Talk:1892 New Orleans general strike

Title change?
Nice work. How would you feel about adding the year to the name of the page? Most of the items in have the year. – Scartol  ·  Talk  18:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I've no objection to adding a date. The original author of the article is the one who chose the title.  While we're at it, "General Strike" needs to be in lower-case as well, doesn't it? This isn't a proper name, so I would think all but the term "New Orleans" needs to be lower-case. - Tim1965 18:28, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Done and done. – Scartol  ·  Talk  20:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Two sentences
In copyediting some of the more recent changes, I deleted two sentences. The first deletion was:
 * ...but the Workingman's council sought to take over the strike by appointing a committee of directors, most from conservative unions though one was black.

This sentence makes no sense in the context in which it was inserted. For one thing, there is no mention of a second council in the city previously in the article. For another thing, this is a major shift in the article. The existing, verifiable citations indicate that the central labor council was wholeheartedly behind the Triple Alliance and first, limited strike. This new insertion (if I am reading it correctly) would drastically change this interpretation. Without a citation and a clearer sense of what was meant, I think it had to come out. As Wikipedia's guidelines on verifiability notes, "Any edit lacking a source may be removed... If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider moving it to the talk page." Done, and done.

The second troubling sentence was this:
 * Fearing bloodshed, the unions ended the strike after three days.

Again, this new insertion drastically changes the interpretation of the event. The existing, verifiable citations indicate that the strength of the strike and its peacefulness led the Board of Trade to cave in to most union demands. There is no indication in any cited source that the unions caved in due to fears about bloodshed (especially since the state militia was withdrawn before negotiations resumed). Absent an inline citation to a reliable, published source, this sentence was removed.

There may be disagreements among scholars as to why the general strike ended. That's fair enough. But, as Wikipedia's guidelines note, "Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text." If another editor wishes to reinsert these two sentences, by all means do so—so long as inline citations are given, and the disagreement among scholars is clearly noted in the article text. Thanks! - Tim1965 15:41, 8 November 2007 (UTC)