Talk:Stanley Marcus

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 Stanley Marcus is currently a good article nominee. Anyone who has not contributed significantly to this article may review it according to the good article criteria to decide whether or not to list it as a good article, as outlined on the nominations page.

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Date: 23:29, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
It is requested that a photograph or photographs be included in this article to improve its quality.

Wikipedians in Dallas County, Texas may be able to help!
The Free Image Search Tool (FIST) may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.
This article was the featured biography on the Portal:Dallas in April 2007.

Contents

[edit] Additional areas I've not yet covered in the article

  • Political stances, particularly in context of being a self-described liberal in a time when Dallas was well-known for conservatism — positions he took with regard to race relations and desegregation, freedom of expression in art, the "What's Right with Dallas" letter after the JFK assassination
  • Connections to political figures and causes — Urban Institute, various presidents, was considered for ambassador to France, during LBJ's retirement years was one of the only people whose social invitations the Johnsons would accept, close to JFK, supported Eisenhower but says in his book it was based on inaccurate predictions of what DDE would stand for
  • Arts patronage (touched on in present article, but there's more to say)
  • Relationship to Dallas' Jewish Community, such as role in Temple Emanu-El but with info also about how he was not necessarily so much a religious Jew as an ethnic Jew (have an article from Commentary that I could use toward this topic)
  • International connections and relations to designers
  • Role as a consultant even after retired from N-M
  • House — initially hired Frank Lloyd Wright but rejected his design; the 2nd designer's house ended up being designated as a historical landmark in 2001
  • Still looking for a usable photograph

- Lawikitejana 11:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Results of the peer-review request

The following is a copy-and-paste of the original peer-review request and of the one response, including strikethrough of items that were addressed.

[edit] Original request

I'm trying to get this article up to GA status. So far, I have tried a few different suggestions:

  • Looking to see if there are articles on the topic on the wikipedias in other languages. There were none, although German Wikipedia had an article on Neiman Marcus that mentioned Stanley Marcus. (I've since gone on to create a stub in Spanish Wikipedia and a start-class Simple English Wikipedia article.)
  • Using Google to find articles and reliable sources online. I've used several reliable sources and cited them as thoroughly as I can.
  • Using print materials that meet the reliable sources criteria. To tell the truth, I got so interested in this topic that I even paid for access to an article in Commentary magazine. (See my user page for my "Are you a Wikipediholic?" score; I even edited the test to include an item on those of us who pay for materials to use in editing.) I used a book by a local author and searched a database of U.S. newspapers. I haven't been able to locate the family copy of Marcus' Minding the Store.

I don't know of a good way to get pictures for the article, so suggestions on that are welcome, as are suggestions for other appropriate forms of illustration. Incidentally, I had to find ways to write around some inconsistencies in the data; for instance, there seem to be different answers on exactly which degrees Marcus had from Harvard Business School, as well as the year in which he started with the company. I also have some additional data and sources I haven't quite figured out how to work in appropriately.

FYI, I have no vested interest in the article other than being a Dallasite and daughter of a Jewish-American Texan and salesman who's a great admirer of "Mr. Stanley," as he's known around town. I started the article because a person complained about a line in the Neiman-Marcus article about Stanley Marcus' death being "mourned by the fashion world." (I've no problem with a complaint about the use of a non-NPOV, uncredited quote from the N-M web site, but instead, the person seemed to be saying that Mr. Marcus was non-notable, which is just not true.) Lawikitejana 23:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Note that Stanley Marcus the retailer should not be confused with Stanley Marcus the judge, who appears to work (to have worked) in the same region. Lawikitejana 23:21, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Further update: I can see from a look at the other articles submitted for peer review that mine is far skimpier. Nonetheless, I'd be grateful for input, and please consider me a newcomer to the review process.

[edit] Yannismarou

  • You could add an infobox.
  • Isn't there any public space or free-use photo available?
Reply: I've looked and looked. I've even tried looking on sites in the .gov domain to see if there were pictures of him from his White House visits or something of that sort. No luck. The best I've been able to do is a picture of one of his book covers, which — in order to meet the criteria for fair use — has to go in the section that discusses the book. Lawikitejana (talk) 23:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
  • "The Advertising Hall of Fame notes: "Stanley Marcus was among the most important figures in the history of American retail merchandising and marketing. Through his many innovations, he transformed a local Dallas clothing store into an international brand synonymous with high style, fashion and gracious service."" 2/3 of your lead is a quote. I do not know if this is OK with WP:LEAD. Don't forget that the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article. Maybe some recasting into alternative language would help.
  • "did not feel the raise he was offered by Sanger's was sufficient to support a family". What was Herbert doing in Sanger's, from where he left? You do not clarify that.
  • "and made his the first department store". What do you want to keep here: "his" or "the"?!
  • "(including pairs of animals), camels, and live tigers.[6][1][7][4]" Personally, I do not like so many citations in a row. Maybe, you could consider combining them per the model in Tourette syndrome.
  • "and industry leaders." (Biderman, p. 60)[2]" Get rid of the parenthesis, and make a proper citation, where you can also mention the page. After all, when you have printed sources, you should always in the notes mention pages.
  • "Later life" is not actually "later life" but trivia (writing, collections etc.). I would suggest that you create the respective sections with appropriate headings, and then work the prose, and expand them, if yoy have more material.
  • "Quotes" again look like trivia. Maybe you could incorporate the quote in one of the previous sections. Maybe Demosthenes or El Greco could give you some ideas about how to do that.
  • Is note 9 OK? <-- not sure what this one meant, but think it's fixed
  • Some of your know online sources have no author no publisher and no work mentioned. You should have at least an indication, about where this comes from. Have fixed where possible; some items simply have no named author (for example, older TIME magazine stories found online)
  • Couldn't "Additional references" be merged with "External links"?--Yannismarou 15:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. The survey will end on April 30.

  • Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article?
Speaking for myself, I won't know if I'd like additional feedback until there's some preliminary feedback.Lawikitejana (talk) 11:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do?
As you've said the survey is trying to find out a little about writing influences and trends that may affect writing on Wikipedia ... I am an educator and have to write a lot of simple expository prose for that context, and also have a Ph.D., which involved writing a dissertation and using APA citation format. I also have a background in journalism and copy editing, FWIW.Lawikitejana (talk) 11:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia?
There's an essay by an editor that's on How to Write a Featured Article -- or similar title -- that's I've read repeatedly in the past, and also I've read a lot of material from the biography WikiProject.Lawikitejana (talk) 11:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:06, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA review

Hello. I'll be doing the GA review for this article. Here are some suggestions for improving the article:

  • Per WP:LEAD, the lead should be about 2 or 3 full paragraphs summarizing all the main points of the article. It should have more info about his career and less about his awards.
  • Also, there shouldn't be any new information in the lead (info that isn't located anywhere else in the article), so the quote about the Advertising Hall of Fame needs to be moved elsewhere.
  • A couple of the web sources in the references need an accessdate. You can just use today's date as the last date they were accessed.
  • In his memoir, Marcus recalled his parents as affectionate and even-handed in their attention to each of their children. - cite with page number
  • Do we know what his major was at Harvard? I'm assuming business, since he went to business school, but it could be all sorts of related things: marketing, economics, etc.
Done. Turns out it was English literature; one has to bear in mind that at first he wasn't sure he wanted to join the business as his father had expected due to concerns about personal liberty and his love of books.
  • Make sure there are spaces after citations. Ex: 14 and 18
  • Out of curiosity, since the home is a Texas Historic Landmark, does it have a Wikipedia article? If so, it should be linked.
No, there is no article. I double-checked just now.
  • "He encouraged men to wear drooping socks" - explain how this saved rubber Done.
  • "During his time as leader of the store, he had doubled annual profits and nearly tripled annual sales." - source?
  • "a lot of Communist art" - quote needs a source
It's from source #35, which is cited at the end of the paragraph; do I simply cite it twice?
I would, because it eliminates confusion, but you don't have to, and I won't fail the article if you don't. Nikki311 18:58, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
I put it in, then took it back out because it interrupted the flow of the sentence and the cites just before and after it in the same paragraph were from the same source already.Lawikitejana (talk) 01:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
  • The citation needed tag needs to be taken care of. Done. (Hadn't seen that one of those had crept in!)
  • History of the Jews in Dallas, Texas should be in a See also section above the Notes. Done.
  • "Neiman Marcus By Frank X. Tolbert 1953" - is this a book? if so, format it using the Template:cite book, including the isbn number. I've done this, but apparently no ISBN exists ... I checked online and also checked two public-library catalogs.
  • Okay. Don't worry about it then. Nikki311 18:58, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm putting the article on hold for one week to allow for improvements. After the time is up, I'll fail or pass the article. Good luck! Nikki311 23:40, 22 May 2008 (UTC)