Talk:General Frisbie (steamship)

A fact from General Frisbie (steamship) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 22 September 2018 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that General Frisbie (pictured) accidentally sank two ships and disabled a third, was renamed Commander, and then turned into a salmon cannery?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2018/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/General Frisbie (steamship).

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DYK[edit]

Jordanroderick, congratulations on this article. It's a remarkably good piece of work, especially for a first article. I would like to nominate it for a Did You Know appearance, meaning an intriguing fact from it would be featured on the front page of Wikipedia (I was thinking "Did you know ... that General Frisbie sank three ships, was demoted to Commander and ended life as a salmon cannery?" – what do you think?). One issue is that for DYK, every paragraph should have at least one inline citation. A citation at the end of the paragraph can cover the whole paragraph but it can't cover several, so this may just be matter of copying citations from later paragraphs to earlier ones. Would you have time to address this in the next week or so? It would need to be nominated within 7 days and while there's some leeway to tidy up after that, it's not indefinite. If any other issues come up at review, I would be happy to help you address them. › Mortee _talk 15:44, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from User talk:Mortee § DYK for General Frisbie

Thanks for the nice edit on General Frisbie. It was a fun project to track down all the history. I think we all owe a debt to the genealogy hobbyists for funding the digitization of all these old newspapers.

I'd love to take a run at the DYK page. I think you're correct that adding a cite to every paragraph will merely be a matter of reusing the existing references. Let me know if you need anything else. Thanks again Jordanroderick (talk) 18:17, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think the referencing is the main thing. If you can get that in place then I'll sort out the nomination. If anything else comes up I'll post on the article talk page and you're very welcome to ask me questions there too. By the way, feel free to change any of my edits on the article if you'd like to. Some of my changes were just matters of preference, not guidelines. › Mortee _talk 18:28, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I added the references and cleaned up a few other odds and ends. Let me know if you need anything else. Thanks! Jordanroderick (talk) 22:28, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Great! It looks ready to me. It would help me with the nomination if you could pick out the particular sources, and ideally specific short quotes from them, that prove the content of the hook we choose to nominate. My proposal is "... that General Frisbie sank three ships, was demoted to Commander and ended life as a salmon cannery?", which probably relies on five sources, but please do give other suggestions if you'd rather go a different route with the wording. › Mortee _talk 22:32, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, one other thing, not for DYK but a general request: you mentioned above that the newspapers have been digitized. Would you be able to add URLs to those references so readers and editors can find them easily? That's useful even if they're behind a paywall (e.g. Newspapers.com). › Mortee _talk 07:28, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I added the URLs to the newspaper articles, but they are ALL behind paywalls. I always find that frustrating, but I'll take your word for it that this is useful to some. Thanks for the advice! Jordanroderick (talk) 23:32, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It at least lets readers see where they can get access if they're really motivated, and it's also helpful for editors (I have Newspapers.com access, for example, so now I can see some of these). Thank you very much for putting the links in. › Mortee _talk 19:48, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. Here are the references you asked for regarding the DYK blurb: 1. Reference 25 documents the sinking of Sehome. Reference 28 documents the sinking of St Helena. Actually, the Iriquois was merely disabled, so perhaps it would be best to say that General Frisbie sank two ships, not three. 2. The definitive record of the names of Federally documented vessels is the annual Coast Guard publication. Reference 24 Documents "General Frisbie" and reference 11 documents "Commander". 3. The ships fate as a salmon cannery is document in reference 19. I hope this helps. Thanks for all your help! Jordanroderick (talk) 00:05, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, I misremembered about the Iroquois when I thought up the hook. Re-reading about the St. Helena, the source says "... had to be beached to save her from sinking", as the article correctly reflects. Perhaps the hook should be "... sank one ship and holed two more..."? Also, why does the article give 1901 for the sinking of Sehome, when the newspaper is from 1918? If 1918 is right, we could switch the order in the hook to: "... holed three ships, sinking one..." I've done the reciprocal review now, so all that's left is to actually write the nomination. Should be quick once we're settled on the hook wording. › Mortee _talk 19:48, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and one more thought - the reviewer at DYK is likely to say that there shouldn't be any references in the lead, because the lead should only summarise what's said in the rest of the article, and it should be cited there instead. I'd be very surprised if it got rejected for that, but it'd be a bit of an improvement anyway. › Mortee _talk 19:52, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I moved all of the references out of the lead. This makes perfect sense to me as a summary of all the other material in the body of the document. Thanks you so much for picking up on the 1918 date for the Sehome sinking. I checked this with three different sources and indeed this is correct. I changed the text to reflect this. I guess that's why everybody can benefit from a good editor. As for the hook, I like "sank two ships and disabled a third...". In one of my other lives I was a Coast Guard licensed mariner, and I think most of my colleagues would consider "beached" a form of sinking. If you have a hole in your hull that lets in enough water that you sink to the bottom, you're still sunk whether you're in 1000 feet of water or 10. And anyway, it reads a little cleaner. Thanks again for all your help! Jordanroderick (talk) 23:55, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you as always on all scores. I'll go with your suggestion "sank two ships and disabled a third". Since the source does say "to avoid sinking", changes might be suggested but you wrote the article and have more expertise than I do, so I'll happily nominate your version. I'll get that written tomorrow. › Mortee _talk 00:47, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jordanroderick, sorry for the delay. The nomination is at Template:Did you know nominations/General Frisbie (steamship), which you might want to add to your watchlist. Congratulations again on the article, and thank you again for the changes you've made since. › Mortee _talk 01:17, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Looks great! Thanks so much for taking this under your wing to coach me on how to improve the article.

Class assessment[edit]

Hi, Nosebagbear. From the documentation on {{WikiProject Ships}}, I think the reason it's not displaying C-class is that it's not been assessed against the B-class criteria. I've never encountered a requirement like that before. Perhaps later (maybe after DYK?) we could ask you to come back and reassess? I agree that it's a C at the moment but it probably wouldn't take much to bump it up. › Mortee _talk 16:17, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mortee: - that is a seriously weird requirement, but you might be right (I wonder if it's there because frequently people default to C to avoid having to assess B more formally). I'd be happy to come back after the DYK, if no-one beats me to it. I should review a few more non-company drafts - I never get to see things this interesting! Nosebagbear (talk) 16:29, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We walked up hill both ways![edit]

When does it arrive? It left already!

Her initial schedule had her sailing from San Francisco at ... and 8:30 pm.

She returned from Vallejo at ... and 8:30 pm.

Shenme (talk) 00:24, 22 September 2018 (UTC) Thanks for catching this. I corrected it to make it both historically accurate and physically possible! Jordanroderick (talk) 22:27, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]