A fact from Warren P. Mason appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 May 2018 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that scientist Warren P. Mason said that polymer chemistry was not "civilized" because of the awful smells produced?
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On initial look, this is a very well-written article - it is probably GA quality already, so my comments will more be for further improvement. As an initial thought, it would be great to have an image of one of Mason's creations (perhaps the GT crystal cut or the Mason-Wick horn). Pi.1415926535 (talk) 06:40, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Pi, thanks for reviewing. Sorry, I can't provide images of either of the things you mentioned. I have plenty of images of modern DE circuits, but the designs couldn't really be directly attributed to Mason, so it might be misleading to include them. SpinningSpark 11:47, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No worries about that. The sections I've gone through so far look very good - it's mostly just formatting and phrasing. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 07:14, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed my mind about that. An image should be ok if it is properly described as modern. SpinningSpark 14:33, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
...working at Bell Labs.: should be in past tense to match the rest of the lede
"...was...working at..." is past tense. How would you like it to be phrased? Simply changing "working" to "worked" by itself won't work. SpinningSpark 14:48, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"who worked at Bell Labs from 1925 to 1965", perhaps?
I've just removed the word "working" altogether, it does not seem to be necessary. It is enough to say he was at Bell Labs. What else would he be doing there? SpinningSpark 08:29, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
...he had a prolific output.: Might be worth moving the last two sentences of the lede further up to connect to this.
The lede as a whole is a bit thin - another few sentences would be good.
Well, it's a relatively short article so we would expect the lead to be short. I think I've included all the really major aspects of Mason's work, but if you feel that something in particular has been missed we can add it. SpinningSpark 15:03, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
A bit about his legacy - perhaps a reworking of the last two sentences of the Legacy section - would probably work great.
Any records of what he was doing while part-time at Columbia?
I'm sure we can find out, but my secondary sources didn't highlight anything as being especially significant. It would be going over the top to discuss every paper in Mason's prolific output. EDIT: here are the scholar results for Mason's publications for the period 1965-1977 [1]. It's a very long list. Does anything stand out that you think should be mentioned? His work on internal friction of metals and rocks falls into this period and is already mentioned in the article along with two of his papers listed in the works section. SpinningSpark 15:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I was just confused - I didn't realize that he was already working at WE while getting his advanced degrees.
Mason married Evelyn Stuart McNally in 1929 by whom he had a daughter, Penelope E. Mason. This is awkwardly worded.
I've split that into two sentences and reordered the paragraph. Is that any better? SpinningSpark 15:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Their plane crash-landed... I'm not sure this sentence is necessary, especially the detail about the pilot - that's what the wikilink is for.
I felt that the seriousness of the incident needed to be highlighted without forcing the reader to follow the link. Yes, it's tangential, but not unduly so. It must have been a traumatic incident in Mason's life. SpinningSpark 15:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Noting the deaths to indicate a traumatic incident is fine; the detail of the pilot re-entering the plane is entirely tangential to this article.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I'm not really willing to remove it. I agree that it is tangential, but not so gratuitously so that it detracts from the quality of the article, and it is not uninteresting to a reader. SpinningSpark 08:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree - it's completely unrelated to the subject of this article and I feel that it reads very strangely - but it's not a significant enough issue to derail a GA.
Career
Mason spent his whole career... This sentence is weirdly worded. Given that 40 of 44 years was with Bell Labs after the split, it might be better to mention Western Electric as a second sentence.
I've entirely restructured that. I was trying to open with the fact that he spent his whole career with essentially the same company. The rest of the sentence was structured to allow that to happen. But it isn't really necessary to do that. SpinningSpark 15:49, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good.
Characteristics
This as a whole is a very short section - I would suggest merging it into the Career section.
I can't agree with that. It's not really a career thing. SpinningSpark 16:00, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Having it as a stand-alone section doesn't really work - ignoring conventional wisdom and pacing in place are interesting details and worth including, but they're not important enough to justify a top-level heading of their own. Given the mention of experimental results, the Career section seemed like the most logical place, but it definitely needs to not stand alone.
I've added another anecdote to flesh this out a bit. SpinningSpark 09:17, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that looks a bit better.
The second and third sentences are a bit awkwardly phrased; they could probably be combined into one sentence. It's also a bit unclear - what does pacing have to do with not missing results?
If you are actually pacing up and down in the conventional manner (like a father waiting for his wife to deliver a baby) you may have your back turned to the event at the crucial moment. I could only make that clearer by adding a third sentence, not by combining two. SpinningSpark 16:00, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see. "pacing in place" might be a bit clearer; "on-the-spot pacing" sounds odd for American English. It can certainly be streamlined into one sentence - I suggest Mason was known for his peculiar habit of pacing in place while thinking, which he apparently did to avoid missing experimental results as they happened.
"Pacing in place", coincidentally, is actually the phrase used in the source. I probably changed it to avoid close paraphrasing, but now you have independantly suggested it, I am copying from you, not the source, so "done". SpinningSpark 09:17, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The final sentences could be streamlined as Mason's inventions in electronics - including distributed element circuits, crystal lattice filters, and the GT quartz crystal - are still widely used. (That sentence would be perfect for the lede as well.)
There are two problems with doing that. The first is that it turns the passage into a one-sentence paragraph. It also interferes with text-source integrity. As it stands, the first sentence establishes that the topic of the paragraph is that these items are still "widely used". The sources in the second sentence then verify that each individual item is indeed widely used. Moving "still widely used" to the end of the passage means that all the cites would also have to be moved to the end, separating them from the text they are verifying. Leaving them in place would look like they were just verifying the existence of the items, not their wide usage, and would leave "widely used" without a cite. Now this could be dealt with by clarification within the cite, but that is a lot more messy. SpinningSpark 09:33, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that's fine.
Selected works
The patent discussion is very interesting, but I'm not sure why it's here rather than under Career given that no specific patents are actually mentioned.
It fits there just as well as the career section. It follows on from the statistics on his other published works. Also, Mason was publishing patents from the earliest days in his career so there is no specific place in the timeline to insert it. We could always list some of the patents, but it is a heck of a job to filter them down to a reasonable list. SpinningSpark 16:10, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, the paragraph reads as though the citation only supports the total number of Bell Labs patents, rather than Mason's numbers. Might be clearer to add a citation (even if identical) after Mason's numbers.
Thoughts in wrapping these works (and those in the bibliography) in citation templates? I'm strongly in favor of always templating citations (especially now that Lua has eliminated rendering issues), but I understand that not everyone holds that view.
We can discuss the merits of citation templates if you like, but the bottom line is I won't be doing it. SpinningSpark 16:10, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Periods should be added after initials for names.
Doubt that is a GA requirement, but done. SpinningSpark 16:10, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Papers should be in chronological order
Done. Only one was slightly out of order I think. SpinningSpark 16:10, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Second reviewer
The original reviewer has said they won't be continuing with the review, so I'll pick it up. If I don't have time later tonight, I should be able to post some notes by the end of the weekend. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:12, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've read the article through twice. Sources seem to be high-quality, and there are no broken external links. The text is clear and concise. I have a couple of minor prose suggestions below which are not necessary for GA, so I'm going to promote and leave these as suggestions.
The "Family and education" section has seven sentences starting "Mason", and some short sentences which are a bit staccato -- e.g. "They had a daughter, Penelope E. Mason. Evelyn died in 1953." I think this section could flow more smoothly.
They could be made with much sharper transition bands: suggest "They can be made", since it is still true.
the efficiency and bandwidth of acoustic transducers, such as used in sonar: suggest either "such as those used in sonar", or "which are used in sonar", depending on whether the point is that a particular kind is used in sonar, or that sonar is an important use.
and was used in experiments to amplify mechanical vibrations. It was used in experiments concerning internal friction and fatigue in metals: repetitive.
the first demonstration of single-chain viscoelasticity. That is, viscoelasticity due to the individual molecular chains themselves, not to their entanglement: suggest "the first demonstration of single-chain viscoelasticity, in which the viscoelasticity is due to the individual molecular chains themselves, not to their entanglement". Could the second occurrence of "viscoelasticity" be changed to "elasticity"? It seems that that's the meaning.
I'd completely forgotten about this article. I'm surprised to learn that the original reviewer had abandoned the review without informing me. I'm even more surprised that they gave as a reason my "refusal to take my suggestions". The vast majority of the review points were complied with and there was disagreement on only a couple.
@Mike Christie: thanks very much for picking up the review. I will deal with your comments shortly, and since you have left them here, I will respond to them here, even though you have now promoted the article. Please let me know if you are no longer interested in taking part. SpinningSpark 12:59, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to participate; I just didn't see a need to delay promotion over very minor prose issues -- I have a tendency to review prose as if at FAC, but I don't want to hold up GA for prose issues that don't fall within
I've dealt with most of your points. There are a couple still to address;
"They had a daughter..." This was changed following a previous review comment. Do you like the original better? Or do you want something different again?
viscoelasticity > elasticity. I was worried at first that this would erroneously read as the definition of viscoelasticity. But it seems to be ok after adopting your other changes so I made the change with an additional copyedit.
Thanks again for your comments. As for FA, I never intended to aim this at FA. My motivation was to fill in redlinks to a person who clearly had a huge influence on electronics, but who has been strangely ignored. However, if you want to make a push for FA, we can talk about what needs doing... SpinningSpark 15:31, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it could be done, but wouldn't be particularly easy, because most of the content is about his work. He did so many different things that the bulk of the article -- the Work section -- is not much more than a long summarizing list, and it's hard to make that sort of thing read smoothly. Assuming that there are no more significant sources, so what we have in the article is all we'll get, going to FAC would mostly mean copyediting. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:55, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
