Talk:Rockwood & Company shipping department fire

Curious about the stand-alone article
Hi. A few months ago I learned about this fire and the Brooklyn Eagle story about it. It led me to start Rockwood & Company specifically to cover the fire/chocolate flood. The thing is, I only found one contemporary report about it (the Eagle, and the more recent articles that just briefly mention it via the Eagle), so it seemed to make a lot more sense to include it in an article about the company. Bonus: turns out it was the second largest chocolatier in the US and an interesting subject itself. It looks like you only found one other source, the Standard Union (which is a good find -- I certainly would've included it if I managed to find it). But why start a separate article with that source? Kudos on finding the pictures, too, but again it looks like they're more relevant to the main article than the fire. Independent notability seems tenuous IMO, but I guess I'm biased.

A proposal: I don't want to get in the way of your DYK (I've been kicking myself for letting time run out on basically the same DYK hook), but after it runs, let's merge the two and bring it up to GA together. I've been meaning to come back to it, and I would be derelict in my duties as a Wikipedian if I didn't use these photos and the additional source, but I'm also content to wait/discuss. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 11:51, 18 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi Rhododendrites, thanks for getting in touch. I saw the List of non-water floods article listed in a Twitter post by Depths of Wikipedia (who posts extracts from some of our more unusual articles).  I saw the article you'd made on the company but thought there was more that could be said about the fire.  Happy to work with you on a GA for the company but don't think everything about the fire needs including; there's space for both articles and think it makes it over the notability line, though I tend to be more inclusionist nowadays.  I am still searching for more sources. The photos are from Commons:Category:Rockwood Chocolate Factory Historic District which also has others of the plant itself - Dumelow (talk) 12:05, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * [facepalm] for not finding the photos on Commons. With the second source, the main article would contain roughly (or nearly?) as much detail as this article because it's the most interesting thing about the company, and at least today the most notable thing about it, so as long as it's not just the one source, it seems like it merits its own subsection. It was the reason the article about the company exists, after all. Given there are only really two sources for the fire (the others really just repeat what those two say, unless I missed something), and given a subsection is warranted in the main article, a separate article just seems like a tough sell IMO. I'm not planning on initiating a merge discussion, but I do think that's the right call. And though I wouldn't be so gauche as to copy/paste content from this article to that one, I would be a bad Wikipedian if I didn't use the source/photos that are here to expand the other one. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 12:25, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Fun fact, btw: I learned about the chocolate flood because our Wikimedia NYC office space is in a coworking space that, it turns out, is inside the former Rockwood factory. Someone there mentioned a chocolate flood, so of course I had to learn about it and start an article that night. :) &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 12:29, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Rhododendrites, no worries, you are, of course, free to take whatever you like! Will take a look to see if I can find anything about the company as a whole - Dumelow (talk) 14:04, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Dollars and sense
These historical dollar conversions in general seem to hold little meaning. I live in a middle class suburb of a medium sized city and if my house burned down it would be over a million dollars in damage. It would make more sense to compare it to how much damage would be caused if a comparable structure burned down today. I imagine it would be well over the stated $1-1.5 million. 50.100.26.182 (talk) 11:54, 30 August 2022 (UTC)