Talk:Richard Gerald Jordan
![]() | Richard Gerald Jordan has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: October 23, 2022. (Reviewed version). |
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![]() | A fact from Richard Gerald Jordan appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 28 December 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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The external tool WordPress Openverse may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites. |
GA Review
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- This review is transcluded from Talk:Richard Gerald Jordan/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Afddiary (talk · contribs) 15:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Hey there! I have started a Good Article review of this page so I can help with the backlog and "pay it forward," so to speak, since I just had one of my own articles awarded GA status. Although I have created and heavily participated in editing one GA so far, this is my very first GA review, so please be patient with me as I work through learning the expectations! Afddiary (talk) 15:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Rate | Attribute | Review Comment |
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1. Well-written: | ||
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1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct. |
08/02/2022 - This has been addressed. |
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1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. |
08/02/2022 - All of the above issues have been adequately addressed, save for one, which I assume has not been addressed due to the lack of sources to elaborate on what Jordan's friends, relatives, and death row guards said in his defense. One final, minor suggestion: in the "Early life" section, you might link the word "physical" to physical examination. |
2. Verifiable with no original research: | ||
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2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline. | As far as I could tell, for all sourced articles, you used links to the article images rather than links to clippings of the individual articles; you also archived these article image links. The result is that people who do not have Newspapers.com subscriptions cannot access the texts of these articles and are taken to a paywall; only through the direct article image link (and unfortunately not through the archived article image link), they may either purchase a subscription, or access a rough automated transcription of the articles via optical character recognition (OCR text) for free, which is generally not a problem unless the OCR text is illegible. The archives will take readers to the same paywall and not to the OCR text, and thus, they don't really archive useful information that could be used to verify the sourced information later.
08/02/2022 - This has been addressed. I deeply appreciate you clipping all of the articles, especially as it was something that was not necessary but a kind gesture. :) |
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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). | Even with the above critiques of the specific links used for each source, each source is reliable. |
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2c. it contains no original research. | |
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2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism. | Not 100% finished checking this. BY SECTION:
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3. Broad in its coverage: | ||
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3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic. | Stays focused on the topic and addresses all important main aspects, from the personal life of the subject, to the legal issues in his case. |
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3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). | |
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4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each. | Neutral tone achieved and maintained. |
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5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. | No editing wars. |
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio: | ||
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6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content. | There are no images in the article.
07/25/2022: Unfortunately, due to uncertainty about the copyright status of all proposed images, I'm not sure if we could ever get pictures in this article. Even so, pictures are desired, but not mandatory, for a Good Article. As someone who is very new to this GA process and relatively inexperienced when it comes to verifying the copyright status of pictures, I personally don't feel well equipped to decide whether or not any of the proposed pictures would be acceptable to include on Wikipedia. I'll mark this as a "yes," but maybe at a later time, someone else with more experience in this area could verify the copyright status of the proposed pictures for this article and include them. |
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6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. | No images yet, but the issues here have been addressed above. |
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7. Overall assessment. | I can check on plagiarism/copyright violation either later tonight, or tomorrow. Also, I humbly ask that you be patient with me if I add or update any of these sections over the next few days, as I sometimes struggle with focus and may have missed some things on my first few looks through the article, or I may have changed my mind on other things that may not have raised concern the first times around. I apologize if this causes any inconvenience.
08/02/2022 - All other concerns in this article have been addressed, save for me continuing to check the sources for copyright violations, which, although belated, I am currently in the process of doing. Unless there are any problems there, I don't think there's anything left for you to do. Thanks for everything you've done to work on and improve this article! |
Hello Afddiary -
Thank you so much for your work on this review. I'm replying down here because I wasn't sure if you were okay with me responding to your points within the table. I appreciate your insights. I implemented your suggestions with a few exceptions. Please don't worry if the reviewing slows down. I am making a stressful job transition this week and next week, so I may not be very timely myself.
My personal preference is to avoid short sections most of the time, and I haven't found enough information on each trial to warrant much expansion, but I will keep looking. I'm still looking for a few other things, like the trial testimony of Jordan's relatives and the prison guard. I will see if I can find the names of the lawsuits, but I think it may come down to primary sources. Good catch on the link to bifurcation; I added it, just a little earlier in the article than suggested. I changed "state supreme court" to U.S. Supreme Court because I originally goofed up; the source clarifies that the reversal stemmed from a SCOTUS ruling, not from the state.
I've clipped a few articles here and there, and I can do it for this entry if necessary. I view it as a nice-to-do - but something that is beyond the scope of GA. Unless I am misreading, WP:FNNR (the layout style guideline referred to in criterion 2a) doesn't require convenience links. Even if the link goes completely dead, the citation should be complete enough for a reader to locate the source (either a physical copy or a link to another archiving service).
I really dislike submitting a GAN without images (or publishing any article without them, to be honest). The issue is that I keep running into copyright concerns with this subject. The MDOC information page doesn't clarify the copyright status of the mugshot, and it doesn't specify which agency took the photo. Some state DOC mugshots will fall under WP:Public domain because the images are created by a government agency, but this depends on the jurisdiction (and whether the DOC even took the photo). The newspaper image of Jordan is presumed to be copyrighted as well. Since Edwina Marter isn't a living person, we could ordinarily claim fair use on her image, but AP Newswire photos (or photos from other press agencies) generally violate the respect for commercial opportunities fair use criterion (see WP:NFCI #8). Heck, I'm tempted to use that image at Burl Cain (which is a free image), but it's not a great pic and Cain isn't that closely connected to Jordan.
Thanks for your work so far. It's no problem at all to go back and update various sections. I do that a lot as a reviewer. (I usually don't use GATable until the end of the review because I find that the updating can get too messy, but it's up to your personal preference as a reviewer.) I will try to watch out for new feedback. Feel free to ping me, especially if I don't seem to be responding. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:02, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Hi Afddiary - I forgot to ping you recently when I finished addressing the above feedback. I have expanded the article a bit, giving each of Jordan's death sentences its own section. As I suspected, the reliable sources don't report the names of the legal cases as far as I can tell. I hate that we still don't have an image in the article, but I can't find one with an acceptable copyright status. I have a few GAs without images, and they usually involve living people in prison like this one or living people who spent much of their lives in prison like this one. Thanks for your work! Let me know what else I need to address. Larry Hockett (Talk) 12:01, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
- Hey! I apologize for taking so long to finish everything; I've had a lot of things come up in my personal life lately that have limited the amount of time I've been able to spend on Wikipedia. I'll finish reviewing all of the changes made to the article and accordingly update the criteria table ASAP. I apologize again! Afddiary (talk) 15:09, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
Status query
[edit]Afddiary, Larry Hockett, where does this review stand? It's been over a month since the most recent post to this page, and the review was originally opened over three and a half months ago. Afddiary, if you don't have time, perhaps we could request a reviewer to finish up via second opinion. It looks like a second opinion is needed anyway regarding the image criteria, so perhaps whoever it is could finish the copyvio checks as well. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:52, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for checking. I know we don't like to leave reviews open for extended periods of time. I am ready to respond to any remaining issues, but there is no particular sense of urgency on my end, so whether Afddiary decides to finish this up or to toss it back for a second opinion, there are no hard feelings either way. I appreciate the feedback so far! Larry Hockett (Talk) 15:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Hi, I apologize for taking so long to finish this review. I have never done a GA review before, and I wouldn't say I'm in a great place right now (in terms of time and focus) to complete the copyvio component of the review. I am so sorry. Afddiary (talk) 08:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- No worries! I just asked for another reviewer per the instructions at WP:GAN/I#N4a. Larry Hockett (Talk) 14:28, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
GA Review
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- This review is transcluded from Talk:Richard Gerald Jordan/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: OliveYouBean (talk · contribs) 09:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
Hi! I've had a quick read of the article and read through the previous GA review. Seems like there shouldn't be any issues since the last review was almost complete. I'll still give all the criteria a look to make sure it's all good, but hopefully that doesn't take long and I can just focus on seeing if there's any copyvio issues. OliveYouBean (talk) 09:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
Rate | Attribute | Review Comment |
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1. Well-written: | ||
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1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct. | First trial (1976): I'll be fully honest, I had to look up what the word "impanel" means. It's pretty clear from context what it means, but for dummies like me it might be helpful to wikilink it to Jury selection? Completely up to you whether you think that makes sense.
All good. |
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1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. | Per MOS:CONTEXTLINK, I think "death row" and "murder" should probably be wikilinked in the first sentence as they both directly relate to his notability. From MOS:REALTIME I think that the second sentence should be qualified by "As of 2022" or something similar. He's not going to stop being the longest-serving until he's taken off death row or he dies, but he's going to stop being the oldest as soon as someone older is given the death penalty which could hypothetically happen.
All good. |
2. Verifiable with no original research: | ||
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2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline. | Thank you so much for archiving most of the sources.
All good. |
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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). | All the sources are reliable. :) |
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2c. it contains no original research. | All good here too. :) |
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2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism. | All good! |
3. Broad in its coverage: | ||
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3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic. | Covers everything really well. |
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3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). | Happy with this now. |
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4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each. | Fantastic neutral tone throughout. |
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5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. | Definitely stable, no edit wars. |
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio: | ||
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6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content. | No images used, which is fine as they're not mandatory and it looks like there's valid concerns about potential copyright problems with the images that could be used. There's always the chance to add more if images come up but that's definitely not an issue here. |
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6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. | No images. |
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7. Overall assessment. | Everything looks great! |
On a sort of unrelated note, I just want to say I appreciate the amount of work that's gone into this article. It was an interesting read and the writing is really good. OliveYouBean (talk) 10:47, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you for your review! I think I have incorporated the points you mentioned above. Good observation on the use of "Jordan said that he was unemployed and desperate for money", as you're right, those aren't contentious points anyway. I archived the source you mentioned; for some reason IABot (the tool I use for archiving) didn't want to archive that one, so hopefully I did a reasonable job by hand.
- On the last point, I tried to tighten up the passages near the end. I assumed that the reader would wonder why Jordan hasn't been executed yet, as his fourth death sentence was handed down nearly 25 years ago, so I thought it was relevant to explain why Mississippi seems to be so far "behind" on its executions (for example, going almost ten years without any executions due to the legal challenges to the protocol). I have tried to cut down on the wordiness and establish better links to Jordan in these explanations. Let me know if you have additional suggestions there. As you point out, a wikilink -- maybe to the ethics of lethal injection or to pharmaceutical companies and lethal injection -- could be helpful for the reader who wants to know more about this, but these links don't exist yet. We do have Participation of medical professionals in American executions, but that's not the issue delaying executions in Mississippi. (In the American South where executions remain legal, usually there are no significant problems finding physicians who will participate. The issue is that the drug companies who make the medications used in executions - companies largely based in Europe, where there is strong anti-death penalty sentiment - don't want to be associated with the death penalty and don't want to sell their products to entities involved in the death penalty.) If I end up writing one of those red-linked articles, I'll link to it in the Jordan article.
- Thanks again for your help! I'll be happy to address any additional concerns. Larry Hockett (Talk) 17:51, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for all of your edits! I don't have any additional concerns, and I think all the changes you've made are good. (Sidenote: I am kind of surprised that there aren't more articles talking about the current problems with lethal injections, I thought there would be more based on what little I know about that topic)
- The copyvio checks all came back clear, so I'm happy to say that there's no issues left that would prevent this from passing. Great work, this was a really good read. :) OliveYouBean (talk) 06:20, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
Did you know nomination
[edit]- 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 SL93 (talk) 22:18, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
- ... that Richard Gerald Jordan has been sentenced to death four times? Source: https://www.newspapers.com/image/743251841 , https://www.newspapers.com/clip/103967891/testimony-of-relatives-and-neighbors/ , https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/07/richard-jordan-death-penalty-joe-sam-owen-prosecution-let-stand-by-supreme-court.html , https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104315448/richard-gerald-jordan-gets-a-death/
Improved to Good Article status by Larry Hockett (talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke (talk) at 13:46, 26 October 2022 (UTC).
- Comment from the creator of the article: I'm always a little hesitant to nominate the entries of living criminals, especially death row inmates with ongoing appeals, for the main page, but I don't think this runs afoul of WP:BLPCRIME as far as I can tell. Suggestions: The really interesting things are that 1) he has received the four death sentences for murdering one person (through repeated appeals), and 2) he had actually received a life sentence through a plea deal at one point, but he appealed it and won a new punishment hearing. At that point, prosecutors were no longer willing to offer him life imprisonment, and the new hearing resulted in the fourth death sentence. I would change the "was sentenced to" to "has been sentenced to" as his fourth sentence is not guaranteed to be the final one he will receive. If we do use this original hook, we should change "4" to "four". Larry Hockett (Talk) 15:08, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Fixed per creator's request. Onegreatjoke (talk) 19:46, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I have the wording quite right, and I haven't been active at DYK in a good while, but here are two suggestions:
- ALT1: ... that Richard Gerald Jordan was sentenced to death for the fourth time after he challenged a plea agreement that spared his life?
- ALT2: ... that Richard Gerald Jordan was sentenced to death for the fourth time after he challenged the plea agreement that gave him a life sentence?
- ALT3: ... that after Richard Gerald Jordan had his death sentence overturned for the third time, he was given a life sentence, but he appealed it and received the death penalty again?
- I think this is an okay source, but I'm happy to supply others: "Try, try again". Slate. I think these hooks are interesting while not overly long. Larry Hockett (Talk) 20:22, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Fixed per creator's request. Onegreatjoke (talk) 19:46, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Drive-by comment for Larry Hockett: there are two citations using unclipped newspapers.com images that should be replaced with clips. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 05:23, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks. I've replaced them with clips. I'm not sure if there is a way to clip an entire article that runs more than one page (ex: a newspaper article that starts on page 1A and continues on page 4A). In these cases I tried to clip the page that provided more support for the content in the article. (I am not very knowledgeable about clipping. I have used Newspapers.com in quite a few GAs, but I haven't run into reviewer requests for clips until recently. I have been away from the DYK process for ages though.) Larry Hockett (Talk) 22:00, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
- Larry Hockett, Wikipedia:Newspapers.com#Citations across multiple pages/clippings advises you to link the first page's clipping in the cite template and then follow that up with links to the subsequent pages in between the cite template's closing brackets and the closing ref tag. There's a good visual example if you follow the link. Also, many of your clipping links aren't working for me, or are only accessible via archive. I haven't run into that issue before with Newspapers.com. After you make the clip, are you changing its settings to "Clipping is visible to everyone"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:44, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
- Firefangledfeathers Thank you so much! I should have known to look for a guideline on the multiple page issue. I'll fix those as soon as we get to the bottom of the clippings not showing up. Thank you for letting me know about the clippings that aren't visible. I haven't gotten that feedback before. All of the clippings are set "Visible to everyone" but I do notice something unexpected: When I go to a clipping, the URL in my address bar is slightly different than the one that shows up when I click on the Share button (almost the same, but missing three or four characters at the very end). I can see the clippings either way, but that's probably because it's my Newspapers.com account and device. I suspect that for some of the clippings I may have copied and pasted the URL from the address bar, and for some of them I may have copied from the link under the Share button. Can you list one of the clippings that isn't working? From there I should be able to figure out which ones need to be addressed. I just don't want to use the wrong URL and accidentally "fix" the links that are actually working. I appreciate your help. Larry Hockett (Talk) 19:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
- You're welcome! Ref #2, the Sun Herald piece, is an example. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:06, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
- Oh, interesting. That's not my clipping, but the clipping pulls up fine for me. (I believe that came from the GA reviewer who clipped a few articles for me, but I can see it fine. We just need to add the first page of the article once we get this issue worked out.) I am not sure how to account for that one not showing up. If there were a problem with the clipping settings, I don't think I would be able to see it. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:14, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
- You're welcome! Ref #2, the Sun Herald piece, is an example. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:06, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
- Firefangledfeathers Thank you so much! I should have known to look for a guideline on the multiple page issue. I'll fix those as soon as we get to the bottom of the clippings not showing up. Thank you for letting me know about the clippings that aren't visible. I haven't gotten that feedback before. All of the clippings are set "Visible to everyone" but I do notice something unexpected: When I go to a clipping, the URL in my address bar is slightly different than the one that shows up when I click on the Share button (almost the same, but missing three or four characters at the very end). I can see the clippings either way, but that's probably because it's my Newspapers.com account and device. I suspect that for some of the clippings I may have copied and pasted the URL from the address bar, and for some of them I may have copied from the link under the Share button. Can you list one of the clippings that isn't working? From there I should be able to figure out which ones need to be addressed. I just don't want to use the wrong URL and accidentally "fix" the links that are actually working. I appreciate your help. Larry Hockett (Talk) 19:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
- Larry Hockett, Wikipedia:Newspapers.com#Citations across multiple pages/clippings advises you to link the first page's clipping in the cite template and then follow that up with links to the subsequent pages in between the cite template's closing brackets and the closing ref tag. There's a good visual example if you follow the link. Also, many of your clipping links aren't working for me, or are only accessible via archive. I haven't run into that issue before with Newspapers.com. After you make the clip, are you changing its settings to "Clipping is visible to everyone"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:44, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks. I've replaced them with clips. I'm not sure if there is a way to clip an entire article that runs more than one page (ex: a newspaper article that starts on page 1A and continues on page 4A). In these cases I tried to clip the page that provided more support for the content in the article. (I am not very knowledgeable about clipping. I have used Newspapers.com in quite a few GAs, but I haven't run into reviewer requests for clips until recently. I have been away from the DYK process for ages though.) Larry Hockett (Talk) 22:00, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Symbol_redirect_vote_4.svg/16px-Symbol_redirect_vote_4.svg.png)
ALT0 is my preference and it is confirmed and interesting to me. The article is well written and interesting, and it comes from a prolific content creator. Thanks for creating the article and thanks to Onegreatjoke for nominating it. It was recently improved to GA and it is long enough so it is qualified. It has the correct inline citations. The article is neutral and does not seem to run afoul of guidelines for living people. The QPQ is done. I do not find any obvious plagiarism. Bruxton (talk) 01:35, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
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