Talk:John Lear

John Lear was nominated as a Social sciences and society good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (January 27, 2023). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

This article was nominated for deletion on September 20, 2008. The result of the discussion was delete.

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GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:John Lear/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: RecycledPixels (talk · contribs) 17:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I will be taking a look at this GA nominee. I have already familiarized myself with the article and will go through the GA criteria and evaluating this nomination against those criteria. RecycledPixels (talk) 17:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Prose is understandable, but far short of FA standards. The article is written in the passive voice in several places, which should be avoided, and has some punctuation errors.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	The lead section fails WP:LEAD. It does not effectively summarize the entire article and includes information that does not appear elsewhere in the article. The article fails MOS:LAYOUT for an excessive number of one-sentence paragraphs. The article fails MOS:WTW due to MOS:CLAIM (Lear claimed that in 1959 he had become the youngest American to ever climb Switzerland's Matterhorn) and (He claimed to have flown "secret missions for the CIA" between 1967 and 1983), MOS:PUFFERY (influential American conspiracy theorist, record-breaking pilot), MOS:DOUBT (He claimed to have flown "secret missions for the CIA") and (Lear served as "State Director" for MUFON) and (a short document in which Lear spun a tale) as just a few examples. The article fails MOS:LIST for a section largely made up of bullet points that would be better expressed as prose.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	Citations attributed to newspaper sources should list the title of the article and the authors, if known. Most of the citations lack sufficient information in the citation format. Citations to books do not include any page numbers.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	[IMDb is not a reliable source. See WP:CITINGIMDB. Twitter is not a reliable source (and the citation format used conceals the fact that is a link to twitter). Youtube is not a reliable source.
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	No copyright violations or plagiarism observed. WP:EARWIG hits on direct quote from the New Republic article, properly attributed, and Wikipedia mirror site.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	No mention that Lear was disinherited? The early life and career sections are largely a collection of trivia and does not adequately convey information about the subject of the article. The lead says he was a one-time candidate for Nevada State Senate but there is no further mention in the article about this.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	There's a large section of the article dedicated to "The UFO Coverup" without identifying any real importance of the work.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	When I looked through some of the references in the article, I see Lear painted as somewhat of a fringe conspiracy-theory wacko, i.e. (John Lear, the disinherited son of the Learjet magnate, had been posting wild conspiracies about secret government relations with aliens. They were the kind of thing no one took very seriously, until Cooper appeared from nowhere, corroborating them) from the New Republic article about William Cooper, or the Pale Horse Rider introducing Lear as a "semi-loose cannon". The tone of the article paints him more as a heroic speaker of truths than I believe is the reality.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No edit warring or content disputes on the article
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	One fair-use image with a valid non-free use rationale on the image.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.	Substantial work is needed to bring this article to GA status

Review is finished. Although I believe the article is far from being ready for GA, I will place it on hold for seven days to allow the nominator to ask questions or seek clarification. RecycledPixels (talk) 18:43, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the excellent feedback!! I'm on it. I share your assessment of Lear being a "loose cannon", not a "heroic speaker of truths", that's def not the tone/POV I was shooting for. Feoffer (talk) 08:39, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notes to self / Todo List[edit]

Fix lede
Turn bullet list into prose
purge IMDB links, youtube Done
Expand on candidacy
Fix newspapers citations, add title
Fix book citations, add page numbers
discuss disinheritance
explicitly connect Lear to Bill Cooper and Bob Lazar
direct quotes from Pale Horse Rider about significance?
tin foil hats he'd give out
Incorporate 'John Lear, the disinherited son of the Learjet magnate, had been posting wild conspiracies about secret government relations with aliens. They were the kind of thing no one took very seriously, until Cooper appeared from nowhere, corroborating them' Done
find good source on Mufon 1989
Improve childhood
discuss disinheritance Done
screen for passsive voice
depuff (influential American conspiracy theorist, record-breaking pilot)
fix excessive number of one-sentence paragraphs.

Feoffer (talk) 08:49, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@RecycledPixels: We're still nowhere near GA, but I've made a lot of changes based on your feedback. If you want to look over the current work in progress and provide on-going feedback, in terms of "right direction/wrong direction", it'd be welcome. Feoffer (talk) 09:45, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At a glance, I'd say the addition of information is nice, but the addition of a whole bunch of short sections runs afoul of MOS:OVERSECTION, which is part of the GA criteria for layout. From that guideline: "Very short sections and subsections clutter an article with headings and inhibit the flow of the prose. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheading.". You have also added a lot of external links boxes to the article, and I wonder whether it would just be better to integrate the relevant content in the prose of the article instead of including external links. This criteria is not a GA category, however, but in my experience, some GA reviewers who are not as strict as I am about limiting GA reviews to just the criteria listed at Wikipedia:Good article criteria may raise that type of objection. I'm going to go ahead and close the GA nomination at this point, feel free to renominate it at any time once you've had more time to give it some attention. RecycledPixels (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep at it! Feoffer (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Influence on UFO conspiracy theories[edit]

Lear has been described as "a divisive figure whose claims often crumbled under scrutiny.

Described by who? The footnote leads to the single page of a book about "conspiratorial science fiction TV shows" by some Aaron Gulyas, where Lear is somewhat critically mentioned but not in the way and not in the words like it's presented here. Maybe some people should stop making up statements. 213.142.96.170 (talk) 06:47, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The quote is indeed from Gulyas, but I guess the link wasn't to the correct page? I fixed it. Feoffer (talk) 07:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]