User talk:MountainDogTime

April 2020
Hello, I'm Mr.Sarcastic. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions to Settlement school have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse. Thanks. Mr.Sarcastic (talk) 15:03, 15 April 2020 (UTC)


 * In your edit summaries on Settlement school, you indicate that the sources are no longer available and your edits should not be undone. But in at least some cases, archive copies are available.  Is there some objection to fixing these links to point to the archive copy, and if so, for what reason?  It is pretty standard practice that dead links are "rescued" by providing archive links.  If a citation is removed without providing a replacement, then the supported claim is properly subject to being removed.  Are you suggesting the information that these citations had provided is actually invalid (as opposed to the link just not working)? Fabrickator (talk) 17:03, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Fabrickator - this not an instance of broken links; rather, the materials are no longer available. They were removed from our collections sometime prior to 2013 and no record was left as to where the were relocated or if they still exist. So the citation points to archival material that is no longer in the collection it cites, and the location of this archival material is unknown.


 * MountainDogTime - Then how is it that I have found this excerpt from the "Insider & Outsider" source:

The first rural settlement school is generally considered to be the Log Cabin Settlement located in Asheville, North Carolina. Established in September, 1894, the Log Cabin Settlement was the idea of a Vassar College graduate, Susan Chester, who had learned "settlement ways" from early urban settlements in the North East. The mission of this first urban settlement, as described by Chester, was "to co-operate with a mission chapel and district school in the neighborhood, to revive the weaving industry, and to provide a good library for the community."
 * Fabrickator (talk) 19:02, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

This is not to say that materials that might be from these sources may have been online elsewhere. The citation is still incorrect in that these are not in Ramsey Library's Special Collections at UNCA and have not been for at least 8 years. It misleads researchers who contact us looking for this material.


 * MountainDogTime - I don't think it's reasonable to demand that these archived copies not be linked to from anywhere on the internet. If you want to avoid some of the inquiries you're unhappy about receiving, I would suggest arranging for the Ramsey Library web site to display a notice about the lack of being able to provide any further information when any url referring to the "settlement school" directory is accessed. Of course, it may be an embarrassment that this material has been lost, but it's no reason to "quash" what remnants of the collection remain available through archived copies of pages on the web site. Fabrickator (talk) 00:18, 16 April 2020 (UTC)