Talk:Statue of James Cook, Hyde Park

A fact from Statue of James Cook, Hyde Park appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 July 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the unveiling of the statue of Captain Cook in Hyde Park, Sydney, in 1879 was declared a public holiday, with an estimated 60,000 people in attendance?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Statue of James Cook, Hyde Park.

Wikipedia

Australia: Sydney Low‑importance

	Australia portal Statue of James Cook, Hyde Park is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.AustraliaWikipedia:WikiProject AustraliaTemplate:WikiProject AustraliaAustralia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Sydney (assessed as Low-importance).
	Need help improving this article? Ask a Librarian^{What's this?} at the National Library of Australia.
	The Wikimedia Australia chapter can be contacted via email to helpwikimedia.org.au for non-editorial assistance.

Public subscription

Cielquiparle An official City of Sydney source, which I referenced, states the statue was "erected by public subscription, which was supplemented by government grants." I understand Robertson's book emphasises the role of gov't grants as the primary source of funding. For now I have reverted your edit on this issue to reflect sources. Does Robertson cite a source for her figure? If it's unclear, we could say that "Robertson says that..." etc. We could also, excepting this, reword the sentence at the top of the history section to reflect chronology (i.e. public subscription and later government funding). Regards, thorpewilliam (talk) 06:46, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One simple solution might be to make it explicit that the City of Sydney is responsible for the first claim and that Robertson is responsible for the second. (I was just trying to quickly add more "independent" sources to the article, as by Wikipedia standards, the City of Sydney, Monument Australia, and the Captain Cook Society are non-independent – ok to cite but better to have more secondary sources in the mix, of which there are many more for this statue beyond the few I added.) Maybe part of the issue is the use of the term "public subscription" (though it is what the statue's own inscription says, it's kind of vague and old-fashioned); even Wikipedia, which is admittedly not a dictionary, doesn't provide a satisfactory definition for the term. I like your proposal to reword it to reflect chronology, as that seems more precise and neutral. I'll suggest one possible fix on the article page, including some detail on how the fundraising started. Cielquiparle (talk) 05:26, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Cielquiparle Thank you, this solves the issue whilst adding more detail. thorpewilliam (talk) 12:05, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]