link doesn't go where you think it goes.

  Y redirected. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• STS-41D: could probably be expanded a bit by telling us about the mission (launch abort, mission objectives, ...) If you do so, perhaps separating into two sections (one for training, one for the spaceflight) could work.

  Will do. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Does "maiden voyage" need to be linked?

  Apparently. This came up during the review of another article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• robotic arm, which she helped create this is fascinating; is there more to this story and what she did? According to Canadarm, she worked on software and protocols.

  I'll investigate. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• While undergoing the intensive training of the NASA astronaut program This part is misplaced here.
• Challenger disaster section: this section assumes we already know everything about the Challenger disaster except what Resnik did in it. We're not told what her function was supposed to be during the mission, we're not told that Challenger broke up shortly after liftoff and how the crew died, or even that the disaster was totally avoidable if people had listened to the engineers.

  I will add some more. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Resnik's remains I recall from GA reviewing Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that we seem to know less about hers than any of the others, is that right?

  Not sure. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Awards could go into "Legacy", especially the posthumous one.

  Y Merged. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Legacy: Schools and roads don't seem to all be in the citation given? (And there's more, for example Judith-Resnik-Straße in Aschersleben, so you need some criteria for what to include and what not).

  Anything with a reliable source, but no attempt to be comprehensive. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Speaking of inclusion criteria: 3356 Resnik is not mentioned, but probably should be. There were asteroids for all crew members, but craters on Venus (named by the Soviets) only for the women.

  Yes. Features on Venus are only named after women. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Combine short paragraphs.

  Y Done. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• ten finalists to represent Ohio Not sure how notable this thing is, but who did she lose to? (It seems implied that she did not win)

  Y Thomas Edison and James Garfield. A cheater and a liar. Deleted. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• In fiction and nonfiction: one sentence is a bit short for an extra subheading.

  Think I'll leave it as it is. These popular culture sections normally attract cruft. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• External links section: trim substantially (can't see a good reason for any of the links, TBH). The archived "Judith Resnik reference site", by the way, was written by the crazy German I mentioned above.

  Y Deleted. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I'll leave you with this for the moment and check your responses in a while (starting tomorrow I guess) and then return for a second pass. Overall, more work seems needed than I originally thought: cut some duplication, reorganise a bit more logically, give some missing context, and double check whether citations really support the claims. —Kusma (talk) 22:16, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I should know by now that you can't just add references to an article missing them. I'm coming round to agreeing with many other editors that such articles should just be WP:TNT. You can continue, but are welcome to close the review at this point. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, it is probably best to take a step back and re-work the article with a few comprehensive sources in hand. But the Bernstein book we talked about you can read for free on archive.org; all you have to do is register an account and click "Borrow for 1 hour" every hour. Other books that have short Resnik bios on archive.org include this one and that one. If you'd like to do some rewriting in the next two weeks I'd be happy to wait before closing this, but if you think you'd rather do this much slower or some other time, we can close now and I'm happy to return to this later, either as GA reviewer or to just make some comments. I already got something out of this review: I think I'll really try to get the article about my own childhood astronaut hero, Ulf Merbold, up to scratch, and reading other astronaut articles is useful for inspiration. And I'm more in awe of Resnik than I used to be :) —Kusma (talk) 09:17, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Two weeks would be fine. I have the short bios, but the book is better. I have "borrowed" it, and will re-work the article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:55, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan. I agree with most of your changes so far by the way, but doing a more global rewrite should help the overall flow and reduce the duplications and jumps forward and backward in time. Let me know when you're done with your rewrite and I'll go through the new text. —Kusma (talk) 14:09, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

@Kusma: Okay, I have finished the overhaul. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:25, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Excellent, I'll try to read through everything tonight (UTC) unless something else stops me. —Kusma (talk) 10:58, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Round 2

Much improved! I have only very small comments to make.

• Lead: Her first space flight was the STS-41-D either "was STS-41-D" or "was the STS-41-D mission" or something.

  Y Yes. Added missing "mission". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• Early life: Some slight jumping backwards and forwards in time, all defensible I guess but I'd like to hear they are deliberate.
  • married Oldak – sports car rallyes while they were students – graduation. I'd expect that she graduated before getting married? July could be after graduation.

    Y Moved into the previous section. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

  • Published an article in 1978, then earned her doctorate in 1977?

    Y Moved to the end of the section. It is possible, even likely, that the paper was written while she was still a postgraduate. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• Selection and training: When she received a promotion at RCA and when she was completed her doctorate grammar, and I think if you could start the sentence with "both" it would better emphasize that this was more than one time.

  Y Added "again" to provide the emphasis. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• Seddon said that: "I thought ..." I'd remove the "that" or the colon, but I'm not a native speaker so will shut up if you tell me this is fine.

  Y More a grammatical issue; deleted "that" as redundant. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• calling Mullane "Tarzan" and Hawley as "Cheetah" well, either "referring to ... as" both times or remove the "as".

  Y Deleted "as". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• STS-41D: its release ... its belt feed mechanism I was confused for about two seconds until I realized that this is the camera's belt feed mechanism, not the satellite's.

  Y Added "the camera's" to avoid confusion. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• On the third day, ... Is everything in this paragraph on the third day? If not, consider putting the Canadian satellite into the previous paragraph.

  Y Moved to previous paragraph. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• Challenger disaster: A minute late Challenger broke up. I guess this is the shortest description of the Challenger disaster I've ever seen.

  Y Corrected to "later" and added a bit more about the cause of the disaster. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• Legacy: a woman who has changed the space industry, has personally contributed innovative technology verified by flight experience and will be recognized through future decades as having created milestones in the development of space as a resource for all humankind is this a quote? It kind of reads like one.

  Y Near enough. Substituted the exact quote, with quotation marks. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• Image captions: After looking at Riding Rockets, I'm not sure the "hate mail" thing should be stated in wikivoice (not totally sure I trust Mike Mullane to correctly report on people he didn't like). Perhaps "According to her colleague Mike Mullane"?

  Y Sure. Changed as suggested. Do you mean you looked at the book or the Wikipedia article? The book is one of my favorites among a shelf of astronaut biographies. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

  I looked at the Wikipedia article mostly, and just briefly at the book (I can see the page with the "hate mail" comment in the Amazon preview snippet). I can't tell whether the Wikipedia article (and the review it is based on) is correct with its assessment, but it looked somewhat plausible to me that Mullane might exaggerate what these feminists said to make them look bad. With the attribution, it is certainly fine. —Kusma (talk) 22:31, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@User:Hawkeye7: I fixed a few typos, please double check. Overall I think this is very nice now, just needs a few more minor fixes/copyedits as listed above. —Kusma (talk) 21:08, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• I think I'm happy with your changes, will sign the promotion paperwork now. —Kusma (talk) 22:34, 20 March 2022 (UTC)