Talk:Doc Adams

Early Life
Giants2008, I spoke to a descendant of Doc Adams who states that the last sentence of the first paragraph of that section is not correct. The passage reads: Researcher Gary O'Maxfield states that Adams was a baseball player during his time at Yale, saying the opportunity to play was one of the reasons he went to the university. The relative says she has read hand-written correspondence of Doc Adams showing that at the time he transferred from Amherst to Yale, baseball was not a consideration. Since you wrote before that this article is of great concern to you, you may want to investigate this. The relative spoke to Gary O'Maxfield, who agrees with her position, and promised to rectify the article. However, I don't see this happening; perhaps O'Maxfield is not interested in Wikipedia, or simply doesn't know how to document and perform a correction. Since you are a party of concern you may want to try to reach out to him.--Gciriani (talk) 23:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know Gary O'Maxfield and wouldn't know where to contact him. The best thing to do would appear to be removing the sentence from the article, which I just did. It's not a vital sentence, and even reliable sources can sometimes contain inaccurate material. Thank you for bringing the issue to light. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 20:10, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Official Website of Doc Adamas
Giants2008, I see that you deleted all the titles for the official website. I would at least leave "DANIEL LUCIUS “DOC” ADAMS, M.D." in it, because official website could be any website. If instead you don't feel like leaving any title, then leave the URL.--Gciriani (talk) 20:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * If you say an external link is an official website on a page. it's generally accepted that the link is a website for the person/organization that is the subject of the article. I don't think the readers will be confused by the current wording, and it's better than leaving a bare link. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 20:14, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you have a fair point. However, just acting as devil's advocate, the title of the article is different from the official web site. The article is Doc Adams whereas the official website is about Doc Adams Baseball. They overlap but are not identical subjects. I have tried to find a Wikipedia style or format guide for external links or official websites, but I haven't found anything yet.--Gciriani (talk) 21:29, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The style guideline for external links is at WP:EL. I don't believe it gives any advice on titling, but it's possible that I'm missing it in the wall of text typical of most Manual of Style pages. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 01:04, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link to the usage page; I'm learning as I consult these sources. It seems then, that according to WP:EL the web site is not official. One of the two criteria is that it has to be authorized by the person or entity, which it is not, because the article is about a deceased person. In the section WP:EL, it says: ' "Fansites", including everything from websites run by fans of a musician to a charitable organization supporting patients with a disease, even if they are endorsed or authorized by the subject, are not considered official websites'. So perhaps we have to change the name of the link. Another thing I was looking at is the Template:Official_website--Gciriani (talk) 13:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I finally got around to reviewing this issue further and saw on the bottom of the site's home page that the organization credited with the copyright is Doc Adams Base Ball. That seems as good a title for the link as any, and more accurate than what was there before. The official website template was added to this article a while back, but I was able to get the title to appear by adding a parameter to the template. Hopefully, this is enough to resolve the issue. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 17:17, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This is an old thread, but I wanted to note that I figured out how to remove the "official website" designation from Wikidata and just have an EL with a title here, and have made edits to fix this old issue. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 02:21, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Great Grandson Is incorrect
The Great-Grandson quote from the NYT is wrong. I know for a fact that Nathan Adams is a great-great-grandson: it could be also checked on Ancestry.com even though only members of Ancestry.com have access; then if one does the math for the year of birth, with Adams born in 1814 and the great-great-grandson born in 1967, one knows that great-grandson is impossible; finally, the referenced article by baseball historian John Thorn, quotes Nathan as the great-grandson of R.C.Adams, and R.C.Adams as the son Doc Adams, therefore Nathan is the great-great-grandson.--Gciriani (talk) 11:58, 19 October 2018 (UTC)


 * The source says great-grandson, and as long as the sentence is using that source, we say great-grandson. A little frustrating, perhaps, but that's how wikipedia works. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:12, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes the Courant says great-grandson. However, the next source at the next reference, at the end of the next sentence, directly contradicts it: "He was survived by his wife, two daughters, and two sons. Catherine, born May 3, 1866, married Dr. William L. Elkin, but they had no children. Mary W., born October 15, 1868, never married. Francis M. Adams, a son born June 7, 1871, drifted away from his family, and nothing is known of his later life. It is through Roger C. Adams, born May 1, 1874, that the family lineage persists. Additionally, in 1939 R. C. Adams wrote a memoir of his father. Unpublished in his day, it was printed in the New York Times on April 13, 1980, along with a letter to the editor by R. C. Adams's great-grandson Nathan Adams Downey." I don't see a guideline prescribing what to do when two sources contradict each other. I would go with the historian. The Courant's presumably is only re-sourcing the article, and therefore I'm going to delete it, and replace it with the original NYT article at their archives, which reads "great-great-grandfather".--Gciriani (talk) 17:06, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, now with the original NYT article referenced, we can change the paragraph, and disregard the Courant quoting the NYT.--Gciriani (talk) 17:23, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd say that may not be the best idea, since the NYT page is just a letter to the editor; as a group, this type of source is not overly reliable, particularly not for a featured article that should have high-quality sourcing per the FA criteria. Personally, I wouldn't consider the letter notable enough to mention in the article without a secondary source indicating that it was important in some way; the Courant story does this by saying that it helped to publicize Adams' contributions to baseball. The SABR biography adequately supports the change to great-great-grandson, so my inclination is to use that as a supporting reference instead of the NYT letter. There's no need to use a source of possibly shaky reliability if something stronger exists and can easily be added. I'll go do this now, if that's all right. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 01:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I support adding back the NYT page, not because of the letter, but because it contains the 1939 memoir of R.C. Adams about his father Doc Adams.--Gciriani (talk) 11:51, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I just added it in the external links section. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 02:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Why not as a direct reference? You are way more experienced than me, but I reviewed the guidelines External_links and moving the letter by R.C. Adams, on which a good deal of the research is based, from Reference to External Link, doesn't make sense to me--Gciriani (talk) 02:24, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The letter is a primary source, which as a group are generally considered less reliable than secondary sources. As the letter has been mentioned in at least one secondary source, and this is a featured article, it's better to cite that fact to the more reliable secondary source. One of the EL standards is "a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article", which the link has a good case for. I don't have a New York Times subscription, but it seems likely that link would have details not included in this article, and having the link in the EL section helps readers access the extra information if they want it. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 18:12, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The R.C. Adams letter is a primary source, but the printing of the R.C. Adams letter in the NYT is a secondary source--Gciriani (talk) 18:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)