Talk:Thomas Paine Cottage

Photo?

I'm biased since I took it, but I like the photo which has the closeup of the building

, rather than more of the lawn

File:ThomasPaineFarmhouse1.jpg

. I'm not going to change it, but if someone else were to take a look at them both and decide ... dm (talk) 22:23, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Material for discussion

Following two chunks of material (and more) were added to the article. If past patterns were repeated, they would be deleted from the article for various reasons. I'd like to discuss these chunks and possibly restore them to the article, with modifications.

Chunk 1:

The cottage was moved to its current location at 20 Sicard Avenue, on land that was also part of the 300-acre (1.2 km²) farm owned by Paine, in 1908. The house, which was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972, is currently operated as a museum.

Reference:

This sounds factual and seems to be written well. It seems better than the current article. Since chunk 1 ends with footnote references, I assume that means all the material is sourced from that footnoted references. Let's check and discuss that? I'll check those documents, within a day or so about this matter, anyhow, and then likely want to restore this passage.

Chunk 2:

The Thomas Paine Monument is adjacent to the cottage. It was first erected in 1839 and topped by a bronze bust of Paine by Wilson McDonald that was added 1881. The monument was re-located to its present site in 1905 and stands next to Paine’s original burial site. Also next to the cottage is the Paine Memorial House, a two-story stone structure erected in 1925 by the Thomas Paine Historical Association. The house contains a number of Paine's personal effects, including the trunk in which he carried the papers of the Second Continental Congress and several first editions of his works.

This sounds factual but no source is given. Can a source for this material be given, please? I would be happy to receive an emailed copy of any scanned or other electronic document supporting this. If a source can't be provided, though, I cannot argue against keeping it out of the article. Please comment.

Discussion of other chunks of material would be similar; let's try to discuss these pieces, arbitrarily, first, either here or by email. Thanks! doncram (talk) 12:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

• I took a crack at editing this using the raw documents and not the reverted text. Please take a look dm (talk) 19:02, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Dmadeo has stepped in to rewrite the article from the sources in the article. Thanks! I am happy to wait a day or two and then compare the result vs. the sources and vs. the removed text. I imagine the removed text has relevant facts that we would like to re-add, not covered in the so-far-stated sources in the article, when it can be clarified what is the source for that material. I guess the standard we need to apply in this rewriting of a New Rochelle area article is that it is meant to pass Peer Review and/or Featured Article standards. At wp:FAC, featured article candidates are questioned meticulously at a level of detail comparable to what has been applied here. I myself don't like to have my writing second-guessed, but it is necessary for FAC applications and it seems to be necessary here, to have a lot of second-guessing done.

Relatedly, I think i should be upfront and raise one issue at that level, trying to pose it the way that I've observed FAC questions go: why should we think that the NHL writeup reference, "Thomas Paine Cottage NHL Writeup". National Park Service. Retrieved on 2009-01-19." is a reliable source?

To share my views, I personally don't think that source would be accepted in FAC, so I think, given high standards applied to this article, that we should not use it. As Dmadeo knows, i prefer not to use those "writeups", although I don't know if he understands/accepts why. In general i am grateful for Dmadeo's editing/development of many NHL articles to at least Start-level standards, in which using the Writeups is okay, I guess, so we haven't really resolved our differences on this one point. But to further this Thomas Paine Cottage article's development on FA-type standards, I guess it should be hashed out more. Reasons that I can think of are:

• The title of the document involving the word "Writeup" is misnamed. The word, writeup, does not appear in the document, so it is not part of the title. How a properly formatted, accurately descriptive footnote reference could be formed for the document is not clear. There are no instances that I know of where one of these Writeup documents has been included in a Featured Article. There are not very many featured articles about NHLs, but Joseph Priestley House is one example whose development I watched, and I am sure that this reference would not have survived the development process.
• The Writeup is undated and unauthored.
• I believe that the Writeup is a summary based on the full NRHP Inventory/Nomination document, which has an author and date and otherwise passes Reliable Source standards for Featured Articles (one is included in the Joseph Priestley House article, for example). I think anything covered in the writeup should be covered in the full NRHP Inventory/Nomination document, so that can be used for a source instead.
• If there is any difference between the Writeup and the NRHP Inventory/Nomination document, I would strongly disbelieve the Writeup, and I cannot believe that it could be defended that an undated, unauthored summary should be preferred in favor of the full NRHP document. I have observed multiple cases where NHL summary webpages (a similar summary from the NRHP Inventory/Nomination document) are flat-out wrong. The summaries (at least in some NHL webpages) are clearly written by non-historian staff who in some cases have obviously interpreted the NRHP Inventory/Nomination documents incorrectly. I itemize some of these in a running worklist of errors in NHL summaries at wp:NHL info issues. I have not examined Writeups as systematically as I have examined the NHL summaries, because I have believed that the Writeups are always inferior to the NRHP full documents. The NHL summaries, however, have other information such as the date of NHL designation which are not and usually cannot be documented by the NRHP Nomination documents, and the NHL summaries are otherwise useful to include as a reference in articles, so I have reviewed them. Anyhow, by analogy, I distrust these Writeups' accuracy.

So, in the vein of reviewing this article at a high standard, and to provide sort of equal treatment for one writer vs. other writer(s) whose work gets deleted routinely, I think that one reference should be dropped. An alternative would be to defend the source, and get the opinion of some regular FAC reviewers to convince me that it is okay. Getting other such opinions is certainly feasible, and i am happy to go down that road (although I myself think in advance that they would say drop use of the Writeup). Whew, that is a lot to say. Hope this is understood by all parties to be in the constructive sense it is intended. doncram (talk) 19:33, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

• Fair enough, I understand your point, though I dont completely agree. I'm not sure in this case the reference add much so I'm no opposed to dropping it. I'm happy to have found some old and new NYT articles which better explain the relationship between the Association and the Cottage, ie: none anymore. They appear to have cohabitated from 1910 to 1925. As far as Featured Article, I've never worked on one before, so if anyone would like to help bring this through that process, that would be great. My first focus is to flesh out the article and perhaps get a 5x increase so that its eligible for a DYK. dm (talk) 21:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
• Ok, I'm walking away for a while now. Feel free to copyedit or otherwise improve the article... dm (talk) 22:31, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Upgrading rating to Start at least now. I need to refresh myself on rating system before would myself have judgment on whether rates B already or not.

Okay about not hashing out more about the Writeups here, then. (Aside: i do concede the writeups, readily accessible, have helped Dmadeo improve many stub articles where the full NRHP document was not yet obtained/linked. And, it may be that writeups are in fact more reliable than NHL summaries, although i think that would be hard/impossible to establish.)

It could be a good experience to bring this towards Featured Article, though the process can also be frustrating if you have expectation of actually getting the FA star in any particular timeframe. When this article is a bit more stable (perhaps the anonymous IP will provide more source(s) to use, too?), I recommend bringing this article to wp:PR with request for it to be reviewed for purpose of identifying what's lacking for FA, first, rather than bringing into FAC process directly. PR can be one way to get helpful copyedit suggestions.

Thanks to Orlady and HMiskoff for helpful copyedits. I may edit some too. Nice work! doncram (talk) 17:40, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks indeed to all three of you for your edits, it's always humbling and educational to have someone go through your writing. Much appreciated. I think I'll try to get a DYK out of this (needs a bit more text to be a 5x increase). Peer review beyond that and perhaps someday a FAC (which I'm in no rush to do)... dm (talk) 00:24, 21 January 2009 (UTC)