User talk:Richwales/Archives/2011-08

User:Richwales/Drafts/George E. Crothers

Here's a few comments:

1. Though Henry Clausen is a real published author, the fact that his book on Crothers is published by the George E. Crothers Trust gives it the air of being a vanity press book. I wonder if there are any reviews of this book? Perhaps Clausen's book cites other works that could also be mentioned in your article.
2. George Osborne's Stanford Law Review article refers to: "the famous litigation over the estate of his uncle, Senator James G. Fair." Could you find out anything about that? It must have been discussed in newspapers.
3. Osborne says (in 1957) that "sixty years ago [he] wrote a thesis on inflation which is again timely." Says "..he was an experienced and successful man of affairs in the world of finance." Can we learn anything more about this thesis or about what he actually did as an attorney? If he became wealthy enough to donate buildings, the events of his legal career must have attracted some notice, and surely appeared in newspapers.
4. As a judge, did he decide any cases that are widely known?
5. The Worldcat entry for his papers at the Stanford U Library mentions: "Republican Party activities (1909-1930), California State Normal Schools, United States monetary policy and U.S. relations with the Republic of China (1920-1940)." This might be a hint to other activities he was involved in.

Sorry that I'm giving you more work :-). Hope this is useful. EdJohnston (talk) 16:21, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. This is extremely helpful. I've been trying very hard to find sources which are truly independent of, and possibly critical of, Stanford and its key figures. The Clausen biography was written by a close friend of Judge Crothers, to whom the judge had entrusted personal papers to be kept under wraps until after his death. So, while I think it's useful for factual details, it's certainly going to be inherently biased. I'm continuing to look for other, more independent sources.

Considering only the sources currently in the article, do you believe his notability is sufficiently well established (per WP:PEOPLE) that the article could survive a hypothetical AfD challenge?

I do have some info about the Senator Fair affair — a crazy tale of relatives fighting over his money, with forged documents, suborned notaries, and handwriting analysis by (not-yet-judge) Crothers which helped establish the truth. I should also be able to get my hands on more details regarding his political activities.

I'm not sure if he decided "any cases that are widely known", since he was a superior court judge in San Francisco and was never on any higher bench than this. But I'll check.

Thanks again for your feedback. Richwales (talk · contribs) 16:56, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

It's possible that his wealth came by marriage or inheritance. His mother was born Margaret Jane Fair, and the name 'Senator James Fair' comes up in the story. I agree with you that notability is marginal until more outside sources are found. Senator Fair must be James Graham Fair. Was George Crothers' mother the sister of James Fair? The Clausen book would surely settle this point. EdJohnston (talk) 17:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you're right — as it turns out, it was James Graham Fair, and he was Margaret's brother (and George's uncle). The Clausen book also mentions Nettie Cravens (the woman who claimed to have been secretly married to James Fair, but whose claim to his estate was eventually rejected).

I'm going to look for stuff in old San Francisco newspapers and see if I can find anything. I should presumably be able to find an obituary (which, of course, might have been supplied by the family), and hopefully also an article reporting his death and talking about his life (written by newspaper staff). Richwales (talk · contribs) 17:45, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

George E. Crothers draft article (copied from Jenks24's talk page)

Hi. Thanks for the tweaks at User:Richwales/Drafts/George E. Crothers. As it turns out, I was working on the page while you did your changes. I believe I managed to resolve the edit conflict, incorporating your changes as well as mine, but if you could take another look at the current draft and make sure I didn't miss anything, I'd be grateful.

I would also welcome any comments you might have on the question of whether the sources I'm currently using are sufficient (in quality and quantity) to establish Crothers' notability. I'd like to make this article as AfD-proof as I can before moving it into the main space. Thanks. Richwales (talk · contribs) 07:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, didn't realise you were still working on it. Sorry for the edit conflict, I know what a pain they can be. Yep, I think you did incorporate all my changes (except one tiny thing which I fixed just now). Regarding notability, I'd say it's probably borderline, mainly because all sources associated with Crothers or Stanford wouldn't be considered independent. To be frank, I doubt it would ever get taken to AfD because of how well-written and sourced it is, so I think if you moved it to mainspace, it wouldn't get deleted. That said, I think Cothers probably passes the general notability guideline anyway. The obit in the Chronicle is good and he gets a few mentions in The New York Times ([1], [2]) and the Los Angeles Times ([3], [4], [5])—though I can't see any of them due to paywalls. Also, this book (p. 344) gives an interesting account of how Crothers proved that his uncle had not married Mrs. Craven. Add to that the 1580 hits (I only glanced at the first page of that search—you might find some good stuff if you go further) in a google books search and I think it's pretty clear that he's notable. If there's anything I can do to help, feel free to ask. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 07:48, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I replaced my original source for the forensic handwriting analysis incident (the Clausen book, which I'm already using more times than I would prefer) with the History of the Bench and Bar of California source you gave me. Based on the titles of the L.A. and New York Times articles, it's not obvious to me how useful they would be; I'll probably not worry about them unless someone takes this article to AfD demanding more outside, independent sources to prove notability (which, as you said, is not all that likely, but a little bit of paranoia can't hurt). Richwales (talk · contribs) 17:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

No worries. Yeah, the NY Times and LA Times articles weren't so much suggestions to be used in the article, but more something you could bring up on the very off chance this goes to AfD, to reinforce notability. Glad you found the History of the Bench and Bar of California book useful. The article looks pretty good from my perspective and I look forward to seeing it in mainspace. Best, Jenks24 (talk) 21:28, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

DYK

Hi. I just nominated a new article I wrote (Template talk:Did you know/George E. Crothers) for DYK. I forgot to include an image (a head shot of the subject, already in the article) in the DYK subpage, and I can't figure out how to add it properly now. Is this something that one of the DYK experts can easily fix? Or do you think it would be better if I wiped the subpage clean, started all over again, and allowed the template to do the work? Richwales (talk · contribs) 02:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I edited the subpage by hand (using another one as a guide), and I think I correctly inserted the image. Richwales (talk · contribs) 05:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

You did it! I added some alt text to the image for you. Daniel Case (talk) 14:12, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I have reviewed and approved your nomination. All I felt I needed to do was change some tags on the Commons pages for the images. Daniel Case (talk) 14:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi again. Thanks for reviewing my nomination. I just wanted to check to be sure I understood the process — did you also "approve" it, or did you just "review" it and it still needs to be separately "approved"? I see other nominations with a and "good to go" or "GTG" added to them, but it doesn't look like you did that in my case. Is there anything additional I need to do before final approval? Richwales (talk · contribs) 23:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know it should be considered approved. Daniel Case (talk) 05:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Ralph Nader

Thank you for getting involved in this discussion. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 17:53, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

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DYK for George E. Crothers

Materialscientist (talk) 16:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Note to self: George E. Crothers got 429 hits on the day it was featured in DYK. Richwales (talk · contribs) 19:05, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable

This AFD really serves no purpose than to waste a lot of community time. What's the point of requesting something for deletion when your deletion criteria, if it's not invalid already, will be invalid in less than a month? Frankly, this AFD is borderline disruptive Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 17:23, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding your comments on article Hailey Dunn

Just to remind you, you wrote:

Comment. I've put a notice about this article on the BLP noticeboard, suggesting that the entire "Investigation" section is tainted with unproven accusations against various people suspected of having a role in Hailey Dunn's disappearance and presumed murder, and proposing that this entire section should be thoroughly removed. The fact that these claims may have been made in newspapers does not (per my understanding of WP:BLP) make it OK to repeat the allegations. Note that even though Hailey Dunn may be dead (and thus the article itself is not a BLP), the BLP policy still applies to statements made in the article regarding living people. As for whether the article itself belongs, I am inclined to !vote to delete per WP:VICTIM — and if the article is deleted, it should be revdel'ed or oversighted out of concern for the material in the "Investigation" section. Richwales (talk · contribs) 01:01, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I am new to Wikipedia and just learning. I agree now, that this article does not meet the notability requirements, but I'm confused about what one write in an article in regards to what is alleged in a newspaper. I understand sometimes publications are incorrect, take on a certain view or mislead the readers. So many things written in publications may or may not be true. But I thought that as long as something is in a newspaper and you cite references to this, you can include it in the article. Normally when I write about something negative written about a person, I use the words: reportedly, allegedly, and supposedly often, to imply that whatever I'm writing is only being reported, meaning I definitely do not if it is true. But I cannot litter every other sentence with these words as the article would sound ridiculous. I'm just trying to understand how one must clearly imply without writing in every sentence: "This was written in an article I read and I do not know if it is definitely true." and writing "allegedly" or a similar word all the time. Respectively....Allycat1208 (talk) 23:33, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! When dealing with comments made about living persons, there is a special policy called the "Biographies of Living Persons" policy (WP:BLP). This applies not only to articles that are specifically biographies, but also to anything said about someone who is alive, anywhere in Wikipedia. The BLP policy says that "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." When I saw the sorts of things said in the "Investigation" section of the Hailey Dunn article, I felt I needed to make a quick decision to remove this material pending a more careful examination of the thoroughness and reliability of the sourcing. At first, I just posted a comment on the "BLP noticeboard (WP:BLPN) about the issue — but after thinking a bit more and reviewing the BLP policy again, I decided this probably fell into the category of stuff that needed to be "removed immediately and without waiting for discussion". Since old versions of articles are always available in the history (except in rare cases when material has been expunged via "revision deletion" or "oversighting", or when an article has been deleted), I knew that the material in question could be restored later on if appropriate. As for whether the contentious material was properly sourced — yes, normally you can go ahead and report something based on a newspaper story, but in this sort of case it's important to delve further and make sure the newspaper story really does back up what is being said in Wikipedia, and also make sure it's a reputable paper, and also look for coverage of the same event in other sources. In this situation, in my opinion at the time, there just wasn't time to do that. I might have acted too hastily, but when BLP's are involved, my understanding of the policy is that it is better to act quickly to remove possibly inappropriate material, even if it does end up being added back later on after it's been checked out. Richwales (talk · contribs) 00:24, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying that the article is also deleted in my user contributions list, because I don't see it or cannot find it in there? I just wanted to refresh my memory on what exactly I wrote in the "Investigation" section" and see what sources I used. Do you know how to find the most updated article in user contributions of a particular name without looking at each page? I asked for help on this subject on my user page. Thanks in advance. Allycat1208 (talk) 00:58, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Since the article was deleted, that means it won't appear on your user contributions list, or anywhere else accessible to users in general. You might be able to get a copy of the article (you would of course need a revision before I deleted the "Investigation" section) by posting a "request for undeletion" at WP:UNDELETE. You have the option of asking for a deleted page to be "userfied" (restored as a subpage of your user page; see WP:USERFY), or to be e-mailed to you. Given that there is a potential BLP problem with the article (and the BLP policy applies in user space), you might have better luck with an e-mail request; if you do want userfication, I'd recommend you point out the BLP issue and give the admins a choice of userfication or e-mailing. Richwales (talk · contribs) 01:19, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, Thanks for clarifying that. I thought that was what happened but was not sure.Allycat1208 (talk) 01:44, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

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Invitation from the Guild of Copy Editors The Guild of Copy Editors invites you to participate in their September 2011 Backlog elimination drive, a month-long effort to reduce the size of the copy editing backlog. The drive will begin on September 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and will end on September 30 at 23:59 (UTC). We will be tracking the number of 2010 articles in the backlog, as we want to copy edit as many of those as possible. Please consider copy editing an article that was tagged in 2010. Barnstars will be given to anyone who edits more than 4,000 words, with special awards for the top 5 in the categories "Number of articles", "Number of words", and "Number of articles of over 5,000 words". See you at the drive! – Your drive coordinators: Diannaa, Chaosdruid, The Utahraptor, Slon02, and SMasters. >>> Sign up now <<<

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Talkback

Hello, Richwales. You have new messages at Wifione's talk page.
Message added 09:25, 22 August 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message} 09:25, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• My apologies I've not been able to respond. Will do so today. Best. Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message} 03:48, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Photos of LDS apostles

[including material copied from 90.208.81.194's talk page]

Hi. I think it would be wonderful if we could have high-quality photos of the Brethren in their Wikipedia articles. I'm very concerned, however, that the photos you found on Flickr and recently added to Wikipedia (such as at David A. Bednar) may not be usable here, due to copyright issues. Wikipedia generally does not allow "fair use" of copyrighted photos of living people (on the theory that as long as someone is still alive, a free photo can most likely be obtained some day). If these photos came from the LDS Church's web site, they are almost certainly not usable here unless the Church has explicitly said that the photos can be used anywhere, for any purpose, without any restriction other than proper attribution (something which I seriously doubt is the case). Please don't feel too bad if these photos end up being removed fairly soon. Richwales (talk · contribs) 14:40, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Brother, in concern to your point about the photograph's of the Brethren and indeed the photograph's of the Young Women and Relief Society Presidency, I have not uploaded them from any official church website, they have all came from flickr. They where uploaded to flickr under copyright terms that allowed them under terms for uploading photo's to wikipedia that do not breach any copyright. I have only followed wikipedia terms in relation to the terms they where uploaded by to wikipedia from flickr and to flickr from their previous source. Regards, Brother Mathers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.208.81.194 (talk) 16:13, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I understand these photos came from Flickr, where they are tagged with extremely permissive rights. My concern is that I suspect whoever uploaded the photos to Flickr did so improperly (possibly because they simply didn't understand or appreciate the copyright issues). They're currently tagged as "free" on Wikipedia because that's how they're tagged on Flickr, but that's no guarantee that the current, permissive rights tag is going to stay after the Wikipedia people who deal with copyrights have had a chance to examine the situation. I just wanted to be sure you didn't get bent out of shape if someone does come along and undo all your work. :-( Richwales (talk · contribs) 20:57, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark peer review

[including material copied from Finetooth's talk page]

Hi. Thanks very, very much for your peer review of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. I'm working on the changes you suggested. One point possibly worth noting is that the {{Cite court}} template does not support the accessdate= parameter — so it is in fact not possible to include an access date in the court case citations where you suggested this should be done. I can add the access dates, but I believe the info will simply be ignored until/unless the template workers can be convinced to add support for this item to {{Cite court}}. Also, it turns out that the abbreviation "H.R." in a bill number in Congress does not stand for "House Resolution" — it stands for "House of Representatives". I'm doing what I can to make the meaning of "H.R. 1868" clearer. Richwales (talk · contribs) 22:51, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Glad to help. I didn't realize that the "cite court" template wouldn't deal with access dates. I ran into this problem with another template a couple of years ago. An acceptable though somewhat clumsy workaround is to add "Retrieved on August 27, 2011." (or whatever date is correct) manually right after the }} of the template and before the </ref>. Finetooth (talk) 23:08, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

True — though now that I've added the accessdate= info to each of the cites, using that workaround would result in sudden duplication of material in the event that the problem with the template ever gets fixed. (I did, BTW, report the problem at Template talk:Cite court several weeks ago, but there was never any response or action.)

Do you consider this a showstopper point which (in your opinion) would or should cause an article to be rejected as a Featured Article candidate unless the template bug were either fixed or worked around? Richwales (talk · contribs) 23:19, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, nothing in the article would fall under the copyvio / plagiarism / close-paraphrase umbrella.

You asked if any ethnic groups other than Native Americans and Chinese had ever been denied birthright US citizenship since the coming into force of the 14th Amendment. No, as far as I'm aware, this has never happened to any other group. There was, at one time, a law prohibiting Indians (i.e., people from India) from becoming naturalized US citizens; see United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind — but AFAIK, no one of East Indian ancestry who was born in the US ever had their citizenship challenged, so I don't really see this question as relevant to the Wong Kim Ark article.

As for the legal status of Japanese-Americans during WWII, many interned Japanese-Americans were drafted into the US armed forces (and some of these were sent to prison for refusing induction in protest against the internment policy). Additionally, one Japanese-American who was stuck in Japan when the war broke out was later convicted of treason for his actions during the war (see Kawakita v. United States). As far as I know, there was never any attempt to strip these people of their US citizenship — and, indeed, the Kawakita case dealt with the government's insistence that the man was still a US citizen even though he claimed to have lost or given up his citizenship.

I think I've incorporated all your suggestions into the article now (with the possible exception of the issue of access dates in court decisions). Would it be appropriate for me to ask if you would take another look at the article now? Or should I just submit it at this point as a Featured Article candidate? Richwales (talk · contribs) 00:58, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

It's always a bit hard for me to guess what might happen at FAC. On the other hand, if the accessdate question arises, either the reviewer(s) will accept your rationale, or not. If not, you could suggest the workaround or ask the reviewer(s) what other options are available. Thanks for the information about the Japanese, which I found quite interesting. I'd be glad to take another look at the article but not until tomorrow. If you want to go ahead with the nomination right away, I can still look again tomorrow and send you a note if I have anything else to add. Finetooth (talk) 02:01, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I think I'll go ahead and nominate now. Do I need to wait for you to formally close the peer review before I do that? Richwales (talk · contribs) 02:11, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

No. You can and must close it before nominating at FAC. Just follow the instructions for closing that appear at the top of WP:PR. Good luck with the FAC. Finetooth (talk) 02:19, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I've done it. We'll see what happens now. Richwales (talk · contribs) 03:43, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I re-read the article this morning, and I found nothing further to suggest. I think it should be OK, and I'll be watching to see what happens. Finetooth (talk) 16:45, 29 August 2011 (UTC)