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I'm disappointed that this article does not tell the whole story: How the ACLU cleaned her up and gave her a job so as to make her look normal for the hearing. How they arranged for her to speak at Harvard. How after Mayor Kotch's attempt to provide help for her was defeated the ACLU abandoned her and left her to return to the streets and meet the end described in the posting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arturo 1929 ( talk • contribs) 02:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
This should probably be at something like Involuntary hospitalization of Joyce Patricia Brown, since most of the news is about her hospitalization and related trial, laws, etc. If nobody objects I'll boldly move it in the next day or two. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
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.
GA toolbox |
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Reviewing |
Reviewer: Freedom4U ( talk · contribs) 23:44, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
Rate | Attribute | Review Comment |
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1. Well-written: | ||
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1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct. | Changes need to be made. Expanded on below. |
![]() |
1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. | Changes need to be made. Expanded on below. |
2. Verifiable with no original research: | ||
![]() |
2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline. | References are in acceptable format. |
![]() |
2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). | Concerns about source-integrity |
![]() |
2c. it contains no original research. | Material not in the sources found. Expanded on below. |
![]() |
2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism. | close paraphrasing needs to be fixed |
3. Broad in its coverage: | ||
![]() |
3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic. | |
![]() |
3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). | |
![]() |
4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each. | A few minor changes need to be made. Expanded on below. |
![]() |
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. | Article history consists of normal editing. |
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio: | ||
![]() |
6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content. | Image in the article used with valid non-free use rationale. I was unable to find any other suitable pictures in searches of public domain databases. |
![]() |
6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. | Concerns regarding the caption below. Not required, but highly recommended that the image have alt-text for obvious accessibility concerns. |
![]() |
7. Overall assessment. |
which expanded the city's ability to forcibly commit homeless New Yorkers to psychiatric hospitals?
established strict standards for involuntary detention of the mentally ill.
Also wouldn't that become. Yep. See also: RAS synrome. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:35, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
would go against WP:NPOV- I think you're reading between the lines there. Strict in the sense that there are clear protections. Strict in relation to what the city was trying to do. Not strict in the sense of "too strict" (?). The ABA article uses the word "strict" in this context. Regardless, it's not necessary for the meaning of the sentence, which is just as well served by "legal requirements".
The source doesn't state "Sometimes staff would" (and "sometimes" is WP:WEASEL).- How is "sometimes" WP:WEASEL? The idea is they take people to the hospital when they think it's necessary. They don't bring everyone to the hospital, but they do ... sometimes. There's no figure about a frequency that I've seen, but if there were, do we really need to get into that level of statistics when writing about an individual case? An alternative is "On the occasions when staff would bring people to psychiatrics hospitals...". Similarly, there is a figure provided for the rate at which hospitals were refusing to commit people brought to them, but there are conflicting numbers given by New York and the AP (and it doesn't seem necessary to the article to present a range of values). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:35, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
28-bed unitinstead of "unit of space"
Joyce Patricia Brown was born on September 7, 1947 to a working-class family in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was the youngest of six children, with four sisters and one brother.be better?
She struggled with substance abuse and testified that she was addicted to heroin and cocaine by eighteen. She began to hear voices and act erratically, resulting in her dismissal from her secretary job, (jstor p11) and she was later convicted of possession of heroin. In 1982 (year given in jstor article), she was charged with assaulting a police officer at Newark Penn Station.)
She testified that by the end of her eighteenth year, she was addicted to both., but the jstor article states
Joyce Brown's history was unremarkable until, in her early 20s, she began using cocaine and heroin.The New York magazine article also states
She was introduced to drugs right after she got out of school(meaning she started using after graduation, and in less than a year was addicted)
She slept on a vent in front of a fancy restaurantand Brown took up residence on an air vent near Second Avenue at 65th Street by a Swensen's Ice Cream Shop for about a year, during which time she was arrested and released a number of times. appears to be original research as its not mentioned elsewhere. The sources do state that she slept near a hot air vent, but the rest of the sentence failed verification.
At a three-day hearing before a judge at Bellevue, the city’s witnesses said Brown urinated and defecated on the sidewalk, burned dollar bills and screamed obscene threats at passers-by, especially black men.and also exposing herself to passersby is just not grammatically correct.
exposing herself to passersby is just not grammatically correct.What am I not understanding there? Exposing herself to people (plural) who walked by = exposing herself to passersby. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:10, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
On October 28, 1987, she became the first person involuntarily committed to Bellevue under Koch's program.
The latter name was...would be simpler and cleaner
On October 28,...should be moved into the next section.
injectedwould work.
As soon as she awoke, she went to a pay phone and called the New York Civil Liberties Union.(New York magazine) are a bit too similar, and the previous information could be shortened to
Brown contacted the NYCLU, who [whatever they did... took her case?]
Levy and Siegel had hoped that someone would come forward to challenge the new program. So when the call came in from "Billie Boggs," they were thrilled.(New York magazine) are also too similar. Simply the only part that matters here is that the NYCLU had been looking for someone to challenge the new program. This could be incorporated into a single sentence with my previous suggestion. Also which would should be
that wouldanyways.
From the start, the case generated extensive media attention.Feels better
Proceedings for the trial began on [date] and were held under Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Lippmann.(Found the date its in the NY Magazine source, its November 2)
Testifying for the defense, Robert Gould.... Also remove "the" from "the New York Medical College"
Brown testified that
shifted the public conversationor
influencedand whether she needed to be hospitalized would be better as simply
her hospitalization
the effectiveness of the city's treatmentwould be better
Lippmann explained that he based his ruling primarily off of Brown's testimony and demeanor, as the psychiatrists' testimonies differed so significantly from each other that they were largely unhelpful.
Upon Brown's release, Rick Hampton of the Associated Press called "the most famous homeless person in America".
The night of her release?
media?
WCBS's People Are Talking, and WABC's The Morning Show?
and arrested for possession of heroin? Or was she arrested for something else while possessing heroin? heroin is linked twice.
Writing in the ABA Journal, Alan Pusey stated that. I think in this scenario, the journal is more important than the author.
...Brown's cases sparked a national debate over whether forced hospitalization policies actually helped the mentally ill or simply removed them from the eye of the public.
These comments aren't required for GA status, but still would be nice.
I actually started making some notes about this article yesterday with the intention of starting a GA review today, but I see Freedom4U has beaten me to the punch. I'm going to leave the feedback I had collected here, just in case it's useful, though these are mostly minor points which are not necessarily indicative of shortcomings with respect to the GA criteria:
Between 1987-88, Brown worked with the New York Civil Liberties Union to challenge her hospitalization and ultimately won her release.I realize the intro should provide a simplified overview, but I think this might be simplifying to the point of being misleading. If I'm understanding correctly, they did get a favourable ruling, but it was overturned on appeal. They didn't win a court order for her release, but the hospital chose to release her because of a subsequent legal judgement that they could not forcibly administer medication to her. Right? I would try to restructure or expand this part of the intro so it doesn't give the misleading impression that Brown simply won a court case and was released as a result.
She was hospitalized for fifteen days, diagnosed with a form of psychosis likely caused by schizophrenia and prescribed Thorazine. After she was discharged she did not continue her medication.This doesn't seem right. The New York source says she never took the prescribed medication.
She struggled with several forms of substance abuse, addicted to both heroin and cocaine by the time she was 18, and began to hear voices and act erratically.(Pence, 2004) gives a different picture. It says that her sisters claim she "started taking heroin in her 20s, and later cocaine". It also suggests she experienced a sharp decline in her mental health in 1982. Might be good to check some other sources to see if they can resolve these discrepancies.
Doctors at Bellevue diagnosed Brown with paranoid schizophrenia and treated her with Haldol and Ativan.[3] Shortly after she regained consciousness on the day after arriving at the hospital, Brown contacted the NYCLU.The beginning of the second sentence is a bit of a jarring transition (it makes it seem like the reader should already have been aware that Brown had lost consciousness).
Overall, my impression was that the article is in an excellent state and very close to an immediate pass, though I didn't get to the point of scrutinizing all the citations as closely as I would have liked to for a complete review.
Anyways, it's in Freedom4U's capable hands now. Good luck with the review! I'll try to stay out of the way, but I have put this page on my watchlist because I'm interested in seeing how the process goes. Colin M ( talk) 16:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Hi Freedom4U and Colin M Thanks very much for your time on this, which is I think the most thorough GA review I've seen in a while. :) There are a bunch of good points above, some of which will require more effort to fix than others, and it'll probably take me some time to get through it all. A couple things look like they may extend beyond WP:GACR (dashes, for example), but I don't foresee a problem addressing them (why not, now that they've been pointed out, after all?). It just might take some time. I'll fill in responses/updates under the original comments as I go and put any further general comments here. Thanks, again. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:09, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Working against a wiki-unrelated paper deadline until Wednesday, but should be able to return to this then. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 12:51, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
@ Freedom4U: At long last, I think I'm done. Thanks for your patience. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:23, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Debating adding this: the John Roland/Joyce Brown interview. It would be a straightforward addition except I suspect the uploader doesn't own the rights. :/ — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:12, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
@
Rhododendrites Sorry to bother you again, but I've just realized the HuffPost article is by a HuffPost contributor, rather than a staff writer. Per
WP:RSP, Until 2018, the US edition of HuffPost published content written by contributors with near-zero editorial oversight. These contributors generally did not have a reputation for fact-checking, and most editors consider them highly variable in quality. Editors show consensus for treating HuffPost contributor articles as self-published sources, unless the article was written by a subject-matter expert.
I don't believe there's anything cited to that article that isn't found in the other citations there, so I'll remove it if that's alright. :3
F4U (
they
/it)
13:34, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Involuntary hospitalization of Joyce Brown article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
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Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | Involuntary hospitalization of Joyce Brown has been listed as one of the
Social sciences and society good articles under the
good article criteria. If you can improve it further,
please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can
reassess it. Review: July 10, 2023. ( Reviewed version). |
![]() | This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() |
Daily pageviews of this article
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I'm disappointed that this article does not tell the whole story: How the ACLU cleaned her up and gave her a job so as to make her look normal for the hearing. How they arranged for her to speak at Harvard. How after Mayor Kotch's attempt to provide help for her was defeated the ACLU abandoned her and left her to return to the streets and meet the end described in the posting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arturo 1929 ( talk • contribs) 02:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
This should probably be at something like Involuntary hospitalization of Joyce Patricia Brown, since most of the news is about her hospitalization and related trial, laws, etc. If nobody objects I'll boldly move it in the next day or two. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
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.
GA toolbox |
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Reviewing |
Reviewer: Freedom4U ( talk · contribs) 23:44, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
Rate | Attribute | Review Comment |
---|---|---|
1. Well-written: | ||
![]() |
1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct. | Changes need to be made. Expanded on below. |
![]() |
1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. | Changes need to be made. Expanded on below. |
2. Verifiable with no original research: | ||
![]() |
2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline. | References are in acceptable format. |
![]() |
2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). | Concerns about source-integrity |
![]() |
2c. it contains no original research. | Material not in the sources found. Expanded on below. |
![]() |
2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism. | close paraphrasing needs to be fixed |
3. Broad in its coverage: | ||
![]() |
3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic. | |
![]() |
3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). | |
![]() |
4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each. | A few minor changes need to be made. Expanded on below. |
![]() |
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. | Article history consists of normal editing. |
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio: | ||
![]() |
6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content. | Image in the article used with valid non-free use rationale. I was unable to find any other suitable pictures in searches of public domain databases. |
![]() |
6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. | Concerns regarding the caption below. Not required, but highly recommended that the image have alt-text for obvious accessibility concerns. |
![]() |
7. Overall assessment. |
which expanded the city's ability to forcibly commit homeless New Yorkers to psychiatric hospitals?
established strict standards for involuntary detention of the mentally ill.
Also wouldn't that become. Yep. See also: RAS synrome. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:35, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
would go against WP:NPOV- I think you're reading between the lines there. Strict in the sense that there are clear protections. Strict in relation to what the city was trying to do. Not strict in the sense of "too strict" (?). The ABA article uses the word "strict" in this context. Regardless, it's not necessary for the meaning of the sentence, which is just as well served by "legal requirements".
The source doesn't state "Sometimes staff would" (and "sometimes" is WP:WEASEL).- How is "sometimes" WP:WEASEL? The idea is they take people to the hospital when they think it's necessary. They don't bring everyone to the hospital, but they do ... sometimes. There's no figure about a frequency that I've seen, but if there were, do we really need to get into that level of statistics when writing about an individual case? An alternative is "On the occasions when staff would bring people to psychiatrics hospitals...". Similarly, there is a figure provided for the rate at which hospitals were refusing to commit people brought to them, but there are conflicting numbers given by New York and the AP (and it doesn't seem necessary to the article to present a range of values). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:35, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
28-bed unitinstead of "unit of space"
Joyce Patricia Brown was born on September 7, 1947 to a working-class family in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was the youngest of six children, with four sisters and one brother.be better?
She struggled with substance abuse and testified that she was addicted to heroin and cocaine by eighteen. She began to hear voices and act erratically, resulting in her dismissal from her secretary job, (jstor p11) and she was later convicted of possession of heroin. In 1982 (year given in jstor article), she was charged with assaulting a police officer at Newark Penn Station.)
She testified that by the end of her eighteenth year, she was addicted to both., but the jstor article states
Joyce Brown's history was unremarkable until, in her early 20s, she began using cocaine and heroin.The New York magazine article also states
She was introduced to drugs right after she got out of school(meaning she started using after graduation, and in less than a year was addicted)
She slept on a vent in front of a fancy restaurantand Brown took up residence on an air vent near Second Avenue at 65th Street by a Swensen's Ice Cream Shop for about a year, during which time she was arrested and released a number of times. appears to be original research as its not mentioned elsewhere. The sources do state that she slept near a hot air vent, but the rest of the sentence failed verification.
At a three-day hearing before a judge at Bellevue, the city’s witnesses said Brown urinated and defecated on the sidewalk, burned dollar bills and screamed obscene threats at passers-by, especially black men.and also exposing herself to passersby is just not grammatically correct.
exposing herself to passersby is just not grammatically correct.What am I not understanding there? Exposing herself to people (plural) who walked by = exposing herself to passersby. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:10, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
On October 28, 1987, she became the first person involuntarily committed to Bellevue under Koch's program.
The latter name was...would be simpler and cleaner
On October 28,...should be moved into the next section.
injectedwould work.
As soon as she awoke, she went to a pay phone and called the New York Civil Liberties Union.(New York magazine) are a bit too similar, and the previous information could be shortened to
Brown contacted the NYCLU, who [whatever they did... took her case?]
Levy and Siegel had hoped that someone would come forward to challenge the new program. So when the call came in from "Billie Boggs," they were thrilled.(New York magazine) are also too similar. Simply the only part that matters here is that the NYCLU had been looking for someone to challenge the new program. This could be incorporated into a single sentence with my previous suggestion. Also which would should be
that wouldanyways.
From the start, the case generated extensive media attention.Feels better
Proceedings for the trial began on [date] and were held under Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Lippmann.(Found the date its in the NY Magazine source, its November 2)
Testifying for the defense, Robert Gould.... Also remove "the" from "the New York Medical College"
Brown testified that
shifted the public conversationor
influencedand whether she needed to be hospitalized would be better as simply
her hospitalization
the effectiveness of the city's treatmentwould be better
Lippmann explained that he based his ruling primarily off of Brown's testimony and demeanor, as the psychiatrists' testimonies differed so significantly from each other that they were largely unhelpful.
Upon Brown's release, Rick Hampton of the Associated Press called "the most famous homeless person in America".
The night of her release?
media?
WCBS's People Are Talking, and WABC's The Morning Show?
and arrested for possession of heroin? Or was she arrested for something else while possessing heroin? heroin is linked twice.
Writing in the ABA Journal, Alan Pusey stated that. I think in this scenario, the journal is more important than the author.
...Brown's cases sparked a national debate over whether forced hospitalization policies actually helped the mentally ill or simply removed them from the eye of the public.
These comments aren't required for GA status, but still would be nice.
I actually started making some notes about this article yesterday with the intention of starting a GA review today, but I see Freedom4U has beaten me to the punch. I'm going to leave the feedback I had collected here, just in case it's useful, though these are mostly minor points which are not necessarily indicative of shortcomings with respect to the GA criteria:
Between 1987-88, Brown worked with the New York Civil Liberties Union to challenge her hospitalization and ultimately won her release.I realize the intro should provide a simplified overview, but I think this might be simplifying to the point of being misleading. If I'm understanding correctly, they did get a favourable ruling, but it was overturned on appeal. They didn't win a court order for her release, but the hospital chose to release her because of a subsequent legal judgement that they could not forcibly administer medication to her. Right? I would try to restructure or expand this part of the intro so it doesn't give the misleading impression that Brown simply won a court case and was released as a result.
She was hospitalized for fifteen days, diagnosed with a form of psychosis likely caused by schizophrenia and prescribed Thorazine. After she was discharged she did not continue her medication.This doesn't seem right. The New York source says she never took the prescribed medication.
She struggled with several forms of substance abuse, addicted to both heroin and cocaine by the time she was 18, and began to hear voices and act erratically.(Pence, 2004) gives a different picture. It says that her sisters claim she "started taking heroin in her 20s, and later cocaine". It also suggests she experienced a sharp decline in her mental health in 1982. Might be good to check some other sources to see if they can resolve these discrepancies.
Doctors at Bellevue diagnosed Brown with paranoid schizophrenia and treated her with Haldol and Ativan.[3] Shortly after she regained consciousness on the day after arriving at the hospital, Brown contacted the NYCLU.The beginning of the second sentence is a bit of a jarring transition (it makes it seem like the reader should already have been aware that Brown had lost consciousness).
Overall, my impression was that the article is in an excellent state and very close to an immediate pass, though I didn't get to the point of scrutinizing all the citations as closely as I would have liked to for a complete review.
Anyways, it's in Freedom4U's capable hands now. Good luck with the review! I'll try to stay out of the way, but I have put this page on my watchlist because I'm interested in seeing how the process goes. Colin M ( talk) 16:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Hi Freedom4U and Colin M Thanks very much for your time on this, which is I think the most thorough GA review I've seen in a while. :) There are a bunch of good points above, some of which will require more effort to fix than others, and it'll probably take me some time to get through it all. A couple things look like they may extend beyond WP:GACR (dashes, for example), but I don't foresee a problem addressing them (why not, now that they've been pointed out, after all?). It just might take some time. I'll fill in responses/updates under the original comments as I go and put any further general comments here. Thanks, again. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:09, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Working against a wiki-unrelated paper deadline until Wednesday, but should be able to return to this then. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 12:51, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
@ Freedom4U: At long last, I think I'm done. Thanks for your patience. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:23, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Debating adding this: the John Roland/Joyce Brown interview. It would be a straightforward addition except I suspect the uploader doesn't own the rights. :/ — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:12, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
@
Rhododendrites Sorry to bother you again, but I've just realized the HuffPost article is by a HuffPost contributor, rather than a staff writer. Per
WP:RSP, Until 2018, the US edition of HuffPost published content written by contributors with near-zero editorial oversight. These contributors generally did not have a reputation for fact-checking, and most editors consider them highly variable in quality. Editors show consensus for treating HuffPost contributor articles as self-published sources, unless the article was written by a subject-matter expert.
I don't believe there's anything cited to that article that isn't found in the other citations there, so I'll remove it if that's alright. :3
F4U (
they
/it)
13:34, 10 July 2023 (UTC)