Wikipedia

Template:Did you know nominations/Caroline Brady (philologist)

< Template:Did you know nominations
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:32, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

DYK toolbox

Caroline Brady (philologist)

edit
(
)

Created by Usernameunique (talk). Self-nominated at 18:12, 24 October 2017 (UTC).

  • New enough, long enough, and thoroughly footnoted. But although this isn't an explicit DYK criterion, the article is problematic, in that it presents lots of little boring details about the subject's life (like the street addresses where she lived and who owned those pieces of property or the subsequent history of a ship she took a trip on as a child) but nowhere does it clearly state what she is notable for in a way that would clearly indicate a pass of our academic notability standards. It states what her scholarship was on, but not why it is significant (if it is). It lists what look like all her publications, rather than making any attempt to select the significant ones. It says she published "more than a dozen book" but lists no books. Much of the sourcing is non-secondary and of dubious reliability and fails to cover the subject in the depth that would be required to establish general notability (e.g. seven separate sources from FamilySearch; local newspaper listings of community college courses; entries in association membership directories). The subject appears never to have progressed past assistant professor in academic rank, a red flag for a failed academic career. I worry that, if an article in this state is linked on the main page, it would very quickly get sent to AfD. The parts of the article that look like they might be usable to establish notability are the Talbot Fellowship and (if she published any) book publications that might have associated book reviews. I think the article could use significant trimming of the uninteresting parts so that readers could focus more clearly on the interesting parts.
As for the rest of the criteria: QPQ done. Earwig found a copied direct quote but no problematic copying. The main hook needs disambiguation on the Pennsylvania link. I prefer hooks ALT1 or ALT2, but they're inadequately sourced for DYK: ALT1 is given only the subject's own publications as sources, ALT2 has no sources at all. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:58, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
  • David Eppstein, thanks for your review. I've added some more information on her publications that should help make her notability more clear. Please let me know if you would like more, although I'm not sure what exactly that would be; a Google Scholar citation count would perhaps be on point, but if you think that the torpedoing of a boat is a "boring detail", then saying that "this article has been cited 36 times" is perhaps hopeless.
Your other main criticism seems to be that the article is filled with minutiae. To the extent that it is necessary to defend this (cf. "this isn't an explicit DYK criterion"), it's worth remembering that little is known about Brady's life. She produced relevant and notable scholarship in the 1940s and 1950s, yet no mention of her appears between 1955 and 1979, when she published the first of two widely-cited articles after a decades-long hiatus. In the absence of a more comprehensive source of information on her such as an obituary, the amalgamation of many small details—whether or not one might term some "boring"—is a way to sketch a picture of Brady's life. Knowing that she lived at 132 S. Laurel Avenue in Los Angeles, for example, is relevant when one considers that it was her parents' address: it implies that between her stints at a community college and at Harvard, she moved back in with her parents. Meanwhile, knowing that she once lived in Cambridge reinforces the scant information on her time at Harvard. It's not ideal, and it would be particularly nice to figure out what she was up to from 1955 to 1979, but at the end of the day the sources that we have are the sources that we have.
Re: sources, I've added one (Frank 1987) to back up ALT1. ALT2 is harder to source as it is backed up by 'negative information,' i.e., the complete absence of anything showing that she published between 1955 and 1979. If in your opinion that's not enough to back up ALT2, then let's just go with another. --Usernameunique (talk) 22:11, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
The torpedoing of the boat is a particularly egregious example, but the same thing is true throughout the article. It's not so much that the torpedoing of a boat is a boring event – it isn't – but that the event has absolutely nothing to do with the subject. She rode on the boat once; as it involved an intercontinental move for Brady's family, that is significant enough to mention. But why would someone who comes to this article to find out about Brady's life be interested to find instead a description of what happened to a boat five years after Brady rode on it? That's not part of her life. A large fraction of the article appears to be filler of this type rather than actual informative content about Brady. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
David Eppstein, I've moved the torpedoing information to the notes section. Returning again to the DYK criteria, is there anything still holding back this nomination? Thanks, --Usernameunique (talk) 22:21, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
It still has all the appearance of an article about someone who is not notable. The lead makes no assertion of significance, and the sources that could be used to make a case for WP:GNG (the nontrivial reviews of her work) are buried under a mountain of redundant trivial sources that do not count towards notability (e.g. 21 different copies of the membership list of an association in which membership is not a significant honor). She may well actually be notable, but the article works very hard to make her appear not. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:24, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
I'm having significant problems with this article in terms of NOTE as well. According to the article, as it stands, this person did not win any notable awards for her work, was not elected to the chair of any notable organizations, and doesn't seem to be particularly widely quoted. There are some interesting quotes about her work, but I'm not clear if they are notable either. There are lots of academics who led interesting lives, what makes this one notable in Wiki terms? Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:53, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Maury Markowitz, thanks for weighing in. I believe that Brady's notability is evidenced both by her Marion Talbot fellowship, and by the impact of her publications, a number of which—particularly her 1943 book, and her last two articles on Beowulf—are widely cited within her field. Minor figure that she was, having an article about her allows anyone wondering who she was to easily find out; that her page has been viewed 13 times per day on average suggests that I was not the only one with that question. At the same time, I don't think that a DYK nomination is the appropriate place to contest the notability of an article's subject. If you or David Eppstein believe that this is an AFD candidate, then being proactive by bringing it there would be more useful than simply weighing in here.
Also, to David Eppstein's earlier point about the membership lists that include Brady: these do not count towards Brady's notability, but they are not intended to, nor have they even been suggested to do that. They serve two purposes. First, they provide a 21 year chronology of Brady's academic appointments. Second, they demonstrate that Caroline Agnes Brady is the same person commonly (and probably incorrectly) referred to as "Caroline Agnes von Egmont Brady" (see, e.g., WorldCat). This was quite confusing when I was researching Brady—I thought at first that they were two separate people—but hopefully by providing hard evidence that the two names refer to one person, it will help others avoid similar confusion. --Usernameunique (talk) 22:55, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
The current state of the article is disappointing, but in my view the bar of notability is easily met. Her 1943 doctoral dissertation, Legends of Ermanaric, is help in 151 libraries according to Worldcat. The large time gap in her research output is puzzling but we may never know the reasons; this could be briefly summarized. A recent handbook on Beowulf (1998) gives half a page to her work on that topic, and (if anyone had the time) the article might be refocused on what she is still known for. A Google for 'Carolyn Brady Beowulf' brings up some relevant hits. EdJohnston (talk) 16:31, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
  • No position on notability, but there's still too much trivia, and the directory listings are OR/SYNTH. EEng 04:22, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
EEng#s, to be clear, which DYK criteria in particular does the article not yet meet? --Usernameunique (talk) 04:43, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
  1. 4, policy, which calls for verifiability. The article cites the MLA membership list maybe 20 times, listing it as a secondary source, which it's not. It also cites census date -- again, primary and WP:OR. May be other issues but I'm on mobile so I won't look further. I'm sure this can be salvaged but as it stands this article tries too hard. EEng 05:10, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
EEng#s, thanks for taking a look and for the comments. I've cleaned up the article some, with additional thanks to EdJohnston for the comments and the reference to A Beowulf Handbook (now incorporated).
Differentiating between primary and secondary sources can sometimes be tricky, but even if those MLA lists are primary sources, they should be fine. All they do is "make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge" (link). As said above, they provide a 20-year roster of Brady's academic appointments (largely also backed up both other sources), and clarify that "Caroline Agnes Brady" is the same person occasionally referred to as "Caroline Agnes von Egmont Brady" (which even WorldCat refers to her as sometimes). You're right that the article is trying, but without leaving it as a stub that's hard to avoid: its subject published a number of notable works and then pretty much disappeared, leaving behind a handful of newspaper articles and syntheses of her work for someone to cobble together. The article's not going to ever make it anywhere close to GA unless a couple of long obituaries come falling out of the sky, but as it stands now, I think it's fine for DYK. --Usernameunique (talk) 06:29, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
You see why I gave up on this? It's this approach, of trying to justify why the article is in the state it is, or making only cosmetic changes that address the specific instances commented on here but not the bigger problem they are instances of, rather than doing something more useful with the feedback. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:38, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
  • There's no "even if" – the MLA's membership lists are absolutely primary, and cannot be used the way you're using them, for example chaining them together to conclude that the subject worked as a TF from 19xx to 19yy or was an assistant professor from 19aa to 19bb. That's classic WP:SYNTH, and there's a reason we don't allow that. I, personally, have many times been listed by professional societies at old employers or former institutions simply because it didn't really matter or I just forgot. That's why we require that such stuff be filtered through reliable sources who are in a position to do research we can't.
  • And that goes double for everything the article currently lists under Primary sources -- census returns, Social Security death indices, and so on. This stuff is notoriously error-prone and and hard to interpret and there are essentially no circumstances under which a WP article can cite them (except to illustrate a conclusion reached in an appropriate source).
  • As a random additional example, the statement that Brady received her Ph.D in October 1935 is cited to two newspaper sources giving conflicting graduation dates, one in 1935 and one in 1936. Newspapers are typically reliable secondary sources, but mass listings of e.g. names of graduates are exactly the sort of thing they should not be relied upon for.

This doesn't mean the article can't be saved. But it's gotta be cut back to what can be established by reliable sources. On a less important note, the use of short footnotes when only a single page or page range is cited in each source is completely unnecessary, makes getting to sources headache-inducing, and creates a gigantically puffed up "bibliography" – I mean... c'mon... 26 entries reading "List of Members of the Modern Language Association of America". Publications of the Modern Language Association. Modern Language Association. XXXXX (Supplement)"? – it's silly. EEng 03:14, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I have significantly trimmed down the section on Brady's personal life, and accordingly deleted a surfeit of related sources, to respond to the above concerns. The refocused article is almost entirely about Brady's career and publications. Of your two examples, EEng#s, ("chaining [directory listings] together to conclude that the subject worked as a TF from 19xx to 19yy or was an assistant professor from 19aa to 19bb"), Brady's years as an assistant professor are given by this source, and her teaching fellowship is given simply as "she worked as an English teaching fellow" (and before I edited it down for length, it very carefully stated "she worked as a teaching fellow in English in 1932[30] and 1933,[31]", precisely to avoid the very "chaining together" you speak of). --Usernameunique (talk) 22:48, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
It's moving in the right direction but there's still a mass of stuff from the MLA list, census, and so on. BTW, since this came up at another article, I don't think there's a problem extracting her full name from the membership lists (because that's an unchanging fact unlikely to be mixed up, and there's no doubt she's the right person) but not for the dates of appointment at this or that institution, because those change with time and may not always be up to date. EEng 04:18, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Per request, EEng#s, I've removed those citations. Perhaps in doing so, it makes clear that the membership lists only independently supported two statements: that Brady was a teaching fellow (I've now removed that statement), and that Caroline Agnes Brady's name is sometimes given as Caroline Agnes Von Egmont Brady. It's an interesting (and probably tangential—I may comment in the other review more fully) point about a primary source being used to support an individual's name. Here, the membership lists are used to point out that Brady is occasionally referred to by another (probably incorrect) name. They're not being used to say what Brady's name actually is, merely what it is sometimes given as. By contrast, the other article hangs its hat on that primary source. Anyways, anything else needed? --Usernameunique (talk) 06:14, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Look, I know you've put a lot of effort into this, but there are still problems, for example stuff like "a period from 1949 to 1952 in which her activities are unclear" is WP:SYNTH. I... I just don't have the energy today to say more. I took out the name stuff since (a) you seem to think it's wrong and (b) it's not that important anyway. EEng 16:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

EEng#s, I've reworded the part about clarity. That said, I really don't understand why you took out portions about her personal life that are cited to reliable sources, let alone so abruptly that you left both an error ("She died sometime before 1983" now refers to her sister, Frances Maud Brady) and a citation that's missing a bracket ("{sfn|Anglo-Saxon England Contents|1983}}"). If editing without energy, it would be more helpful to at least focus on the parts that are germane to this article passing DYK.
Finally, as was explained above, the part about her name is important. It was incredibly confusing at first while reading about her that there was both a "Caroline Agnes Brady" and a "Caroline Agnes von Egmont Brady", and I thought at first they were two people; only after tracking down all of her books and articles (e.g., The Eormanric of the Widsith which WorldCat lists under Caroline Agnes von Egmont Brady, but which the print edition attributes to Caroline A. Brady) did it become clear that they are one and the same. Part of the reason for creating the article was to save anyone else the same confusion. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
I don't understand. Didn't you say you thought the long name was incorrect? Why do you think that? EEng 23:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
EEng#s, I think the "von Egmont" is incorrect because it is only used in a few of her WorldCat/Google Books/Hathitrust entries (but not in her books), in eight membership lists, and in an archive that gets her year of death wrong. I assume that these are in error, rather than the reflection of, say, an eight-year marriage. Yet it doesn't really matter whether or not it is incorrect; the language that was in the article, "Caroline Brady's name is occasionally given as Caroline Agnes Von Egmont Brady", did not comment on correctness, but served to indicate that both names refer to the same person. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:11, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
What makes you say the 1973 date of death given in the archive you link is wrong? From the article, all you know otherwise is that she was dead by 1984. Also, Harvard's catalog gives the full name [1] and they're awful careful. EEng 15:25, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
EEng#s, she inscribed a 1980 offprint of her 1979 article to Fred C. Robinson (confirmed via email with vendor). Why are we using a DYK review to discuss her year of death at a level of detail that is not included in the article? Also, why are we discussing whether the long or short name is correct, when the article has never said which one is correct? The salient point is that she is sometimes referred to be one name, and sometimes by another. --Usernameunique (talk) 16:47, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

We're discussing the year of death because you brought it up during a discussion of sources for her name. If you're saying she didn't sign the book with the complete Caroline Agnes von Egmont Brady, that's not evidence of anything (even if an email wasn't unusable WP:OR since people often don't sign their full names (and the von Egmont doesn't have to have anything to do with a a marriage). I repeat what I said above: there are still problems, for example stuff like "a period from 1949 to 1952 in which her activities are unclear" is WP:SYNTH. I... I just don't have the energy today to say more. EEng 14:36, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

EEng#s, the line you quote as evidence of synthesis is not even in the article, because, upon your earlier request, I took it out. Since you have indicated that you don't have the energy to continue this review, I am asking for a new reviewer:
Full review needed. --Usernameunique (talk) 15:34, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
The last paragraph of the Career section still says "Brady's activities from 1955 through 1979 are unclear" – it's like David Eppstein said: making only cosmetic changes that address the specific instances commented on here but not the bigger problem they are instances of, rather than doing something more useful with the feedback. I was never the reviewer, who was David Eppstein; I just dropped in to help a new editor i.e. you, but I give up. EEng 16:45, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
EEng#s, that line is in response to EdJohnston's above comment and suggestion that "The large time gap in her research output is puzzling but we may never know the reasons; this could be briefly summarized." But hey, if that transitional line is all that stands in the way of a green check mark, by all means take it out. --Usernameunique (talk) 17:10, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Repeat: making only cosmetic changes that address the specific instances commented on here but not the bigger problem they are instances of, rather than doing something more useful with the feedback. Please don't ping me again, because I'm such a nice guy I find it hard to ignore someone's entreaty; but the fact is there's nothing more I can do here, and will have to leave it to others to help you further, if possible. EEng 17:25, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

New reviewer still needed. --Usernameunique (talk) 17:28, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

David Eppstein, Maury Markowitz, EdJohnston, EEng, I am going to assume from the above discussion that WP:PROF has been met; if there are any remaining doubts about this, we can put the article up for AFD to settle the matter. Other than that, I am planning to do a bit more cleaning up of this article before completing a review - this nomination has been sitting on this page for far too long and needs to be moved along one way or the other. Gatoclass (talk) 21:27, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Gatoclass Frankly, I still have little clear idea whether any notability criterion has been met because the article is still so full of low-quality sources that finding the high-quality parts is very difficult. But I suspect that WP:PROF, specifically, is not met. She doesn't have many highly-cited publications, major national or international awards, elected membership to highly selective societies, etc. That is not so much an issue with the article as with the discipline (humanities) that she worked in. Most humanities scholars don't meet WP:PROF but many do meet a different notability criterion, WP:AUTHOR, by publishing books with multiple published reviews. In this case we do have the multiple published reviews, but only for one book, and an academic career that seems to have petered out rather than flourishing. So there's a case to be made, but a borderline one. In any case, my complaints with this article were never that it actually was non-notable, but that it was written in a way to make it look non-notable. The article creator has chosen to stubbornly defend the way it was written rather than repairing this problematic appearance, but I think the result is that the article does not reflect the best of recent Wikipedia contributions, as DYK is supposed to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:19, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Yngvadottir, based on the note in the Beowulf Handbook I'd say PROF is met, but (as you know) I'd be doing some pruning in this article. I have not looked at all the other issues in this DYK nomination, but no one in our business should be happy with seeing the MLA members list cited as a reference. Drmies (talk) 00:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Yes, I want us to keep this article, but I'm not sure I can find any info that hasn't already been found. And I agree, please don't cite the MLA directory. I would simply omit the years in which we haven't figured out what she was doing, and I'm not sure any of the material about what city she was living in is encyclopedic. Her teaching career and publications and the statements about the latter should suffice. Or does that put it below minimum length for DYK? Yngvadottir (talk) 20:55, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm glad you guys agree the topic is notable, however, there is no need for you to work on this article Yngvadottir. I converted most of the sources to something more appropriate the other day, and was going to trim the article myself today but got caught up in some other matters, so I'm planning to finish the job tomorrow. You are of course welcome to critique or edit my work when I'm done. Cheers, Gatoclass (talk) 22:09, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I've pretty much finished my edits to the article text, all I need to do now is a bit of cleanup of the reference section, mainly the membership list, which has to be handled carefully as some of these are used as article references. I'm not sure if I'll get this done tonight, if not, I should be able to complete it by tomorrow. Gatoclass (talk) 13:58, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Yngvadottir, Drmies, Usernameunique, I have pretty much finished work on this article now, please take a look and tell me what you think. Gatoclass (talk) 15:48, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Well, it's better, but I object in principle to citing someone's biography to primary sources such as lists of classes--that they were printed in the paper doesn't make it that much better. Still, I suppose it's the best we can do in that pre-internet age. Y? Drmies (talk) 15:54, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Drmies, there are only three such lists left in the article, and as it turns out, we can eliminate one or two of them using another source which I've yet to add,[2] so it's not as if the article is relying heavily on these. Gatoclass (talk) 16:06, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
I know, Gatoclass, I know, and you've done a fine, fine job rowing with the oars that you have, as the Dutch would say. And yes, the article doesn't rely on those, nor does her notability, so these are (for me) all mitigating factors, and I'm not telling you to cut that (they're better than membership lists). I'm certainly not going to say no to this because you got a couple of those primary or semi-primary sources in there. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 16:11, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the significant improvements to the article. It's now to a good enough point where I wouldn't have raised the questions I did at the start of the DYK review process. There are still a lot of primary sources but they appear unproblematic to me — it's now clear which parts of the article address notability (the critical appraisal section) and the primary sources are used only to fill in factual detail for the rest of the article, which is now no longer overly detailed. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:32, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
      • I'd pass this, but I don't do DYK any more, so repeating the call for a fresh review. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:52, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Usernameunique, ok, I'll review the article. I have no time to also review the discussions, so hope that watchful eyes will see what I miss.
Seems we know much about her writings than about her ;) - I think class lists are better than nothing. Decent sources, I accept those I can't see AGF, no copyvio obvious. - Of the hooks, I like only ALT1. Who cares when she wrote/taught what? - Article: I'd avoid the quote (fundamental) in the lead, - it's fine in the body. I never need more than 3 refs for one fact, only the better ones. I don't care about "deceased", sorry. One ref is not used (Brady 1952b), another one missing (Brady 1955 p. 524 #36), please find if they match. "these are considered "three fundamental studies" - can we say who considered, a name or even several? The personal section is very short, - can the whole perhaps be told chronologically. A bit trange to have her first died, then teaching ;) - How do you feel about an infobox? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:19, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for stepping in, Gerda Arendt. Made most of the changes you suggested—removed the quotation in the lead, reworded deceased, restored the ref that had been for some reason removed, fixed the other, added the source of the "three fundamental studies", added to the personal details, and added an infobox. More than happy with ALT1. --Usernameunique (talk) 23:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
thank you! In March please. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:28, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Caroline_Brady_(philologist)&oldid=829860158"