Talk:Charles L. McNary

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Charles L. McNary has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
October 18, 2007	Good article nominee	Listed
August 9, 2009	Peer review	Reviewed
October 24, 2009	Featured article candidate	Not promoted

Current status: Good article

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Sources for expansion

Use to expand for FA push. Aboutmovies (talk) 09:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OREGON'S TRAILS OREGON'S SEN. MCNARY WAS A TREE HUGGER FOR HIS TIME. The Oregonian, October 20, 2002, Author: JOHN TERRY. Aboutmovies (talk) 00:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
McNary of Oregon : a political biography / by Steve Neal. Portland, Or. : Western Imprints, c1985. WU: HAT 2d Floor Stack, E748.M156 N43. Maybe this too. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:49, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Picture from 1929 once article is expanded. Aboutmovies (talk) 23:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Free photos

Free photos from the US Government of the McNary Lock and Dam, located on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington and built in 1953 are located at www.nww.usace.army.mil. Some of the free photos may include pictures of Charles L. McNary. -- Suntag ☼ 15:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but there weren't any. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:01, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proofing, alt text done; PR next?

I've dusted the hard-to-reach places, added alt text to the images, and tweaked the layout to meet Manual of Style guidelines. The article seems comprehensive to me, although I might not be the best judge of that since this is my first serious encounter with McNary. I'd suggest a peer review (PR) as the next step before heading to FAC. I'd be happy to seek a review via the PR system. Shall I? Finetooth (talk) 16:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:10, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another push

I'm making a few more additions and tweaks. Just added a paragraph, citing Neal, about McNary's ability to get along with progressives, main-line Republicans, and his boyhood friend, Oswald West, a Democrat. One of the suggestions in the FAC was that a little more background be included for readers outside the U.S. Finetooth (talk) 02:50, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could we just delete the unsigned tertiary-source claims if no secondary-source replacement is possible? For example, the claim that "McNary first held public office in 1892 when he became Marion County's deputy recorder, remaining in the position until 1896" is supported only by the unsigned Oregon Biographical Dictionary. Although I've tried, I haven't found support for this claim elsewhere. Neal simply says that McNary's brother, the county recorder, hired McNary as a clerk in 1890. The earlier two uses of the Oregon Biographical Dictionary support minor points in claims that are mostly supported by Neal. For example, "Charles McNary's paternal grandfather, James McNary, immigrated to the Oregon Country from Kentucky in 1845, while his maternal grandfather and namesake, Charles Claggett, immigrated from Missouri in 1852" is fully supported by Neal except for "Missouri" and "Kentucky". By dropping a few minor details like this, we might be able to get rid of the unsigned tertiary-source problem altogether. Thoughts? Finetooth (talk) 03:24, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And here's a McNary PD image I scanned from a Congressional document: File:Charles McNary farm statesman.jpg. The source does not say when the image was made or how old McNary was at the time. Finetooth (talk) 04:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the problems I have in general with placing too much emphasis on one reviewers well intention desire for signed tertiary-sources. First, it was just a single editor, I don't recall anyone else with the same objection. And it is not in-line with WP:V or WP:RS. Maybe more so with FA's "high quality reliable sources", but it says "high" and not "highest". We want quality sources no doubt, but I think a biographical dictionary should meet that requirement. Somebody's high school history report, no, and neither is the guy on the freeway off-ramp begging for change or even the tour guide at McNary Dam.

Secondly, if we rely more and more on just the Neal bio, which is the highest quality source we have, but is also the only real biography on McNary, then our biography simply becomes a regurgitation of a 25 year old source. Which in itself raises the issue of our {{One source}} template, but more importantly to me raises copyright issues. Sure we can move information around and re-word things, but if this is just a different version of Neal's biography, I think there could be a case for copyright infringement. Granted, not an extremely strong case since we are dealing mainly with facts, but the more and more we use his impressions and analysis and remove anything else, the more this becomes our re-hashing of his work.

Next, are we making the article better and more informative by simply removing this information? Or are we making it less? If, to borrow a specific instance here, we remove the clerk item only supported by the Dictionary source, then maybe we lose something Neal missed? If you look here you will find what that website lists as ROC McNary. Well, if you look closely, it is far more likely it is C. McNary if you compare the decorative calligraphy near the C. that the website folks take as R.O.C. with the similar marks near the first initial of the other folks. Plus just compare the style of the "R.O." part with the "C." part, they simply look different. Then, looking at the photo, the hair matches. I don't know I recall what the Neal book has in the way of images of him for around that time, but the 1912 one on the article, plus having looked at him almost daily during law school with class photos on the wall, he had a sort-of wavy, center part around that time, similar to what is shown here in this picture.

On a broader note, if this were a rule in general (only signed tertiray sources may be used), doesn't that limit us as an encyclopedia? As in, this type of rule would prevent us from writing a FA on say Hillsboro, as there is not currently a "bio" by some noted scholar on the city. That article is pieced together using many, many sources, some signed, some just websites, but all reliable as to what they are sourced for. Take for instance the demographic info, that info comes from the Census Bureau and is not exactly signed by an author. You could certainly argue they are respected in their field, but at the end of the day they always make mistakes and the work is not really up to the quality of say a Yale professor. Or to borrow one of your FAs, Fanno Creek, how many of those sources pass this proposed test? That is to say, this test would limit Wikipedia on what we could do for FAs. As in only certain topics that have attracted scholars could ever become the best of Wikipedia. I personally do not prefer that limitation, since as you have proven with your multiple FAs on various rivers/streams, we can produce something better than what already exists in the real world on a topic, and in fact in many ways produce something that no one else has produced. Britannica does not have an article on Fanno Creek (or at least I doubt), and I would doubt they would ever produce something on their own as complete and comprehensive as what you produced.

I apologize for not responding sooner, but a new job and the flu have kept me off Wikipedia for much of the last week. I also apologize if this comes across as a bit harsh, but it is really directed at the reviewers instance upon this rule and the problems with such a rule. Anyway, I'll try and work on the article for the FA drive, as I still have a PDF somewhere that should have some analysis, plus I need to completely re-do the Senate years to get it to flow better. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:34, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your response is thoughtful and convincing and not at all harsh. As I began changing things this time around, I began to be concerned about turning the article into too much of a paraphrase of the Neal biography. This has most likely come about because I have fallen into a desire-to-please trap, looking for a middle way between WP:RS and a reviewer's preference for signed sources. I've been frustrated by the lack of sources that satisfy both, and I've wondered if an insistence on signed sources means that articles on most topics can never become FA. These thoughts coincide with you are saying above. So, I'll stop replacing the unsigned tertiaries, and I'll keep trying find something besides Neal. I've reserved a copy of Richard L. Neuberger's Our Promised Land, which Neal mentions in his bibliography as a source that includes "firsthand observations on Senator McNary". I've already used the Neuberger magazine articles as sources, and I don't know if I'll find anything different or useful in the book, but I'll give it a try. I know you are very busy at work, and I'm sorry to hear about the flu. Please don't feel pressured to hurry. I always have multiple projects going at the same time, and I'm not obsessing about this one. I will follow your lead. Finetooth (talk) 17:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One more thought. If you think we should backtrack from the latest version, that's fine. I could revert to an earlier version with a couple of mouse clicks. Nothing has to be lost. Finetooth (talk) 18:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Neuberger's book was no help, alas. Gordon Dodds' Oregon: A History looks slightly better for our purposes. I am slowly making my way through the book, which has lots about Oregon but only a couple of pages about McNary. More about this later. Finetooth (talk) 20:34, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, sounds good, I'll try to work through my sources as well. As to your earlier offer to revert, I don't think its really necessary. The only things I would re-add would be the specific date of Lane's death (you changed it to spring) which was supported by the Cong Bio source for Lane, and then the "chance at redemption" bit following his defeat from running for the Supreme Court at the beginning of his Senate years. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:00, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Both re-added. Finetooth (talk) 16:16, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dodds

Gordon B. Dodds in Oregon: A History devotes a couple of pages to McNary. Key sentences might be (1) "Republican conservatives were ascendant during the twenties, although the progressive wing of the party, led by Charles Linza McNary and Charles Sprague, gained in the following decade" and (2) "Senator McNary was the state's only national figure in these years, and his legislative impact was the most crucial area of domestic politics for Oregonians, that of natural resources." He credits McNary for the Clarke-McNary Act, which Congress passed in 1924 and "was the motivating force in making Oregon state forestry effective" as well as his sponsorship of the McNary-Haugen bill, which, though twice vetoed by Coolidge, "was an important precedent for New Deal farm legislation." Dodds says that McNary kept the Republican party alive in the 1930s by opposing "diehard opposition to the New Deal that would stamp the party as hopelessly reactionary". His personal friendship with Roosevelt "worked to Oregon's advantage in the Bonneville Dam project" and provided "low-cost electrical power for farmers, public utility districts, and farm co-operatives... ". It was also "instrumental in bringing aluminum and other defense industries to Oregon during the Second World War." All of this is on pp. 199–200. Some of it, at least, could probably be worked smoothly into the existing article. Finetooth (talk) 02:07, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OSU McNary Hall

I had always thought that OSU's McNary Hall, constructed in 1962 or something like that, was named after an OSU English professor by that name, but it does indeed appear that it was named after Charles McNary, per THIS. Carrite (talk) 18:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]