Talk:J. Bernard Hogg

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This article was nominated for deletion on 02 March 2007. The result of the discussion was No consenssus.

[edit] False statement

The article contained this statement in the opening: "J. Bernard Hogg was a pioneer in the field of labor history at a time when labor history was not yet recognized as a scholarly field." Utter nonsense. Hogg's dissertation was in 1943, long after other scholars such as Philip Taft had been writing in the field for decades! Labor history was a very well-defined field by then, and widely recognized. - Tim1965 15:42, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Utter nonsense? Those were the words of someone trained as a labor historian who holds a Masters degree at Georgetown University, who was working beside me, advising me about the specific wording as i typed in that information. I accept that she could be wrong, but Tim, the one fact that you cite, that "Philip Taft had been writing in the field for decades" certainly doesn't make her wrong. She was speaking about the field of labor history not being recognized according to certain criteria, not about whether anyone had been writing labor history. (You're criticizing a claim that was never asserted — or at least, that's my take.) I'll ask her about it when i see her. Richard Myers 01:13, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

That's wonderful if true. And if true, you can provide a citation. If you can't provide a citation, I can point to a number of labor historians working in a clearly defined field to which they and others refer. That claim is very significant and should have a citation; even more so, as Wikipedia's guidelines point out, it can be a very damaging claim, and so should be removed until a citation can be provided. - Tim1965 01:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Tim, i don't have a citation, i need to leave that up to my labor historian friend, if she can find the time. But because you've launched a deletion review process on this article, i would like to offer a defense of the original work, if only on this talk page.

I don't have Melvyn Dubofsky's book Hard Work, published in 2000. However, the reviews of that book appear to support what had been written in the article, and which you deprecated under the heading of "False statement." For example:

This volume opens with an autobiographical account in which Dubofsky fits his career into the emergence of labor history as a recognized historical field, the rise of the discipline to prominence in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the recent stagnation and declining influence of the field.

http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/0365

Granted, a review of a book is not appropriate for use as a resource. But If Dubofsky sees his career as coinciding with "the emergence of labor history as a recognized historical field," i'd suggest my friend's "utter nonsense" was probably a correct observation. Dubofsky's Ph.D. was in 1960, seventeen years after J. Bernard Hogg accomplished the same.

I don't know if there will be time to rescue this article from deletion before the process runs out, some necessary resources are not available to me right now. I hope that it can at least be transferred to my user space for later ressurection, if destruction is decreed.

And one final question: why are so many people in such a hurry to delete biographical articles in their infancy, even when they are about legitimate individuals? Why can't editors be given two or three week's time to flesh out details, without suddenly having to drop everything to satisfy a deletion review committee? Facing such a bureaucratic nightmare on several different articles in the same week prevents me from establishing my own editing priorities, and gives me second thoughts about continuing here. Richard Myers 08:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I honestly don't care one way or the other about the labor history thing. Find the citation, and re-add the claim. But read the article on Labor history (discipline), and you'll see that it was already formed as early as 1894 with the publication of the Webbs' book in the U.K. and in 1886 with Ely's book in the U.S. Read the article on Melvyn Dubofsky, and you'll see that the book review you are citing really refers to Dubofsky's role in new labor history. As for the deletion process, I would advise taking the time to get most of the research done prior to putting your article online. Again, I don't care one way or the other if the article lives or dies. I do care that it meets Wikipedia's guidelines on academic notability. It doesn't hurt to give yourself an extra week of research to meet those standards prior to putting an article (even if it's just a stub) online. As a political science Ph.D. myself, I know that there are thousands of scholars who do a dissertation, generate four or five articles or a couple books from it, then don't do another thing. Their work may have shined light on one thing, but wasn't notable outside that extremely narrow focus. Under Wiki's guidelines, that probably would not make them notable. Not everyone who writes an article about someone notable is, themself, notable. I could write a book about Ed Boyce, but unless that book is widely quoted or is considered by the academic community to be pathbreaking, I'm not notable. That's why the Wiki guides exist. But, as both others have pointed out in the deletion process, if notability can be established -- that saves the article. Take the time to establish that before putting the article up. - Tim1965 19:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External link has disappeared

The externally linked document "Public Reaction to Pinkertonism and the Labor Question" appears to have disappeared (November 2, 2007). Sometimes website files are just re-arranged; not sure about this instance.

If it has been moved or has disappeared permanently, the link will need to be edited or removed. 4.227.255.227 09:57, 2 November 2007 (UTC)