Talk:Manistee Watch Company

Julius Kahn

I need help. I just changed Louis Kahn to Julius Kahn in a sentence that says who invented the concrete reinforcing system used in the Manistee factory. I'd like to make a footnote to back that up, but I can't figure out how. The footnote would contain the following information: The source is Structure (that's the name of a publication), April 2013. The article was written by Ryan Salmon, EIT and Meghan Elliott, P.E., Associate AIA. The URL is http://www.structuremag.org/article.aspx?articleID=1636 . The text I'd like to quote is "The "Kahn System" was invented by Julius Kahn, who filed a patent for it on December 11, 1902."

Of course, this doesn't PROVE that this same Kahn system was used in the Manistee factory, but unless a different person named Kahn violated the patent and offered a different concrete system under the same name (which seems unlikely), it had to be Julius Kahn's system.

It definitely wasn't Louis Kahn, who appears to be no relation. He was 7 years old in 1908 and had just immigrated from Russia with his family.

If anyone can help me fix this, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to leave this change unsupported by reference.Gms3591 (talk) 09:39, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for improvement and correction on this.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:33, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome, and thank you for the help. I wish I were better at formatting, but I can't seem to figure out anything even slightly complicated, so others have to do my work for me. By the way, I noticed you misspelled Structure (the name of the publication), so I fixed it. You had it right in the URL, so the link was correct. Gms3591 (talk) 08:40, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:48, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Manistee Watch Company/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 02:13, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Extremely disorganized: basically a big lump of text in a "history" section, with almost nothing else, and within that section a collection of isolated sentences in a seemingly-random order with paragraph breaks added at seemingly-random points between some of the sentences. Information is in the wrong order: for instance we learn that the watches were shipped "about 30 miles away" before learning where they were shipped from. Although the "Legacy" section is short, only the first two of its seven sentences make sense for that section.

Self-contradictory: a sentence early in the history says that "some" of the movements were jeweled, while a different sentence later classifies the movements by numbers of jewels implying that all were jeweled. A sentence early in the history says that the watches were cased by "other companies", while a sentence in another paragraph says they were cased by one specific company. The lead says "a range of prices" while later we learn "five dollars each".

Vague: "other companies", "other inexpensive watches on the market". "16 and 18 size": in what units? "Disagreements arose": when? "Business people from Chicago": who? "Placed in a location": really? How would you place a factory so that it was not in a location? "two businessmen": who?

Peacock and largely content-free: "specialized one-of-a-kind" "specifically to the correct dimensions". "Tiny parts of the watch mechanisms": are any parts of watch mechanisms not tiny? Anti-peacock: "low quality".

Overly detailed: Why do we need to know the names of the factory directors? The layout of the factory? The existence of a nearby lake? The fact that the only wood in the factory was in its window frames? The invention date and inventor of the specific brand of concrete used to build it? Relatedly, the "Notes" section is mostly a quote farm of long off-topic quotes that, if they were not so old, would be a copyvio.

Original research and sourcing issues: We are not told what the alloy is, in the article or the quote from its source, so how do we know that it "did not involve a ferrous material"? And what is the point of the circumlocution "ferrous material" for iron? The Ford Collections reference is a deadlink, and when tracked down turns out to source only the second sentence of the legacy section; the first sentence is unsourced. The claim that a later occupant made kilns is contradicted by its source, which says that they were looking to purchase kilns. The claim that A. D. Joslin made machine tools is not supported by its source, and it is certainly not true that the building became the company as the current text states. Much of the sourcing is to primary legal documents rather than secondary sourcing, dubious by WP:RSPRIMARY. The claim that "The sales of the watches had slowed and there were insufficient funds for Rath to make his required payments to Bachner" is sourced to one of these legal documents, which appears to be entirely about a different agreement between Rath and Bachner with the city and says nothing about sales rates or payments from Rath to Bachner.

The gallery of tiny uncaptioned pictures of watches conveys no useful information to the viewer and fails WP:NOTGALLERY. And two of the images when expanded turn out to be badly blurred.

Overall I think this is very far from WP:GACR #1 (prose quality and organization) and #3b (avoidance of unnecessary detail), and has significant problems with #2 (sourcing) and #6 (image captioning and relevance). It does appear to be neutral and stable, but that's not enough to save it. I think it is a quick fail. I would rate it as C-class at best. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:38, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Manistee Watch Company/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vice regent (talk · contribs) 21:28, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I have started reading this article.VR _talk 21:28, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Doug Coldwell some early thoughts as I read the article.

• "These were then shipped to a watch case company..." What was the name of this case company? VR _talk 04:19, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

•  Done ->Star Watch Company is in the first paragraph of the History section. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 10:57, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• I added it to the lead too.VR _talk 14:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• The lead doesn't adequately summarize the article. For example, there is a section on hairspring and the article says "Manistee watch was the first time a non-magnetic hairspring was made for a pocket watch in the United States". That sounds significant enough to merit mention in the lead. Likewise there is nothing about jewels or the company's legacy in the lead, even though these have a section each in the article. VR _talk 04:19, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:57, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Should the gallery be below the section Legacy. Usually gallery come after all prose sections.

VR _talk 04:19, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:57, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Now for the review.

1. Well-written.

The article is well written. No spelling or grammatical issues, sentences are not too long and I can follow the prose easily. It follows MOS guidelines, no WTA that I can see. Lead follows MOS and the issues I identified with the lead above were fixed by Doug Coldwell - thanks for that.

2. Verifiable with no original research.

Every sentence in the article body has a citation. The sources are appropriate for this article, and I don't see any reliability issues. Citation style is appropriate. No original research, no excessive quotations. No BLP issues.

3. Broad in its coverage.

All major aspects seem to be addressed. This is not a broad topic to begin with and I suspect reliable sources don't have much to say about this watch company. So while the article is small, I don't see any problems with that. There are no issues relating to unnecessary detail.

4. Neutral

No NPOV issues. Again, this topic isn't one that I'd suspect of being prone to NPOV issues. The article is written objectively. Nothing controversial in the content that would make me suspect issues with WP:DUE.

5. Stable

Yes. I don't see any recent disputes in the article history or talk page.

6. Illustrated

All images are relevant and have captions. I don't see any copyright issues with any of them.

I saw this article was reviewed before (version reviewed). I think the article has come a long way since, especially with respect to organization. So I'm going ahead and passing the GA nom.VR _talk 07:12, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment

This article is part of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 and the Good article (GA) drive to reassess and potentially delist over 200 GAs that might contain copyright and other problems. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of articles en masse, unless a reviewer opens an independent review and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information about the GA status of this article, the timeline and process for delisting, and suggestions for improvements. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)