Template:Did you know nominations/Aaron Ayers, Henry Thomson, Eden George

Aaron Ayers, Henry Thomson (New Zealand politician), Eden George

 * ... that three people who at some point were all Mayor of Christchurch, Aaron Ayers, Henry Thomson and Eden George (pictured), have in common that they unsuccessfully contested the Christchurch South electorate in the ?
 * Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/World Naked Gardening Day
 * Comment: The first article has just been moved into mainspace and the other two have been expanded. Note that the 5 times expansion criterion for Thomson was met before I started introducing content that is licensed as Creative Commons. Further expansion of the George and Ayers articles will be ongoing over the next few days.

Created/expanded by Schwede66 (talk), Canley (talk). Nominated by Schwede66 (talk) at 20:04, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * ALT1 ... that Aaron Ayers, Henry Thomson and Eden George (pictured) have in common that they unsuccessfully contested the Christchurch South electorate in the, and that they at some point were all Mayor of Christchurch?


 * I don't know much about DYK, but I think the hook could be rewritten a bit. ALT1 is better; I would suggest a wording like ALT2 "... that Aaron Ayers, Henry Thomson, and Eden George (pictured) all unsuccessfully contested the Christchurch South election in the and were at some point Mayors of Christchurch?" Just my 2 cents. Keilana | Parlez ici 23:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your suggestion. I've added 'ALT2' to it.  Schwede 66  09:16, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol question.svg two sources don't strike me as reliable: and . The Christchurch City Council Cemeteries Database is questionable in my opinion, since every page there contains a disclaimer that the information may be inaccurate. The Ayers article cites this page for the date of his wife's death, but as far as I can tell there's no evidence that this was really his wife. --Carabinieri (talk) 16:12, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. I won't have time right now to respond to all the issues brought up, but I'll start and carry on tomorrow.
 * I'm not sure why the reliability of the rootsweb source is queried. That page states its sources, and the fact that it verifies (i.e. that Ayers arrived on the Gananogue in 1860) is also given in the other reference after the sentence. I've now gone to one of the sources quoted by the rootsweb page and added the original newspaper article to it.  Schwede 66  09:42, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Regarding the reliability of the canterburyphotography.blogspot.de reference, I assume that you think the word "blog" in the URL is the culprit. Ok, fair enough, that doesn't look good. But that guy's hobby is to research early Canterbury photographers, he has created an enormous amount of material about them, and I really value his work. It's simply that he uses blog to publish his research. I have mostly used this guy's website as a starting point for my own searches and some 60 other references later, I can't recall having found a single piece of information that he didn't get right. The Eden George article is more complete than the blogspot source (e.g. I have collated four children, whilst this particular source only lists two of them), but lack of completeness is something different than unreliability. Through my extensive work on the Eden George article, I have come to regard this person's work as reliable.
 * Regarding the Christchurch City Council's cemetery database, that they put a disclaimer on there is unsurprising, as this council is risk averse and it's a huge database with well over a million burials, so of course there will be mistakes. Any database of that size will contain mistakes. But if somebody then decides to put a disclaimer on one of those databases, does that make those databases with the disclaimer more questionable than those ones that haven't got the disclaimer? I simply don't share your concerns about this. But either way, there is only a single aspect in the three articles that comes from that database and isn't also confirmed through other sources, and you question that in your next point.
 * You query whether the person who died on 9 September 1927 is really Aaron Ayers' wife. Well, here, we will have to rely on the council cemetery database, as the three Christchurch newspapers that are available online at Paperspast (The Press (1861–1915), The Star (1868–1909), Lyttelton Times (1851–1862)) don't cover that period (and one could safely assume that there would have been at least a short notice on the mayoress' death). So what evidence do we have that the person is his wife? Well, she's got the correct name (including the middle name), it says in the reference that she had been in New Zealand for 67 years (which makes her immigration year 1860, which is the year they arrived), her age would have made her 18 at the time of an 1859 wedding (not unreasonably young) and, as it says in the article, she is lying in the grave next to Ayers (both are in block 30; he is in plot 85; she is in plot 84). Is that enough evidence?

Does the above address your concerns? I've struck out the original hook for clarity, as both ALT1 and ALT2 are better (with ALT2 being my favourite).  Schwede 66  19:15, 11 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but it does not. According to WP:RS: "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. [...] Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight." I'm not convinced that rootsweb or that blog meet this standard. As to Ayers' wife, your reasoning seems sound to me, but that's original research, in my book.--Carabinieri (talk) 12:43, 12 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol redirect vote 4.svg Ok, I've dealt with all these issues. I trust that taking a photo of a headstone is not regarded as original research.  Schwede 66  10:37, 13 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol confirmed.svgthing looks good now, to me at least.--Carabinieri (talk) 17:37, 18 May 2012 (UTC)