Talk:Stanley Marcus/Archive 1

Untitled

This article was the featured biography on the Portal:Dallas in April 2007.

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)

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.

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.

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)

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)

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.

I've now added a second paragraph about innovations he introduced at N-M. I'm not certain that yet provides enough about his career and why he's famous, but it's an improvement and definitely is expanded later in the article.

I was just getting ready to help out with this, but I think the paragraph you added helps a lot. I think the lead is good enough now. Nikki311 04:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad. If you see something that could be added to the lead, please do, as I'm still not content with it.Lawikitejana (talk) 21:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• 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.

Can we mark this one off the list now that we've found other GAs and FAs with similar quotes? I could also look for more info on when he was inducted into the AHoF to add to the article proper.

• 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 Done.
• 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? Gave up. I can't find this in his book, nor in my 250-page files of online clippings. All I can find is his doubling something in the first year he was there, so I took it out.Lawikitejana (talk) 21:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
• "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)

There's just one sentence left needing a citation (see above). If you can't find one, we can just remove that sentence altogether for now. It can always be added back later if a source is found. Nikki311 04:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I took that sentence out, so are we good to go? Lawikitejana (talk) 21:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Great job! I'll pass it right now. Nikki311 21:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Randall O The book by Frank X.Tolbert Neiman Marcus Texas First Edition Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 53-5506 Printed 1953. Checked Library of Congress, LC Control No: 53005506 LC Classification H F 5465.U6 N48 Call Number HF 5465. U6 N48 FT MEADE . Also Carrie died on March 6, 1953 in her Swiss Avenue home. Page 180 same book. I can supply address if needed? Stanley graduated, with a bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard in 1925. Page 18 He also went back to Harvard, in 1926 to attend the Harvard School of Business Administration. Page 20 I have his school book and will try to copy the front page for you. Miss Jane Trahey was the Neiman Marcus advertising director, Pages 46,137 for a number of years. Many people feel a street needs to be named for him in Dallas or a highway. Randall O Randall O (talk) 05:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Jane Trahey also co-wrote with Stanley Marcus and Miss McDuff a book called "A Taste of Texas" Also known as the Neiman-Marcus cookbook. By Random House several printings were done over the years. Pages 46,47, and 48. Randall O

Marcus's

Hi Lawiki. As promised, I'm going through the article seeing if I can help. You are a really excellent writer; the writing quality is clearly good enough for WP:FAC (actually, it's better than that standard!), although I have to admit I'm not much good on FAC issues except for the "well-written" part. My edits are meant to correspond to what I think NYTM and AP Stylebook say, and to help it pass FAC, not to pass judgment on the prose.

NYTM says to use 's for a possessive on a singular noun, except when the noun ends in two successive sibilant sounds (Kansas' climate), and a few other odd cases. AP Stylebook, on the other hand, says "SINGULAR PROPER NAMES ENDING IN S: Use only an apostrophe: Achilles’ heel, Agnes’ book". So whichever you want is fine, but consistency will help the article pass FAC, and I saw both "Marcus' " and "Marcus's". I changed them all to "Marcus's"; feel free to change them all the other way around if you prefer. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Where I say "Mrs. is a bit old-fashioned", my feeling is that it's perfectly okay for a woman who identified herself that way; I had to pause and think for a moment when they referred to "Mrs. Clinton in 1996..." on Jeopardy tonight, but of course, that's what she called herself in 1996. However, you never know what you're going to encounter at FAC, so I just finessed the issue by changing it to "she"; feel free to change it back. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Question: is this article headed for FA? If so, I'd rather do any copyediting shortly before FA. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I am totally onboard with going for FA, but didn't know if there was a problem with the fact that I can't find ANY free images of Stanley Marcus. I have innumerable images from newspapers, etc., but I have tried every avenue I've ever seen suggested (government sources, etc.) without success. Even the family photos tend to be copyrighted professional work. (A book of Marcus' own photographs was recently published, BTW.) I also wasn't sure because of the fact that I see areas for coverage, mentioned above, that I didn't feel had been covered sufficiently; then again, maybe my notion of adequate coverage is overreaching. I haven't enough FA experience to be sure, but I did feel sometimes it was better than GA once those little items were fixed.

Thanks for the tightening and consistency fixes, BTW ... we all need that when we've been writing a large piece by ourselves, especially working from wordier or more formal sources.Lawikitejana (talk) 18:29, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I have to admit I'm an idiot about image issues and can't help you there. I'll be happy to give it a copyedit just prior to FAC. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:49, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I'm sure people at WT:FAC would be willing to help with advice on images. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Bot-created subpage

A temporary subpage at User:Polbot/fjc/Stanley Marcus was automatically created by a perl script, based on this article at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges. The subpage should either be merged into this article, or moved and disambiguated. Polbot (talk) 14:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

As noted on the article page, this article does not discuss the judge listed in that directory, but rather a well-known businessman who shares the same name. Lawikitejana (talk) 05:10, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Interesting link that can't go in article due to WP standards

This article discusses the former Stanley Marcus home at 10 Nonesuch Road and various work that has been done on it by the homeowner. It is quite interesting, but as Wikipedia does not consider Pegasus News to be a reliable source, I am not adding anything from it to the article. Nonetheless, I would point it out for anyone interested in the topic: “'Grace Kelly would approve' of recent updates to Stanley Marcus home," Pegasus News, August 12, 2013 Lawikitejana (talk) 19:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Reproduction of the comments on the failed FAC nomination

Preface: I had no idea that when such a nomination is made, the comments are not in any way (a) posted to the article's Talk page nor (b) mentioned on the User Talk page of the nominator and/or major editors. Far from having "lost interest" in either the article or the process, I simply assumed that all this time no one had gotten around to the review, since I'd never seen any new notes either on this page or on my User Talk page. In future I will know that no one notifies anyone and all followup must come from the person who wants it. Lawikitejana (talk) 08:20, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

THE TEXT BETWEEN THESE TWO LINES IS THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THE FAC RESULTS. TO REMARK ON THIS MATERIAL, PLEASE DO SO BY CREATING A NEW SECTION RATHER THAN EDITING THE FAC REMARKS.

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by GrahamColm 10:02, 6 October 2013 (UTC) [1].

---

Stanley Marcus

Stanley Marcus (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Nominator(s): Lawikitejana (talk) 21:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because the content seems similar in quality and documentation to that of many current FAs. Peer review was conducted a while back, and the changes made as a result are documented, along with rationales for any changes that were declined. The page is immensely stable, having never attracted any edit wars. Given the difficulty of finding any free-use images of the subject — from his youth he was member of a prominent retailing family and thus every photo of him I have yet found, even those of SM as a child, are protected by copyright, and his participation in government doesn't seem to have yielded usable images — the images used have had to be confined to those of places associated with him and one book-jacket, placed in the section of the article that discusses the book. The article's content seems to be that of an FA, although there might ways of dividing it that might yield a more substantive TOC for navigating the text. Lawikitejana (talk) 21:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC) Addendum: After looking through other nominations, I see they generally also discuss the notability of the subject. Stanley Marcus was a major figure in fashion retailing and a major contributor to the world-recognized brand of Neiman-Marcus. He appears in Harvard Business School's list of "20th Century Great American Business Leaders" and in theHouston Chronicle list of 100 influential Texans, as well as the Advertising Hall of Fame and the Retailing Hall of Fame. Lawikitejana(talk) 21:35, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Comment it is perfectly valid per WP:NFCC to have a non-free (copyrighted) infobox image of a deceased person, given no free alternatives. On the other hand, the book cover will have to go, as the cover itself isn't being discussed.—indopug (talk) 01:58, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Oppose for the moment. This article has not been formally reviewed since it was made a GA five years ago, and the edit history doesn't indicate that there has been a concentrated effort to prepare it for this FAC, which suggests that the nomination may be premature. I have not had time to read more than the lead at present, plus a quick scan through the rest and some reference spotchecking:

• Lead does not seem to be a summary of the whole article. There are sections in the TOC which aren't mentioned in the lead – including "Presidential connections" which I should imagine is pretty notable.
• As noted above, you may use an image of Marcus in the lead, on a fair use rationale basis, for the purpose of identification. There are several Google images from which to choose. As it is, the infobox looks pretty inadequate. The book cover later in the article has to go, however.
• What is the purpose of citing Marcus's name to the Dallas Morning News?
• I'm not sure why so much information is cited in the lead. If the lead is doing its job of summarising the article, this information ought to be in the main text and cited there. If the information is not in the main article, then the lead is not doing its job.
• However, if you use a direct quotation in the lead ("There is never a good sale for Neiman Marcus unless it's a good buy for the customer.") that does need to be cited.
• Inappropriate capitalisation in "American Business Leaders"
• Outside the lead there are uncited statements: "Personal life" paragraph 2, and "Early years" paragraph 1
• There are better, neater, more up-to-date ways of enclosing quotations than using giant ornamental quote marks; I've not seen these in a FAC for years.
• In the references, no. 29 is unformatted
• It would be much more convenient for readers if the publication details of multi-cited sources, e.g. Minding the Store, and Biderman, were listed separately, under "Sources" or "Bibliography". As it is, someone wanting to check, say, ref. 46 has to search through the references section to find details of the book.
• References to newspapers or journals where no online link is given should have page references. This is done in some cases but not others.
• I have not checked out the referencing in detail, but ref 63 source appears to have no relevant information. Nor does 73. I suspect that these, and possible other cases, are due to the age of the article and lack of updating—I note that many of the retrieval dates are for 2007 or 2008, and of course websites and their contents can change considerably over time. I think you need to check out all your online references.

I think your best course of action might be to withdraw this nomination to give yourself time for some serious updating of content and refs. Although the article obviously has merits – it looks comprehensive and well-researched – it looks in need of modernisation and is not, at this time, ready for FA promotion.Brianboulton (talk) 10:38, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

(Added note): the external link checker indicates that several links are dead and that in several other cases the source content has changed.Brianboulton (talk) 10:48, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Note for delegates: I rather think this editor has lost interest in the nomination and the article. Maybe consider closing the nom?Brianboulton (talk) 00:20, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Graham Colm (talk) 15:32, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.

THE TEXT BETWEEN THESE TWO LINES IS THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THE FAC RESULTS. TO REMARK ON THIS MATERIAL, PLEASE DO SO BY CREATING A NEW SECTION RATHER THAN EDITING THE FAC REMARKS.