Talk:Béla H. Bánáthy/GA2

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

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The need for reassessment is clear. The original assessment missed NPOV/COI issues of a major editor of the article, @Btphelps:, who appears to have been personally involved with the title subject before his passing, and with the whitestag.org organisation (with which the title subject was apparently deeply involved, as indicated by several pages of their site which are in homage to the late Dr B.). As a result, this organisation's content is repeatedly cited by the WP article, such that large parts of the article content are not third party/independetly sourced.

As well, an earlier purely circular source relationship was identified as the sole citation of the "Large complex systems" subsection of the "Professional life" section, which led me to tag the article.

That web citation, an example of the non-independent sourcing of this WP article—see this page—says at its base that it "uses material from the Wikipedia article 'Béla H. Bánáthy'" (more later). This results in the curious, clearly problematic issue, of that webpage reproducing our footnotes from the Wikipedia article page (one of which was to that webpage, such that the webpage cites itself!). In short, the two webpages, our WP article, and that organisation's page, appear to have been jointly developed, leading to problems in each. (The four appearances of this problem source were therefore replaced with ^{[citation needed]} tags in our article.)

Moreover, it is worth noting that the webpage whose citation was removed for this conflict states that the Wikipedia article was "written by Brian Phelps". Then, the website has other pages, e.g., see here, whose authorship and copyright are assigned to this same person. Hence, a member of an organisation of which the title subject was a part wrote a significant part of this WP article, citing their own work at the organisation, repeatedly, as a source for the article. This appears to be a quagmire of NPOV and COI issues.

The formal evidence of non-neutrality is reinforced by an overly-detailed degree of personal content, and a somewhat promotional sense of writing that pervades this article (see more at the closing, below).

At the same time, the key professional facts of the article—the dates and precise titles of his academic appointments, etc., are missing from the relevant sections, leading to a poor professional/academic biography. This is compounded by four sections—the "Large complex systems" subsection just referred to, and the "Systems science", "International Systems Institute", and "General Evolutionary Research Group" subsections of the "Professional life" section, covering a key academic and career period, that contain no sources (two subsections) or very few valid sources (two subsections). Hence, there are repeat ^{[citation needed]} issues in these two key biographical sections, as well as in the Military Service subsection.

The overall situation with sourcing can be summarised as, [i] an over-reliance on general historical sources that make no mention of the title subject (to cover the war years and content about Hungary, perhaps a third of all sources), [ii] systematic, repeated citation of whitestag.org, ISI, thedarwinproject.com, and other webpages for biographical content that is not independent of the title subject (he founded or led all of these orgs), [iii] no sourcing for other large tracts of content, and [iv] under-utilisation on the few good sources appearing (e.g., the Chico Enterprise Record obituary (appearing as a whitestag.org citation, but acceptable, as a reprint of this actual newspaper obit), and a New York Times "2 Boys" piece that appears to have been about the early years of Bánáthy. (The Jenlink journal biography is also good, but is already cited eight times.)

In terms of article scope, in part because of the COI situation, and in part due to the poor sourcing, the article is over-written in some regards (scouting, war years) and grossly underwritten in others (Career elements, and hard who-what-when-where historical fact). It may read well, but only if you are not a biographer or teacher or other person experienced at looking at such purported historical content.

Finally, the list of published works are incomplete with regard to the standard {{cite book content, that would allow others to actually find these works.

In short, it is hard to see that this ever was a GA, and it certainly needs to be delisted, until all the COI/NPOV material is scaled back, the fauning non-independent sources are balanced—e.g., not a single contrary source from the US Scouting controversy appears, to balance the presentation—and the whitestag, ISI, and darwin autobiographical sources are replaced (i.e., the indirectly self-published Bánáthy → Phelps → Wikipedia material is removed or substantiated with further sources).

Were this a student work, this article is so laced with Bánáthy's sense of himself as expressed through his organisations/admirer's (for Phelps relationship/neutrality, see here), I would tear it up and have the student start over. Here, other editors will have to decide what to do. Cheers, Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:02, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Leprof 7272 What sort of "US Scouting controversy" would you apply to this particular subject? That shoehorning makes me question your own POV.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 09:45, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have always found this article to be out of balance, and that this lemma could share more light on Bánáthy's academic career and notable role in systems science movement. I also believe it is indeed NPOV to introduce Bánáthy "as founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program," and rearranged the lead sentences and removed the sentiments. -- Mdd (talk) 13:21, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I only just noticed the lead was rearranged relatively recently (in 2015), see here, with the edit summary expand lede to more accurately describe his notability. I think the editor mistook his idea of notability (or the general expression the lemma gave of Bánáthy's notability) with the general idea Wikipedia uses, based on secondary sources. -- Mdd (talk) 15:09, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Leprof 7272, I'm not clear what "fauning" sources you are referring to that contribute to your issues with NPOV. I was acquainted with Banathy, and I had a brief professional relationship with him, but I would not call it a friendship. As to link between the citations and Banathy's participation in the various organizations, his participation in at least the White Stag program after its founding was extremely limited. I may be able to find another source or two documenting his role in BSA's junior leader training initiatives and White Stag.

As to the undue weight given to his personal history in Hungary, when he was asked to describe his early life, these facts are what he reported in two summaries of his life he wrote (here and here) as significant. He apparently felt that Scouting was a pivotal part of his youth, and gave it particular emphasis when he wrote about his life. I have not found any other published information on his youth. I could interview his family and publish the results, but it appears that this might still be seen as possibly as having NPOV issues. Much of the academic sections were contributed by others.

As to your concerns about the circular trail of content, that is a mistake on my part. I wrote a biography of Banathy for whitestag.org, which I used as a basis for making additions to the Wikipedia article. When the Wikipedia article surpassed the quality of my original article on whitestag.org, I copied the later work to whitestag.org and replaced the former, thus creating the circular references you've detected. I'm seeking to address those issues in the article now.

Leprof 7272, like Kintetsubuffalo, I question your reference to a "US Scouting controversy", and if such controversy existed, what relevance it has to this article, and leads me to wonder what axe you have to grind on this subject. Please describe this "controversy" and your thoughts about this issue. I am also attempting to resolve some of the issues you've described, so additional time is required before a decision is make about delisting the article from GA. Thanks and regards, — btphelps ^{(talk to me) (what I've done)} 21:07, 7 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Leprof 7272, I removed details about WWII that were not cited and were peripheral to the article. This resolves the issue with additional references needed in the section Military service during World War II.

I think the issue of 'undue weight' given Scouting in this section merely reflects the stories he told about his life (here and here) and can be removed. You marked the same section as relying on too few sources -- there are currently three, which I believe is sufficient.

I've added some citations and updated others. Only two now still create the circular issue you identified. I'll try to fix those shortly. Meanwhile, I think some of the issues have been resolved, and you may want to evaluate whether all of the hatnotes are still accurate. — btphelps ^{(talk to me) (what I've done)} 20:45, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Leprof 7272, as you have not responded for over a month, I'm going to close this discussion as no change to GA assessment. — btphelps ^{(talk to me) (what I've done)} 04:31, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]