AnEaragail

Your submission at Articles for creation: Hobbs v. Fogg (November 16)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted because it included copyrighted content, which is not permitted on Wikipedia. You are welcome to write an article on the subject, but please do not use copyrighted work.

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Comr Melody Idoghor (talk) 11:42, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello, AnEaragail! Having an article draft declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Comr Melody Idoghor (talk) 11:42, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Draft:Hobbs v. Fogg

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A tag has been placed on Draft:Hobbs v. Fogg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be an unambiguous copyright infringement. This page appears to be a direct copy from https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/I7b9d53d3338711d98b61a35269fc5f88/View/FullText.html?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default). For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images taken from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites or other printed material as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

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If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Comr Melody Idoghor (talk) 11:43, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I have declined the speedy deletion nomination, because as far as I can see the text shared between the draft and the given source consists of quotes from nineteenth century sources, and is not subject to copyright. JBW (talk) 12:09, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Hobbs v. Fogg (November 16)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by JBW was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Hobbs v. Fogg and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
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JBW (talk) 12:06, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Hobbs v. Fogg

• I am copying this discussion from my talk page, and adding further comments to it. I don't usually do that, because I think keeping a discussion in one place, runs less risk of causing confusion, but I am making an exception, because I think it may be convenient for you to have the information on your own talk page. JBW (talk) 22:12, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, and especially pointing out that text from an 1837 legal decision is not copyrighted.

As to the existing reference, the commentary on that website surrounding Gibson's letter to Jefferson (not the letter itself) is the source of Gibson "maintaining a generally restrictive view of judicial authority".

There are few if any published articles about this case. That's why there aren't more citations. I didn't want to pull in tangential references. It is a significant one of Gibson's opinions, I think, but if you still think it should be deleted, then I won't contest it.

AnEaragail (talk) 13:15, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@AnEaragail:

1. I don't think the draft should be deleted; bear in mind that I declined a deletion nomination for it. As far as I am concerned, I see no reason why the draft shouldn't be accepted if the lack of sourcing can be dealt with.
2. Yes, I understand that the letter from Gibson is a reference for his view of judicial authority, rather than for the particular case, but we do also need citations to sources about the case itself.
3. Although Wikipedia's notability requirements are based on good principles, I am not a great fan of the some of the ways they work in practice. It seems to me that this is a significant and interesting case, and it would be reasonable to have an article about it. However, Wikipedia's notability guidelines require substantial coverage in reluable published sources. Your statement "There are few if any published articles about this case" suggests that there may not be much coverage, in which case the case may not satisfy those guidelines. However, you must have got the information from somewhere, so can you say where? Wherever it was, it is at least one source that can be cited, assuming that it's a reliable source. JBW (talk) 14:21, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

   I will do some more in-depth searching in the legal literature for references to the case. Thanks again for your comments. If I can find useful references I will add them and hit the resubmit button. AnEaragail (talk) 19:52, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I resubmitted the draft with additional support. The article has been beefed up, so I hope you will find it acceptable to publish now. Thanks JBW. AnEaragail (talk) 18:40, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Some aspects of what you have said and done puzzled me for a while, until it occurred to me that you may have misunderstood what "citations" means in the context of Wikipedia articles, which is different from what it means in some other contexts, and certainly very different from what a lawyer understands by a citation to a case. A citation in a Wikipedia article serves two purposes. (1) It shows where the information in the article comes from, so that the information can be verified as coming from a reliable source, rather than having been made up by the Wikipedia editor who posted it, or copied from some unreliable source such as X. You should have no difficulty whatsoever in providing at least one source for that purpose, because, as I said above, you must have got the information from somewhere, and that place should be a suitable reference to cite. (2) Citations are necessary to show that there has been significant coverage in reliable sources, because Wikipedia's notability standards don't regard a subject as worthy of being the subject of an article unless there has been such coverage. Commonly one reference can contribute to both of those purposes, but the requirements are not identical; a reference for verifiability may be just one sentence which confirms one statement in an article, but a reference for notability must be reasonably substantial.

A quick search turned up several suitable sources, which give significant coverage to the case; for example The End of Black Voting Rights in Pennsylvania: African Americans and the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1837-1838, by Eric Ledell Smith, and Pennsylvania's First Civil Rights Movement: 1639-1900 by Rosemary Shaver. There are downloadable pdf copies of those two papers, respectively on the websites of Penn State University and the University of Scranton. Unfortunately, for reasons I can't be bothered to explain, I can't give you the URLs for them, but I found them easily, and presumably you will be able to.

All of the references in the draft at present pertain to the paragraphs "Gibson's legal philosophy", "Revision of Pennsylvania Constitution", and "Criticism", which account for only a minority of the content of the draft. Also, even in those paragraphs, they appear to be citations only for small parts of the content. You need to provide references for the main content of all parts of the article. I did not find large numbers of sources, but three good sources should be enough. You can use the papers I have mentioned, and probably the source you got the information from (if it wasn't one of those two).

My advice to new editors us to start by making small improvements to existing articles, and not to try creating a new article until they have a significant amount of experience of how editing Wikipedia works, because there are numerous aspects of creating articles which can trip inexperienced editors up. You have hit difficulties with providing references, but apart from that I think you have done a far better job of creating an article than most inexperienced editors do. When you have added some suitable references to all parts of the article, let me know, and if it seems to me that you have done it successfully I will be happy to approve the draft. JBW (talk) 22:12, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I am familiar with Smith's article, and disagree with his characterization of the Fogg case. Shaver's piece is an undergraduate paper. Let's drop this and delete the draft. Thank you again for your comments. I have been a lawyer for 40+ years and have two masters degrees, one of them in legal history, but Wikipedia's standards must be unattainable for me. AnEaragail (talk) 02:29, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

OK, you evidently know far more about this than I do, so I'll accept what you say. It's a pity for it to end like this, as I think the draft had the potential to be a perfectly good article. JBW (talk) 15:49, 18 November 2024 (UTC)