Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Thomas Bailey Marquis/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 04:10, 20 November 2016 [1].


Nominator(s): SpinningSpark 11:53, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about an ethnographer and historian of the American Plains Indians who provided valuable and unrepeatable first-hand account material of the period. Largely ignored in his own time, and for half a century afterwards, the value of Marquis' writings were eventually recognised by historians. He did what no one else at the time was doing, recording events as told by the Native Americans themselves. SpinningSpark 11:53, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • File:Thomas_B._Marquis.png: suggest instead using {{non-free biog-pic}}, and should explicitly identify the copyright holder
  • Same with File:Marquis_1916.png, but I'm not sure we can justify both
  • File:Cheyenne_Indian_Man.jpg: when/where was this first published? Same with File:Wooden_Leg_1913.jpg
  • File:Thomas_Leforge_with_Thomas_Marquis_from_Memoirs.jpg is tagged as lacking author info, includes both a fair-use rationale and a PD tag, and is missing date of first publication
  • File:James_Willard_Schultz_and_Lone_Wolf_(Hart_Merriam_Schultz)_in_1884.jpg: who held copyright on the original image? Nikkimaria (talk) 17:34, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Marquis images
@Nikkimaria: On the images from The Cheyennes of Montana there are no credits in the book for the photographs. Should I assume that copyright is owned by the book publishers, or that the copyright owner is unknown? I have given an explicit rationale for using the second image of Marquis ("because it shows the subject of this article as a young man in a section describing his early years.") Why is that not a sufficient reason? The rest of the images were not uploaded by me and I will have to research the issues. SpinningSpark 18:19, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a general copyright notice in the book? With regards to the fair-use issue: yes, I had seen that, but I don't agree it's a strong enough rationale to outweigh the 3a issue. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You mean the bit that says don't use multiple non-free images "if one item can convey equivalent significant information". Come on, I doubt that you could have identified the two images as even being the same person if you had not read the article. Much of Marquis' notability stems from his activities as a young man, thus an image of him in his youth is appropriate. It's not as if I put in a baby picture. SpinningSpark 20:02, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If his notability mostly stems from his activity as a young man, then use that image in the lead to identify him. I simply don't see particular value in having both. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to leave a drive-by comment about the use of multiple non-free images, so I'm glad to see that the issue has already been raised. The fact that the subject looks fairly different in both photos is really not a good reason to use two, unless his appearance is significant in some way (I could understand it for a model, say, or certain actors). To put it another way, NFCC#8 matters in addition to NFCC#3. To be frank, I'm not at all sure about the use of non-free images at all, given that we have (what is claimed to be) a free image of the article subject further down the article. While this may not be the best image for identification purposes, we have to be ready and willing to compromise in favour of free content. Given the dates, I would imagine that there is free content to be found. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:54, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wooden Leg
I don't know when the image was first published but I don't think that is relevant. It is the work of the Bureau of American Ethnology and therefore public domain because it is the work of a Federal Government employee in pursuance of his duties rather than PD because of age. See here SpinningSpark 23:50, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Marquis and Leforge
Memoirs of a White Crow Indian, from which the image was taken, was first published in 1928 (and we only know for certain that the photo was in the 1974 edition) so on the face of it, the PD claim is dubious. SpinningSpark 23:50, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

At this stage, I would like to withdraw the nomination. SpinningSpark 23:50, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.