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	Joseph Franklin Rutherford was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result June 26, 2012 Good article nominee Listed December 20, 2024 Good article reassessment Delisted
	A fact from this article was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on January 8, 2024.
Current status: Delisted good article

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Years under 'President of Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society'

Why has an unregistered person (from merely an IP address) been DROPPING or abbreviating information and abbreviating that information from actual calendar dates, to years only? cf.President of Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society 1884–1916

MaynardClark (talk) 04:35, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

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

Reviewer: GreatOrangePumpkin (talk · contribs) 12:21, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

Lead

You may want to link "doctrinal"

Done. BlackCab (talk) 11:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Early Life

"a Baptist farm family and raised in near-poverty." - comma missing between "family" and "and". Maybe reword to something like "Rutherford was born on November 8, 1869 to the Baptist farm family, James Calvin Rutherford and Leonora Strickland, and raised in near-poverty. "

Done. BlackCab (talk) 11:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The Finished Mystery

"seditious and antiwar statements" - they really banned for these reasons?

The body of the article explains that the directors were charged with offences under the Espionage Act. The charges were laid in response to complaints about The Finished Mystery, which Beckford describes as containing "seditious materal". I have added a citation for this. BlackCab (talk) 11:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Doctrinal changes

"In 1936, Rutherford rejected the belief that Jesus had been executed on a Roman cross, in favor of an upright stake or "tree."" - any information why he believed so?

That's unknown. BlackCab (talk) 11:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Personal life

If he was against marriage, then why he married?

Good question, but I'm not sure the answer is known. BlackCab (talk) 11:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Death and burial

Some medical terms should be linked

Link "Beth Sarim" in the first occasion

Done. BlackCab (talk) 11:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

Ref 29, 46, 47, 51, 57, 64, 93, 94, 109, 111, 127, 131, 135, 144, 150, 165, 170, 177, 178, 179, 184 and 195 do not link to any citation

Use consitant style of "page"

Dead references should be fixed

According to one category, he was a "Former atheists and agnostics"; do you have any information regarding this claim?

Ref "Millions Now Living Will Never Die!, 1920, p. : "A simple calculation of these jubilees brings us to this important fact: Seventy jubilees of fifty years each would be a total of 3500 years. That period of time beginning 1575 before A.D. 1 of necessity would end in the fall of the year 1925."" needs a page number--GoP_TN 08:58, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Page number done. BlackCab (talk) 11:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

The references you mention are all linked to sources in the Refs section; all are then linked to their entries in the bibliography.

I have removed the "Former atheists and agnostics" category. There is a passing reference to atheism in a reference, but this is far from a reliable source and certainly not a secondary source.

Can you please point out any dead references? Thanks. BlackCab (talk) 11:18, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

According to Chechlinks:

Ref 227: Consolation , May 27, 1942.

Ref 240: San Diego's Officials Line Up Against Earth's New Princes

Ref 224: Witness Sect Founder Dies

Ref 36: Rutherford—Troy Debate

Ref 235: Witnesses of Jehovah

Ref 234: Mp3 of Interview with Hayden C. Covington on November 19, 1978--GoP_TN 11:29, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Those dead links have gone. BlackCab (talk) 12:00, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall: A few fixes are needed, but otherwise an excellent and interesting article.

Pass/Fail:

Delay of Rutherford's burial

The newspaper article cited says that the body was awaiting burial three weeks after the January 8th death, but no record of the date of burial is found in the article. 134.174.140.111 (talk) 19:30, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

You're correct that the St Petersburg Evening Independent did report three weeks after his death that the burial had been delayed. William Whalen's Armageddon Around the Corner (p.67) says the interment in fact took place five months after his death. BlackCab (TALK) 03:56, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

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"Judge" v Judge

I may be in the minority here, but it seems to me that putting "Judge" in quotation marks implies that the sobriquet was in some way false or not legitimate, i.e. he wasn't a "real" judge. Regardless of time spent as a judge (by all accounts a one-time sitting) he was appointed as a judge and did serve in that role. Not even Penton, by no means a fan of Rutherford, calls him "Judge" Rutherford but instead refers to him as simply Judge Rutherford both in text and in the index. I have therefore been WP:BOLD and removed the " " from the two times it was used (and have simply removed the "Judge" part entirely from the picture as it is unnecessary). If anyone disagrees, I'll be happy to discuss it. Vyselink (talk) 04:56, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Fair point. His use of the term was blatantly self-aggrandising, especially given the fact that he sat as a substitute judge possibly on just one occasion in his career, but it's true that when he was called Judge Rutherford by the WTS, it was never with quote marks around. In a very extensive scrapbook of old JW-related news clippings on Archive.com, there are rare uses of quote marks but in the great majority of cases newspapers simply called him Judge Rutherford. BlackCab (TALK) 06:13, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Rutherford was a "Special Judge", which means he stood in as a judge when no appointed judge was available. He was not a "Sitting Judge", which is a judge in office who is appointed.

Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, page 67:

Rutherford later served for four years as public prosecutor for Boonville, Missouri. Still later, he served on occasion as a special judge in the Eighth Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri. That is why he came to be known as “Judge” Rutherford.

--Jeffro77 (talk) 06:31, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

The use of quotes in those two WTS references was more of an emphatic device. In almost every other case when he was so-described, it was without the quotes. BlackCab (TALK) 10:15, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

That's also the Proclaimers book, where they would have been attempting to minimize any connection with the secular world. In either case the judge title is one he held, regardless of how long. Putting it in " " makes it sound like a nickname that was unearned. Even Julius Erving, who did not hold an academic PhD, does not have " " around the Dr. J. moniker. Vyselink (talk) 14:42, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Actually on Dr. J.'s page in some cases it does in some cases it doesn't. Is there a wp policy that would help define this for us? To me, because it was an actual title (even if for a day) and he was appointed as a special judge (who are not called "special judge" in court) I don't think it should have " ". Vyselink (talk) 14:45, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't care whether or not quotes are used, but nor is it a simple case of saying he was or was not a 'real' judge. (The article already stipulates that he was "special judge".)--Jeffro77 (talk) 11:27, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

'Judge'

An editor added material in an exposé tone, which has been removed. 'Rev. Edward Lodge Curran', according to Time magazine in 1939, the "florid, bald, horn-voiced, hammer-handed president of the International Catholic Truth Society" is not a remotely neutral source for discussion of Rutherford. The material in the unnecessarily long quote in the citation didn't seem to indicate that Rutherford's position as a lawyer was remarkably different to other lawyers during his early career, instead appealing to comparison with later standards asserted by Curran. It is not necessary for the article to elaborate on things Rutherford didn't do, and the article makes no attempt to claim that Rutherford had any education that he did not have. Similarly, the article already notes that Rutherford sat as a special judge and makes no claim that he was a Judge in a more official sense than was actually the case. His actual role as a 'judge' is quite clearly stated in the Law career subsection.--Jeffro77 (talk) 00:52, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I also just noticed that my mobile device changed "Conley" to "Cobbler" in a previous edit summary. The fact remains that Rutherford was second president of the incorporated Watch Tower Society, which the article directly states.--Jeffro77 (talk) 01:02, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Joseph Franklin Rutherford

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.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:00, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I think this article cites too many primary sources to be a GA. This inevitably leads to some synthesis. By my count, 96 of the cited references are to the group's own publications. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 09:10, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

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