Talk:London Steverson

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[edit] Cleanup

This article needs to be cleaned up to meet wikipedia's guidelines, see the manual of style, and Wikipedia:your first article. Also see the guidelines on articles about living people, WP:BIO. This article does not cite any sources, see the policy on verifiability. Mr. Steverson may have done some notable things in his career but this article is written in much too much detail for an encyclopedia and does not cite any sources verifying the claims. It may be subject to deletion if verifiability can not be established. Thanks. Thatcher131 21:17, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Definite improvement

There is a definite improvement so far. I would suggest rewriting the first paragraph to be a concise summary of why Mr. Steverson is important (Coast guard, judge) and move the early life down to the first main section. See George S. Patton to pick an example at random. Thatcher131 02:18, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Something funny happened in the Coast Guard section. I don't want to fix the edit because I don't know what it was supposed to be. It kind of looks like a copy from another web site; that's discouraged even though as a federal government website it is not a copyright violation. I also took out the part about being a life insurance salesman; his importance is as a judge and a Coast Guard officer, the life insurance kind of detracts from that. Generally I would say in almost any article to reduce or trim things not related to the subjects importance. Thatcher131 22:11, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk Page

Removed some content from the top of this talk page that appears to have either been added in error, or as a way to use the talk page possibly as a sandbox for editing. I recognised some of the wording as probibly from/for the article before I began editing it. If anyone disagrees with my removel of this, please note that the text is available on the history on this talk page. -- 63.226.38.196 03:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images in article

Could the origional contributer of the pictures added to this article please provide a caption to the images, especially on the one under the [London Steverson#USCG Minority Recruiting]] section? Are those the 20 Black cadets admitted as part of the Class of 1978? I count 20 on the steps in the background, but I didn't want to make any assumptions.

If you are not sure how to added captions to pictures here at Wikipedia, I can put them in for you if you add the text here on the talk page. Thanks, -- 63.226.38.196 03:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Concerning the caption for the picture with the 20 new cadets, the caption should read, "LT. Steverson with the 20 new Black cadets in the Class of 1978 sworn in July 1974 on the steps of Chase Hall".

RE: The picture of the Officer's cap and swords with the shoulders boards, the caption should read, "Four long years from civilian to Comissioned Officer".

RE: All of the other pictures, the caption can read, "Senior cadet Company Commanders".

Also, the paragraph concerning attrition was important. It is historically significant.04:54, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I added more info concerning attrition. Also, I am fashioning a new first paragraph along the lines that you suggested. Concerning pictures, I have boxes of them and am trying to sort through them to find the most appropriate. Do you have any suggestion concerning how many would be appropriate and when would it begin to look like too many? 20:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improving article quality

I want to explain why I have removed whole paragraphs of content from the article on at least two separate occasions, as well as other content edits. I also want to explain what I feel would be the best way to improve this article going forward.

1. Please understand that there are specific guidelines on what should be include on biographical articles here at Wikipedia that relate to the point of view expressed by the way the text is worded. From the current version of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons please note the following information (with emphases added):

"The writing style should be neutral, factual, and understated. There should not be any tone of either hagiography or hatchet job. Take care not to fall into either a sympathetic point of view or an advocacy journalism point of view."

I believe that the last paragraph that I removed was not in keeping with the neutral and understated requirement for Bio articles. For more info about what we mean here on Wikipedia by a neutral point of view (NPOV for short), please see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. One rule of thumb that may be useful is that if info in a Bio article is written in the glowing expansive style found in some personal histories, or in a style that might be appropriate at a funereal, its probably not in a NPOV, and needs to be edited.

2. Bio articles here at Wikipedia need to mainly focus on topics that are directly related to the subject's notability. Some other extra background info is fine, but one needs to avoid the large amount of somewhat related (or even trivial) content that is so easy to include. Information about broader topics (such as the integration of the USCG, &/or the USCGA) also deserve their own article(s), where guidelines for those topics are a little different then for Bios. Adding more of that kind of material into this particular Bio article will most likely not enhance the article.

The last paragraph I removed was more strongly related with the concept of integrating the USCG & USCGA than it is to the actual person known as London Steverson. Since there is some very good wording in it regarding the larger topic of USCG integration, I moved it into Black Cadets at the Coast Guard Academy. where hopefully it can be re-written to add value to that article. The other paragraph I remove earlier today also seems to fit in that same category, and since it was already found in the other article, I simple removed it from London Steverson. See also Wikipedia:Importance.

3. This article lacks citable sources and because of this, it appears to have a great deal of original research too. Again, from Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons:

"You should document, in a non-partisan manner, what credible third party sources have published about the subject and, in some circumstances, what the subject [or those close to the subject] may have published [about the subject]."

It is obvious that a close relative, friend, or an ardent admirer has been a source for a lot of the originally contributed material to this article. This is ok, but we also need verifiable sources. Please keep in mind that Wikipedia is a encyclopedia, not a place to post original research. I would highly recommend a rigorous study of Wikipedia:Verifiability as well as Wikipedia:No original research; these two articles, along with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view are considered critical documentation of core principles here at Wikipedia.

It would appear that the best thing that could be done right now to help this article would be to document all of the pertinent source material related to London Steverson that can be found. I've tried to do this myself, but I have found very little available on the internet so far. This doesn't mean it's not there, but I may just not know where to look, since my knowledge of this subject is mostly based on the material found here in the article. Note that printed material that is not yet available on the internet is also OK to cite as source material, as long as it qualifies as legitimately published material (as opposed to a unpublished diaries or personal/family remembrances). See also Wikipedia:Citing_sources, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources, Wikipedia:Notability (people), category:wikipedia notability criteria, Wikipedia:Autobiography, Wikipedia:Vanity guidelines and Wikipedia:Deletion of vanity articles.

4. Lastly it is very important to read & understand Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not, Wikipedia:your first article, and both the general manual of style as well as the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) in order to avoid many common issues. Wikipedia:Assume good faith, Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers, Wikipedia:Ownership of articles, Wikipedia:Civility, Wikipedia:Etiquette, Wikipedia:Resolving disputes, and Wikipedia:Make_only_links_relevant_to_the_context are also good to know about.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and happy editing! -- 63.226.38.196 06:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I recently created an account, and I'm no longer contributing from 63.226.38.196. If you wish to discuss the above material, please add a note to my talk page. Thanks again -- Argon233 22:49, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

4/04/06 Added picture of the USARP scientists that were onboard CGC Glacier for the 1969 Deep Freeze patrol. It is a group photo taken for the scrapbook. 01:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC)(ICHBINALJ)

  • The image link is broken. I don't think you can link to images on external sites anyway, you have to upload them to wikipedia and then you can link to them. Look at upload file in the box on the left hand side of the page. If you did upload the picture, haven't linked to it correctly. Thatcher131 03:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I added a comment to User_talk:199.173.226.228, since the contribution was made from that IP address, but it would probibly be good to add here too:
"Unfortunatly the way you tried to add it does not work, so I removed the attempt. Please see Wikipedia:Images, Wikipedia:Image use policy, and Wikipedia:Uploading_images for more info on how to add pictures to Wikipedia articles. I hope you are willing/able to follow those instructions so the picture can be added."
Thanks again -- 63.226.38.196 07:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC) Argon233 T @ C  U ∠  07:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments per Argon's invite

I know I worked on this article when it was new but I don't remember why; I think I found it by clicking random link and thought it looked in danger of a vanity deletion but could see a good article in the making. I am not African-American nor do I have any knowlege of Judge Steverson other than this article.
I think the article is greatly improved. I looked at the diffs of Argon's edits (63.226.38.196) and generally agree. I think it is important to focus on why Judge Steverson is important (desegration of the USCG, of course) so that should probably be the focus, with less attention to other details. I do think a current picture would be appropriate, and/or one other picture if it is related to the desegregation of the CG. I recall that an early edit discussed that London was bused a long way to a segregated school; I think given his work with the CG that is an important piece of context to include. I also agree that documentation of his career accomplishments is important. However as it all happened way before the web, that may require looking at real books in a real library (do they still have those?).
I certainly encourage the anonymous user who has been editing this article to come forward and participate in the discussion more, and even register for a user name so we can keep track of your contributions. You are obviously closely related to Judge Steverson if you have access to personal photos. While it is true that writing articles about yourself or people you are close to is generally frowned upon (as autobiography) that is not an automatic barrier especially for someone who is clearly important in the history of the CG and desegregation. The key is to work with other editors to help improve the article according to various wikipedia standards as Argon outlined above. (Judge Steverson is clearly in a different universe from the 16-year old kids who think their garage bands are the center of the universe, and I would be happy to defend this article to anyone.) Thatcher131 04:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Argon, instead of reverting Ichbinalj's changes, could you convert them to a more appropriate reference format? Thanks. I'd do it but its past my bedtime :) Thatcher131 04:38, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Thatcher, thanks for reminding me that I needed to explain why I did what I did. My first thought when I saw this was to do exactly as you suggest, but when I followed the link (they were identical) it didn't match the description in the edit history. In the edit history they are listed as "Senate confirms selection of Capt. Manson K. Brown for Admiral" but the actual web page added was http://www.comcast.net/qry/websearch/?query=%22Manson+K.+Brown%22&cmd=qry&safe=on&x=14&y=14 which is just a link to a comcast.net search page using "Manson K. Brown" as the query criteria. Perhaps within the results returned on that search page is the specific link that Ichbinalj meant to add, but I wasn't sure which one it might be. It's past my bed time too, so I'll look at this again tomorrow (or Sat) and see I can figure out which of the pages returned in that search make the most sense to include. -- Argon233 T @ C  U ∠  05:55, 7 April 2006 (UTC)