Template:Did you know nominations/Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal

Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal

 * ... that the best-selling biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, which created Earp as a "superman", omitted his common-law wife of 46 years after his widow threatened to sue the author?
 * Reviewed The Armada Service
 * Comment: :* ALT1 ... that the best-selling biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal created Earp's reputation as a "superman" in the Old West but the author later admitted he'd fabricated much of the story?

Created/expanded by Btphelps (talk). Self nom at 00:48, 16 April 2013 (UTC).

5X expansion: This is complicated, because about half of the expansion consisted of transfer of text from the Wyatt Earp article. However, the additional expansion beyond that would have pentupled the original, very short article's length. So I think it passes. Citations: Lots of citations. There are some errors that need to be fixed; I did one already. There's a foulup with one of the archiveurl's. Several of the citations are incomplete (Tefertiller - year, isbn; Gibbs - work; Kansas Historical Quarterly-page #'s; Ortega-newspaper). I couldn't check some of the books.google.com citations. The links take me to the book cover; for whatever reason, google isn't letting me see the actual pages cited. I assume good faith for these and for the citations without online access. Please put memorable phrases like "one of the first television moguls" into quotations when they're taken from your sources. Hook: I prefer the ALT1 hook; the original hook is too complicated. However, I'm not able to check the 2 citations to the hook's claim that the biography is "more fiction than fact". I did find, buried in the Kansas Historical Quarterly article, statements about Lake's "semifictional" biography. I also didn't find the source of the term "superhero"; the fact that it's in quotations suggests that the term was first used in one of your sources. Summary: Please work on the citations and make sure there's an easy way to verify the hook's claims. Easchiff (talk) 00:55, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I enjoyed this article, which is already of medium length.


 * Thanks for the review. Thought I had all the citations in place. Will follow up ASAP and see if I can resolve them. I don't believe the criteria for DYK includes checking the quality of all of the references, merely that the facts cited in the hook are supported by references. But I cleaned up those I found cpntained obvious errors. — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 22:06, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I couldn't recover the citation referring to Earp as a "Western superhero": I found in a Google search for "Stuart Lake Superhero" the following quote from page 334 of Tefertiller's book: "Stuart N. Lake created a flesh-and-blood superhero, and he did it so convincingly that the majority of his readers believed unquestioningly..." — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 22:20, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

My suggestions: (i) please fix the Goodman link if possible, or add a quote inside the reference so the reader knows what's on p. 95. (ii) revise how you use the Silva citation in a couple of places; Silva does not agree with the consensus about "more fiction than fact". (iii) Give an inline citation specifically to the quote from Rascoe. I presume that you're actually citing Schillingberg's summary of what Rascoe published in 1941. (iv) revise the last sentence in the lede to back up the hook and to better reflect the references. Perhaps something like "Many researchers have concluded that Lake's narrative is "more fiction than fact", and Lake himself apparently confirmed this in conversations and private correspondence." To Silva and Goodman, I'd add inline citations here to Schillingberg and to Waters to bulk up the "many researchers" claim. Thanks for writing this excellent article and for the DYK nomination. Easchiff (talk) 11:54, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Unable to find prior reference to "more fiction than fact", so supplanted that with "considered more fiction than history" from American Cowboy. — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 00:06, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Let me know if these corrections are sufficient or if you need anything more. — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 08:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This is a complex and important article. Can you try once more on references related to ALT1? I don't think the Lee Silva citation says what you claim: the actual quote seems to be that the book "in the last half century has been undeservedly lambasted as more fiction than fact". The citation to Goodman's book in the lede has a nonfunctional link, so I don't know what's on p. 95; google isn't letting me just look inside.
 * Thanks for the input. I'll see what I can do in the next couple of days. Is there a timeliness issue for DYK purposes? — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 20:28, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's a problem if you can do your revisions in a couple of days. Easchiff (talk) 00:48, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Changes made as requested. — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 20:46, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Symbol confirmed.svg ALT1 & article look good to me. Easchiff (talk) 02:21, 2 May 2013 (UTC)