Talk:T. F. Secor

A fact from T. F. Secor appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 July 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Thomas Powell (pictured) was one of several exceptionally fast Hudson River steamboats of the 1840s powered by the marine engineering works of T. F. Secor?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/T. F. Secor.

Wikipedia

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 01:47, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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~~... that New York marine engineer T. F. Secor co-founded T. F. Secor & Co. in 1838, later managed the Allaire Iron Works, and left a fortune in excess of $1,000,000 ($36,624,000 in 2019 dollars)?~~

QPQ review: Template:Did you know nominations/Seht, er lebt

Created by Gatoclass (talk). Self-nominated at 13:39, 17 April 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Just a quick comment: I was wondering if anything else could be said about Secor as it's not unique for wealthy individuals to leave $1 million fortunes, even engineers. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:08, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, $1 million was a lot of money to accumulate in 1901 - even Cornelius Vanderbilt, who is usually placed as the second or third wealthiest American in history, had a fortune of only $105 million - about $2.5 billion in today's money, which wouldn't even get him close to being on the world's richest 500 list today. Also, if you take Secor's fortune as a share of total national GDP at the time, which is how Vanderbilt's wealth is often calculated for comparative purposes, $1 million in 1901 would be the equivalent of $953,000,000 today. Gatoclass (talk) 18:19, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Even if that were the case, that probably means the hook won't be as hooky to a reader unless they were aware of the context of the times. Perhaps a different hook fact could be discussed here instead? Looking at the article again, there do appear to be some information about his life that isn't reliant on the fortune. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:04, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Like what, Narutolovehinata5? Gatoclass (talk) 06:32, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps something about his company's shipbuilding activities, such as the boats and engines they built before and during the Civil War? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 06:54, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New article is 6,749 characters long and nominated on the same day as creation. No copyvios detected and no close paraphrasing issues spotted. Article is well-sourced. Hook is 191 characters long (under 200 character max.) and is interesting. Refs 4, 5, 6, and 8 (all verifying the hook) are reliable sources (AGF ref 8 from NYT which is behind paywall). QPQ done. Looks good to go! —Bloom6132 (talk) 13:12, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the review Bloom, but after Narutolovehinata5's comments, I decided that I should come up with a better hook, which will entail writing a companion article to make this a double nomination, which I'm hoping to get done in the next few days. My apologies for not adding a note to this effect earlier - but I'm sure your review will still count as a valid QPQ if you need one regardless. Gatoclass (talk) 15:02, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, Gatoclass. Feel free to ping me when you've got the second article and I'll be more than happy to review that one too. —Bloom6132 (talk) 15:35, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gatoclass: Are there any updates with this nomination? It's been several weeks since the last comment here. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 13:35, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Time flies Narutolovehinata5 - faster than ever it seems lately.

I haven't been able to get back to this because, firstly, I recently bit off more than I could chew by starting 10 GAN reviews plus two GANs of my own in a futile attempt to stay in the Wikicup, and am now obliged to complete those reviews as a priority, and secondly, because real life unexpectedly became very busy a week or two ago and will remain so at least until the end of the month. So I've had to put this one on the backburner for a bit. I still expect to get back to it in the not-too-distant future, but am not quite ready to do so yet. Apologies for any inconvenience. Gatoclass (talk) 13:57, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gatoclass: Just leave a message or inform the reviewers once you're ready to work on this again. If things get too difficult and continuing the nomination within a reasonable amount of time becomes unfeasible, let people know here too. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:32, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gatoclass: Are you still planning to work on this? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 07:51, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Narutolovehinata5, nothing has changed since my last comment, I am still busy off-wiki and I still have five outstanding GAN reviews to complete which have to be my priority here. However, I am working on a companion article for this nomination in the little bit of spare time I have. I could of course have whipped up a quick companion article in the space of a few hours which would have met the criteria, but I like my DYK nominations to be worthwhile for the reader, and that requires considerably more work and time. Gatoclass (talk) 03:58, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As the nomination has been open since April, things will probably need to be finished soon. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 13:05, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gatoclass: Please indicate when you intend to continue the nomination. This is now one of the oldest remaining nominations and there has been little progress since early May. If a double article hook is not forthcoming, the nomination can be approved with the original hook, or it can be withdrawn. Courtesy ping to the original reviewer Bloom6132. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 15:16, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Alt1 ~~... that New York marine engineer T. F. Secor rose from being a machinists apprentice to lead one of the leading American marine engineering facilities of his day.~~ --evrik ^(talk) 02:33, 26 June 2020 (UTC) --evrik ^(talk) 02:33, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you evrik, but I said I was going to write a companion article for this nomination and still intend to do so. I have been extremely busy off-wiki for the last couple of weeks but am now ready to return to editing. I should have the article ready within the week. Gatoclass (talk) 13:29, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gatoclass: It has been over a week since your last comment. As this is now the fourth oldest hook, this may be closed as stale soon unless the second article has been done and nominated, or if there is agreement to only stick to a one-article hook about Secor. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 13:41, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, unfortunately I had some more holdups this week; however, I managed to get back to editing late in the week and the companion article is almost done; I will be moving it to mainspace early next week, at which time I will propose the alt hook for both nominations. Gatoclass (talk) 14:47, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gatoclass, I appreciate your attention to detail, but this nomination is dated April 17 and it keeps getting pushed off later and later. Please finish this by July 11 or 12, or else it will be closed as unsuccessful. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 19:23, 5 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ALT2: ... that Thomas Powell (pictured) was one of several "crack" Hudson River steamboats of the 1840s powered by the marine engineering works of T. F. Secor?

- Hook fact can be found in the T. F. Secor article. Gatoclass (talk) 11:09, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. Pinging original reviewer @Bloom6132: if he'd like to review this double nom. Yoninah (talk) 11:19, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Second article is 12,085 characters long. No copyvios detected and no close paraphrasing issues spotted. Article is well-sourced. ALT2 is 149 characters long (under 200 character max.) and is interesting. Refs 6 and 7 (both verifying the hook) are reliable book sources. Rest of my earlier review stands. Looks good to go! —Bloom6132 (talk) 17:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]