Talk:Alexander Bielaski

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by TJMSmith (talk) 21:53, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

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Alexander Bielaski

• ... that Abraham Lincoln convinced his friend Alexander Bielaski (pictured) to join the Union Army, only for him to be killed at the Battle of Belmont? The Wytrwal JSTOR PDF and the Hughes book
  • ALT1:... that Alexander Bielaski (pictured) was friends with Abraham Lincoln, offered Mexican citizenship by Santa Anna, and the grandfather of a director of what became the FBI? Hughes 1991, the Wytrwal PDF, and the FBI source linked in the article

• Comment: Expanded from 2711 to 15kb bytes of readable prose per the prose checker tool, should be about 1,000 over the 5x expansion requirement

5x expanded by Hog Farm (talk). Self-nominated at 07:26, 13 March 2021 (UTC).

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Tommy Turtle

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: ALT1 is much better on the "interesting" point, but it is a bit long-winded and seemingly links unrelated facts together - maybe picking one or two of these items might be better (the FBI director thing is certainly the most interesting bit). Also noting that the article is up for GA nomination. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:18, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

• How about:

• • • ALT2:... that Alexander Bielaski (pictured) was friends with Abraham Lincoln and the grandfather of a director of what became the FBI? Hughes 1991 and the FBI source linked in the article

• The open GA nomination will only affect DYK in the unlikely situation that 1000 bytes of readable prose gets removed from the article over the course of the review. I don't see that happening, but if it does, I will withdraw this. Pinging RandomCanadian. Hog Farm _Talk 20:07, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

• If the article passes GA, that counts as eligibility for DYK (Wikipedia:Did_you_know#Eligibility_criteria - 1.f). Anyway this suggestion is better, and although it might be better to wait for the GA to post a hook then, for the time being, Approved ALT2. Cheers RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:32, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

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

Reviewer: Buidhe (talk · contribs) 23:44, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

• I believe Grand Duchy of Lithuania ceased to exist before he was born. At the time, Minsk was part of the Russian Empire.
  • I noticed that, but Shea and Wytrwal, which are the two that mention his birthplace, both state directly that he was born in the "Grand Duchy of Lithuania". I have no idea how to handle this. It is quite possible that the sources are referring to a cultural area or the place of the former Grand Duchy, but I can't really extrapolate that from the sources.
    • Neither of these sources is really that great. I do think it's misleading to imply that he was born in a political entity that didn't exist at the time. Someone born a few years after the Civil War should not be described as "Atlanta, Confederate States of America". Also, it's not the present-day Minsk province but probably either Minsk Governorate or Minsky Uyezd that he was from, both of which were located in the Russian Empire. (t · c) buidhe 04:19, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
      • After a very good deal of searching, I turned up an obscure 1970s publication from Cleveland State University that states Unfortunately, not enough is known of his exact place of birth or national leanings: Some sources list him as being born in the Minsk Province of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, while others list him as coming from ethnographic Lithuania. I agree that the Minsk province link is currently not the best one after seeing the alternatives. The broader governorate article is probably the better link, as the sources are too vague to narrow it down to the more specific uyezd. I'm honestly not entirely sure how best to handle it when the available RS sourcing is all pretty vague and seemingly anachrostic. It seems to me that the Polish parts of this fellow's life were just not really satisfactorily recorded. Hog Farm _Talk 04:40, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
        • I have made some changes, I hope you are satisfied. Theoretically there is no source cited for Minsk Governorate being in the Russian Empire but that is so basic that it probably doesn't need citation per WP:BLUE. (t · c) buidhe 05:50, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
          • @Buidhe: - I'm satisfied with the birthplace part. Hog Farm _Talk 03:46, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
• It's a bit odd to state his son's ethnicity but not Bielaski's. Is there any info on his religion and whether he identified as Polish, Belarusian, etc.?
  • Hughes describes his as Polish; I've added that. One of his sons was a Methodist minister, but I haven't found anything that comments on Bielaski's religion. Oddly, Wytrwal, Pula, and Shea don't comment directly on his ethnicity. They imply him to be Polish at various points, but since it's referring to his military service for the Poles, it's too unclear for me to determine if they are commenting on his ethnicity or his military service. I've turned up a few marginal sources that refer to him as Polish, but those are all from various Polish groups. A marginal source associated with a Lithuanian group considers him Lithuanian. Hughes doesn't have any bones to pick as to ethnic identification, so stating that Hughes refers to him as Polish may be the best thing to do.
• Too much space is given to family members in the lead compared to the body.
  • Trimmed to only mention the FBI grandson, who is the most prominent of the three by a mile.

More to come. (t · c) buidhe 23:44, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

• @Buidhe: - replies above. Hog Farm _Talk 01:06, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @Hog Farm: are you satisfied with the birthplace now? If so I will pass it. (t · c) buidhe 20:42, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed