User talk:North Shoreman
Recommend posting to ACW Task force
Hi Tom, just as a thought, you may want to post to WP:ACW about the pending History & geography comment since many of them are familiar with Ghost and these issues and will be interested. Cheers,
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 02:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
re: Great Train Raid of 1861
Ping! --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Great Train Raid of 1861
You have the patience of Job. Is there anything specific you want me or others to do? I can't volunteer for any formal mediation role because I've had disputes with GG in the past. It is amazing to me that educated people cannot understand what secondary sources are and what a fundamental role they play in Wikipedia. Hal Jespersen (talk) 14:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
- I'm thinking the best thing to do is to make a solid, simple proposal that would allow folks to respond with a clear "yes" or "no". My general concept of the article is expressed in my reply to the section on the article's talk page "7 Purpose of Wikipedia - a reminder". While reasonable people may have differences on some aspects of it, I think the basic format of LEDE, MAIN BODY OF ARTICLE (the more numerous version), and then CONTROVERSY is pretty much consistent with common Wikipedia practices. I think the important first step is to get the entire subsection "6.3 List of historians believing the locomotive raid true" out of the article. If it has information of value then it should be presented in the body of the article w/o all the OR about what it proves or refutes re Robertson. Unless something else develops in the next couple days, I will probably propose something as a "Request for Consensus" on the discussion page and see what happens -- I find it difficult to believe that anybody will argue that the section remain. If you have ideas along this line let me know. Thanks. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Your approach is fine with me. The table of agreeing sources is completely inappropriate. Ghost should be challenged to find secondary sources published after 1997 (after Robertson's book) that dispute Robertson's conclusions, not to travel back in time to find older secondary sources and obscure primary sources. Certainly anyone writing about Jackson after Robertson's book came out would have something to say on such a blatantly controversial conclusion in a book widely considered to be the definitive bio. By the way, when writing in the ACW space, it is better to avoid the abbreviation OR in correspondence unless you mean the Official Records (I assume you are using it to mean original research, but others might not). Hal Jespersen (talk) 01:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)