Talk:Nikola Tesla/Archive 12

"Min-Gag"

 * Seifer notes Tesla may have also traveled on through Zagreb to a small village on the coast of the Adriatic Sea called "Min-Gag."

This is now referenced to a page number, but it's still totally weird because that's not a known place name, this combination of words is not something typically used in local toponymy, I couldn't find it anywhere. Can we actually reference this to something meaningful? --Joy (talk) 03:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * @StephenMacky1 thanks for removing this, but this now brings up the obvious question - is this Seifer (2001) source reliable for other claims, if we can't trust it for this? --Joy (talk) 10:57, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hello. Good question. I am unsure. If the information is covered by other sources and it does not contradict them, it could be reliable for the other statements. The part about him gambling is present in other sources too for example. The article might need a GAR though since it still has some unresolved issues. Overreliance on primary sources at some parts, unsourced content, as well as unreliably sourced content. StephenMacky1 (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah. @Jclemens was the reviewer back then, but @Laurdecl who was editing it seems to have gone idle since. I just noticed that I had noticed the same two years ago in Talk:Nikola Tesla/Archive 11. --Joy (talk) 13:27, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You can take it to GAR, if you ask me. Some of the issues could have been resolved easily and earlier, not in two years. I might help too if I'm free. StephenMacky1 (talk) 14:57, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * While I was a pretty involved GA reviewer in 2017, I really haven't kept up with the article since. It won't hurt my feelings if it goes to GAR, but thanks for the ping. Jclemens (talk) 15:32, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Tesla sources, as per WP:RS, varies in reliability from bunk/money grabs to scholarly content. The author in question, Seifer, seems to fall in the middle, He seems to be interested in the topic and therefore puts allot of time into continual researching. Problem is he tends to re-arrange that materiel to match some kind of preconceived narrative. So he is a bit more reliable for his sourced facts than for his conclusions. In this case, "Min Gag" a small coastal town along the Adriatic between Rijeka and Zadar, from the reaserch of ( Dr. Nikola Pribic?). Min Gag does not turn up but it may no longer have that name or its some form of translation. GAR is always worth doing. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:50, 27 April 2024 (UTC)


 * There's a database of former settlements in Croatia since before Tesla was born, publicly available for lookup at . The coast between Rijeka and Zadar is part of three modern-day counties (Primorsko-goranska, Ličko-senjska and Zadarska županija), and none of these seem to contain mentions of Min or Gag, which makes this more likely to be an error.
 * One thing that comes to mind is that maybe they meant to use the hyphen to point to some location between Nin and Pag. It's two typos, one consonant in each word (!), but conceivable because of a visual similarity of m and n and p and g esp. in some sort of cursive, and the relative vicinity of these two places. Obviously, we can't compose encyclopedia articles based on conjecture... --Joy (talk) 21:19, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Prodigal Genius

 * @Fountains of Bryn Mawr how would we assess the O'Neill (1944) source Prodigal Genius? The book's article says the author was a close friend of Tesla. Is it a primary or a secondary source? The article has 26 references to it right now. --Joy (talk) 09:34, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This is a published secondary source. Bilseric (talk) 11:45, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * O'Neill needs to be taken with a grain of salt. He, like Seifer, seems to be more reliable for dates/facts than for his conclusions. You can find various assessments of O'Neill. Cheney seems to think O'Neill was not all that close and his book reads more like he amalgamated Tesla's autobio, old articles, court documents, and snippets and claims from Tesla's birthday party announcements, which I assume O'Neill attended. Finding good RS on Tesla is hard, we really only have one academic historian of technology who wrote a book on Tesla, and that is W. Bernard Carlson. Sources get wonky fast once you look past him. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 23:41, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It still is a secondary source. Wiki guidelines can be found here . Author can do OR and that is often the case as not all within secondary sources is based in primary sources. In we feel some claims from O'Neill are too much, better confirm them with other sources. I can agree, good source on Tesla are hard to find, especially regarding the issues from the separated talk page which are still contested after so many years due to lack of sources. Bilseric (talk) 23:33, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

baptismal record / birth certificate
The early years section currently contains this picture and caption:



This seems like a remnant of some sort of a WP:SOAPBOXy nationalist edit war between this and the passport that keeps getting mentioned at /Nationality and ethnicity:

I'd say this is largely clerical information that is of little interest to the average English reader, mainly because they can't actually understand much of the text written on either of them.

The picture also squeezes the text because there's another few pictures there, of the birth house (which also isn't of huge interest, but at least it's a small landmark that a modern-day viewer may encounter in reality) and of Tesla's father.

Does anyone mind if the picture of the baptismal record is removed? --Joy (talk) 19:23, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Unreadable at thumb and not an illustration of something in text body so no real MOS:PERTINENCE. Worth deleting. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 19:36, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * If you feel it's argely clerical information or it queezes the text, I can agree. I, personally, am not noticing edit warring regarding this in the last several years...From that point of view, I would just leave it be. Bilseric (talk) 21:10, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Agree, remove it --ChetvornoTALK 21:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * U definitely mind. Putting it back. Spirit Fox99 (talk) 22:23, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, this message does not constitute an actual consensus-building contribution to a talk page. Your recent user contributions are all apparently very contentious, so I'm not sure what this is, but it sounds like more pointless trouble. --Joy (talk) 07:56, 9 May 2024 (UTC)