Talk:Uranium mining in the Bancroft area#Referencing & verifiability

{{Template:Did you know nominations/Uranium mining in the Bancroft area}}

Hi User:GeoWriter and with reference to the over quotation tag:

1 - (I'm kinda new and still learning, so this is a sincere question) I did read into the guidance for how much I can quote stuff and I understood for that for technically complicated things, it was appropriate to use longer quotes. With that in mind, do you still think changes are needed?

2 - If it's a "yes" to the above, do you have any tips for how to get someone technically competent to summaries the geology aspects? Sherlock CT55555 deduces you might have some better insight into that than me :-) 19:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

:I have tried to summarise the content of all the geological block quotes and therefore I have also removed the over quotation tag. I hope it is a improvement. GeoWriter (talk) 22:32, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

::Thank you GeoWriter! You have done a fantastic job. I am very grateful. This is exceptionally good timing as the over quotation issues was a pain for the "do you know?" process. CT55555 (talk) 22:35, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

::: I'm glad to have been of assistance. I await the "do you know". GeoWriter (talk) 22:42, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

{{Talk:Uranium mining in the Bancroft area/GA1}}

This article recently failed to reach Featured Article status (archive link), mainly due to disagreements about the reliability of the citations from a book by Nila Reynolds. Unfortunately, the discussion about that got cut short after I tried to convince @Hog Farm and @Nikkimaria that she is a reliable historian. I'll restate (and slightly refine) my argument again here, hoping to persuade. Also inviting comment from others who didn't comment before it was close @Reidgreg. Note: there was other minor points on which caused others to not support, mainly the reliability of sources used of minor facts, I don't disagree and will delete those facts if I succeed in persuading others about Reynolds being reliable. My argument:

1. Nila Reynolds is an established historian. I have searched the Wikipedia Library, ProQuest and every possible avenue I can pursue to learn about her to form this argument. Every mention I have found on her is positive.
2. The article about her (i.e. Nila Reynolds) details her writing training: she learned under Sylvia Fraser, Scott Young and Austin Chesterfield Clarke at the Haliburton School of Fine Arts. (cited in article about her)
3. Her work is noted by Barry Penhale who described Reynold's book In Quest of Yesterday as "critically acclaimed."
4. Most impressively was this podcast, which is an interview with a history museum director, and is mostly glowing praise for Reynolds and her research techniques. https://www.stitcher.com/show/time-warp/episode/local-history-writer-nila-reynolds-plus-brief-history-of-slavery-in-canada-pt-2-201964754.
5. The book cited in this question is considered important enough to be held in the University of Calgary library ([https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/archive/Bancroft--a-Bonanza-of-Memories-2R3BF1O7WCUJ7.html link])
6. She is an established, published, praised, notable historian. I don't think we should discount her reliability because she focussed on local history, and I think we need to be mindful of the time that these books were written and the disadvantages that women historians faced in those times.
7. WP:USEBYOTHERS is part of our policy for deciding on the reliable sources. Reynolds is used by others a lot. If you search for her name in Google Books and you'll see work by John Robert Colombo citing her, you'll see her book mentioned in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the Encyclopedia of Ontario, and Ontario History
8. Nobody has put forward any source that discredits her. I contend that she should not just be treated as equal to any history writer, but superior to most due to her specialisation and the absence of any negative critique.

CT55555(talk) 17:53, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

:: {{u|CT55555}} - What I have been saying and I think Nikkimaria is as well, is not that we're disputing that Reynolds is unreliable, but instead expressing issues with the phrasing in the FA criteria of {{xt|high-quality reliable sources}}. There is a definite step up from simply reliable to high-quality reliable, and the latter generally requires strong indications that it would be considered high-quality, rather than an absence of reasons that it would be unreliable. Point #2 is not really relevant to the argument for high-quality RS; you can learn from the best and not become that great, especially since Clarke is mainly known for fiction and Young seems to be mainly known for fiction and sportswriting. Point #5 is also weak, as libraries hold many things we would not consider RS. Again, I don't think she's unreliable, but FA requires a higher bar and I don't think this quite meets it. I'd say this falls in the same tier of sources as one I've used several times for B-class or I think even GAs occassionally: Borderland Rebellion by Elmo Ingenthron. Ingenthron was a local historian whose work would probably be comparable to Reynold's in impact, but I don't see Ingenthron ever passing a rigorous FA source review due to the relative obscurity of the work and the fact that it never really had a peer review process. The higher bar of sourcing for FAs tends to strongly favor academic sources, which is just what the FA process has evolved to. Hog Farm _Talk 04:39, 11 August 2023 (UTC)