Hi there, I wanted to share back that I shared your new articles with C-SPAN as promised. Overall, a very positive response. Great work. There is one thing they did point out to me, about The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1994 reenactments): in the first sentence, your version says they were "sponsored" by C-SPAN, but they've advised me this is not so. C-SPAN encouraged the cities involved to hold the debates, promising to air them, but did not produce the debates. I do have a source to verify this, but it's not available (for free) online. Via Lexis-Nexis, I found a February 28, 1994 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, by Doug Pokorski, titled [http://w3.nexis.com/new/docview/getDocForCuiReq?lni=3TYV-VNC0-006K-W06C&csi=11810&oc=00240&perma=true Debates 'Lincoln, Douglas' Set for Cable TV]:
:"The local communities are in charge of producing the debates," [C-SPAN spokeswoman Rayne] Pollack said. "We're not setting up our own event and then covering it. All we have asked for is that they use the most complete transcript and perform it in its entirety. Our goal is for it to appear as if C-SPAN was actually there in 1858."
If you're OK following a (sort of) offline source, I'd suggest "encouraged" would be a more accurate phrasing. What do you think?
Also, one more thought, entirely my own: should the article title include the definite article? I realize the book inspiring the series uses it, though based on my own perusal of C-SPAN's Video Library [http://www.c-span.org/Events/Lincoln-Douglas-Debate-Reenactment/10737423561/ here, for instance] it seems they do not. Cheers, WWB Too (talk) 13:35, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
:OK - I got rid of the word "sponsored' from the opening sentence. I suppose I used that word in an inexact sense; "encouraged" or maybe "facilitated" might have been better words. But I am just omitting it without replacement, at least for the time being. I have [http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-08-20/features/1994232090_1_lincoln-douglas-debates-c-span-debates-history an article from the Baltimore Sun] that says something similar: "Spurred on by its own 15th anniversary, C-Span officials approached the mayors of all seven cities last year. Re-create your debates, they said, using local talent and local money, and we'll come in and broadcast them, as though we'd been there in 1858... ...All seven mayors agreed, the state of Illinois chipped in $20,000 for each site and C-Span spent $300,000 to $500,000 promoting the debates, providing staff people to coordinate the coverage and putting together educational materials. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were on their way back to center stage." KConWiki (talk) 02:36, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
:As for the "The", I don't know if there is a right answer or not, and if we have just established that C-SPAN did not sponsor the event, then the exact usage in the Video Archive site's segment titles would not be authoritative. Not only that, but check out [http://www.abrahamlincolnperformance.com/debate_files/CSpan02.jpg this poster] for a leading article. I think I am going to wait for someone with a stronger opinion on the matter than I have to come along and address this. KConWiki (talk) 02:43, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
::Apologies for the slow reply here: looks fine now with "sponsored" removed; one of your replacement words I think would be a lot better. Regarding "The" you raise a fair point; this may be one of those situations where a definitive title was never properly settled, in which case what you have is fine. By the way, have you had a chance to look at my new Brian Lamb draft, mentioned above? I'm looking for a clearer expression of consensus to move it; I thought we were getting close, and then conversation just slowed. Hope you can find a moment to weigh in. Cheers, WWB Too (talk) 14:09, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
:::Oh wait, never mind! The Brian Lamb article was in fact moved overnight, and I'd just failed to notice. I've actually got a draft for one more C-SPAN person in the wings, Robert X Browning, but I'll only check back if I get stuck there, too. Cheers, WWB Too (talk) 14:27, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
::::Sorry I didn't comment on your Lamb article sooner, I think it looks real good. Let me know if you need anything about the Browning one too, but I have kind of come to the realization that I would rather (and this is just me, you know) work first on building pages for their shows and specials (and I am trying to think how best to do one for the School Bus(es)) and also on adding SPAN links to the pages for the authors/books/sites/topics seen in their programming before turning to the pages for the individuals associated with C-SPAN. This is despite the fact that Lamb is one of my all-time heroes. Like, I am sure that Susan Swain deserves a page (or to put it better, Wikipedia deserves to have a page about her) but I am not putting that at the top of my to-do list; Partly because the Spanners like to keep (as you know) a low-profile in terms of not promoting their own selves on air. That being said, I am sure that Susan Swain, Rob Kennedy, and others ought to one day have their own pages. KConWiki (talk) 02:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)