User talk:SebastianJFromTheBurg

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DYK nomination of L-8

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Authenticity of Ward Lamon, William Crook and Laura Keene’s accounts

I just noticed that the Lincoln death article (great job by the way, it deserves a gold star) mentions the dream Lincoln was said to have had of his own assassination; however, some respected historians have cited internal inconsistencies and external evidence regarding Lamon's account that lead them to question its veracity. Lamon stated that the incident had occurred only a few days prior to the assassination, yet within Lincoln's monologue he related at one point that the dream occurred "the other night" and also "about ten days ago." It’s also been pointed out that although Lincoln stated in the account that on the night of the dream he "had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front," during the period of March 24 to April 9, records show he had in fact had been at the front, rather than in the White House. There is also records and eyewitness evidence saying that Lincoln and Lamon did not see each other in those weeks. In addition, there was no contemporaneous account of the dream following the assassination. No one mentioned it in the voluminous writings of the period, not Mary Lincoln, Lamon, anyone else at the supposed telling of the dream, or anyone to whom those who heard it may have relayed it.

Additionally, the article contradicts itself at one point by saying “Mary Lincoln developed a headache and was inclined to stay home, but Lincoln told her he must attend because newspapers had announced that he would,” but then says “bodyguard, William H. Crook, advised him not to go, but Lincoln said he had promised his wife.” So basically in one version, Lincoln didn't want to go to Ford's Theater that night (April 14th), but Mary Lincoln insisted. In this scenario, Mary becomes the scapegoat for the murder (like she had enough to deal with already!). In another version, Mary didn't really want to go but Lincoln felt that they must go as it had been published in the paper that they would be attending. Lincoln didn't want to let the public down. Thus, in this scenario, Lincoln was killed giving his complete "all" to the public-even though he wanted to stay home that evening. I'm sure there are other variations of what happened.

By all accounts, the Lincoln's seemed to have been in a good mood, so I am a little surprised to hear someone state that the president didn't want to attend the play, although I'm sure being tired is a good enough reason. Why the belief in Abe's hesitancy to attend? The source for this is William H. Crook. Crook wrote that Lincoln said, "It has been advertised that we will be there, and I cannot disappoint the people. Otherwise I would not go. I do not want to go." This is on p. 67 of Crook's book entitled Through Five Administrations.

I must add, however, that several highly respected historians do not regard Crook as a reliable source. Among these folks are Ed Steers and William Hanchett. Crook's reminisces have been studied and are regarded as not trustworthy. For example, Crook says Lincoln was depressed that day and had promised his wife they would go, but this contradicts the other accounts which describe Lincoln being cheerful that day; even the article has deleted included Crook's observation that Lincoln said "goodbye" instead of "goodnight." Did Lincoln really say "goodbye?" if so, can we really attach that much meaning to it?

The article additionally says that Laura Keene cradled Lincoln's head in her lap in the box. Does anybody know from what eyewitness accounts that comes from? I just want to clarify that I mean from the original witness accounts, not from the numerous books and articles about the assassination, ie who actually said that happened and was it contemporary or written years later? Did Leale mention it in his accounts? I ask because the account Laura Keene gave in an interview to the New York Herald a couple of days later doesn't mention this happening at all. Keene says she brought water to the box and then tried to console Mary Lincoln. As far as I know the Herald interview is the only account given by Keene herself, and being printed a few days later is also contemporary.80.2.23.127 (talk) 09:45, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for L-8

On 17 November 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article L-8, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the crew of a U.S. Navy blimp mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1942? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/L-8. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, L-8), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Maile (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

		Hook update
		Your hook reached 10,438 views (869.8 per hour), making it one of the most viewed hooks of November 2021—nice work!

theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 02:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Lincoln assassination edits

I think the Lincoln assassination article could have the use of the more detailed and scholarly works concerning Booth's death, that I have read, they point to a prolonged and agonizing death that took several hours, using sources from the Boston Corbett article? 62.254.70.42 (talk) 09:42, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Copying licensed material requires attribution

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I have sent you a note about a page you started

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Thank you for creating Anjette Lyles.

User:Justanothersgwikieditor, while examining this page as a part of our page curation process, had the following comments:

More information can be found online about the murder etc.

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Justanothersgwikieditor}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~ .

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Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 07:12, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Linking

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Tiberius

Hi. I've reverted all your edits to Tiberius. Please read what you've done carefully, before you hit the "save" button. Your changes included one which transfered Tiberius' birth-date to his father (ambiguously and inadvertently, as far as I can tell), and another adding two of his later imperial titles (Caesar and Augustus) as if they were part of his birth-name, which they evidently weren't. Other changes included overlinking of common terms (for which see also the post above this one) and punctuation changes that did not improve clarity or the precision of meaning, but seemed imho to represent change for the sake of change, or personal preference. You're entirely welcome to edit the article, but please follow best practice guidelines. Thanks for reading this, Haploidavey (talk) 16:20, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Death of Adolf Hitler

As a relatively new editor with a relatively small number of edits, it's probably not a good idea to edit articles like this, which have been shaped by numerous veteran editors over many years time. Better to edit in non-controversial, non-contentious areas. Best, Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:37, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

File source and copyright licensing problem with File:BBC One Scottish 5.webp

File Copyright problem

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I have left some copyright and source markings on the image page now. Let me know if these need to be improved. Thanks, S. SebastianJFromTheBurg (talk) 18:44, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You need to fill in the "Purpose of use" field in detail for each article in which you use an image (WP:NFCC#10c). — Ирука¹³ 18:48, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the "purpose of use" field? I don't see it. SebastianJFromTheBurg (talk) 18:51, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's the "purpose" field in the blank form, which is labelled "purpose of use" in the rendered form. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:53, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Where you wrote "Identification". — Ирука¹³ 18:54, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I understand now. Let me know if it's better now. Thanks, S. SebastianJFromTheBurg (talk) 18:56, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Now it's ok. — Ирука¹³ 19:04, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

López de Santa Anna

I have seen you have removed the "López de" mentions within the López de Santa Anna article. This is incorrect as I have pointed out in the most recent edit summary. Although some English sources tend to refer to him as Santa Anna, repeating the error here without contempt is not good. For instance, Spanish customs mean that López was his paternal surname and Santa Anna was his maternal. English-language countries such as the US only use the paternal surname, so had him been a US citizen, he would have been known as Antonio López, instead of Antonio Santa Anna. If you disagree, please take this to the talk page. Either we have to use the composed surname "López de Santa Anna" or "López", but Santa Anna is plain incorrect. Bedivere (talk) 03:21, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Duly noted. SebastianJFromTheBurg (talk) 03:41, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Zodiac Killer

Hi Sebastian. The edits you made to the Zodiac Killer caught a few typos and made occasional improvements to the text. The vast majority of them were unhelpful and inconsistent with the recent improvements made to the page. Another editor and I were collaborating on editing the article to fix issues that were brought up in an assessment from a decade ago when the article was delisted. Please consult that discussion and the assessment if you decide to edit the page again.

A couple of overarching concerns from your edits:

There is no need to add "sic" to Zodiac's letters which are misspelled on purpose. The article makes that clear.
Zodiac's letters are available on Wikisource and linking to them helps readers access them. It also eliminates the need to excessively summarize them in the article.
There was a nonchalance about language. You often made minor changes to wording that drastically altered the facts. For instance, the Timex did not have an am/pm indicator, the SF teenagers did not see the Zodiac until he had already killed Stine, and the Zodiac put on his hood as he came out from behind the tree.
I could not suss out why you removed certain wikilinks while inserting others. I initially thought you took out the Wikisource links to streamline the article, but you also added so many wikilinks to arbitrary terms.
Any reason why "Zodiac Killer" doesn't work for you? It's the title of the article. I also don't think a definite article is always required when speaking about "the Zodiac".
It seemed like most of what you did was combine sentences that were separate. Occasionally, that led to run-ons, but most often, it crams together independent thoughts in ways that are rarely constructive. For instance:

The Chronicle received a letter postmarked February 14, 1974, explaining that the initials of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the leftist militant group which had recently kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, spelled out an Old Norse word meaning "kill." -- The thing that matters most here is Zodiac's interpretation of SLA's initials. This is an encyclopedia, not Austen. The point is to convey information. By the time we get to the Old Norse definition, we've detoured into Patty Hearst and a redirect link to left-wing politics. That is more than enough information for separate sentences. Trumpetrep (talk) 05:31, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the late response. I will address your criticisms point by point so that I can explain my thought process with the edits I made:

I was simply under the impression that adding "sic" would make the page look more professional. If this wasn't necessary or contrary to Wikipedia protocol, I apologize and will refrain from doing this further.
Oftentimes, I've noticed that other writers leave more than one link to the same subject, which sometimes makes the page look like a sea of blue. I simply tried to eliminate all but one link to a certain subject (hence, for example, I seemingly removed a link to Melvin Belli's page; he already had a link in the section listing the Zodiac messages). This same thought process was in play when I eliminated the Wikisource inks to the Zodiac messages in the lower body of the page, since they were all already listed chronologically in the second-to-first section. This was done to avoid excessive and redundant links, nothing more. So you were correct in that I was trying to streamline the page.
My changes to the language were simply to improve sentences I thought were too short, which made me feel like I was reading something on a grade school level. If I was accidentally altering facts, I apologize; it's for the best those edits be reverted.
I was only trying to give a consistent name to the killer. Same reason I repeatedly used the word "assailant" instead of switching between "assailant", "killer", "perpetrator", etc.

Hopefully this explains my reasonings behind the edits. I accept your criticism and will try to keep it in mind when editing other pages in the future. SebastianJFromTheBurg (talk) 17:42, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the response. It's good to know what your intentions are. As you can see from the discussions we had, the article is immense and complicated. It combines confirmed facts and suspicions in a way that is rare for Wikipedia. Normally I would concur that once a name or subject is linked it does not need to be linked again. In an article this long, that loops back on itself so much, I think the links are important resources, just as it's important to repeat full names when a person has not been discussed for thousands of words.

As to the writing style, there is an odd fetish on Wikipedia for long sentences. People seem to think that making sentences longer improves them. Sometimes it can, but what often results is a sclerosis that makes the language insecure. Instead of presenting facts as they are, people end up adding a lot of "Howevers" and "laters".

"Then" is a particularly ominous sign. When an article has a lot of sentences like "(X) then went to the grocery store," it's a sign the language has lost the plot. See this doozy from an earlier version of the article, "The killer then placed their bodies in a small shack and then tried, unsuccessfully, to burn the structure to the ground." Two thens in one sentence. That's not to mention the fact that "tried" implies an unsuccessful attempt. If he had succeeded, the sentence would simply say "he burned the structure to the ground". There's no need for "unsuccessfully" to be clumsily inserted into an already bad sentence.

I only dug into this article when I noticed a ton of bad citations that were duplicated and missing information. In consolidating and correcting them, it became clear that a lot of the article was muddy at best. Take a sentence like, "Allegedly, immediately after Ferrin and Mageau left the house, they started believing or noticed that they were being followed by a man in a light-colored car." That linguistic pileup is most likely the result of various editors trying to consolidate information into a sentence that is all things at once. That kind of stuff was all over the place, and I'm sure it will creep back in as editors who prefer compound sentences work on the article.

With all that being said, if you think things like a consistent name or descriptor would improve the article, you should not hesitate to advocate for the change. When I realized what bad shape the article was in, I immediately posted my concerns on the Talk page to alert people to what I was doing. I knew there would be people who were more invested in the topic and had more knowledge of it. Discussing my edits ensured we weren't working at cross purposes.

As always, the joy of editing Wikipedia often lies in such collaboration. For instance, in reviewing your edits, I learned that including punctuation marks inside partial quotations is now an acceptable practice. It looks dead wrong to me, but who cares? What matters most is creating a good article! Trumpetrep (talk) 20:45, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]