Template:Did you know nominations/Zelia N. Breaux

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 Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:39, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Zelia N. Breaux[edit]

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... that Zelia N. Breaux owned the only black theater in Oklahoma City and hired many jazz artists, but taught her students Charlie Christian, Jimmy Rushing and Ralph Ellison classical music theory?

Reviewed: Silva Kaputikyan

Created by SusunW (talk). Self-nominated at 18:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC).

Article creation date and filing date okay. Length easily okay. QPQ done. Neutrality seems okay. Hook length just fits, hook interest is good. Haven't checked hook fact sourcing yet, because ...

Sourcing for the article as a whole has a problem: there are three separate Find-a-grave pages cited, one for ten separate instances. Per WP:EL/P, Find-a-grave is not allowed as a source, for all the reasons listed there. But don't give up, there are always other sources out there, you just have to dig a little bit more.

Also, the structure of the article it suboptimal. I know a lot of WP articles use separate "Personal life" sections, but to me and some others, it makes no sense. People live one life, and everything in one aspect of their life can and often does affect other aspects. And have you ever read a real biography that had a separate chapter called "Personal life" stuck at the end? Of course not. So in this case, you really should merge all the material in "Personal life" into the appropriate chronological order of the overall biographical narrative. It will flow a lot better that way.

Finally, there are some red links to Zelia Breaux on other pages, you should create a redirect from there to this article. That way your work will have more visibility. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:48, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. I am though, confused as the comments you have made are not generally a part of DYK nominations. The arrangement of the article and links to other pieces appear no where in the DYK criteria. The hook, which you say you did not verify is not linked to the sources you do not like, so I am not sure why it was not reviewed. I'll be happy to work on additional sourcing. An article can always be improved, but I do not read the page you cited in the way you do. It says rarely and almost never, neither of which are the equivalent to "not allowed." In fact, there is a specific acknowledgement that the information may not be available anywhere else and is rarely controversial. I do not live in the US and have found no other web information that gives her birth, marriage or death dates. The information is not controversial and could be removed. Same with the personal life. In this case, her personal details, husband, child, etc. are pretty much a side note to her life and not an integral part. She did not live with her husband, in fact on the 1940 census, she listed herself as a widow, though her husband actually outlived her. Under those circumstances, it seems logical to me to leave the personal details as they are, separate from her. I found 2 red links to Zelia Breaux instead of Zelia N. Breaux and linked them in. I truly appreciate your input, I am still a fairly new editor and am learning. SusunW (talk) 05:02, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I found several more sources. Cannot find anything except the F-A-G that gives her specific birthdate nor anything that gives any dates on her husband. If you want to remove the dates, feel free. They do not change the importance of Mrs. Breaux one way or the other. SusunW (talk) 05:52, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

You are correct, my DYK reviews sometimes address making the article in general better, not just passing the DYK criteria. I put a lot of articles up for review myself and my attitude is I am always happy to hear of ideas for improvement regardless of forum.

General consensus on WP is pretty adamant against using Find-a-Grave as a source; see WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_149#findagrave.com_redux for example. Doesn't matter that the information may not be controversial; it may be wrong. I have found and removed several errors from Find-a-Grave myself in other articles.

Do you have access to newspapers.com? It has lots of old newspapers from this era, including local ones that might well have run stories on her. You can sign up at WP:Newspapers.com.

It's still worth redirecting Zelia Breaux to Zelia N. Breaux in case someone else comes along in the future and makes to link to the first.

The fact that she did not live with her husband and believed in her independence is an integral part of her life and helps account for her accomplishments. How many women of that era would have been as equally bold? And why is managing the Aldridge theater and rental properties a 'personal detail' while hiring musicians to play at the same theater is part of her 'biography' – aren't they both business activities? And doesn't being able to hire a live-in cook tell you something about how successful she was financially? This division makes no sense; she led one life, and everything that went into it and came out of it made her the person worth writing an article about. Look at the Oklahoma Historical Society page that you are now using as a source; it integrates her life together chronologically, and I'm sure it never occurred to Hannah D. Atkins, the author of it, to do otherwise.

But don't let anything I say discourage you in any way; WP needs more people like you writing about worthy topics such as this! Wasted Time R (talk) 11:02, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't find any of your comments to be discouraging in any way. Just a final comment on sourcing ... in academia primary sources always take precedence over secondary because secondary sources so easily repeat the same wrong information. F-A-G is no more likely to have repeated wrong information than any other secondary source, IMO, though they are likely to have plagiarized of copyviolated someone else's work without citation. In this case, I was able to find the source of their information, it seems. I do have access to Newspapers.com and a search last night produced "sort of" a notice of her death and confirmation of of her tenure at Langston. Interestingly, I found no notice whatsoever of she nor her father's initial appointment to teach there. To our eyes, looking back, the significance of even creating and then hiring the first staff of an all-black university, before Oklahoma was even a state, would be worthy of mention in multiple news outlets. There were hundreds of articles about her in Newspapers.com and a couple in the Langston University Press but they are just contract renewal notices. Apparently segregation did not deem her worthy of mention. There were black newspapers and I am sure that the Oklahoma Historical Society has them on microfiche, but they are not available on the web. I put the husband in chronologically, though in truth, I would have left him out entirely, but for the knowledge that someone would put him back. Odd how many bios on men leave out their familial information, but for women it seems a necessity. I did not understand initially what you meant about the aka. I thought it would be a never-ending process to go to each page Zelia Breaux is on and change it to direct to her page. I understand now that you meant a redirect page. Again, thank you for the comments. I think I have now addressed all of your concerns, except the 3 dates that are only shown on the tombstones in Find A Grave. The tombstone photos clearly show the dates as stated, but if you want to remove them, feel free. SusunW (talk) 13:14, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't realize that the only Find-a-Grave usages left were of photographs of tombstones. I think that's okay, but you should append text to those citations saying "Used only for information from photograph of tombstone" or something like that, so that other editors know.

I think per WP:LEADSENTENCE the opening sentence needs work – it says she was a musician, but actually she's here because she was a music teacher. I'm not even sure what instruments she plays needs to be in the lead. However, Category:American music educators should definitely be added.

I also see a few MoS issues that you can look at on your own: inconsistent use of dmy and mdy dates; an inappropriate comma in a dmy date ("6 February, 1880"); missing commas after "city, state" in running text; missing italics for the names of newspapers; and using retrieval dates for books (unlike something on the web, the book is always there).

Anyway, I've verified most of the source hook via online access, AGF the rest.

So in terms of the review, the DYK is good to go. Wasted Time R (talk) 10:57, 17 April 2015 (UTC)