User talk:Cullen328/Sandbox Ansel Adams

I've only been an occasional contributor to the Ansel Adams article, and won't address each specific comment. A few general thoughts:

 I agree with many, perhaps most, of the comments, especially those about statements that need support (or are unsupportable).

In some cases (e.g., asking for something more specific than the Western Addition) may be asking a bit much (how many other biographies of this length give the ICBM address?). Of course, the information may be easily at hand in Alinder, and including it won't hurt.

I agree that Adams appears to have well established his claim to Moonrise decades before the analyses by Elmore or di Cicco. I seem to recall some “controversy” resulting from Elmore's initial (and incorrect) date, but cannot place the source and honestly doubt that it had much merit. I forget exactly what Alinder had to say about this, but I fail to see how di Cicco's correct date could have done anything more than confirm that Adams was correct in asserting his claim to the image. Without support, I don't think the current statement can stand.

I understand your concern with relying too heavily on accounts by Adams and Alinder, but I think it should be obvious that the citations document the source of statements rather than their accuracy. A good example is Alinder's refutation of the account of the making of Moonrise in U.S. Camera 1943 annual; for several reasons, some of which I've mentioned on Talk:Ansel Adams, I tend to believe that earlier story. Perhaps where facts are disputed, we could make clear that “So and so said ...” (as I tried to do with Moonrise), but I think in most cases it's clear that we're trusting the author. I agree that it would be nice to have additional support from more disinterested sources, but for much of what's in the article, that may not be an option. Not long ago, the article was almost completely unsourced, and the citations of Adams and Alinder are much better than nothing. Eventually, perhaps some other sources can be added.

I think the Notes and References sections are correctly titled and consistent with Wikipedia practice as well as that in many other style guides; they've recently be discussing these titles under Wikipedia talk:Citing sources. Though some styles use Bibliography (e.g., Chicago footnote style), it's potentially confusing; many (e.g., Chicago) used it to mean works cited, but others use it to mean what's commonly titled Further Reading in Wikipedia. I've occasionally seen Sources, but offhand I can't think of a recent example. I think we should distinguish between works actually cited (in most cases, with a page number) and Further Reading (which currently doesn't exist, but into which I would put general references that lack page-number citations). 

The notes could be cleaned up a bit for consistency, ensuring that every reference is last name/first name and alphabetized, and formatted consistently. Most notes and references now use templates, so it probably should stay that way, though the conversion was done without prior discussion and consensus as required by WP policy. The few discursive footnotes (most of which I added could be put in a separate section, though it hardly seems worth it. I'll take responsibility for moving the references for my notes to the References section. 

JeffConrad (talk) 00:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)