Talk:Solomon Butcher

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Solomon Butcher/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 19:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review. Initial comments to follow in the next 1-3 days. Thanks in advance for your work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 19:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Initial comments

On first pass, this looks solid and ripe for promotion. Thanks for creating an article on this interesting figure and taking it this far.

The only tiny quibble I have so far is with "an invaluable resource" -- would you settle for "valuable"? "Invaluable" always seems slightly exaggerated to me as an intensifier. ("valuable" is also used in the article body, so this would correlate well.) This doesn't rise to the level of a GA criteria issue, though, so don't worry about it for purposes of this review. -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:42, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Checklist

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Prose is excellent. I don't have access to the Carter, but spotchecks of other sources show no evidence of copyright issues.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
	2c. it contains no original research.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	File:Omer Kem's sod house.jpg, File:Rawding family sod house.jpg, and File:First train into Broken Bow, Nebraska.jpg need to be tagged with US copyright status.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.	Pass as GA

Butcher books at Unz Review

The deprecated website Unz Review maintains an archive that includes scans of two of Butcher's books, Pioneer History and Sod Houses. I've used these scans in citations to those books, so that readers of the article can verify the statements that those citations support. On two occasions, editors have removed the links to those scans: [1] and [2]. I am restoring those links for the second time.

The summary of the deprecation discussion of Unz Review, found at WP:UNZ, states "The Unz Review was deprecated by snowball clause consensus in the 2021 RfC. Editors cite racist, antisemitic, pseudoscientific and fringe content. The site's extensive archive of journal reprints includes many apparent copyright violations."

This might be a good reason for deprecating the source in general, but doesn't apply to this case. We are not referring to a source written by an Unz contributor, so Unz's failure to fact-check or otherwise exercise editorial oversight is not an issue. I see no evidence that the scans have been altered, and nothing in the discussions suggests that Unz tends to do so. And copyright violation is not an issue here: Pioneer History was published in 1901, and Sod Houses in 1904, so both are in public domain in the US.

Given this, I see no reason why we should not use their scans of the Butcher books. Of course, if another editor wishes to replace them with equally valid scans hosted elsewhere, I would have no objection. But simply removing a legitimate, albeit distasteful, source of information without replacing it with another is doing WP's readers a disservice.

Ammodramus (talk) 00:38, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I've again reverted the removal of two links to scans of Butcher books hosted at at Unz Journal.

Per WP:RSPNOT, the page is not "a list of banned sources that can never be used or should be removed on sight." Getting more specific, at WP:DEPS, section "Acceptable uses of deprecated sources", we find "Deprecation is not a blanket retroactive "ban" on using the source in absolutely every situation... Citations to deprecated sources should not be removed indiscriminately, and each case should be reviewed separately."

This seems to apply to this case. The links to Unz were present when the article was launched in 2013, so this is a question of whether they should've been removed, rather than one of whether they could legitimately be added. They were initially removed in 2021 [3], with edit summary "rm deprecated source WP:UNZ per WP:RSP". Looking at that editor's contribution history from around that time [4], we find a long string of similar edits, all with that same generic edit summary. This is one of two articles whose edits bear a time stamp of 11:49. Two others are stamped 11:48. Before that, there's a gap, then four with stamps of 11:41, four with stamps of 11:40... The pace of these edits suggests that indiscriminate removal on sight, with no individual review, is exactly what took place, contrary to WP:DEPS.

Since then, the links have been removed twice by a different editor [5][6]. In my previous comment, I attempted to make a case for why they should be retained in this particular case, at least unless and until the editor can replace them with an equally valid alternative source, or makes a case for why these specific links are unreliable and should be removed. In light of the passage I've cited from WP:DEPS, a mere invocation of WP:UNZ is insufficient. — Ammodramus (talk) 19:01, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Name in infobox

In the article as originally created, the name in the infobox was "Solomon D. Butcher". An editor recently removed the middle initial, without explanation. I restored it; and that editor again removed it [7], with edit summary "The infobox name is always only the name of the article, with honorifics. Cf. Lyndon B. Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mark Twain, with, say, Donald Trump (J.) Other names have their place in the article's body."

I think this editor's assertion is incorrect, and have restored the initial. In MOS:INFOBOXNAME, fourth bullet point, we find "It should be named the common name of the article's subject but may contain the full (official) name; this does not need to match the article's Wikipedia title..."

More specifically, in the documentation for Template:Infobox_person, section "Parameters", second table row "name", we find "Common name of person (defaults to article name if left blank; provide |birth_name= (below) if different from |name=). If middle initials are specified (or implied) by the lead of the article, and are not specified separately in the |birth_name= parameter, include them here. Do not put honorifics or alternative names in this parameter."

According to this, my fellow editor is mistaken on two points: the infobox name is not always only the name of the article, and should not include honorifics. And the situation here is exactly as described in the documentation: the lead begins "Solomon D. Butcher", and the |birth_name parameter isn't used; so the middle initial should be included in the |name parameter. —Ammodramus (talk) 15:35, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanking the user for the thoughtful reply, I have some points to make as the editor being addressed. I beg leave firstly to clarify my statement, which was insufficiently expressed due to the text constraints in edit summaries, viz., that honorifics (Sir, Dame, OBE, etc.) are of course prefixed and suffixed.

Regarding the bulk of the dispute, precedent strongly indicates the contents of the name parameter should fit the title of the article, being the name which is most commonly used, unless there is an intervening circumstance (e.g., they are the Lord X of Y). Taking just a few examples: it is John F. Kennedy but Donald Trump; Susan B. Anthony but Richard Nixon. Notice the omission and inclusion of middle initials follows the article's title. This includes even if the name is abbreviated entirely, such as E. E. Cummings and W. E. B. Du Bois, and in the case of pen names (Mark Twain) and stage names (Eminem).

Regarding the MOS link: this is a general rule, and not exclusive to biography. Far more persuasive might be that | name defaults to the article title if left blank, and that it prefers the subject's common name, which of course should be the article's title, too.

From these statements I believe that the solution is simply to include Butcher's middle initial in the | birth_name parameter, and remove it from the title. If it is felt that the 'D' is the common name by which Butcher is best known, then this should be a separate discussion to move the page entirely.

I shall not take any more action until further discussion. JJLiu112 (talk) 20:03, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to JJLiu112 for the reply, and please forgive the delay in my response: I wanted to take some time to consider it.

I am disinclined to give much weight to the "precedent" argument. Unfortunately, I've seen too many of what seemed to be legitimate changes in articles reverted, not on their own merits or lack thereof, but because "This isn't the way it's done at other articles of this type, and we need to be consistent". It's certainly useful to look at what other editors have done in other articles, but we shouldn't be constrained by it, except to the extent that it's been incorporated into Wikipolicy. And Wikipolicy, in the documentation for the Infobox_person template, clearly does not require that the presence or absence of middle initials in the infobox match the article title.

JJLiu112 suggests using the birth_name parameter. Unfortunately, I don't think we can do that. The problem is that the birth name would include the full middle name, and our sources vary on that—see footnote 2 of the article.

Google searching suggests that "Solomon D. Butcher" is somewhat more widely used than "Solomon Butcher": a search for ("solomon d butcher" nebraska) yielded 19,700 hits; a search for ("solomon butcher" nebraska), 6,800 hits. There was less overlap than I'd expected: searching for ("solomon d butcher" "solomon butcher" nebraska) got only 956 hits. In light of this, if I were creating the article anew, I'd name it "Solomon D. Butcher"; and I wouldn't be personally averse to a page move (the SDB page exists, but is a redirect to SB with no edits after its creation, so such a move would be possible). However, I'm not sure if Wikipolicy allows us to do such a page move. Looking at WP:MOVE, section "Reasons for moving a page", the only thing that seems at all applicable is the first point, and that's questionable: the title SB is a common name for the subject, though it doesn't seem to be as widely used as SDB.

I'd welcome further thoughts on this, and I'll try to respond to them more promptly— Ammodramus (talk) 20:49, 29 March 2025 (UTC)