Talk:Styles Hutchins

Original research concerns
Hi. I noticed recently undertook a major expansion of this article. Thanks for all your work (and especially for finding an image to include! :). However, I have some concerns that it may be partially original research and synthesis. I don't have access to many of the sources used, but especially the "Inconsistencies and Contradictions" strikes me as being potentially problematic. For example, it seems like the statement that "This is at least partially the fault of Hutchins himself, who as an old man in 1937, 1943, and 1946 told inconsistent stories about his past to a series of newspaper reporters" is unsupported – I think that to include an entire section discussing inconsistencies, we would need reliable sources actually discussing them as inconsistencies, and I'm not sure whether they actually do. Similarly, we'd need a very good source to be able to state that "early life, education, and early employment is riddled with, inconsistencies and contradictions, some of which have been widely repeated", given that the sources repeating those claims include some of the most reliable ones currently in the article, namely the Tennessee encyclopaedia one and the in-depth biography of Hutchins in "This Honorable Body". Because of these concerns, I will comment out that section (and potentially some other OR-y parts of the text), pending discussion here. Womump, could you comment on whether claims in that section are supported by secondary sourcing, and to what extent? Best, Blablubbs | talk 15:46, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello Blablubbs-- this is just to let you know that I've seen your note and will be in touch as soon as I've thought through your comments. Thanks! Womump (talk) 05:28, 26 January 2021 (UTC)Womump


 * Thanks, I look forward to your reply :). On another note, I'm currently working through Curriden's "Contempt of court" and plan on expanding the article with the things I find there. Since it looks like we're both going to work on expansion, I think it makes sense to coordinate a little, especially with regard to structuring the article. Would you be opposed to going back to a chronological structure and introducing subsections for different episodes of his life (potentially with a separate "private life" section)? I assume that discussion of his legal work is going to end up being a major part of this article, so it might make sense to not have it at the bottom. We should probably also standardise the citation style; the article originally just had bare links, which I converted to CS1 style templates with named refs and rp to prevent reference duplication. Given CITEVAR, the good CS1 support in the visual editor (aside from the way it names references by default – I've gone on a renaming spree) and the fact that there are lots of online sources at play, I think it makes sense to stick with CS1 (and convert the bare references that are currently in the article). I'm not entirely opposed to switching to a different citation style if there's a good reason to do so, though. Best, Blablubbs | talk 15:35, 26 January 2021 (UTC)