Talk:James Longstreet

Well-sourced material being forcibly excluded from this article

Under the guise of objections about trivial style and format objections, an editor is attempting to prevent the following well-sourced material from being added to the article:

• Longstreet had started buying property there in 1875 – including a farm with vineyard and orchard and a newly built hotel, which would be run by his son, Garland.

• He served briefly as deputy collector of internal revenue for Georgia and Florida, and as postmaster of Gainesville.

• Longstreet was appointed by President James Garfield as U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Georgia, an office he held from June 1881 until he was asked to resign by Chester A. Arthur due to Republican Party factional politics. He stepped down in July 1884, but not before he vigorously defended his administration of the office to a Department of Justice committee investigating charges of corruption and malfeasance brought up by his political opponents.

• interrupted his political career – he continued to seek public office but did not succeed in doing so

• In 1897, at the age of 76, in a ceremony at the governor's mansion in Atlanta, Longstreet married 34-year-old librarian and journalist Helen Dortch.

• Longstreet is remembered in his adopted hometown of Gainesville, Georgia, {Longstreet was neither born nor grew up in Gainesville, he moved there as a adult, after living in New Orleans after the war]

Other grammatical and stylistic adjustments, which improved the writing were also rejected by thus editor, were also reverted. It is my opinion, based on their editing history, that they are expressing WP:Ownership feelings by blocking material that they did not add, based on a source they are apparently unfamiliar with (Elizabeth R. Varon (2023) Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South).

Their editor's latest edit reverting this material is here. This information is obviously relevant, and the source -- which was written by an academic historian and which won the American Battlefield Trust Prize for History, is clearly an WP:RS. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:17, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I've said this now on multiple places, but I'll say it here in the hope that maybe you'll listen. You adding sourced content to the article is not my main concern, even though I view some of the content as unnecessary. Here are the primary problems. You have been adding new citations in the middle of text cited to other sources while not adjusting the original citations, therefore destroying source to text integrity. In one place, you added content that was not backed up by the citations in the article while not adding a new citation. After I called your attention to this error, you added a new citation, but placed it in the middle of text already cited to the other two sources, thereby corrupting the original citations. You altered a perfectly fine reference section and have refused to explain your reasons, which goes against MOS:STYLEVAR. You adjusted paragraphs in a way that leaves numerous one-sentence paragraphs alongside much longer paragraphs, which I find aesthetically and stylistically problematic. Some of your edits have also been sloppy. You moving citations around and breaking up paragraphs caused the final sentence of one paragraph to be without a citation, whereas it previously had one. (You have since fixed that issue after I pointed it out.) I was wrong. You didn't fix it. The final sentence of the third paragraph under "Reconstruction era" is still missing a citation due to your careless editing. Display name 99 (talk) 15:05, 11 August 2024 (UTC) A more recent edit refers to "Teddy Roosevelt," but that was not his actual name and there is no link. You also left two spaces between paragraphs at one point. It is not clear what the reason for most of these changes is, and you have continued to revert rather than stop and explain them.

The correct path forward, in my view, would be to restore the article as it was before you began editing and from there re-add some of the content that you want included while respecting the integrity of the citations already in the article. Display name 99 (talk) 13:11, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

References

• Let me re-state the obvious: if the style questions are your concern, then do not delete legitimate well-sourced material from the article. Instead, focus on those "problems" (which they are not) and leave the new material alone until you have a consensus from discussion on this page to delete it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:45, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Once more, you refuse to address my criticisms, which have now been clearly articulated on the article talk page. I do not question that the material that you added was well-sourced, but even that had problems insofar as the placement of the citations, as I explained. It is not my job to seek consensus. Rather, per BRD, if an editor makes changes that are reverted, they are the one who are required to have consensus before restoring their content to the article. Furthermore, it is not my job to pick apart your changes to separate the 5% good from the 95% bad. Because of all this, and because you have once again not attempted to address my concerns, I will be changing the article to its previous version. I am willing to begin from there on working to restore some of the content, but as you continue to refuse to justify your other changes, then you need to commit to not reverting me again. Display name 99 (talk) 21:29, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

The improvement of articles by the addition of sourced information is what we're all about. The complaints you raise about style and format are purely incidental. Your deletion of sourced material for any reason except that a consensus of editors feels that it is not pertinent, or badly sourced, is not helpful to improving Wikipedia. Please address the issue in question, and not your personal bete noirs. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:15, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

[1] Trivial. No evidence that Andrew Montgomery is an important figure. Also, a stylistic problem. McKinley's name should be spelled out in full and linked. This mostly looks okay, but could use some copyediting. Roosevelt's name should also be linked. This seems fine, but we don't need to say the title of Varon's book and we could probably shorten the text by summarizing rather than using the quote. This addition also seems rather trivial, but I'm not vehemently opposed to it. However, this is one of the places where your careless placement of citations interrupted source to text integrity. If the content is going to be restored, that needs to be fixed.

That's all for now. As I said, I am willing to work with you to restore some of the content, but you need to stop edit warring and stonewalling to force your unexplained and damaging stylistic changes into the article. Display name 99 (talk) 04:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Retaining existing styles

Per MOS:STYLEVAR – When either of two styles is acceptable it is generally considered inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change. Unjustified changes from one acceptable, consistently applied style in an article to a different style may generally be reverted. If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, seek consensus by discussing this at the article's talk page.

I'm not seeing any edit summary explaining why the Notes/References/Further reading sections were changed. I don't see any discussion on the talk page either where consensus was achieved for changing the established style. In absence of any compelling reason given for why the established style was changed, those changes were inappropriate and should be reverted back to the consensus version seen here. Isaidnoway (talk) 22:41, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Seconded. Display name 99 (talk) 13:06, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Obviously, I believe the change in style is preferable, but if a consensus here disagrees, I'm not going to buck it. However, "fixing" a style dispute should not entail the removal without a consensus discussion of added well-sourced information. They are two totally different things. In any case, my preference is, again, obviously, for the more efficient current state of the References. MoS is not a policy, nor is it mandatory, and each and every MoS page makes clear in the header, so the curremt dispute is primarily an argument from familiarity. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:51, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

If you think our manual of style doesn't have community consensus in this case of retaining existing styles, you can challenge that consensus, otherwise, like it says in the heading: It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. You haven't presented a compelling argument as to why your preferred version should be an exception, so your change to the existing style is generally considered inappropriate, and you should change it back. Thanks. Isaidnoway (talk) 21:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Weighing in here because I was heavily involved in the FAC. I agree with Isaidnoway and DN99 above that the existing citation format should be retained. Beyond My Ken - as to the removal without a consensus discussion of added well-sourced information see WP:ONUS. It's your responsibility to get consensus to include information, not somebody else's job to get consensus to exclude the information. And yes, edit summaries are not strictly necessary, but if you're in a position where you know your behavior is likely to be controversial, you 100% should be using edit summaries. As another question - on edits like this, are you verifying that you aren't breaking the integrity between the sources and the text? For instance, did you verify that Varon 2023 p. 243 supports the text "Longstreet applied for various jobs through the Rutherford B. Hayes administration of 1877–1881 and was briefly considered for Secretary of the Navy."? Hog Farm _Talk 01:05, 13 August 2024 (UTC)