Talk:N. Howell Furman

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 21:21, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

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• ... that analytical chemist N. Howell Furman was part of a secret team of Princeton scientists – including Einstein and John Archibald Wheeler – who "disappeared to Shangri-La" to work on the atomic bomb?
  • ALT1:... that N. Howell Furman led a secret squad of analytical chemists to process uranium oxide for the Manhattan Project?

Created by Tarselli (talk). Self-nominated at 10:58, 26 July 2020 (UTC).

• Date, size, refs, neutrality, hook (main BUT NOT ALT1), copyvio spotcheck, all GTG. For ALT1 the article does not claim he was a leader of the team, so it is rejected (unless article is expanded with the source for this; ping User:Tarselli). This is the nom's third DYK so QPQ review is not needed (but recommended per best practices) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:45, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Einstein to work on the bomb?

The Albert Einstein correctly states that Einstein was a pacifist. He refused to work on the atomic bomb. Whatever the Princeton Bulletin says, it can't be correct about this. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:14, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Hook reference is messed up? (and some others, too)

Sorry if this sounds rude, but how did this get through DYK nomination? There are significant issues here with some of the references, but which could potentially be resolved easily.

Most importantly, the hook needs to be sourced directly as per the rules. Now at first glance this seems to be the case here, but when you take a look at the actual reference, you notice that it just links to https://www.newspaperarchive.com/princeton-daily-bulletin, which does not resolve in my browser and defaults to just https://www.newspaperarchive.com. In any case, this does not link to an article where the fact is stated - I am quite sure the article could eventually be found, but atm the reader would have to do that themselves, which imo can't be acceptable. Moreover, the citation itself is really bad, as it cites "Bulletin" as last name and "Princeton" as first name of the author, when in fact that is most obviously just the title of the newspaper split in two. The same issue exists with several other references, basically everything from this edit here.

This isn't meant to be an accusation of anyone; and I am well aware that this does probably stem from a simple error or a failure of some automated citation tool, and was simply overlooked during DYK-check because the reference looks fine at first glance. But now it's visible from the mainpage and should be corrected, so @Tarselli or whoever else can find the proper link please correct the citations. I personally do not seem to be able to find them, alas, otherwise I would have refrained from writing this rant and just fixed it myself ;)

Respectfully, LordPeterII (talk) 19:46, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

(Whoops I linked to the diff wrong, I was referring to this edit here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=N._Howell_Furman&type=revision&diff=969590969&oldid=969505026 --LordPeterII (talk) 19:48, 17 August 2020 (UTC))

Hi LordPeterII - you bring up a fair point, and yes, you are seeing some citation issues for good reason. Newspaper Archive is one of WP’s recommended sources for people beyond the forty years or so that reliable internet sources exist. I applied for an account through WikiEducation and sourced articles about NHF from 1910-1950 or so.

Thing is, there are no better direct links of which I’m aware; the Princeton Daily Bulletin does not maintain them online for these dates. They are mimeographed at Newspaper Archive. Granted, I could still have done a deeper dive on sourcing the provenance of these references, but it’s quite difficult to figure out author, for instance, of this format of newspaper - I am happy to send you an example. It’s the 1930s style of “column news” with no bylines and few pictures.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and happy to help improve referencing as I can. Tarselli (talk) 09:00, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks Tarselli for clearing that up. I only stumbled upon the Wikipedia Library thing and related stuff very recently, and didn't remember that it could be involved here. So I guess the links are fine, if unsatisfying. The remaining problem (and what got me suspicious about the accuracy in the first place) are the wrongfully used attributes related to authorship. As per the cite news template, "first" and "last" are related to the person who wrote the article, not the newspaper (that would be the field "work", which you used correctly). So in order to avoid confusion, I would recommend just leaving these out if no author is stated, or using the suggestion on the template (|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->). Thus, if you indeed can not identify the authors of these articles, I would remove the name fields and replace them with the "staff writers" comment.

It's otherwise a nice article and definitely a cool hook btw! Otherwise I would not even have clicked that and landed here :)

--LordPeterII (talk) 11:48, 20 August 2020 (UTC)