This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Alexander Bielaski article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Alexander Bielaski was friends with Abraham Lincoln and the grandfather of a director of what became the FBI?
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions.
Latest comment: 3 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
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.
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
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)Reply
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 FarmTalk20:07, 13 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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) buidhe04:19, 15 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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 FarmTalk04:40, 15 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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) buidhe05:50, 15 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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.