Talk:Willie Wiredhand

Starting new edits

Hello Jzwei! I went to make an article for Willie and saw you already have a draft in progress here, so I am planning to build on this draft as I work. If you are still interested in this article, it would be great to work together! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 21:27, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

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.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Willie Wiredhand/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: LEvalyn (talk · contribs) 02:24, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: SounderBruce (talk · contribs) 01:55, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Will review later in the day (or tomorrow). Disclosure: this is part of a review swap with the nominator. SounderBruce 01:55, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Lead

• The caption should be more descriptive
  • I couldn't think of what else would be at all useful to say, and I noticed that Reddy Kilowatt has no caption at all, so I removed the caption. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Per the body, the October 30, 1950 date is the in-character birthdate and not the character's first appearance.
• Overuse of "his" in the second lead sentence; consider a list format that begins with "His figure consists of a head shaped like a lightbulb socket, a wire-like torso, and legs that resemble a two-pronged power plug" or something similar.
• The case was resolved in NRCEA's favor, not the character's.
  • All of the above are done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Creation

• "continues as the Rural Utilities Service" could be reworded as "later evolved into the modern Rural Utilities Services" to prevent continuity issues.
• Link to co-op.
• Add {{inflation}} for the $50 figure
• "The freelance artist" does not need "the"
• Per MOS:LQ, "Willie the Wired Hand," and "Willie Wiredhand," (among other uses) should have the comma after the quotation marks.
  • All of these are done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Lawsuit

• Second use of "Collins" in the first sentence is repetitive and sounds like he refers to himself in the third person.
• Link to United States District Court for the District of South Carolina
• Link to United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• "ruled that the lower court's decision held" can be simplified to "upheld the lower court's decision"
• MOS:LQ again for Watkins' quote.
• "Court costs" should be "legal fees", unless it refers to something else in this case.
• Link to United States Patent and Trademark Office
  • All of these are done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Appearances and uses

• "The Willie Wiredhand Serenaders" should be in quotations; identify where the "local television show" was broadcast.
  • Done. Looks like it was broadcast from from a lot of Midwestern cities so I just summarized the states. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Citation 16 does not support the Southwestern Electric Company's sponsorship of the team; a more specific location (beyond just the state) would be welcome as well.
  • Good catch; I misunderstood the article due to my lack of sports knowledge, haha. I found a lot of mentions of this team but nothing that lets me write a good sentence about them, so I removed this detail. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Mention that the comics were distributed by member co-ops
• "five-foot" should use {{convert}}
  • Done and done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Timeframe for the animatronic verison?
  • No idea-- the animatronic was found in a storage shed in 2014, and they just say that "in younger days" the animatronics worked that way.~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Comma after "Branded items" and "and aprons"; "local events" is vague, was it just one locality or many?
  • Lots of localities; there are a zillion little local news articles for things like "willie wiredhand socket wrench given as prize for the third place winner of the northwest arkansas spelling bee". (That's a fake example, but it captures the vibe). ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Spell out "RECs", as it is only abbreviated in this one use.
• "In the early 2000s he began to regain popularity" is a bit of a fragment and also unclear on who "he" is.
  • I think I have addressed this with some expansion. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• The neon sign was from Sandpoint, Idaho, not Seattle. Do we know the fate of the sign? The source suggest it was not allowed to be displayed at their new building.
  • Good catch on the city; for some reason I thought the paper was in Washington. As for the sign, it couldn't be displayed with animation outside, but it's indoors above the reception desk. That seemed like a lot of detail for this section so I added a footnote.~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Link to crowdfunding, Christmas ornament, and bobbleheads.
  • Done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Remove the "handmade" descriptor from the pens.
  • No, the handmade aspect is really quite important to the pens, since it's so unusual -- I added the descriptor "wooden" instead to indicate why it's specified. ~ L 🌸 (talk)

Citations

• Consider adding |via=Newspapers.com to citations that use Newspapers.com.
• Many of the newspaper citations are missing the authors, which should be included for consistency.
• Citation 2 is missing the publisher of the opinion copy as well as its author.
• Citation 3 is missing its publication date and should use the full name of its newspaper (St. Cloud Times).
• Citation 6 is missing its publication date.
• Citation 7 is missing its publication date.
• Citation 13 is missing its publisher.
• Citation 18 should spell out the organization's full name (Michigan Electric Cooperative Association) and not credit it as the author.
• Citation 21: The publisher's name should be moved from the title to the publisher field. Not too sure this is a reliable source given that it is a company website.
• Citation 22: The column's title ("Merit pay dips in tough times") should be used rather than the subheading; the author is also not listed in the citation.
• Citation 25: Wrong author listed. The citation should also mention the publisher (National Rural Electric Cooperative Association) rather than use their tagline.
  • I don't believe that any of these comments other than #21 are tied to the GA criteria (though I did fix the more major problems). In terms of citation 21, the company website is not independent, but I'd certainly argue that it's reliable as WP:ABOUTSELF; the source is being used to describe when they produced more or less branded merchandise. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
    • Criteria 2a links to MOS:NOTES, which mandates a consistent style (of the editor's choosing). Missing parameters is an example of inconsistency. SounderBruce 05:03, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

      The GA criteria specifically state for 2a that Using consistent formatting or including every element of the bibliographic material is not required, although, in practice, enough information must be supplied so that the reviewer is able to identify the source. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 05:14, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

      That last part is key; publication date is one of the minimum pieces needed to identify a source if Newspapers.com someday does go out of business and its sources cannot be salvaged. SounderBruce 05:26, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

      I still disagree that it's required, but I did it anyway. My reading of Dead links are considered verifiable only if the link is not a bare url is that live links are considered verifiable even if they are bare URLs. Since my footnotes include live URLs, I think more than enough information is supplied to meet the minimum GA criteria. But adding the additional source information is not bad for the article, so I did it. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 07:23, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Images

• File:Willie Wiredhand mascot.jpg is properly tagged with a non-free fair use notice.
• File:Reddy Kilowatt US patent picture 1933.jpg was not properly tagged, but should still be PD as a pre-1963 work that did not have its registration renewed (per the filing). I have swapped out the templates, but I am not an expert in this field so a second opinion may be needed.
  • Thanks for going digging for that filing! Technically, what that filing shows is that the trademark expired and was not renewed. Copyrighting a specific image is entirely separate from trademarking a logo. This specific image was created by the U.S. Patent Office, and is exempt from copyright restrictions like almost all old patent diagrams. I updated the tag with the patent one. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Just some citation cleanup and word/link choices for the most part. Putting this on hold for now. SounderBruce 03:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks for the review! I think I have addressed all your comments.

• @LEvalyn: Just waiting for the citation comments to be addressed, otherwise this looks good to go. SounderBruce 05:03, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

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.