Talk:Jamie Kalven

	Jamie Kalven is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 16, 2024.
Article milestones Date Process Result August 5, 2023 Good article nominee Listed January 11, 2024 Featured article candidate Promoted
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 4, 2023. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Chicago journalist Jamie Kalven (pictured) has amassed a database of nearly 250,000 allegations against police officers?
Current status: Featured article

This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Biography This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles Chicago Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles or pages related to Chicago or the Chicago metropolitan area.ChicagoWikipedia:WikiProject ChicagoTemplate:WikiProject ChicagoChicago articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Journalism Low‑importance Human rights Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Law Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Law Enforcement Low‑importance This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Law Enforcement. Please Join, Create, and Assess.Law EnforcementWikipedia:WikiProject Law EnforcementTemplate:WikiProject Law EnforcementLaw enforcement articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale. Freedom of speech Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Freedom of speech, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Freedom of speech on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Freedom of speechWikipedia:WikiProject Freedom of speechTemplate:WikiProject Freedom of speechFreedom of speech articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

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 AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:26, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

Jamie Kalven

• ... that journalist Jamie Kalven (pictured) had to sue for the release of Chicago police misconduct records, and eventually amassed a database of nearly 250,000 allegations against police officers? Source: https://inpursuit.news21.com/2022/09/27/journalist-fights-open-police-misconduct-records-chicago/
  • ALT1: ... that Chicago journalist Jamie Kalven (pictured) obtained the autopsy report confirming that Laquan McDonald was shot by a police officer 16 times, contradicting the official police account of a single gunshot? Source: https://www.chicagoreporter.com/how-chicago-tried-to-cover-up-a-police-execution/
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Battle of New Carthage

Jamie Kalven

• • Comment: Proposed Image #2: File:Jamie_Kalven_2022.jpg

Moved to mainspace by Edge3 (talk). Self-nominated at 01:25, 20 June 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Jamie Kalven; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

• I will review. Cielquiparle (talk) 07:02, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Good article, great addition to Wikipedia. Article is lengthy (16,569 characters), new enough (submitted within 6 days of move into main space), well-sourced, neutrally written. Images are striking and appropriately licensed (CC BY-SA 2.0 for the first; 3.0 us for the second). QPQ is done. Both hooks are cited within the article and are backed up by sources provided; both seem long but are less than 200 characters excluding the word "(pictured)". No apparent copyvio, although Earwig reports one 38.3% match with News21 which seems rather high. So @Edge3: Could you take another look to try to reword in places to reduce close paraphrasing / bring the number down a bit? In any case there is at least one match that could be converted to a direct quote (of the Institute website) if needed. Once you've done that, I am happy to approve. Cielquiparle (talk) 11:35, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Cielquiparle: Thanks for reviewing! News21 is freely-licensed under CC BY-3.0-US; see their "Free Content" page. I included a CC attribution template in the reference footnote. Let me know if you have concerns about this. Edge3 (talk) 17:45, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Approved. Thanks for adding the license and for reworking content regardless. Cielquiparle (talk) 18:31, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Passed. MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 22:22, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

GA toolbox
Copyvio detector Authorship External links
Reviewing
Templates Criteria Instructions

This review is

transcluded from Talk:Jamie Kalven/GA1

. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: MyCatIsAChonk (talk · contribs) 12:32, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Saw this on DYK, seems like a very interesting person. Happy to review! MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 12:32, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edge3, I've completed my review, just some small things about the prose and then this article is good to go. Nice job! MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 13:30, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see you've implemented my suggestions, thank you- good to go for GA! MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 22:19, 5 August 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.	Kalven grew up in Kenwood neighborhood... - "the" is needed before "Kenwood" Afterwards he graduated from Wesleyan University. - comma after "afterwards" Harry died in 1974... - I'd replace harry with "His father", or add a clarification ("Harry, his father, died..."), because it could cause confusion for a skimming reader ...his wife Evans was beaten... - again, clarification would be helpful. Perhaps, "...his wife, Patricia Evans, was beaten..." The "Invisible Institute" was a fictitious name for the blog's publisher. - might just be me, but I'm not entirely sure what this means. What exactly does "fictitious name" mean? In June 2005, counsel for the city... - missing "the" Everytime "FOIA" is stated as a subject or object, it must be preceded with "the". When the FOIA itself is not the object/subject (like in "FOIA requests") "the" is not needed Prose is clear and free of typos.
	1b. it complies with the list incorporation .	Add Template:Use American English or otherwise appropriate All the templates and whatnot under "Works" should have "none" placed under the ref parameter Complies with MoS standards- no fiction or words to watch are present, lead is well-written.
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 are placed under a proper "References" section
	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 citations are to news sites or official documents (like court cases)- all reliable.
	2c. it contains no original research.	I did some random checks on some possibly contentious statements, all came up clear.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Earwig shows a relatively high score for some- the highest score is to a source licensed under CC, and the citation states that some material is taken from the site, so that's all good. The other high score is for the Chicago magazine source, but most of the highlights are for long names or otherwise simple statements like "A Worthy Tradition: Freedom of Speech in America". No copyvios/plagiarism.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Addresses his personal life and the major events in his career- all good.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	Stays focused throughout.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	Article stays neutral throughout, particularly in discussions of the various court cases.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No edit warring.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as audio :
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Images are properly CC/PD tagged.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions .	Images are relevant and properly captioned.
	7. Overall assessment.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

@MyCatIsAChonk Thank you for your review! I wanted to make sure I addressed the rest of your comments, even though you just passed it for GA status. I was delayed in posting this message because I had taken a quick nap. :-)

• The "Invisible Institute" was a fictitious name for the blog's publisher. – "fictitious publisher" means that the Invisible Institute didn't actually exist as a formal entity. Recall that The View from the Ground was a webzine put together by the Kalven, Evans, and Eads as a grassroots project based in Stateway Gardens. There was no need for a formal organization at the time, so they listed Invisible Institute as a "publisher" more as a joke.
• Everytime "FOIA" is stated as a subject or object, it must be preceded with "the". When the FOIA itself is not the object/subject (like in "FOIA requests") "the" is not needed – I disagree with this. I'm somewhat of a FOIA enthusiast myself, and colloquially, "FOIA" in Illinois is referred to in conversation and in writing without the article. See Illinois Freedom of Information Act (which I wrote) and the sources I cited for that article.

I did a quick survey of the case law in Illinois, and it appears that there has been a shift in how "FOIA" is referred to in writing. Bowie v. Evanston Community Consolidated School District 65 (1988) and Lieber v. Board of Trustees of Southern Illinois University (1997) are both important cases in FOIA jurisprudence, and they both use the article "the" before "FOIA". On the other hand, more recent cases, including Kalven v. City of Chicago (2014), Uptown People's Law Center v. Department of Corrections (2014), and Better Government Association v. City of Chicago Office of Mayor (2020), do not.

Edge3 (talk) 22:51, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see then, thanks for clarifying these for me. I'd assumed there was reason for these, and I didn't know about fictitious publishers until now. Thanks! MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 23:09, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MyCatIsAChonk Thanks! I also see that you have some experience with the FA process, and you even just nominated an article today! Would you say that this article is ready to be nominated? It would be my very first nom, and I have no other experience with FA at all. No pressure to give feedback, of course. My inquiry is completely casual and informal. Edge3 (talk) 23:44, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Edge3, it's definitely close to FA quality. The prose is excellent, it's comprehensive, images are good- the only issue I can imagine would arise is sourcing. The article only has 23 citations, and the article heavily relies on around 10 of them. Of course, this entirely has to do with the amount of coverage Kalven has. If you can justify the use of so few citations, it's good to go. Let me know when you nominate it, I review at FAC as well. MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 23:48, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MyCatIsAChonk: Thanks! I'm going to see if I can improve the image quality for the high school yearbook portrait, since I worry that FAC reviewers might bring it up. I've submitted a request for the UChicago Library to give me a higher-quality scan. (I was allowed to use only my phone's scanner app, not a professional scanner, when I inspected the yearbook in-person at the library.) Once that's done, I'll probably be ready for FAC. Edge3 (talk) 03:06, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MyCatIsAChonk I've received the higher-quality scan from the UChicago Library, which I've swapped into the article. Is there anything else you think is needed before I take this to FAC? I see that mentorship is suggested; hopefully you'd be willing to help out? Edge3 (talk) 16:32, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Edge3, I'd love to help! General disclaimer that I'm no expert in FACs (I only have one) but I have reviewed many and can offer advice there. Some first thoughts:

• I suggest applying the same casing for all citation titles (
  MOS:CONFORMTITLE
  - not mandatory, but it looks cleaner (in my opinion) and is more consistent

I've used sentence case in all citations.

• Earwig is showing some pretty high scores for various sources. News21 is ok since you have the CC tag in the citation, but some others have pretty high scores for random sentences- these scores should be reduced.

I've rephrased many of the cases flagged by Earwig.

• Ref 13: How is it via Business Source Complete is there's no link?

I accessed the article through a library subscription that I don't have a usable link for. Others may try to read the article through JSTOR or directly from the ABA Journal, but both links require a subscription. However, since I didn't use JSTOR or directly subscribe to ABA Journal in my research, I don't think I can use those URLs in the citation.

• I suggest you do your own spotcheck before nominating. FAC first-timers are always spotchecked, and especially on a BLP, it'll be very strict and thorough.

Will do! I'll check my sources again before filing the FAC.

• No mention of his polk award?

Good catch! I can't believe I missed it. I've added it in.

Let me know when you send it to FAC- I have no concerns on the prose, it's a very well-written article! MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 16:53, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MyCatIsAChonk: Thanks for the tips! I've responded above. I'll try to get this to FAC once I finish re-checking the sources. Edge3 (talk) 21:21, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just leaving a note here in case people have questions. During the FAC nomination, Kalven's birth year was estimated at 1948, but there was some uncertainty around this estimate. See version at February 23, 2024, footnote 1. After this article was scheduled for TFA, a question was raised at TFA talk to see whether the specific birth year could be determined. Thanks to some additional research, the exact date of birth was found in Kalven's marriage certificate on Ancestry.com, and the year of birth (1948) is now cited accordingly in the article.

As I stated at

In the "Works" section, this notation is used: "Kalven, Harry (1989). —— (ed.). " My vision isn't great, and I struggle to read it. Is it two em-dashes together? What does it mean? -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The two emdashes refer to the previous person listed when referencing people in citations. But, I do see how this is confusing- I've removed the parameter, since him being the author is enough attribution. MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 19:05, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! But aren't the dashes just the same as

WP:IBID? -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:24, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

@MyCatIsAChonk and @Mikeblas: Thanks for your patience, as I was delayed in responding due to international travel. The two em-dashes are consistent with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works#Template, which states, {{Cite book}} may be used to format bibliography entries; for single-author lists, use |author-mask= to avoid repeating the author's name. I do wonder if we should mention Kalven by name in the second item in "Works", since the first item was authored by his father. Edge3 (talk) 10:41, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that makes sense too. Avoids possible confusion MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 10:56, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've just made that change. Edge3 (talk) 11:05, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article repeatedly states that Laquan McDonald was shot "execution style", but does not explain (single bullet to the back or side of the head? firing squad in front?). Indeed, the autopsy diagram suggests he died in a hail of bullets from all over--far from a tidy execution. And one person shot him 16 times? This is a glaring discordance. Minturn (talk) 16:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I believe "execution" is taken from the source (this article which uses the word many times). Though @Edge3 can provide more on that MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 10:58, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The word "execution" comes directly from the source. Edge3 (talk) 11:07, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]