Talk:William M. Tweed

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[edit] Weasel words cut at end

The game try to drag the modern Council on Foreign Relations into an article about Boss Tweed is a textbook case of "weasel words" and I've cut it. Here's what the Wiki guidelines are, fyi:

Similarly, avoid weasel words that offer an opinion without really backing it up, and which are really used to express a non-neutral point of view.

Examples of weasel words Some people say... ...is widely regarded as... ..is widely considered... ...has been called... It is believed that... It has been suggested/noticed/decided... Some people believe... It has been said that... Some would say... Legend has it that... Critics say that... Many/some have claimed...

Profhum 17:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Apprehension

I have read before that Thomas's Nast cartoons greatly contributed to his capture in Cuba. Cuban authorities recognized him by the political cartoons and this lead to his capture. An interesting point to include if anyone can cite it. I'll take a look on google and see if I can find a reference /// I found a citation; here http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20050704/202/1467 among other places on google if you type up "boss tweed capture in cuba" in the search. I'll be adding this in now. --Glen 07:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Advertising?

The comment near the end about a biography of Boss Tweed simply seems to be trying to advertise the book and has no valid reason to be in the article and should be removed.

See no reason why it can't remain there; it's a nice pointer for anyone who wants to read more about Tweed. --me
Well, it may be good reading, but it has no place in the main section of the article. I'm putting it under a "Further Reading" section, that will hopefully point to the book without being so bias. Teimu.tm 02:18, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Debtor's prison So when were debtor's prisons abolished in America? I was under the impression they were gone by the time of the Constitution (obviously not, if this article is correct)...

William_Smith_(geologist) - Fanny_Hill - John_Mytton

~ender 2004-02-15 01:41:MST

Shouldn't this page really be under "William Marcy Tweed", with a redirect from "Boss Tweed"? --Michael K. Smith 20:54, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • No, "Boss Tweed" is his common name, the name 95% of people would refer to him by, and therefore the appropriate article title per Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Using the common name in the title, among other things, makes the result more likely to pop up on google.--Pharos 11:45, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I disagree. Boss Tweed is a nickname, not a real name, hence is not a common name. When has nicknames been used in Wikipedia over formal names? It's not even an alias. Mandel 07:13, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
A name is what something or someone is known as. That's the whole point of naming things. The goal is to allow users to most easily find information, hence the reliance on common names. Mark Twain's "real name" was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but we don't put his article under that title because it would be rather difficult to find from a search engine. Similarly with Bill Clinton ("real name":William Jefferson Clinton) and Julius Caesar ("real name":Gaius Iulius Gaii Filius Gaii Nepos Caesar). "William Marcy Tweed" gets only 815 hits on google, while "Boss Tweed" gets 28,000, more than 34X as many. If by "real name" you mean the most formal name is the only allowed form, then clearly there is no meaing to a concept of a "common" name. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) for a full explanation.--Pharos 08:35, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
"Boss Tweed" is a highly informal, almost colloquial "name". Bill, Julius and Mark Twain are all common names, whereas "Boss" itself is just a designation and not a real name per se, so you should not place them on the same platform. If you really want to use a pseudo-name as Boss Tweed, put the quotation marks in "Boss", or people will mistake it as a real name. Boss is a designation, not a name, and as such should not be used. Mandel 21:09, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Mandel, the name of this article should be "William Marcy Tweed" with a redirect for Boss Tweed, allowing people who search for Boss Tweed to find this page. -- 24.22.56.148 08:09, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

_____________________________________________________________________ Bold text Boss Tweed's personal life

Didn't Boss Tweed ever marry or have children? 169.139.16.2 18:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Source

         Was the source that went to New York Times confidential?

[edit] Backslashes

I apologise for all the backslashes that have appeared since my edit. I\'m not sure why they are appearing but I suspect if I try to revert, they will appear again. Can someone edit them out, please? Thanks. 69.41.185.10 01:39, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

On second thoughts, just revert it. The edit wasn\'t even that important. 69.41.185.10 01:40, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relatives?

I just trimmed a line that was out of context in its placement. Instead of just moving it, I have opted for deleting it as it was about living relatives as of 1974. It was out of date and why would we want to saddle relatives with infamy by association? User:El benito 11:15AM 4/20

This article should not be titled Willam Marcy Tweed. It should be titled William Magear Tweed. Magear is both the middle name of his first born son, William Magear Junior, November 14, 1845, but also the maiden name of his mother, Eliza Magear. The name Marcy was a nickname that was derived from the politician William L. Marcy. He was the one to coin the phrase, "To the belongs the spois." Nicknames were common to this era such as, John "Toots" Hoffman, and Peter "Bismark" Sweeney. Ipso facto, the title should be William Magear Tweed because that is truly his real name. See Hershkowitz and Ackerman. 68.162.150.122 05:34, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Views of Tweed Today

I have removed this sentence: "Tweed does have a small camp of defenders, mainly liberals who point out he looked after New York City's poor and lower classes by distributing tax money as welfare for the poor."

I have done so for two reasons. Citation is lacking, and the word liberal seems to be a POV attack on modern day Democratic party members. This word requires context. Liberal in its most basic essence means a leftist or an advocate of democracy and free speech as our founding fathers were.72.150.107.101 22:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

There seem to be two Legacy sections, one of which calls Tweed's political machine "stupid." Who writes this junk? 66.71.90.75 19:56, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tweed's legacy section

There were, as a previous poster indicated, two sections referring to his legacy: One called "Tweed's legacy" and one called simply "Legacy." I have deleted the "Tweed's legacy" section and moved its content to the "Legacy" section.

I have also added a couple of requests for citation.

In addition, I have removed the following paragraph:

"Tweed's organization was neither the first nor the last instance of a political machine, but it may have been one of the most stupid. Tweed's over-reaching doomed him; with better judgment he might have remained in power much longer. Many big cities were governed by machines well into the 20th Century and machine-like political organizations persist to this day -- for example, in Chicago."

At best, this is uncited original research. The author draws his own conclusions from the information in the article and presents them as fact. The author also makes an accusation about the city of Chicago. Whether or not this accusation is true,

  1. No source is given.
  2. The information is not relevant to Tweed's career in New York.

CKA3KA (Skazka) (talk) 22:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Took out some sentence regarding "banging" in this section. Definitely not what we're looking for. 74.132.62.250 (talk) 00:34, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hundreds of Dollars?

Just wondering, in the articles beginning it says he stole hundreds of dollars from taxpayers...shouldn't it be millions? I don't want to make any changes if hundreds is the proper way to say it, though. Ageofe (talk) 23:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sloppy words

I replaced "He then plundered the city" with "He then allowed contractors and others to submit invoices for inflated amounts or for work that was not done." I also replaced "cronies" with "others."

Ephraimh (talk) 23:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

Far too often when an essay is dealing with a larger-than-life person, the writer gets lazy & forgets to provide sources for the good stories. It's not following th eadvice of the cynical newspaperman in the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" -- it's that without a bit of healthy skepticism, we help make legends into facts. It was in this frame of thought that I dropped some {{fact}} tags in this article: the anecdotes just sound too good to be true -- although it's likely that they are.

I'd like to see these sourced in some of the well-researched books about the man. At the moment, these statements are accepted without criticism because we can find some kind of source for many of them -- although these sources are not the result of careful research, but off-the-cuff comments by people familiar with the legend around Boss Tweed. If possible, I'd like to see a couple quotations traced back to the primary sources. (Why quote secondary sources, when primary ones will provide even more impact?) I believe the right person, with a love for research, could turn the material here into a Featured Article. -- llywrch (talk) 23:04, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Typo?

There is a poorly worded sentence under SCANDAL that should be corrected. I don't know the correct info so cannot do so:

"New York City's debts increased from $3600 million in 1868 to about $136 million by 1870" Djarvinen (talk) 20:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)