Talk:David O. Dodd

Aristotle reference
It's really gotta go. It's just somebody's personal website. &mdash; NRen2k5, 00:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It has been removed and replaced with a reliable source that contains the same information. I suspect the information on the personal website came from there ... they are very similar. Truthanado (talk) 00:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

GA failure
I have had to fail this article at GAN, not because I don't think it has the potential to be a good article. I just think that what needs to be done to bring it to GA standard will take a while, certainly more than seven days. I would be very pleased to see the article eventually renominated, if the points below can be addressed.

The main problem I had is that there are so many loose ends that it seems as though only about half of the article has been written. There is a whole lot of stuff missing that we (the readers) needs to know if we are to make proper sense of this story. The following is a list, not necessarily exhaustive, of questions that need attention:-


 * What was the nature of the business that Dodd's father sent him to Little Rock for?
 * This has been added to the article


 * Who was Mary Dodge - an old or a new acquaintance?
 * Unknown ... some info about Dodd and his popularity with girls has been added to the article


 * Why did Dodd visit the Dodge home?
 * This has been added to the article


 * Were the Dodges thought to be implicated, and if so, why were they merely sent to Vermont while Dodd was put on trial for his life?
 * This has been added to the article


 * What defence did Dodd put up at his trial? Did he explain how he came to be carrying messages in morse code about Union troop strengths. Did he admit they were his and that he'd sent them, or claim they were planted, or what? How did he plead? Was he legally represented?
 * This has been added to the article


 * How, if at all, did Dodd explain the Derringer found on him? Was this held against him, or was it acceptable - there was a war going on, after all.
 * What was the significance of the parcel found "between his shirts"?
 * What was his family doing while all this was going on? Were they suspects? Was his father, who had sent him to Little Rock in the first place, questioned?
 * Who were the character witnesses that testified for him?

That's enough for the moment. Please let me know if anything is not clear. Brianboulton (talk) 23:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * (This is being posted on the article's talk page as well as on the reviewer's talk page.) As the one who started this article, I appreciate your taking the time to review it. I was flattered that the article was nominated for GA status. I will try to address your questions, although it is difficult to find verifiable sources for the level of detail you are asking about. Having been involved in some GA reviews previously, I would be curious how you rate the article using the six criteria in Good article criteria. Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 00:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your comment, and I apologise for not including the following criteria list in my original review.


 * Well-written, etc: Marginal fail. It's not badly written but the lead is not in accordance with MoS guidelines
 * Verifiable: Pass
 * Breadth of coverage etc: Fail. This is the main area of concern - as indicated, too much is presently left out of the story.
 * Neutral: Pass
 * Stable: Pass
 * Images: So-so. As you have the only confirmed photograph of Dodd there probably aren't any other specific images you could use, but you could consider brightening the article with some background stuff (Civil War, maps etc?). I wouldn't make this a GA pass-fail issue, though.

So what it amounts to is writing a proper lead, and dealing with the points previously posted in order to provide a more complete story. It may be necessary, where the details asked for are simply not available, to say things like: "The exact nature of this business is unknown", or: "The contents of these documents have not been recorded" - these are of course examples, not suggestions. I imagine, however, that at least some of the key missing details are available somewhere, and will be interested to see how the article develops. Brianboulton (talk) 11:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I am trying to improve the article by addressing the GA review comments above. As I find and add things, they are added in italics after the appropriate comment. Everyone is welcome to help with this. Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 00:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Dodge-y age
In the intro, it says Mary was 15. Then later on, it says 16. Which is it? Clarityfiend (talk) 14:12, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091204232213/http://www.southernheritage411.com:80/truehistory.php?th=086 to http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=086
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080211213430/http://www.lrsd.org:80/schoolindex.cfm?sccode=32 to http://www.lrsd.org/schoolindex.cfm?sccode=32

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External links modified
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Reliability tag
I've tagged the article for reliability. The article heavily relies on a pro-Confederate website (which has since been deleted and now exists solely on the Internet Archive). Many of the other sources cited are of questionable reliability or are explicitly written in favor of Dodd. The problems with these sources have greatly impacted the neutrality of the article. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree.
 * The Southern Heritage 411 page no longer goes to the correct page. Instead of "Southern Heritage: Boy Hero of the Confederacy", it goes to "UNDERSTANDING THE CAUSES OF THE UNCIVIL WAR", written by an real estate broker and amateur historian. The cited article doesn't appear on that site any longer. Even the Internet Archive goes to a different page. The "Boy Hero" article doesn't show up elsewhere either. The site itself is owned by Dewey Barber of Dixie Outfitters. and appears to be connected to H.K. Edgerton, who works as a pro-Confederacy activist.
 * The other main source was hosted on a school website. The same unsigned bio also appears at another pro-Confederacy site, which may be the original source. It hosts many bios written in a similar style, all of them uncited and unsigned. Its "Purpose" page declares that it exists to celebrate Dixie.
 * Let's just remove these biased, poor-quality sources and stick with the good sources that are already being used in this article. Mobi Ditch (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Checking the history. The sources were used extensively by the original author, . I'm pinging them in case they want to weigh in before the citations are removed. Mobi Ditch (talk) 19:18, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * As one of the original contributors to this article, I have no issue with tagging links that no longer work as dead links, as the community does on other Wikipedia articles. I'm not sure if deleting such links is appropriate since they were once deemed acceptable by the Wikipedia community, evidenced by the fact that this article was nominated for good article status. We also must wonder if the disappearance of some of these links is related to the recent fervor by some to downplay or perhaps even erase memory of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, which some consider an attempt at rewriting history. Truthanado (talk) 23:07, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying. It doesn't look like the article achieved "Good Article", though the reviewer doesn't seem to have commented on the sources directly.
 * "Link rot" is a problem with websites of all kinds, especially with the free hosted sites that used to be common. In many instances the pages can be recovered using the Internet Archive. But even if we can see someone's personal web page, the standards at WP:RS mean that self-published sources by non-experts are not sufficient.
 * To add to the confusion, this source contains a lot of the same text as this source, the latter crediting it to The Civil War Quadrennium by William O'Donnell. So that may be a good source (it's already included under "Further Reading") to replace the school page.
 * Anyway, there are some pretty solid looking sources so we'll struggle through! Mobi Ditch (talk) 00:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)