Talk:Mark Twain House

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mark Twain House article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Mark Twain House was one of the Art and architecture good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 23, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
July 22, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

National Register of Historic Places High‑importance

	National Register of Historic Places portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of U.S. historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.National Register of Historic PlacesWikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesTemplate:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic Places articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Architecture Mid‑importance

	Architecture portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Architecture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Architecture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ArchitectureWikipedia:WikiProject ArchitectureTemplate:WikiProject ArchitectureArchitecture articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Connecticut Top‑importance

	Connecticut portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Connecticut, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Connecticut on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ConnecticutWikipedia:WikiProject ConnecticutTemplate:WikiProject ConnecticutConnecticut articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Museums Low‑importance

	museums portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Museums, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of museums on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MuseumsWikipedia:WikiProject MuseumsTemplate:WikiProject MuseumsMuseums articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Historic sites Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Historic sites, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of historic sites on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Historic sitesWikipedia:WikiProject Historic sitesTemplate:WikiProject Historic sitesHistoric sites articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Breathe[edit]

This article is currently (February 20th, 2006) Under construction, so please give this article a little breathing room to be completed. Additions more than welcome! :)

Photos[edit]

The original photo was actually of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, not the Mark Twain House. I have replaced it with photos of the actual house. Coyoty 16:47, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great getting the pictures, could we just have one though? We technically can't have image galleries in articles, and I want to nominate this article for Good Article status soon. Thanks! Judgesurreal777 18:56, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you cite the restriction on galleries? As Rob says below, there are several articles that use them, and I thought it was encouraged to keep articles from looking fragmented. One case is the Willy Wonka article. In this case, however, I agree that the article doesn't need all the views on the page, and I've added a Commons link to the rest of them.

Coyoty 20:44, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here is where I first heard of it :) Judgesurreal777 01:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC) [[1]][reply]

Okay, what that means is that people can't use Wikipedia to host showcase galleries of their own work, as with Deviant Art or Elfwood. In the context of Wikipedia articles, as I was using it, "gallery" is a formatting method of organizing images related to the article. There are no restrictions on that type of gallery.

Coyoty 20:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Too bad the photos are all black and white. 192.132.64.3 (talk) 19:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

GA review[edit]

I actually see galleries in articles all the time; use sparingly, but see Niagara Falls. As for GA status, it's about the right size but the sections seem way too short. It may need to be restructured to have less sections. Not failing for now though, as that's a quick fix. —Rob (talk) 18:33, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All done, and copyedited for good measure :) Judgesurreal777 20:50, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did have to rewrite the intro, so I'll have another GA reviewer take a look at this... looks good to me though. —Rob (talk) 19:39, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was concerned about stability 41 edit in 10 days, 33 of them in one but that was in response to a previous review thats ok to me. Looks good too, Mark Twain House now has GA status, well done to all who have contributed to this article. Gnangarra 11:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great article![edit]

This really is a great article on a historic author's home, so I'm glad to see a lot of work has been put into it! I was wondering what people thought of breaking the article into further sections - maybe a separate section for the style of the house or architecture, or even subsections in the two main sections (just because they are so large). Thoughts? --Midnightdreary (talk) 20:00, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea! I'm glad someone else has also taken an interest in this article I wrote 2 years ago. Feel free to expand it, if we can do that and copyedit, replace those bottom two images, we may have a Featured candidate! Judgesurreal777 (talk) 20:35, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I gave something a try. Does this work, you think? And, yeah, we definitely could use more modern pictures! I wish I had an opportunity to get to Hartford again soon but I don't see that happening! --Midnightdreary (talk) 02:20, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I actually was there a couple weeks ago but, alas, they don't let you take photos inside the house. Some photos of the new welcome center might help but I didn't get any (in my disappointment). --Midnightdreary (talk) 17:15, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA Reassessment[edit]

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Mark Twain House/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

GA Sweeps: On hold[edit]

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing Sweeps to determine if the article should remain a Good article. I went through the article and made various changes, please look them over. I believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. However, in reviewing the article, I have found there are several issues that needs to be addressed.

"While in Connecticut, the family remarked "[the house] had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with."" A citation is needed for the quote. Do the same for "Twain had said "There ought to be a room in this house to swear in" and "It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.""
"Twain played with his children in the conservatory, pretending to be an elephant in an imaginary safari." This may be one of my weirdest GA review questions, but how often was he pretending to be an elephant? The sentence reads as if he was always doing this whenever he played with his children.
"This was known to have caused marked uproar among the northeastern Missouri intelligentsia." Address the "citation needed" tag.
~~Is File:Billiardsroom.jpg needed for the article? There are already several free images, including two of the interior. I don't think a non-free image is needed of the room.~~
"Restoration and preservation at the Mark Twain House helped bring the house and grounds back to the years between 1881 and 1891, when the Twains most loved the house." Did the Twains specifically say that they loved the house during this time? If so, it should quoted and it stated that they said so.
"The home today contains 50,000 artifacts: manuscripts, historic photographs, family furnishings, and Tiffany glass." This would benefit with a source.
"With the number of admissions leveling off around 53,000..." Is this total? Or monthly/annually? The other figures in this section should be clarified as well.
"The center is a $16.3 million, 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) facility that will house artifacts from the museum's collection that cannot now be shown in the house itself." "...that will..." Has the center been built yet? If so this should be updated. Clarify for the remaining sentences in the paragraph.
~~In the lead it is mentioned that Twain wrote many of his novels in the home. This isn't mentioned in the article, try and expand on this.~~ Other details are also not mentioned (such as 19 rooms). Assume that the reader may skip the lead and ensure all of the lead's details are included in the article somewhere.
The article has multiple dead links that need to be fixed. The Internet Archive can help.

This article covers the topic well. I will leave the article on hold for seven days, but if progress is being made and an extension is needed, one may be given. If no progress is made, the article may be delisted, which can then later be renominated at WP:GAN. I'll contact all of the main contributors and related WikiProjects so the workload can be shared. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 07:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not particularly invested in this article but I'll make a few edits in the next couple days. One point I'd like to make: I believe the billiard room image is important to the article and would continue to support its use, despite no free use alternative. The room is very indicative of the home, Twain, and is a significant "finale" to the tour for those who attend. It's a shame the quality is so low... --Midnightdreary (talk) 17:54, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I found and added a citation for "There ought to be a room ...". I also found one for "[the house] had a heart, ...", but since Midnightdreary had already removed the quote, I didn't bother to add it back in. If someone else thinks it's important enough to include, the citation can be found by doing a search for the quote at Google Books. --sanfranman59 (talk) 02:15, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to add it back in. I'm no expert on Twain or his house but a quick perusal of a couple works that discuss it make me uneasy about keeping this as GA right now. There's a lot of information missing and, perhaps more importantly, a fair amount of incorrect information. I fixed some of it but, due to my lack of expertise, I may not be able to identify all of it. One example is that Twain moved to Stormfield, a home built for him in Redding, CT. It actually was someone else's house, not built for Twain. That's just one example, and I note that it's in the lede but isn't mentioned anywhere else (the lede is a real issue on this one). I'm not yet confident that we can salvage this as a GA without extensive work. --Midnightdreary (talk) 02:44, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some progress was made this week in addressing the issues. I struck through the completed ones, but there are still some remaining. I will leave the article on hold for another week for the remaining issues to be addressed. If you need help with anything, let me know. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 21:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA Sweeps: Delisted[edit]

The article has been on hold for another week and no other improvements were made. As a result I have delisted the article as it still has a way to go before meeting the GA criteria. Continue to improve the article, addressing the issues above. Once they are addressed, please renominate the article at WP:GAN. I look forward to seeing the further improvement of the article, and don't hesitate to contact me if you need assistance with any of these. If you disagree with this review, a community consensus can be reached at WP:GAR. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Revising the structure of this article[edit]

Hi everyone! My dad, a Mark Twain scholar, has done a rewrite of this page which I'm helping him put on Wikipedia. Everything's cited and I'm making sure there's no original research, that none of the existing information gets lost, and so on.

Once I've been through the whole article, I'd hope all the issues currently keeping it from GA listing described below will also be resolved -- I've revised the intro already to his version as an example.

Is anyone adverse to a major revision of the structure of this page? The new outline would be...

Building the House
The First Floor
The Second Floor
The Third Floor
Leaving the House
After the Clemenses
Restoration
Recent history

Bencoland (talk) 20:25, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Mark Twain House. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.marktwainhouse.org/about/history.shtml
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.hannibal.net/twain/biography/
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.house.gov/larson/pr_001013.htm
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.aetna.com/foundation/news/articles/twain.htm
Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110707115856/http://alonzopotter.com/EdwardTuckermanPotter.aspx to http://alonzopotter.com/EdwardTuckermanPotter.aspx

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 15:31, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Mark Twain House. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 13:47, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]