Template:Did you know nominations/James Blair (MP)

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 PFHLai (talk) 01:29, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

James Blair (MP) edit

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... that when the British Slavery Abolition Act 1833 compensated slave-owners, the largest single payment was to the Tory Member of Parliament James Blair?

ALT1:... that when the British Slavery Abolition Act 1833 compensated slave-owners, the largest single payment was to the Tory Member of Parliament James Blair for his 1,598 slaves in British Guiana?
Reviewed: Nossa Senhora da Graça incident

Created by BrownHairedGirl (talk). Self nominated at 17:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC).

New (26th), long enough, neutral, no copyvio found via spotcheck but will re-check later, QPQ done. There are a number of sources used in the article tagged as unreliable, and what's up with the Hansard? Isn't it just some unofficial site? Aren't there better public sources available? Please ping me if I don't respond. czar ♔ 03:25, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Czar: Thanks for the review.

Hansard is the Official Report of debates in Parliament. The online source used is a digitised version produced as part of a project led by the Commons and Lords libraries. -- see http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/index.html

The refs which are tagged as unreliable are to Leigh Raymnent's House of Commons pages. This is self-published work (which is why someone decided to tag it as unreliable), but it is of extraordinarily high quality. Cross-checking it with other sources over tens of thousands of articles has revealed almost no errors in Raymnent's work, while other more traditional works have many more errors. Having changed a ref in the lede, I don't think that any part of the article relies solely on Rayment, but those references add value by helping readers to verify content in an online source. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:50, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Right, but the website says to not cite it as a source czar ♔ 03:57, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Czar: I absolutely agree that it should not be used as an indexing source, for example to determine whether an MP spoke or when they first spoke, etc. The actual text usually seems pretty good, but I take the point about them asking or it not be cited as Hansard, so I have replaced the URLs with Google Books links. (Ideally we would have both, because the experimental site is so much more useable, but {{cite book}} allows an alternative URL only for an archive)

Where do you think that leaves us? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:14, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

This doesn't have to kill the nom—we just need to find a way to deal with it. So "The material on this site cannot be held to be authoritative" is why I wouldn't trust that Hansard site. In that vein, if that was how you sourced that stuff, you cannot simply just change the link because it means the information was written while relying on a non-authoritative source (so it needs to be checked in whatever actual source you're linking)—otherwise we're greenlighting something that no one has confirmed. I wouldn't use the Hansard site until it is definitively approved by the body itself. And things like cite 13 are original research if they're making conclusions from primary sources (not as self-published) that even the primary sources don't say. Perhaps those types of things can be cleaned up and the rest of the choppy one-sentence paragraphs merged? As for Rayment, is there no suitable alternative? The next step would be taking that to WP:RS/N for approval, because it needs to be vetted as reliable (by other secondary sources) before we can use it. czar ♔ 12:50, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Czar: I have made a series of changes, which together have the effect of:

Removing all the Rayment references, and replacing them with an RS
Merging the single-sentence paras
Adding a London Gazette ref for Stopford-Blair's name change

Your comment about how I sourced the material misunderstands how I did it. In each case that a primary source is cited, it is as back-up verification for info gleaned from a secondary source. So in the case of Stopford-Blair's name change, my original source was the secondary one (M'kerlie, verified by the primary source (London Gazette).

In the case of the Hansard quotes, I did the same thing: secondary source (Estcott's History of Parliament article), supported by the primary sources (Hansard 1824 and Hansard 1825).

This is a belt-and-braces approach to referencing. The secondary source is evidence of the significance and interpretation of the primary source, but the primary source is included as well to allow the reader to perform their own verification of the secondary source.

That is not original research; it is responsible verification of secondary sources.

Please can you clarify whether you object to the inclusion of primary sources as back-up to secondary sources. If so, I would want a third opinion, because in my view the integrity of any article is enhanced by providing verification of secondary sources. I am a bit offended by the suggestion that their inclusion amounts to original research; it appears to me to contradict WP:PRIMARY. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:36, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, it was not my intent to offend you, so I apologize for that. I don't have a problem with the use of primary sources. In the version I reviewed,

His only other contribution to Parliamentary debates was in 1825, when he supported retaining the preferential tariff on sugar imported from the West Indies.[13]

was all sourced to that ref 13, to say that the brief line pertaining to Blair in source 13 supported that first clause (about his "only other contribution"). Since there was no support of that clause in the source, it appeared as original research to me. Now, since that was the only use of ref 13 at time, I'm not sure why you'd extrapolate that note to other parts, like the Stopford-Blair name, etc. If the question is why I objected to Hansard, it had nothing to do with being a primary source but with reliability that what was materially on the website matched the official Hansard (the same concern from the site's blog post, which I linked). My other concerns have been addressed—thanks. Did you want to add an image? czar ♔ 14:55, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Czar: Thanks for clarifying that. I am glad we got things sorted. I appreciate the thoroughness of your reviewing, because it is important that high standards are applied to articles which appear on the front page.

The secondary source for the 1825 contribution being his only other one was in the para above, but when I split the para that sentence became more remote from the ref. Repeating the citation was a good idea, and I should have spotted that.

The only candidate images I found were:

Images of Penninghame, where his estates were, but I don't have enough info to determine which if any of them relate his own landholdings. It doesn't feel right to include a "stuff somewhere in the area where he owned land" image.
Images of the Demerara rebellion of 1823, but when I thought about it, it felt a bit tendentious to include them. Slavery is a significant issue in Blair's career, as the source of his wealth and the focus of his Parliamentary activity, but the slave rebellion is only one aspect of that. Having a picture of that event as the only image seems to me to give undue prominence to that point, particularly since many of the images carry a lot of shock value.

So ... are we good to go? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Surprising that a millionaire wouldn't have a single painting made of him, but perhaps it's in a closet somewhere. Almost there—just need immediate refs in the article for the hook's facts (see 3b). Also not sure if you want to link British Guyana in the hook and article (and use same spelling) czar ♔ 15:48, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Czar: I'd be very surprised if he didn't have several portraits painted, including some with his slaves looking up happily from their chains in reverence at their beloved massa :( However, they can't be included unless someone has uploaded a photo of them. I will add a requested photo tag.

The hook fact is in the second-last para of James Blair (MP)#Parliament, which I checked carefully before making the DYK submission: it is copiously referenced, with some points referenced to multiple sources. What points do you think are missing refs? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:55, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I missed it in the lede, but I was looking at the "largest single claim was from Blair" part as you mentioned in the penultimate ¶ of "Parliament", where DYK 3b says there should be a citation right after that period. We're good to go, but please add an appropriate cite there. Also since ref 2 in the lede doesn't source that he's a Tory, you might want to use current ref 3 for that. czar ♔ 17:07, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Czar: As you note, DYK 3b was already directly met by the citation in the lede, where it is first mentioned, so it seems quite pedantic to demand that it be directly re-referenced when mentioned again :(

Anyway, in this edit, I have added two refs to the hook fact's mention in the penultimate para. I think that this clutters the text, and that it is superfluous because a) the same fact is sourced in the lede, and b) the same sources are cited two sentences further on in the same para, where the size of his payout is noted.

I have not added a citation to lead fact about him being a Tory. That fact is already referenced in the 3rd para of the Parliament section, per WP:LEADCITE, the presence of citations in the introduction is neither required in every article nor prohibited. His Tory allegiance is not a contentious point, and there is no need to clutter the lede with another ref. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:16, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I already approved the hook, so it was and remains a suggestion—not nearly a demand. I'll add, though, that it seems odd to use the citation in the lede as the primary citation for a fact repeated in the article before referring to (WP:CITE) that the lede citations are only needed for extraordinary claims. As for the Tory citation, it didn't need to be in the lede, but know that as a reader, it took me several sources to confirm that he was a Tory. If you're fine with that, so am I. czar ♔ 18:36, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

The primary citations are (and were) all over the substantive paragraph. The cite in lede was to meet DYK 3b, so that readers could readily verify the hook fact the first time they encountered it.

The Tory bit is referenced in the text on the only place in the article where the word is used, so that doesn't need to be repetaed in the lede.

Anyway, glad that we are good to go :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:47, 28 June 2014 (UTC)