User talk:Cems1

Debs and Elliott

Hi there.

I see you made some additions to the piece on Eugene V. Debs back in December 2010. A very cool photo, may I say. However, there was quite a bit of what Wikipedia calls "original research" that you ran in there — an unsubstantiated assertion that ARU man Elliott was the one who won Debs to Socialism in jail. You footnoted NY Times pieces in to demonstrate that Elliott was a chief at the ARU, which is beyond dispute, but your big (and controversial) assertion was footnoted with reference to a 570 page volume of Debs letters with no page number listed. There's not a word in that book that I can find, nothing, which indicates that Elliott brought books to jail and won Debs to Socialism. Compare and contrast to the way the article is now written, which quotes Debs' own words, written just 8 years after the fact, that Victor Berger visiting him in jail was his pivotal conversion experience. This accords with the historical literature. Opinions of granddaughters 115 years after the fact aren't what historians or Wikipedia would consider to be a Reliable Source.

Anyway, I don't want to come across as a jerk, but I do want to let you know that I changed your stuff substantially and that I did it for good reason. Please do make sure you're pulling facts from published sources; Wikipedia isn't the place to freelance new information. Do keep working though, Wikipedia needs active content creators.

Best regards,

Tim Davenport "Carrite" Carrite (talk) 07:49, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tim, The primary source for this is Maxine Murton (deceased) and her Daughter Mariel Murton (living). Maxine is the daughter of Elliott. I Know both of these people which is how I got the photo, and the details. How would you like this to be referenced?