Talk:Jones Law Office

dropping the NPS PD disclaimer template

I would strongly prefer for the NPS PD disclaimer template to be NOT included in this article, and just removed it for discussion here. This is the removed template: {{NPS.Gov|sourceURL=[http://www.hscl.cr.nps.gov/insidenps/report.asp?STATE=VA&PARK=APCO&STRUCTURE=&SORT=&RECORDNO=34]}}.

I have lots of objections to the use of PD disclaimer templates like this, and have been involved in a lot of related discussions elsewhere in the past. Very briefly: I think it promotes poor referencing by serving as a crutch to support anything-goes-style writing (often by later editors, not the first one), and is inappropriate in the encyclopedia. In my view, any text taken verbatim from the public domain (PD) source should be put in quotations or set off in a block quote, just as for text taken from any other source. For PD sources, the only difference I recognize is that you are allowed to take longer quotes than would be allowed under copyright fair use provisions applicable to non-PD sources. For any reworded material, the source should be footnoted just as for any other source. In my view, the tag undermines a reader's ability to trust what is stated in the article. With the generic PD disclaimer tag in place, it is suggested than any of the material in the article may be merely copied from that source, and other material which may be doubly or otherwise well supported should only be trusted to the extent that the reader trusts that linked webpage. It puts an undue burden on the reader to evaluate the quality of the linked webpage. Also, for future editors, it muddies the sourcing of specific statements in the article, and makes future development harder. I believe that it has been largely accepted that PD disclaimer templates are not acceptable in articles nominated for FA status. Sorry, i really hate the PD disclaimers! :)

Here in this article, the NPS webpage it links to is cited already (or should be). So, I hope it is okay that i deleted the template, and I ask that development of the article be continued without relying upon it. I will watch for any further discussion here. I'll also visit the related Woodson Law Office article and hope that this discussion thread here can serve to cover its template use, too. Thanks. doncram (talk) 20:11, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I removed the corresponding templates at Woodson Law Office and at New County Jail just now, but will pause for any discussion here before going through the rest of the related articles covered in the navbox among these Appomattox area sites. doncram (talk) 20:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

O.K., did happen to have already removed the template at Old Appomattox Court House since I was already working on the article.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Replaced - let me know if you think it is o.k. to remove from Old Appomattox Court House.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:27, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Please do remove the template from all the Appomattox articles, if you don't mind. Thanks! doncram (talk) 20:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, good, I am glad you don't mind or otherwise are accepting what i spouteth above. I see that some more articles, though still less than 50 in total, have also linked to Template:NPS.Gov and I will return to the work of addressing them. There are that few because i have fought this battle before. doncram (talk) 20:33, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I am working on putting in the "contributing property" info boxes on these various Appomattox articles for improvements. I will also work on the description so that the wording is different than the public domain source and acceptable. However will leave in the templates until you remove them. Sound good?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:43, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe I understand. If that website is used in the Footnotes as a reference THEN that template can be dropped. Correct?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 00:09, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

As you see, I dropped the PD templates from the other articles. Sorry i just did it quickly, I know it now doesnt look good and you will have to clean up after me. But i am not ready or interested enough to edit each of the articles properly.

If you use anything from any website, then what you add to the article needs to be footnoted with regular reference to that website. If you don't use anything from a website, but you just want to direct interested readers to it, you can include an external link to the website. If you later add something to the article that requires/justifies regular reference, you can drop the external link. Or actually, you can keep the external link either way. But whatever is in an article should be sourced clearly by regular references. And there is no role ever for a PD disclaimer template, in my view, because it confuses matters. doncram (talk) 00:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Article review

I've looked over the article and have a few suggestions:

• While the Park Service may indeed be confused, there's no reason to discuss it. Lots of NRHP properties have all sorts of crazy names, depending on who lived/worked there and what got recorded. It might be worth mentioning in passing farther down (as you did), but certainly not in th lede.
• "which lead to investigating getting a place closer to the "court house" for an office" is awkward, and unclear.
• "5 slaves" should be "five slaves" - spell out any numbers of ten or less.
• I think the three paragraphs on Jones, Kelly and Robertson could be copyedited - they don't flow well, and the Kelly paragraph has too much extraneous detail.
• "restored it" should be something like "restored the house" to avoid a pronoun in the first sentence of a paragraph, especially with "It" leading the next sentence.
• Description: The digression concerning Lorenzo Kelly only needs to occur once
• sashes, not sash when plural
• "All the windows do not have shutters": -> "No windows have shutters"?
• "The interior has been restored and has little integrity." Why not? Was it restored poorly?
• I don't think the Park Service numbers add anything.

I'd also consider (again) the AfD discussion, and try to explain how the office is notable, apart from simply being present at the event. That's hard, because it's really just a contributing building in a district. There are many individually-designated NRHP structures that one could argue are less notable, but this one'sclearly one that's coming along for the ride, so to speak. Acroterion _(talk) 19:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the recommendations. Working on them now.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 22:17, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Kelly vs. Kelley and other info

I just reverted this edit in which a non-logged-in editor changed "Kelly" to "Kelley" everywhere, and added some other information. To the non-logged-in editor: You are welcome to edit in wikipedia. Please don't misunderstand my reverting your edit for now. What I would like to do is discuss, here, what published sources may be available to support your information. I assume, offhand, that you have some correct information, but in wikipedia articles there is a need for each statement to be supported by specific, reliable sources. It is not quite proper to change Kelly to Kelley in the article in places where the footnoted, corresponding source uses Kelly, however. Consider if there was an explicit quote: it definitely would be wrong to change the spelling within an explicit quote, as if you are judging that the quoted source should have said "Kelley" when in fact they said "Kelly". An explicit quote should not be changed. But if a specific mention of this Lorenzo Kelly/Kelley can be found showing the "Kelley" spelling, then I would think it would be fine to explain in the article at least that "Kelley" is an alternate spelling.

Also it would probably be easier to interact with you if you would create a free wikipedia account, and log in before editing here, but again that is not required. doncram (talk) 16:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

External links modified

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