A fact from Pistol River appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 April 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that the Pistol River received its name after James Mace lost his pistol in it in 1853?
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Oregon, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of Oregon on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.OregonWikipedia:WikiProject OregonTemplate:WikiProject OregonOregon articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Rivers, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Rivers on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.RiversWikipedia:WikiProject RiversTemplate:WikiProject RiversRiver articles
Latest comment: 13 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Who is James Mace?? If there's no Wikipedia article about him, something should have been written in this article, i.e. "a gunfighter on the run", "a wandering prospector", etc. Boneyard90 (talk) 13:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
The source doesn't give any hint about who he was, but I agree with you that it's odd to mention him without some further explanation or description. Would deleting his name from the article solve the problem? Finetooth (talk) 16:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm surprised that that bit of missing data wasn't caught by the DYK reviewer. If the referenced source mentions John Mace, but doesn't elaborate on his identity or profession, perhaps the line can be kept with the addition of something like: "though local lore recalls the name John Mace, more detailed information has not been documented", or something like that. Boneyard90 (talk) 17:15, 14 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
A good suggestion. I propose waiting until User:Little Mountain 5 has a chance to weigh in, and I'll try to find something about James Mace in other sources. He clearly isn't the James Mace described in a separate Wikipedia article, but he might appear in local Oregon history books. Finetooth (talk) 19:21, 14 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
Here is an article in The Curry Coastal Pilot that describes him as a "pioneer". The article, which is a feature, attributes this information to a central Curry County history, They Found Gold on the Beach by Walt Schroeder. I checked, and my local library does not have a copy. Still, "pioneer" is not a doubtful claim, and it would probably not be challenged if sourced to this newspaper article and its author, Betty Bezzerides. Thoughts? Finetooth (talk) 21:55, 14 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I'm a bit late to the scene. The thing is, no source that I've found elaborates on James Mace whatsoever. ([1][2][3][4][5]) The news article that Finetooth discovered is the best/only thing I've seen so far, and I think it will work nicely. I'll add it in a few minutes if no one beats me to it. (It would be even better if either of you could get your hands on a copy of the source book... the nearest library that carries it is well over 100 miles away from here...[6]) Cheers, LittleMountain500:22, 15 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The new Flickr image is superior to the older image that was in the geobox, and I took the liberty of replacing the old one with the new one. I thought I should explain why. (Nice job in finding and adding the new one, by the way.) MOS:IMAGES advises against crowding the text with too many images. The guideline I'm think of says, "Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, or between an image and an infobox." Other things to generally avoid are images that overlap section boundaries or displace edit buttons. What I try to do when I have multiple images to choose from is to pick the best one(s) and add only as many as seem useful without violating the layout guidelines. I see exactly the same problem in the layout of Williamson River. There as here, I'd be inclined to use the left-hand image in the geobox and delete the one that's in the geobox now. They illustrate the same thing, and the left-hand one is a better photo, in my opinion. Finetooth (talk) 18:12, 13 November 2011 (UTC)Reply