Talk:Oscar S. Adams

Sources for uncontroversial biographical details

Nikkimaria – I don't understand what your problem is with using a site that has a physical photograph of a headstone as support for what someone's name and birth/death years was. See WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:SELFSOURCE for related guidance about using mediocre sources for uncontroversial factual claims. We're not putting words in anyone's mouth here, making scientific or historical claims, etc. Removing the source doesn't provide any benefit to article readers. Then we just have an obviously true and trivial but unsourced claim. I could go try to find more newspaper clippings from obscure 50–100 year old local newspapers, but that's also pretty unhelpful to anyone. –jacobolus (t) 05:42, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

My concern is that the physical photograph of the headstone does not support any link between the individuals named on the headstone and the subject of this article. Instead the connection is being drawn from the user-generated content, which does not fall under SELFSOURCE. If no reliable sources have covered these claims, they should be omitted. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:54, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

The headstone directly says "Pauline G. Adams [Pealer] 1904–1999", next to her former husband "Chester A. [Pealer] 1894–1936", in a cemetery in Mount Vernon, Ohio. There's really no question that this is the same Pauline Gleason Pealer mentioned in Adams's obituary also cited at the end of the paragraph, or the "Mrs. Adams" with whom he retired to a farm in Mount Vernon, near both of their birthplaces, as mentioned in several newspaper articles.

The main relevant part for us here, from her headstone, is the name of her first husband and his birth/death dates, which shows that he is the "Chester Allen Pealer, 42, died at his home after a three weeks' illness" in 1936.

The reason to rope him in here is to demonstrate that Pauline was recently widowed when Adams (a recent widower) married her, which gives some helpful context. I could trim the quotation down; it's not really important to list her parents' names etc. –jacobolus (t) 06:03, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

That source doesn't provide that context, though - we can only get there through synthesis, which we shouldn't be doing. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:42, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a total misunderstanding/misstatement of what Wikipedia:No original research means by "synthesis", why that policy exists, and what it is attempting to prevent. The point of this standard is to prevent Wikipedia from putting words in people's mouths, speculating, making up facts, inventing new scientific ideas, or the like. The purpose is not to prevent editors from exercising basic common sense in evaluating or connecting uncontroversial (certainly true) biographical trivia. –jacobolus (t) 18:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

If you insist we can also cite Pauline née Gleason's first marriage license application from 1929, a scan of which is here https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9392-B29M-2K?i=549 (requires creating a free account to read) describing the marriage between 35 year old Chester A. Pealer (electrician, son of E. S. Pealer and Delmina Adams) and 25 year old Pauline M. Gleeson (school teacher, daughter of Mayme Benson and Harrison Gleeson). We can also find her in the Knox County birth register, 1904 https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRYW-SVPP?i=112&personaUrl=/ark:/61903/1:1:X666-W72 as Pauline Gleason (daughter of Harrison Gleason and Mamie Benson). Figuring out which of these public records has the correct spelling of her mother's first name (Mamie vs. Mayme) and father's last name (Gleason vs. Gleeson), or whether they just didn't care much about spelling, would take more detailed investigation that doesn't really seem worth the effort. Here's the death certificate https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9PK5-9GVD?i=2902 for Chester Allen Pealer (husband of Pauline G. Pealer) describing his death from tuberculosis of the lungs + throat(?) on October 19, 1936 and his burial in Ebenezer Cemetery. We can see that this is the same Pauline from the ohio death index https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VKBT-MH9 describing Pauline Adams (born 19 Jun 1904, father Gleeson, mother Benson) death at age 94 on 5 Mar 1999. All of the details here are a matter of public record, and not especially hard to corroborate by as much evidence as anyone cares to investigate. It seems like a huge waste of time though. Which sources do you think are necessary evidence for the claims in the one relevant sentence of this article? –jacobolus (t) 18:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

The obit covers the relevant claim: the wife's name and date of marriage. We don't need to connect a pile of primary sources to include what you yourself say is trivia. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:05, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Can you explain the problem with including Adams's parents' and wives' years of birth/death? These provide useful context. In my opinion all of your copyedits seem net negative, just taking out information for no reason. Edit: I explicitly added back a sentence about Adams's parents both dying when he was 19 years old. –jacobolus (t) 05:22, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Life ranges should generally not be included in body text per MOS:BIRTHDATE. The other removal so far not mentioned is |nationality=, which is excluded here per MOS:INFONAT. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:01, 29 August 2024 (UTC)