Talk:Samuel B. Ruggles

Keep more material in lead
This content gives insight into the society of the day.Parkwells (talk) 19:24, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

WP Policy
Is to require citations, so that people know specifically where the facts come from. A list of sources is not enough - how do you determine the NY Times article is incorrect? What is the source for correct facts?Parkwells (talk) 19:40, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Looking at a list of canal commissioners, you see that he was NOT in office for 18 years. That's easy. Most of the lead which I deleted was either written factually wrong like "was elected a commissioner to the Erie Canal" or contained WP:Weasel words. Uncontroversial content does not need to be footnoted in short bios, since the same info is in almost all the sources, and it is not helpful to add a lot of footnotes in a text, like 5 times citing the obit. Only disputed dates or events, or unusual behavior or utterances, need to be sourced in footnotes. That's encyclopedic standard. Besides, the way you edited the article, the references were doubled, and then mentioned again in the sopurce list, making it three times the same thing, that is NOT helpful at all. The article should contain correct info, and it should remain READABLE. Nevertheless, edit as you see fit, if the article improves it is ok with me, if not I might re-edit later again. Kraxler (talk) 23:37, 23 December 2010 (UTC)