Talk:Porcellian Club/Archive 1

Redirect to Final club?
Is there a good reason for me not to make this a redirect to Final club? -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 07:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Amusing Quotation
"I remember a sophomore, a very nice Porcellian boy—they seemed to be the most fragile—whom Cloke saw across the room at the Casablanca and apparently liked. He got his attention just by focusing on him, and then he walked across the room very slowly, snapping his fingers, click, click, click, and finally he got right up to him, and the boy fainted! He was on the crew and a big jock "

from Edie: An American Biography, online at http://poetryfoundation.org/features/feature.onculture.html?id=177974

Present Members
If one knew the current club membership, a matter of nontrivial public interest, how could one get it into the article without violating No original research and Citing sources policies? -anon 16:01, 7 November 2006

The only way would be if his name was published in a Club Directory. 70.22.238.123 18:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Source citations needed for members
A specific source citation is needed for each member. What's needed, per the verifiability policy, is a reference to a published source meeting WP:RS which says that the person involved was a member.

There are several reasons why simply linking to a Wikipedia article won't do. Basically what it boils down to is that the policy is that a Wikipedia article cannot be cited as a source for a fact in another Wikipedia article. For one thing, Wikipedia articles change. For another, as spot-checking shows, it is very often the case that the cited article may not even state, much less provide a reference for, the fact that is supposedly being supported. For example, the article on Paul Nitze does not mention Porcellian. (In fact, neither do the articles on Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Everett, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.... And of course it is not enough for the linked article to mention it. If it does provide a source citation for the person's being a Porcellian member, that citation should be copied into the Porcellian article.

Any persons for which there is no verifiable source citation, to a reliable published source, showing that they were Porcellian members, should eventually be removed from the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

As for Louis Agassiz Shaw II, it's a potentially verifiable fact (though I haven't looked up the poem myself, but I'll take the NYT's words for it) that Lowell wrote a poem containing the words "'Bobbie,' Porcellian '29, a replica of Louis XVI, without the wig --redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale, as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit and horses at chairs." I'm guessing that the identification of this person with Louis Agassiz Shaw II is made in Alex Beam's book, Gracefully Insane, which I haven't read. But it needs to be made clear that this is a case of "verifiability, not truth." Anyone who cared to write fiction satirizing a Boston Brahmin might well describe them as having been a member of Porcellian, as it happens to be the only final club most people outside Harvard have ever heard of. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:21, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I made another Google Books search. "Porcellian" gets several hits in various books. Douglass Shand-Tucci, Harvard University, Princeton Architectural Press, 2001, contains sections on all the clubs at Harvard (the pages listed in the search result list with the comment "[Sorry, this page's content is restricted]" seem actually to be available). Theodore Roosevelt is mentioned as a member in several books, and the club is also mentioned in his own letters in Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles 1870 to 1918 (2005). u p p l a n d 14:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Plagairism
The contents of portions of this article are plagiarized from Reference dot com. Entire paragraphs carry not a single revision over the original, which has been lifted in its entirety. (update) I see that in the last 48 hours someone has taken the trouble to source the Porcellian "Membership criteria" section, but that doesn't make it any less a whole-cloth steal from Reference dot com.
 * Actually, Reference dot com derives it's information from here. That's why it says "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" right below the title. So does Answers dot com, for that matter. It's the whole free license thing, therefore no problem. Also, please sign your posts with four tildes (like this - ~ ). Thanks. -Ebyabe 13:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Unintententially funny quotation from that 1901 book...
, p. 171: "Small as the membership has been, the roll of graduates shows many of the most famous of the Sons of Harvard, including Wendell Phillips, Channing, [Joseph] Story, [Edward] Everett, Prescott, Adams, Palfrey, Charles Sumner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and John Lothrop Motley." Online at Google Books

"At that time, a number of intimate friends were in the habit of meeting in each other rooms on alternate Fridays for social intercourse."

Well, it does read a little strangely to third-millennium ears, doesn't it? Dpbsmith (talk) 14:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Reads funny merely to the uneducated. 70.22.238.123 18:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Joseph P. Kennedy blackballed
Recently added. I'm moving it here as unreferenced:
 * Harvard graduate Joseph P. Kennedy was also blackballed from the Porcellian Club.

Interesting, would be nice to have in the article if referenced. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, found one. Reinserted. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:08, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Porcellian and the Civil War
it would be helpful for someone - perhaps a current member of the Club - to continue the research into the Porcellian members who served in the Civil War. The Confederate names are easy to come by, less so the Union names which require going through the entire list of 1024 Union Army members. Perhaps the club has its own index?--HansDieterUlrich (talk) 18:42, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I had been building out this section by carefully researching the history of club members in the Civil War, however some one of the Wikipedia editors simply erased everything for no apparent reason other than they didn't feel it was important enough. In any other context, a command rank officer in a major war would be a notable person; as would a key munitions supplier - Adolf Krupp comes to mind. However, this editor simply erased everything and frankly I had not anticipated that such a carefully researched piece of work would simply be erased. I don't have the necessary whatever it is to engage in whatever it is people on Wikipedia do when something like this happens. So a piece of research this carefully crafted will have to be pursued by someone else. I don't have notes and drafts to re-draft with so I would point you to the sources cited in the many footnotes. It is a small miracle anything gets done on Wikipedia with such a disorganized system.--HansDieterUlrich (talk) 08:13, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi there. First, I'm refactoring your comments to put them at the bottom of the page. As the talk page header notes, new discussions start at the bottom, and comments that are added are added at the bottom, too. Anyway, you're right to note that context matters. Wikipedia is not a place to document every single person who participated in a war, even if they all have in common a connection to one particular club at one particular university. If these people are notable, then they are perhaps deserving of special mention in the article's lists. But listing every person, even those of the rank of major and above, would make the list unwieldy and the article unreadable. If you're curious about notability in the Wikipedia context, there's a Wikipedia page on that here. It's not exactly the same thing as what I'm arguing for here, but I think it's a good bit of guidance to follow: if someone is notable enough to deserve his or her own article, then that person is probably notable enough to be listed in the article. I don't mean to short-circuit your work, but I think you're just sort of generally misunderstanding what's worthwhile to be included here. Like I said in the comment I put on my own talk page, I think adding prose about Porc members' contributions to the Civil War as a whole is probably interesting stuff that could merit a place in the article. But individual members just aren't that important, I'm afraid. Esrever (klaT) 21:56, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Civil War section
Appears way too inside Harvard to interest anyone but a scholar of the American Civil War. Suggest immediate removal of section. 127W111 (talk) 18:56, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Civil War section
Appears irrelevant to have such a section. Even Civil War buffs might ask why include the section, unless several members killed each other in battle or when in hand to hand combat recalled one another and ceased hand to hand combat.

I suggest removal. 127W111 (talk) 21:02, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Clubhouse Photo
There is a picture of the Porcellian at http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/cba/m.html, listed under the heading 1320-1324 Massachusetts Avenue. The direct link is http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/cba/images/massachusetts1320_870905.jpg. -anon

There are pictures of the interior in the centenial book which is somewhere online. 71.243.1.159 (talk) 22:40, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Admitting Women, and the recent news headlines
Welp, the club just told the media they fear they would rape female members, or be accused of it, or something. Shall this be added to the article? https://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=dxGD9h81XftuK6MoJysS-szl_FwlM&q=porcellian+club&lr=English&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUgLCsvI3MAhVQw2MKHQohCcgQqgIIKDAA
 * That's a gross mischaracterization of what the club's president said. He said that they have zero sexual assaults now because they're all-male and have no guests on the premises. Adding female members could only increase sexual assaults. I would say that the statement probably does merit inclusion in the article, given that it's the first time the club has gone on the record in 200-plus years. Esrever (klaT) 14:42, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Removing two unsourced entries
I'm removing these two names of notable members of Porcellian, because no sources have been cited. They can be reinserted by anyone who cares to find a verifiable source citation stating that they were members. The sources would of course have to meet the reliable sources guideline and be published sources, i.e. not insider information or internal Porcellian records. Given the prominence of Porcellian and the people involved, this shouldn't be terribly difficult. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Benjamin Curtis - Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, author of dissent to Dred Scott v. Sanford
 * Paul Nitze - Presidential advisor, diplomat, foreign policy strategist, Secretary of the Navy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and co-founder of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)


 * Both entries have been sourced and footnoted HansDieterUlrich (talk) 18:42, 4 January 2015 (UTC)