Talk:Box 13 scandal

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hcsimmon.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Edit for class

I am editing this page as part of a class project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/University_of_Mississippi/Writing_with_Wikipedia_(Fall_2016) I created this page because I saw a need for the page because it was on the requested articles page of Wikipedia. I believe that my edits are within the guidelines of the editing community, but welcome feedback either here on this discussion page or on my talk pageHcsimmon (talk) 17:02, 18 October 2016 (UTC).

Who is Adams?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.236.24 (talk) 01:27, 9 April 2019 (UTC) 

I went ahead and added adams name here Jakesyl (talk) 04:08, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Notability

There should be no question about the notability of this topic. The Box 13 scandal was documented in extensive detail by Robert Caro in his book "Means Of Ascent". Chuck Todd specifically addressed the topic during a May 8, 2019 podcast discussion with Caro (available on Spotify), attesting to the enduring interest and importance of this topic. The scandal was the primary factor in Lyndon Johnson's election to the Senate, a terribly significant event given 1) Johnson's extraordinarily consequential term as one of the most influential Majority Leaders of the Senate in American History, and 2) Johnson's subsequent ascendancy to the Vice Presidency and Presidency, based on his Senate record. This topic absolutely rates its own article. Porterhse (talk) 18:25, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing

It looks like two of the four sources for this article (NY Times and Washington Post) took information directly from [2], released at around the time those articles were published. More independent sources needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdf7 (talk • contribs) 22:36, May 22, 2020 (UTC)

Stage Play

In the 1980s or 1990s, a community theater, College of the Mainland Community Theater, presented a one-act play on this topic, probably called "Box 13". It was done with a very stark stage setting consisting of several gray boxes on which speaking characters sat or stood. College of the Mainland is in Galveston County, outside Texas City, Texas. If anyone can provide better detail, please add it. 108.73.53.150 (talk) 02:03, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Additional Detail and Wyatt Source

A number of people have reverted a valuable edit to this page that adds a lot of detail to this scandal and corrects an incorrect timeline of events.

Let's discuss what is objectionable in this edit and get to the bottom of what can be changed to preserve the beneficial additions. Reverting to a inferior, less detailed version of this article is not an acceptable solution imo and from what I see the grounds on which this was done are nonsensical. (Ljaatx2022 (talk) 00:47, 21 June 2022 (UTC))

Thanks for initiating discussion. My first complaint is minor: section headers should be in sentence case, with the first word capitalized.

My second complaint is that a bunch of apparently unreferenced material has been inserted, along with a bunch of material based on poor sourcing. Any paragraph lacking a citation is suspect. Any new material placed in front of an existing citation is suspect. The poor sourcing includes in this edit a YouTube video by actor Bill Kalmenson which you misrepresented as an AP news item, and some stuff about Hamer that was originally added in 2019 by User:Billmckern to the article 1948 United States Senate election in Texas, based on a blog post by a little-known firearms lawyer named Mark S. Knapp. The Knapp source is colorful and fun, but it should not have been introduced by Billmckern because blogs are considered unreliable unless the writer is a known expert on the topic, for instance Leonard Maltin had a fine blog about film criticism. One of the cited sources is a self-published book by Frederica Burt Wyatt and Hooper Shelton, printed in 1976. Only six libraries carry the book, according to WorldCat—all of them in Texas. To me it looks like you drew far too much from Wyatt–Shelton, or pulled stuff from the 1948 Texas election article.

The main problem I have here is that you are adding far too much detail in order to supply color and context. I'm a big fan of color and context, but the sourcing isn't good enough. More importantly, if you keep going in this direction, the Box 13 article will be a duplicate of 1948 United States Senate election in Texas. I am seriously considering a merge request to have everything here merged back into the 1948 article. Binksternet (talk) 02:00, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree that this topic should be merged into the 1948 senate election article. I'll save the argument about Mark Knapp's expertise on Frank Hamer for another day.

Billmckern (talk) 02:15, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I concur that this is a good merge opportunity.

My attempt here was to take some of the most colorful, interesting information about 1948 election and provide sources that I've encountered in my research at the TX State Archives. The 1948 election page also has weak sourcing (including that Youtube video that I and another editor resorted to for a newspaper clipping that has been elusive to find on the web) and relies almost entirely on Caro's (well-respected) research.

Perhaps the best way for this to be resolved is a merge followed by some thoughtful edits to the 1948 Election page to add more varied sources and some of the new info that I've tried to add here to the extent it is not already discussed on that page.

I apologize for the lack of courtesy I showed on my edit comments -- I'm new to Wiki and was using what can be called traditional internet etiquette (or lack thereof) but glad to learn that is not tolerated here. (Ljaatx2022 (talk) 03:48, 21 June 2022 (UTC))