Talk:Albert Henry Smyth

New article

Added content and sources welcomed. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 23:36, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

DYK nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 20:21, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

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Albert Henry Smyth

• ... that Albert Henry Smyth (pictured) uncovered 385 letters in America and Europe, written by Benjamin Franklin, and in 1906 was the first editor to publish them?  Sources: <Rosengarter, 1907, p. iii><Malone, 1935, pp. 372-373>
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Konzerthalle, Bad Salzuflen
  • Comment: Sources and statement supporting hook can be found in the 2nd paragraph of the Benjamin Franklin's papers section

Created by Gwillhickers (talk). Self-nominated at 17:45, 28 September 2022 (UTC).

Interesting life and work, on fine sources, no copyvio obvious. The hook idea is good, but I think Franklin comes too late, - can we perhaps drop "in America and Europe"? The article says "discovered", which sounds more exciting ;) - In the article, how do you feel about an infobox? I am not happy about the "young image" displacing the text. "never took a wife for himself" made me smile. Do we have to say it at all? Under "Later life"? "never married" would please me more. I wonder if we should read first about the letter discoveries, then the publication. All these are just suggestions, - not necessary for an approval. I wonder if the quote "every point, capital letter, and eccentricity of spelling being loyally preserved" would make a more interesting hook than the discovery. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:40, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

• ALT1: ... that Albert Henry Smyth (pictured) discovered 385 letters, written by Benjamin Franklin, and in 1906 was the first editor to publish them?
• @Gerda Arendt: — I dropped 'America and Europe', and reworded the statement hitherto mentioning 'wife'. As for the recovered letters, Smyth never really discovered them, as they were in private collections, more or less forgotten about. What I will do, however is simply say he discovered them in private collections to put that idea in context. I'm not sure what the young Smyth image issue is. I added the clear template as the image otherwise would have cramped the sections. I plan to add more content to the section in question, which will remedy the displaced text. Also, I think the recovery of letters is more interesting than Smyth's effort at correcting Franklin's original grammar and such, so I'd prefer to keep the same basic hook. Last, I prefer to stay away from infoboxes for simple biographies, as all the basic info is at the beginning of the article. Infoboxes are more appropriate for politicians, military leaders, etc, where dates of office, command, battles fought, etc can be conveniently displayed. In any case, thanks for not being demanding over these things. Hope all is well on your side of the globe. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:45, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you for explaining, and why not say so?

  ALT0a: ... that Albert Henry Smyth (pictured) uncovered 385 letters by Benjamin Franklin in collections in America and Europe, and in 1906 was the first editor to publish them?

  Thank you, approving all hooks, letting the prep builder decide. I don't believe we need a comma before "written". Subscription source accepted AGF, and the image is licensed and shows the period well while 1906 comes late. - The image question is of accessibility and layout: in it's present position and on my screen (which is not even very large), it displaces the following header which is not wanted. I see four solutions: make the image much smaller, place it right although he looks right, place that young image in the infobox, or place it in the following paragraph. You decide. (If there was only one solution I'd do it myself.) - Can you please change the image description on the commons in "date" where I'd expect date of the image, while it rather looks like date of publication, - in 1906 he wasn't young. - I am not demanding an infobox, I just believe that for readers coming from the many languages who don't have an article on Smyth, a neat collection of the precise dates of birth and death, their locations and the title of his book, all at an expected position where they are helped by parameter names, would be a service, and even an English-speaking reader would have to search for where he died. We talk accessibility again. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:03, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

• @Gerda Arendt: — Added the infobox. Thanks for your thorough review. There's no known dates of creation or artist's names for any of the images, so the next best thing is to use date of publication. Smyth is obviously younger in the picture in question -- reduced the size a bit. Will give some thought to the other things. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:13, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you. I think it wouldn't hurt to say "published in 1906" instead of just 1906 in the description on the commons. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:16, 29 September 2022 (UTC)