Talk:Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery

Good faith Copy edit by Rebecca Bender
, I'll leave this up to you. Please see the edits (and edit summary) by Rebecca Bender right before mine. All I did afterwards was correct the coding on the sourcing, because she knocked it off a bit. Also, I ran Earwig's copyvio tool, and none of the new edits were identical to the wording on the original NRHP form. I'm just as happy to leave the edits as Rebecca Bender made them.— Maile (talk) 15:10, 6 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I am glad to see Rebecca Bender contributing here. There is a long sentence now which is bit flowery now for a Wikipedia article ("Despite this lack of experience and the many rocks and boulders that peppered their claims, with the assistance of their German-Russian neighbors, and hard work and persistence, the great majority of them were successful enough to buy their land outright prior to the five year waiting period contained within the Homestead Act of 1862, or to own their land at the five year mark." )  But I think it is okay.


 * And I see some substantive changes now like to include prominent mention of Romanians. In the NRHP registration document, Romanians are mentioned only once, as the "and Romanian" in sentence "The McIntosh County Jewish homesteader community was made up of Russian and Romanian immigrants escaping persecution, including the Russian prohibition against Jews owning lawn for farming."  The current wikipedia article goes further, a bit, in stating "The Russian and Romanian Jews who farmed the area beginning in 1905 arrived as refugees fleeing pogroms and persecution. They had never farmed before, due to restrictions against Jews owning land in their native countries. "  Technically there is no support in the NRHP registration document about the Romanian Jews being restricted from owning land.  In Wikipedia editing on more controversial topics, any such unsupported assertion, even if believed to be true, would get tagged by other editors by cn "citation needed", and could get removed by editors to the Talk page for discussion.  I don't want to do that to this article;  I would rather there be some other effort to improve the sourcing and the article in general.  Or it could just be left alone, if no one is too very concerned.  I am certainly going to assume good faith that all the info in the article is believed to be fully accurate.


 * I wonder if the new edit is meant to correct the record a bit regarding Romanian Jews (and it would be interesting/nice if the relative numbers of Russian vs. Romanians could be provided, say), but a Wikipedia article is not the right place for a new record to be established. It needs to be published elsewhere, then can be reported here. In effect I gather the new assertions are informed/based on knowledge/facts/sources other than the cited document. Would it be appropriate to cite some other source about the Romanians or anything else added?  I certainly believe Rebecca Bender if they say the facts are a certain way;  the only issue is writing in Wikipedia-compliant way where we want to state what is the generally accepted knowledge, i.e. secondary and tertiary sources are appreciated more, and we want to avoid any new/original research (see wp:OR).


 * It is quite believable to me that the Russian and Romanian Jews would have similar facts that could kind of blur together. But we should look for other sources besides the Bender-written NRHP document about the history of Romanian Jews back in Europe, say.


 * To Rebecca Bender, as you are an original author on this topic, please do try to navigate the requirements for Wikipedia writing, which are different than for publication elsewhere. We want all the material to be sourced to written/published sources which could be verified by anyone else (Verifiability, not truth), and we don't want new facts asserted here that aren't backed up that way.  Primary sources can be cited but are to be used in limited ways (see wp:PRIMARY).


 * Overall, thank you for writing the original NRHP nomination and otherwise covering this topic. Please ask any questions or make suggestions here. --Doncram (talk) 18:02, 6 April 2018 (UTC)