Talk:The Boy with the Leaking Boot

The Boy with the Leaking Boot was a Art and architecture good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
September 1, 2010	Good article nominee	Not listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on July 17, 2009.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that statues of The Boy with the Leaking Boot are found in Cleethorpes (England), Winnipeg and Toronto (Canada) and several cities in the United States, but his origins are obscure?

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Placenames - with or without country?

@Zacwill16: I believe that in an international encyclopedia such as this we need to give full place names with country - not everyone who reads this will recognise every US state (I sometimes forget whether "Michigan" is in Canada or USA) or British county, though I can't at a quick look find anything in WP:MOS to confirm that this is the standard. Please do not change to the short form of the place names again until it has been discussed further here. I have reverted them to the form in which they have been in the article for some time. PamD 13:34, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked for advice at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Include_country_when_mentioning_placenames.3F. PamD 13:56, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would go with a country as not everyone knows where a specific place is located, and you need to know without having to dig for it via a link. Though I would only give a single country and not as some do multiple countries such as "England, UK" where the UK is superfluous. Keith D (talk) 15:23, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would also include a country as Wikipedia is here to inform people of all kinds of things, including information that lots of people already know. It's off-topic here but I would disagree slightly with Keith D on his last point, in that "UK" would only be superfluous if "England" and "UK" were synonymous; it's basically the same argument. Not everybody knows the political geography. However, the consensus is that if "UK" is not already present in an infobox, it shouldn't be repeatedly added to articles as it causes edit warring. The same goes for removing it where it already exists. In the text though, I'd say use either "England"/"Scotland" etc or "UK" but probably not both. Bretonbanquet (talk) 15:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have attempted to resolve the issue by reorganizing the article into "by country" sections. This informs the reader which country each of the various statues are in, without the need to add the country name after each town name. Blueboar (talk) 14:11, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Blueboar: Thanks for that. I think the original order was intended to be strictly chronological, but as the great majority are in USA your split works OK. The article could be expanded, from the splendid "Zinc Sculpture in America" listed in the Further Reading, which identifes 33 USA specimens, current or not. PamD 21:04, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Proof of location

I don't think we should be listing locations with out proof of existence. I removed the Stockholm, Sweden location and the Svappavaara, Sweden location because there is no proof of existence. I talked with the restaurant that HAD the statue in Stockholm, but they don't have it any more - yet Stockholm is relisted. The source article that also claims Caracas, Venezuela, doesn't actually prove the statues existence. All the other locations have photographic evidence - so why not these? SoupCanHand (talk) 16:52, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced "Origins" section

The "Origins" section contained entirely unsourced content added by an IP editor in 2015 (it has been amended and moved by other editors, but is basically the IP's content). It was that IP's only edit. I'm removing it from the article, as unsourced.

I'll place it here, in case anyone can find any source for any of it:

Origins

The exact origin of the "Boy with the Boot" statue/fountains has been uncertain. It appears the first statues appeared in the U.S. c.1895 and were thought to have been purchased in Europe by wealthy travelers on the "Grand European Tour". Many stories relate the statues came from Germany, but that has not been confirmed.^{[citation needed]}

However, a connection between the statue and Germany may have more validity. Patrick Patterson of Clovis, California, purchased what was purported to be the "original" bronze molds for the Boy with the Boot statue in 1998 from an antique dealer (Lamoine Abbott) of San Angelo, Texas. These molds of the Boy with the Boot statue were sold to the Texas dealer by "Midwest Exchange, Inc." of Shawnee, Wisconsin, in 1981. Midwest Exchange Inc. related the molds came from a Mr. Henry Braun, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Braun was believed to have emigrated from Germany in the 1920s and may have brought these molds with him. It was stated Henry Braun was an "uncle" of Eva Braun.

The bronze molds are probably the "original" molds because the "original" statues were cast in "white metal" (zinc) by a process of "slurry casting"...a process quite different from lost wax casting methods.^{[citation needed]}

PamD 12:27, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]