Talk:Grant's Canal

Copied material in this article, to be identified and quoted, or removed

There's a problematic tag with note in this article "This article incorporates text from a National Park Service website (1) that is a public domain work of the United States Government." To whatever extent there is copied text or other copied material in this article, I believe it should be put in quotes and directly attributed, or it should be removed, so that removing this tag would then be justified.

Note, by the way, not all National Park Service website material is public domain: in particular photos on NPS websites are often not PD. The NPS copyright / permissions notices are clear about that. doncram (talk) 18:50, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see what is wrong with a tag noting some text is borrowed from the government. There are many tags that do this, as well as the 100s of 1911 Brittanica tags out there. That's the reason the information is PD, so it can be spread around. It's silly to think that we're going to put quotes in a Wiki article unless they are in some form of speech. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 19:00, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

This duplicates discussion at similar Talk:Cuyahoga Valley National Park. My comment there:

It's a big discussion. See Wikipedia:Plagiarism's talk page and prior discussions linked from that page. But briefly, it is widely (but not at all unanimously) regarded as a mistake for wikipedia to have included eb1911 material in, the way it did, rather than keeping track of the specific material more clearly. And it has caused a lot of work. There are people still working at removing 1911 material. Similar material from DANFS is often included in ships articles. I've played a role in ensuring that such material gets removed from ships articles that are going through GA and FA reviews, and I think the consensus is now that such material must be removed (or quoted just like any other quoted material from non-PD sources). The only benefit for wikipedia of material being PD, as I see it, is that you can justify much longer quotations, if you want to have a very long quotation, beyond what would be justified by "fair use" for copyrighted material. It is basically irrelevant that material is PD, because it still ought to be quoted and sourced directly. However, there are many who do cut and paste PD material in, and that causes a lot of work and, in my view, undermines the quality and credibility of wikipedia. It is not a copyright violation, so it is not illegal; the issue is proper attribution and, in broad terms, plagiarism. Plagiarism is a loaded term for many, but I use the term to refer to situations where attribution is less specific than is appropriate. In the case of cut-and-pasted text from a PD source, a tag and a link to a website provides general attribution that is of a level suitable for the website being a general source, but it does not specifically credit wording to the author / website. The specific passages' wording should be attributed, and that is traditionally done by using quotation marks or indented quote passages, with footnotes following. Or, if you don't want to give such credit, you should reword to avoid the necessity.

doncram (talk) 19:19, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

@Doncram and Stepshep: - I doubt this is relevant any longer, given that this discussion was from 12 years ago, but I've since rewritten the whole article from scratch, fixing the problem with what was almost entirely a copy-paste from the NPS. Hog Farm _Bacon 06:54, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Grant's Canal/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) 15:20, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I'll grab this one.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:20, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Sturmvogel 66 - I'm going to be withdrawing this for now, per issues identified on the article talk page. I'm about to go on wikibreak for a week, so I won't be able to address those issues for awhile. Hog Farm _Bacon 17:31, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

No rush, I can sit on this until whenever you're ready, so long as it's sometime before the end of January.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:21, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

It'll be done well before then. Hog Farm _Bacon 17:29, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Sturmvogel 66 - I've made the adjustments to this one, and I'm back online, so this one and the 13th Mo. Cavalry Regiment are ready to be reviewed when you're ready. Hog Farm _Bacon 20:11, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• restored the river course to passing by Vicksburg awkward
  • Rephrased
• Commanding General of the United States Army Winfield Scott This is such a long title that I think it read better if the name came first with his title set off by commas
  • Done
• Trailing comma on Louisiana, repeatedly
  • Found and corrected several instances
• Comma after De Soto Point
  • Added
• infantrymen would not be released Would or could?
  • Would not. I think it's a bit out of the scope of this article, but the Union efforts against Vicksburg were hampered at times by Henry Halleck, who was mostly incompetent and had a drinking problem that rivalled Grant's.
• promoted by the practice of both gathering drinking water and dumping raw sewage into the Mississippi River awkward
  • Done
• 160 feet (49 m) sections hyphenate by adding |adj=on to the template
  • Done
• making the section each--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:43, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Done. Sturmvogel 66 - I think I've caught all of these. Hog Farm _Talk 04:10, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Comprehensiveness

Hog Farm, thanks for your work here. Can the article really be considered comprehensive without using this book or sourcing like this article at all? I'm not that familiar with this topic, specifically, so can't pass judgment, and of course GA does just ask for 'reasonably comprehensive', but I suspect there may be some detail missing from the article. Cheers, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 15:46, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

• Also, what is a 'military canal' (From the first sentence) supposed to mean? I'm unfamiliar with the difference between a 'military canal' and a regular canal, and suspect most readers will be too. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 15:50, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
• also, keep your eyes peeled for images, like this one -- makes me suspect it isn't perfectly illustrated either, yet. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 15:53, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
• Not sure how much of an RS this is, but there seems to be some detail. There's also allusions to Terry L. Jones, "Grant's Canals in Northeast Louisiana," North. Louisiana Historical Association Journal 9 (Winter 1979), but I've not seen where it's located. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 17:30, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Eddie891 - I've asked for the GAN to be failed due to withdrawing. This was kinda one evening's attempt at rewriting what was just a copy-and-paste from the NPS source, so the GAN was a touch hasty. I can't access the one book, but I should be able to get the JSTOR PDF through the wikipedia library. I don't think perfectly illustrated is necessary for GA, and it can probably be GA-comprehensive without that book (although not A-Class or FA comprehensive). I'm about to be away from my computer for a week, so I won't be able to work on this til after new year, but I'll keep working on this once I can. Hog Farm _Bacon 17:37, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that pretty much echoes my thoughts on the matter. Illustration-wise it's probably fine. If there isn't an absurd amount of stuff to add, I wouldn't say that it necessarily needs to be failed-- chances are high that Sturm would be fine waiting a couple of weeks. There are a few broader books on vicksburg or Grant available at archive.org that it may be worth checking out as well. But it's whatever you feel comfortable doing. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 17:41, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I can't find the Jones article online anywhere that seems obvious to me. The journal appears to be North_Louisiana_History#Journal_of_the_North_Louisiana_Historical_Association, an obscure regional publication which became defunct in 1998, so I'm not holding out hope that it's ever been put on the internet. Hog Farm _Bacon 17:54, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Personally I'm of the opinion that for GA, that for smaller subjects such as more obscure battles, three high-quality books by different authors will work, such as for Second Battle of Newtonia. But that's just a mininmum, and if I can get more on a subject, I'll put it in, so this one will get getting more work. Hog Farm _Bacon 18:03, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Hog Farm, as a thought if you're interested in collabing on this, I'd be happy to purchase the book for myself and incorporate it. However, I do agree that this can reach GA level without it. Do let me know what you think, Best, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 23:56, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I think my goal on this one is probably GAN for now. It looks like I can get it for about $6.50 on Amazon, so if I never need one more item to get free shipping, I'll get it then. Hog Farm _Bacon 01:28, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Eddie891 - I've gleaned what I can from the JSTOR article (only two pages long) save from two references to "head difference", as I have no idea what "head difference" is. I've also rephrased the military canal thing in the lead to try to make it clearer. Are you okay with the GA review continuing from this point? Hog Farm _Bacon 06:32, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it looks good to me now. Thanks for your work! Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:05, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

fish

fish selling a sandwich AnonymousWasBaken (talk) 06:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)