Talk:Mantua Township, Portage County, Ohio

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Algonquian toponym?[edit]

I never thought Mantua is an Algonquian toponym. I figured it was named for the city in Italy. Sources, please? -- JeffBillman (talk) 06:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mantua, Utah[edit]

Greetings! Some discussion has arisen at User talk:JonRidinger#onlineutah spam about the propriety of one of the sources used for this article. Below is the transcription of that discussion. -- JeffBillman (talk) 22:00, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've been removing onlineutah.com from all the pages it is currently on, because (a) it's spam (for a realtor, and for Google ads) and (b) it appears to be copyvio, copied from a Utah encyclopedia. It certainly shouldn't stand as a reliable source, and probably not as an EL either. I'm not reverting your reverts, but wanted to let you know the rationale behind removing the refs. tedder (talk) 06:17, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I found the onlineutah.com link via a Google search. If it is indeed copied from a Utah encyclopedia, it would be helpful to know that encyclopedia so that the source may be updated. By the way, though copyright violations are certainly a concern, if they occur outside Wikipedia they're pretty much also outside the scope of WP:COPYVIO. Thanks! -- JeffBillman (talk) 07:29, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks both of you for the heads-up. In looking at the source it didn't jump out at me as pure spam and even after reading WP:SPAM I still can't say this specific source is blatant spam. Yes, it does have a ton of ads, but the link in the article is not placed to promote anything and the page does indeed have information directly related to the article. And as a citation, it never was just an external link. I am definitely searching for an additional source (or at least the source of OnlineUtah), but for now I think it is OK, epspecially for a relatively non-important article and fact. I have seen many reliable sources online that have a lot of ads on them. Thanks again for all you do with spam removal, though! :) --JonRidinger (talk) 07:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's likely copypasta from "Utah History Encyclopedia", seen in this ref. In any case, it isn't much of a reliable source, let alone the spam issue. tedder (talk) 19:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've researched the UHE, and unfortunately I don't see a reference that substantiates the claim that Mantua, Utah was named in Snow's honor after this township. It certainly seems probable, but at this time I don't feel comfortable allowing the claim to go unsourced. (More to the point, I'm actually more comfortable allowing the onlineutah.com source to remain than to remove the citation entirely.) Thoughts? -- JeffBillman (talk) 22:00, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My thought is that it would be best as an external link, not a cited source, it misses the main point of WP:RS: "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". It's a self-published source of some sort. I have objections against the spamminess of it too, but ultimately it isn't a reliable source. If you'd still like to use it as a cite (since it isn't being used to back up anything big). tedder (talk) 22:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, ideally we'd find a reliable source, put it in the place of the onlineutah cite, and be done with it. (I don't suppose you have one hanging around somewhere? ;-) ) If it's important to you that the existing onlineutah cite be removed, though, I can agree to removing the cite and replacing it with Template:Fact for now. -- JeffBillman (talk) 22:47, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be a fan of removing it, but I'm fine with waiting for consensus, or running it past WP:BLPN. I wish I could conjure a RS for you, but Ohio and Utah are well outside my knowledge domain :-) tedder (talk) 23:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Meh... it's outside BLP scope, as Snow has been dead for a century. The more I think about it, let's remove it and replace it with a cite needed. The "damage" done by an uncited claim is far outweighed by the potential spam, copyvio, and RS concerns at work here. Thanks for your help! -- JeffBillman (talk) 23:14, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(over) After some digging I found a MUCH better source via Google Books here. Hurray! --JonRidinger (talk) 14:17, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Great work, Jon! Congrats on digging out that. tedder (talk) 16:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]