Talk:Marie Breen/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Kimikel (talk · contribs) 02:30, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 12:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Sources are reliable. Earwig finds no issues.

• The source link in the image file doesn't point to a URL where the image is visible; can you provide a more specific link? And can you give me the URL for the page where the Australian Parliament released this image as CC 4.0? I had a look on the website and could find it.

• Replaced the link with a proper source. The website claims the following:

"With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and where otherwise noted, all material presented on this website is provided under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence."

If I have the wrong type of license selected on Commons please let me know. Kimikel (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Spotchecks. Footnote numbers refer to this version.

• FN 4 cites "After their marriage, Breen and her family moved from St. Kilda to Brighton." Verified, but I would suggest removing "and her family" -- she may not have had any of her daughters by then.
  • Done Kimikel (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• FN 7 cites "With her victory, Breen became the second female senator to represent Victoria (after Ivy Wedgwood), and the sixth female to serve in the Senate overall." I don't see most of this in the source -- e.g. Wedgwood is not mentioned.
  • Fixed, I had the wrong URL Kimikel (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• FN 14 cites "She was further appointed as a Dame Commander on 16 June 1979 in general recognition of her lifetime of community service." Verified, but I would cut "lifetime"; it's not in the source and I don't think adds anything -- or if it does then it would have to be separately sourced.
  • Done Kimikel (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• FN 6 cites "She and her husband housed two Burmese boys from Shan, Myanmar while they studied in Australia." Can you give the location in the sound file where this is supported? I think {{cite AV media}} has parameters to allow you to do this.
  • Occurs at exactly 49:00. Since I use that source multiple times, and as far as I know shortened footnotes only work with print media, should I just leave the citation as is or create a separate citation for each reference? Or is there a way to do shortened footnotes with a I'm fine with any just let me know Kimikel (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

    I don't use sfn myself and am not knowledgeable about it. For GA it's only required that a reader be able to find the citation, and since there's a transcript at that URL one could search that and find "Burmese", so I think GA requirements are met. You could try asking at WT:Citing sources, where someone will probably know how to do it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:20, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• FN 9 cites "Among other causes, she advocated for the abolition of Australia's marriage bar, financial support for widowed and deserted mothers, and the inclusion of women in official positions." Can you give page numbers here?
  • Done Kimikel (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

    The source says wives, rather than mothers -- I think it would be better to match the source here, even though it's closer to the original wording. It's a phrase that would be very hard to fluently reword so I wouldn't worry about close paraphrasing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:20, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Fixed Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll continue the review once these issues are resolved. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Thank you for taking up this review @Mike Christie:, I've addressed this first round of issues. Kimikel (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Second spotcheck. Footnote numbers refer to this version.

• FNs 1 & 4 cite "Breen and her husband were founding members of the Liberal Party in 1945." "Founding" has a specific meaning (the people who actually establish the party) that I'm not sure is fully supported by the citations, but after looking at the history of the Liberal Party I see that there was a mass conversion of members of the UAP, so this could be read as referring to the initial, large, intake of members. I'm not going to consider this a verification failure, but in your shoes I might weaken the wording to something like "joined the Liberal Party when it was created in 1945", since from the citations it's possible they didn't join until a month or two after the founding.

Fixed Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• FNs 4 & 10 cite "Breen was also a supporter of increases in welfare payments, especially to families, believing that familiar stability was key to individual, and, by extension, national progress." Verified, but that should be "familial", not "familiar".

Fixed Kimikel (talk)

• FN 8 cites "She was also the founder and president of the Victorian Association of the Citizens Advice Bureau from 1970 and 1978." Verified.
• FNs 2 & 24 cite "She chose not to seek reelection in the Senate in order to continue caring for him and retired at the end of her term on 30 June 1968." Verified.

The spotcheck passes. I'll read through next and make any additional comments below. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:32, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Comments:

• "Breen was interested by politics from an early age; she became more involved in them": "them" seems like the wrong pronoun for "politics". Is "interested by politics" a natural phrase in Australian English? In British or American English it would be "interested in politics".

Reworded sentence Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• "She and her husband were founding members of the Liberal Party in 1945": as above I would suggest rephrasing this unless there is sourcing to show she was one of the people who founded the party.

Corrected Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• "In 1933, while also raising her three children, Breen became the secretary of the Brighton Auxiliary for the Royal Melbourne Hospital." Do we need to mention she was raising her children? It's clear to the reader already that she had children. Or is the point that the third child had already been born by this time? If so it might be more natural to give the relevant dates in the earlier section where you mention them.

Removed Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• "She also became the secretary of the Australian Women's National League": two "also"s in consecutive sentences, though if you've removed the previous on per the comment above it's not an issue. Do you have a date for this?

The only thing I could find regarding a date is her claiming that it was sometime before 1935 in her interview with Schedvin. If you'd like me to add that, I certainly will Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• "In August 1941, Robert was elected mayor of Brighton; he would end up holding the position until the following year": Robert isn't the subject of the article, so perhaps this doesn't matter, but this seems an odd thing to say -- I imagine a mayor would always have at least one year's tenure, so is the point here that he actually left the post early? In which case "only until" would make more sense.

Removed, not relevant enough to keep in article Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• "Nonetheless, her husband eventually convinced her to seek Liberal party preselection for the 1960 Balaclava by-election, caused by the resignation of Percy Joske; however, she was narrowly defeated during preselection." Per Joske's article he was in the lower house, but she was elected for the upper?

She attempted to gain preselection in two separate elections, one for the House (the Joske one) and one for the Senate (the one she actually won). I clarified this a little further in the article. Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• "Her victory was partially attributed to the Communist Party of Australia marking her as their preferred candidate." If you have more sources that discuss this it would be interesting to know why -- I understood the Liberal Party to be centre-right, not left-wing at all, and the article later says she supported anti-communist efforts in south-east Asia.

Removed, outside of the original source, the only place I found the communist party mentioned was in what appears to be an accusatory speech by a member of the house of rep. I'm guessing this is where that article is sourcing the communist party claim from - Kimikel (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

That's everything I can see to comment on. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

The fixes all look good, so I'm passing this. Congratulations! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate it, thank you for the review and for helping me approve the article! Kimikel (talk) 04:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)