Talk:Franklin La Du Ferguson

A fact from Franklin La Du Ferguson appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 September 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Pomona College's "missing president", Franklin La Du Ferguson (pictured), is the only past president not honored by the college with a portrait?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Franklin La Du Ferguson.

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DYK draft

...that Congregational minister Franklin La Du Ferguson, the second president of Pomona College, likely used his office to make disastrous illegal personal real estate investments, putting the fledgling school at risk? - {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:36, 5 August 2020

Did you know nomination

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.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 17:50, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Article history

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Franklin La Du Ferguson

... that Franklin Ferguson (pictured), the second president of Pomona College, evidently used his office to illegally make disastrous personal real estate investments, putting the then-fledgling school at risk? Source: [1]
- ALT1:~~... that upon taking office as second president of Pomona College, Franklin La Du Ferguson (pictured) requested a censor for the student newspaper, leading the student body to dislike him?~~ Source: [2]
- ALT2: ~~... that Congregational minister Franklin La Du Ferguson (pictured) is the only past president of Pomona College not honored by a portrait, and is considered arguably its least successful?~~ Source: [3]

Reviewed: Under 5 noms
Comment: Regarding ALT0, Thelin is definitely a reliable source, but I think his use of "evidently" would require that we do so here as well unless we can find another reliable source that's more definitive.

Converted from a redirect by Sdkb (talk). Self-nominated at 21:59, 7 August 2020 (UTC).[reply]

New enough, long enough, neutrally written, well referenced. As all sources are offline, unable to check for close paraphrasing. Image is freely licensed. No QPQ needed for nominator with less than 5 DYK credits. I struck the first and last hooks because they are very negative. I like ALT1 a lot, and I would shorten it for punchiness:
ALT1a: ~~... that upon taking office as second president of Pomona College, Franklin La Du Ferguson (pictured) requested a censor for the student newspaper?~~
However, I don't see the hook fact about upon taking office as second president of Pomona College in the article. Add that (as long as it's in the source), and we'll be ready to go. Yoninah (talk) 20:24, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdkb: Please respond to me here on the template to tell me what you've done. It doesn't really matter if you change the page number here on the template; what's important is that the information is correct in the article. Please add page numbers to footnotes 3 and 5.
How can this have happened upon taking office when the students were unhappy about one of his fundraising decisions? Perhaps it happened shortly after taking office? Yoninah (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Yoninah, thanks for the review! Oops, I had given the wrong link for the ALT1 source, but I just fixed it. And I tweaked the article to add upon taking office.

Regarding "very negative", I just looked at the content rules, which advise Articles and hooks that focus unduly on negative aspects of living individuals should be avoided. I don't think that really applies here, since Ferguson is definitely not living, and I wouldn't consider a negative focus undue, since the defining aspect of his biography is that he was a bad president ("arguably least successful" is from Pomona's official timeline). So I'd hope with we wouldn't have to cross those out and be able to choose whichever is most interesting, and even for ALT1, I think we'd be okay including leading the student body to dislike him (keeping in mind that Sumner in 1914 is almost surely being a little polite/euphemistic, I think we'd probably be justified in using hate him if we wanted).

As for interestingness, I think it detracts to leave out that the request caused students to reject him, but maybe I'm just too wrapped up in the piece. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:13, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
To address your follow-up, I added page numbers to the references at the article in addition to the URL; thanks for catching that oversight. And regarding the timeline, per Sumner 1914 p. 212, he gave the speech where he made the fundraising claim during his visit to Pomona before he became president (apparently he was already involved in anticipation of taking office); the conflict arose because TSL thought that credit should be given to his predecessor, not him. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:13, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Look, I am the first person to read your hooks. I think they're unduly negative. Would you expect to see a hook on the main page stating that Richard Nixon was a bad president? He's dead, so we can say whatever we want, right? A lot of this is a matter of opinion, and you only have a handful of sources. But others may disagree with me. I added an alt version to the first hook which better reflects the source, and am calling on a new reviewer to complete this review. Yoninah (talk) 22:32, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thelin in American Higher Education: Issues and Institutions writes Not only were the real estate deals illegal, they were disastrous – resulting in a loss of money that put the college at risk. So I'm not sure quite what issue you had with the sourcing that required changing ALT0 to ALT0a, but hopefully a new reviewer will be able to bring in some fresh eyes to help us out. Thanks again for your work on this. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:53, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I give up. Here's a new nomination for someone with "fresh eyes". Yoninah (talk) 23:08, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the comments above that the hooks are unduly negative. The infobox also includes multiple family members are not notable, nor cited in the article. Flibirigit (talk) 17:15, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This reads like a hit piece. --evrik ^(talk) 20:13, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As multiple editors have raised concerns about the hooks, new ones may need to be proposed. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 10:56, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The concerns trace back to whether or not it's appropriate to use negative hooks for non-living people, which is the issue I raised at DYK talk. Hopefully more editors will weigh in there, so I'm waiting on that, but so far I don't see any consensus forming to modify the rules, in which case the guidance to rely upon is their current state, which permits negative hooks for BDPs. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:44, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are no rules prohibiting them, yes, but from experience they're usually discouraged. And in any case, for this particular nomination consensus appears to have formed that the negative hooks are unsuitable at this time. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 01:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ALT3: ~~... that the second president of Pomona College, Franklin La Du Ferguson (pictured) is referred to as the "Missing President," and is the only past president not honored by a portrait?~~ --evrik ^(talk) 03:09, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
--evrik ^(talk) 03:09, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds much better since the "Missing President" aspect would make readers want to find out more. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 04:52, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take it over nothing, I guess, although I'm still more than a little bemused at the idea that I might have reason to author a hit piece against someone who died in 1944, and I don't think it's very encyclopedic of us to be restricting ourselves to only positive facts over negative facts that are well-sourced, significant, and interesting.

To tidy up a bit, here's some phrasing tweaks to create ALT3a: ... that Pomona College's "missing president", Franklin La Du Ferguson (pictured), is the only past president not honored by the college with a portrait? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:28, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ALT3a: ... that Pomona College's "missing president", Franklin La Du Ferguson (pictured), is the only past president not honored by the college with a portrait?

I like it. --evrik ^(talk) 14:56, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging the original reviewer Yoninah to give a second look. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:52, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Great hook! ALT3a hook ref verified and cited inline. Rest of review above. ALT3a good to go. Yoninah (talk) 13:03, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong order of Pomona presidents?

Articles on early presidents of Pomona College disagree on the order in which they held that office. It appears at first glance that this article in particular may have the facts wrong; however, there's some detail in here that suggests maybe other articles are at fault. Someone who knows ought to fix it - that certainly isn't me. TooManyFingers (talk) 04:47, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]