Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dorothy Olsen/archive1

Dorothy Olsen

Dorothy Olsen (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

As of 10 January 2025, 14:47 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. An FAC coordinator will be responsible for closing the nomination.

• Featured article candidates/Dorothy Olsen/archive1

Nominator(s): RoySmith (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

This article is about Dorothy Olsen, who flew military planes during World War II as a civilian member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, ferrying newly built fighters and bombers from their factories where they were built to their embarkation points to Europe or Russia. I am grateful to UndercoverClassicist for their extensive comments at Talk:Dorothy Olsen and Wikipedia:Peer review/Dorothy Olsen/archive1. RoySmith (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Kusma

Planning to review. —Kusma (talk) 23:34, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Did you see this source? There are a few nice anecdotes in there that are not yet in the article.
  • I did see that. It's more about WASPs in general; was there some specific item that you think would be useful to add?
    • I'm not sure. It is mostly cute anecdotes:
      • "At the state fair in Salem during the Great Depression, she saw a biplane and spent every cent of the money she had earned picking hops to pay for a ride."
      • "Her daredevil stunts once caused damage to a plane’s front-wheel cowling." because she had been "hanging upside down at the time".
    • Including some of that would add further colour, but certainly isn't necessary.
• Lead: clarify that she preferred the P-51 to the P-38 even if she preferred that one over bombers.
• 40hp Taylorcraft: is that a Taylorcraft B?
  • I don't believe I've seen anything which specified the exact model.
    • I think the "40hp" was supposed to specify it; not sure whether that uniquely identifies the model.
• WASPs: "Her training began in February 1943, at Houston Municipal Field [..] along with half of her class". Not a fan of the "along" here. Maybe "She begain training in February 1943. Half of her class trained at Houston Municipal Field, the other half ..."?
• "Olsen initially hated her training" do we know why?
• "She encountered difficulties when her fiancé died" do we know anything at all about him or how long they had been engaged? (Did he do anything other than inconvenience her by dying at an inopportune moment?)
  • Nothing that I've found.
• "civilian aviation was grounded during World War II" really? Maybe general aviation was, but I think Delta and a few other airlines were operating scheduled civilian flights during WWII.
  • Hmmm, I'm unsure what to do here. You're probably right, but the source doesn't say that specifically. I've made it "civilian general aviation", which I think is reasonable even if not strictly supported by the source.
    • The Chinook Observer perhaps isn't the greatest source for the history of general aviation during WW2, so it may be better to cite this from elsewhere.
      • I've done a bit of hunting and haven't found anything definitive about general aviation being grounded during WW-II. The best I've found is a vague and unsourced statement in History of the Civil Air Patrol#World War II: On 8 December 1941, all civil aircraft, with the exception of airliners, were grounded. This ban was lifted two days later (with the exception of the entire United States West Coast) and things went more or less back to normal I'll keep looking, but for now I've put a more generic statement in the article.
• "delivering brand new planes from the factory and was one of only 12 women certified for night flight" maybe better not to connect these separate facts in one sentence.
• There is a slight abundance of "woulds" in this section.
  • I got rid of some of them.

Nice article overall, and she seems cool (I like the photo of her as an old lady with sunglasses). I guess her life outside the WASP episode is so unremarkable that its short treatment does not indicate a lack of comprehensiveness. —Kusma (talk) 23:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Other than as noted, I think I've addressed all of your comments. RoySmith (talk) 00:32, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed you have. My remaining comments are not showstoppers, happy to support. —Kusma (talk) 09:23, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Volcanoguy

• She grew up on her family's farm in Oregon. Link Oregon?
• After training in Texas. Link Texas?
• After the war, Olsen retired from flying and moved to Washington state. Washington state can be changed to Washington by linking it to Washington (state).
• Dorothy Eleanor Olsen was born in Woodburn, near Portland, Oregon. Link Portland?
• Floyd Gibbons's biography of World War I. Link World War I?
• In a 2022 interview, she recollected crowded housing, insects, and poor weather. The interview was done in 2010 not 2022; Olsen died in 2019.
• Opportunity to keep women pilots flying during World War II. World War II should be linked in introduction first.

That's it for now. Comments welcomed FAC here. Volcanoguy 19:44, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Fixed all those, thanks. RoySmith (talk) 22:32, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Grungaloo

Marking my spot, will post comments shortly. grungaloo (talk) 19:01, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Source review

• Ref 1 - all uses good
• Ref 2/3 - No access so not checked
  • There's links in the refs to Internet Archive if you want to look at those.
    • Ooh, thanks!
• Ref 2- all uses good
• Ref 3 - all uses good
• Ref 4 - good
• Ref 5 - One issue
  • [b] - I don't see where "Woodburn Flying Club " is mentioned, I only see a vague "club" reference. Also, it seems that this sentence is actually a quote from her so I'd make sure that's clear in the prose.
    • fixed.
• Ref 6 - all uses good
• Ref 7 - good
• Ref 8 - You cite page 99 inline at one point, but the citation at the bottom only lists pages 102-103. usage is good otherwise
• Ref 9 - good
• Ref 10 - Small issue
  • [B] - It's called the Sixth Ferrying Group personnel book in the text, but the source says it's a yearbook, I'd suggest to use yearbook.
    • Fixed
• Ref 11 - good
• Ref 12 - good
• Ref 13 - good
• Ref 14 - good
• Ref 15 - Issue
  • [A] - I can't find anything in this sentence that this source verifies. I wasn't able to access the WaPo article, but if it covers this off then I'd remove Ref 15 on this sentence.
• Ref 16 - good, it's only sourcing Jennings' title right?
  • Yeah. I messed up the ref mapping when I inserted that. Fixed now.
• Ref 17 - Can't validate, AGF that the WaPo article covers this.
• Ref 18 - good
• Ref 19 - good

The sources mostly appear to be from good WP:RS (WaPo, NYT, other recognized news outlets). For those I couldn't access, I'm AGF that they check out considering everything else does (minus some nitpicks). The only ones that stuck out to me are the few that are mostly interviews, namely Ref 6. Wikipedia:Interviews is the closest guidance I found, but even if considered a primary source I think it's still good to use. It's mostly her recollections of her life, so pretty uncontroversial stuff. Overall I'd say the source are good minus those few issues I point out above. grungaloo (talk) 22:45, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Prose comments

• A petite woman - Ref 1 lists her starting weight (92 lbs), I'd consider replacing this with the actual numbers.
  • If you believe the source, she managed to put on 8 lbs to get form 92 to 100 in a week. I doubt that's physically possible, so I'm inclined to think the 92 isn't correct, so safer going with the vaguer "petite", I think.
    • Fair rationale. I'd maybe consider a word other than "petite" though. IMO it feels a bit sexist although I'm sure this is not the intent - we don't use this term to describe men so why use it with women? Maybe try something more factual like "Olsen did not meet the 100lb minimum weight upon entry to the program, so she under embarked on..." or something like that.
      • I changed it to "small", which is guess is more gender neutral.
• There were more than 25,000 applicants to the program, of which 1,879 were accepted and 1,074 graduated; Olsen was one of 152 students in class 43-4. - This is missing a source. It seems like Ref 8 and Ref 1 cover it though.
  • Hmmm, unless I'm missing something, this sentence and the next few are all cited to ref 8.
    • Ok yeah, I think I got confused during the read. On second look it checks out.
• Dorothy Eleanor Olsen was born in Woodburn, near Portland, Oregon, on July 10, 1916, to Ralph and Frances (Zimmering) Kocher, and grew up on the family's small farm.[ - there's a lot of commas here, stylistically I think it would look better broken up into two sentences - one for where/when she was born, another about parents/farm?
  • Done (not in exactly that way, but split into two sentences).
• She encountered difficulties when her fiancé died; taking time off to attend his funeral put her behind the rest of her class. - I think this semicolon should be a comma since the second clause isn't a complete sentence on its own.
  • What comes after is taking time off to attend his funeral put her behind the rest of her class. That seems like a sentence to me, but if you feel strongly about this, I'll change it.
    • On a re-read you're right, the semicolon is good.
• a practice shared by other WASPs. - This isn't sourced as far as I can tell.
  • The WaPo article (ref 2) says, "Sometimes, before sending a plane off to combat, a WASP would leave a note for its next pilot"
    • I guess it's a stylistic preference of mine then, so not something that would prevent support. IMO having a citation near the end of the sentence but leaving the tail end without one makes it seem like that tail is uncited. Even though the next cite does cover it, it's not immediately evident that that cite covers the tail end of the previous sentence as well. You could consider moving the tail into the next sentence instead, or maybe putting ref 2/3 at the end of the first sentence instead. Again, this is a stylistic preference so no need to change it if you'd prefer not to.
      • I think you're right. This is probably one of those things that's "technically correct, but could be better", so I did that.

That's all I've got. Looks pretty good! grungaloo (talk) 22:45, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Support - changes look good. grungaloo (talk) 00:18, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Pendright

Placeholder - back soon! Pendright (talk) 22:36, 1 March 2024 (UTC)