Template:Did you know nominations/Janine Brookner

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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) 01:14, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

DYK toolbox

Janine Brookner

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  • ... that Janine Brookner was the first person to successfully sue the Central Intelligence Agency for gender discrimination? Source: Stein, Jeff (May 15, 2021). "The CIA Officer Who Became a "Formidable Foe" of the U.S. Government". Washington Monthly. "'I’ll never forget sitting in her living room in Georgetown and watching her snuggle with her Maltese as she told stories about becoming the first female CIA station chief in Latin America and, later, the first person to sue the CIA and win for sexual discrimination,' Jones told SpyTalk."
    • ALT1: ... that three former, top-ranking Central Intelligence Agency officials appeared on ABC News Nightline to condemn the agency's treatment of Janine Brookner? Source: Carlson, Peter (March 10, 2004). "Counter Intelligence". The Washington Post. "In March 1996, ABC's "Nightline" aired an extraordinary program about the case. Three former high-ranking CIA officials -- Director Robert Gates, Deputy Director Thomas Tweedon and chief of the Soviet division Milton Bearden -- appeared on camera to praise Brookner and denounce the CIA's "unfair" treatment of her."
    • Comment: This is my first nomination so please let me know if there is anything else I need to do. There are a lot of other interesting potential hooks in her article if there are issues with either of these.

Improved to Good Article status by Sammielh (talk). Self-nominated at 10:27, 9 January 2022 (UTC).

  • Comments by Tbhotch

General eligibility:

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

  • Cited: Yes
  • Interesting: Yes
  • Other problems: Yes
QPQ: None required.

Overall: A recently approved GA. I couldn't find major issues as the GA review was [almost] handled appropriately. However, I'm putting this DYK into a temporary hold-on because I found several instances where the text was more or less the same as the sources. I'm not saying that the article was plagiarized, but that I feel that the Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing is too close. For example:

  • Wikipedia: "...she was appointed chief of the CIA's United Nations branch and was responsible for recruiting diplomats from the Soviet Union to spy for the United States"
  • Source: "For four years she was chief of the CIA’s United Nations branch, in charge of recruiting Soviet diplomats to spy for the United States."
  • Wikipedia: "In 1972(the source says 1973 though), she was transferred to Thailand and while there, she married Thompson in Bangkok the following year [...] Brookner and Thompson divorced in 1979 but remained close friends"
  • Source: "In 1973, Brookner and Thompson were sent to Thailand by the agency. They were married in Bangkok that year and divorced in 1979 but remain close friends."
  • Wikipedia: "The report also stated that Brookner had improperly applied for overtime when she cooked and served a turkey at a dinner for local contacts on Thanksgiving 1989 and that she used the station helicopter for picnics on Lime Cay. These latter two accusations were referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution"
  • Source: "The report [...] went on to say that Brookner had improperly put in for overtime when she cooked and served a turkey dinner for Jamaican contacts on Thanksgiving of 1989. The report also accused her of twice allowing the use of the station’s helicopter for embassy picnics on Lime Key [...] Those two charges [...] were referred to the Department of Justice by the CIA for possible criminal prosecution of Brookner".
  • Wikipedia: "she was informed by an internal directory that she had been demoted to chief of the Czech branch(this is the least critical quote as there are not so many ways to say this; if you eliminate the other three cases, this one can stay)"
  • Source: "Brookner was startled to find that she had been demoted to chief of the Czech branch"

In itself, this is not a problem, but this is just content from the LA Times, the most used source here. Per WP:CLOP: "when extensive (with or without in-text attribution) may also violate Wikipedia's copyright policy". At the moment, Earwig's Copyvio Detector is currently inoperative ("An error occurred while using the search engine. Note: there is a daily limit on the number of search queries the tool is allowed to make"). So, I'll need to wait for the tool to determine if the whole article is acceptable or if there are substantial similarities with every source. If so, multiple sentences will need to be rewritten.

@Sammielh: As I was afraid of, Earwig's marks "34.6% Violation Unlikely". Although it says violation unlikely, it is too high for an article without quotes (for example, Teenage Dream receives a 36.3%, but if you compare the texts, most of it is just quoted text). Most of the red flags are related to the quotes I mentioned above and only are related to that source, so they need to be reworked to not sound "substantial similar" to the LA Times text. You can guide yourself with WP:FIXCLOSEPARA. I've highlighted the ideas that are too close. (CC) Tbhotch™ 22:32, 10 January 2022 (UTC) (CC) Tbhotch™ 05:11, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
@Tbhotch: Thank you for your detailed review. I did run a Copyvio check using Earwig before I submitted the article for GA but I took the "Violation Unlikely" at its word. I have tried to rework the areas that you have mentioned and bring it some additional sources. As you said, I'm not sure if I will be able to change the last instance because I'm not sure why this is considered a demotion and it seems unlikely that any sources will explain the CIA's reasoning, so it's a bit difficult to add anything different. Please let me know if there are any additional changes that need to be made, and I appreciate all your help. Sammielh (talk) 20:19, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
It's now OK. The percentage was reduced to 27% but it's just common phrases. None of them remind me to the LA text as does the reworded sentences. Now ALT0 it's good to go. ALT1 is not bad, but suing the CIA is more interesting for the average person. (CC) Tbhotch™ 21:06, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi @Tbhotch: Thanks a lot for your help here. I did the GA review, and remember waiting long for Earwig's bot to respond; it didn't. I randomly did a few spot checks, and didn't saw much of an issue, so I passed it on copyvio. I agree with few of the concerns you raised above (though few were cases of WP:LIMITED). Happy to see everything now resolved. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 16:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Kavyansh.Singh: I wonder would you consider us holding this DYK for a special set about women on International Women's Day, which is 8th March? If you want it to run sooner that's fine, but if you're happy then I'll move it into the special occasions holding area. DrThneed (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@DrThneed: Well, Sammielh is the nominator, and Tbhotch is the reviewer. I'll leave this to them, but I think it would be nice to have this on Women's Day! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 04:01, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't know if this is valid as per the "but not more than six weeks in advance" clause. (CC) Tbhotch™ 04:21, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Sorry for mistaking the nominator. The date is not a problem, in the discussion here you'll see a creation date of 1st January onwards was allowed (I just wasn't organised enough to get going that early). So is that a yes, once other issues are dealt with? DrThneed (talk) 07:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@DrThneed: Yes, I'm happy for it to run for International Women's Day if the date isn't an issue. Sammielh (talk) 15:27, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm not convinced of the sourcing for ALT0. The source indicates that this is Brookner's claim, but not necessarily that third party sources agree. (t · c) buidhe 06:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • @Buidhe: "Janine Brookner worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 24 years when she became the first person to sue the agency and win for sexual discrimination. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)"[1]. If anything it would need to be rewritten. (CC) Tbhotch™ 22:24, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • @Buidhe: @Tbhotch: The quotation that I used as a source for this statement is from Abigail Jones who wrote multiple articles about Janine Brookner and would be as close an expert as possible. I agree that it's difficult to definitively verify this because of the nature of the CIA, so I would be happy to change the DYK to "...that Janine Brookner successfully sued the Central Intelligence Agency for sex discrimination?" if that works better. Otherwise, I'm happy with ALT1 if there are no issues with that. Sammielh (talk) 15:27, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I still have no objections. (CC) Tbhotch™ 21:34, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Reiterating for a future promoter that ALT1 is acceptable. I will move this to the special occasion hooks now. SL93 (talk) 23:01, 28 January 2022 (UTC)




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