William H. West (policeman) was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 13 April 2023 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Arrests of Ulysses S. Grant. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

A fact from Arrests of Ulysses S. Grant appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 24 May 2023 ( check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse carriage when he was a general? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Arrest of Ulysses S. Grant.

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I don't see anything about a written arrest record in the DC police chief interview, but it does mention he was cited three times for speeding. Pharos ( talk) 21:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC) reply

This article is a joke. It repetitiously cites the same two or three flimsy sources to lend faux credence to a very likely apocryphal story. There is no contemporary evidence I can find (and I've got about 20 hours of searching and reading into this). The earliest note is 1908 when West tells the story himself, then everyone repeats it from there. Now, in the wake of people salivating over Trump's arrest, we have numerous "reliable sources" repeating it over and over again, which are now cited here on WP! XKCD put out this comic years ago and WP even recognizes it as a major problem. WP:citogenesis. At best, this story has a section on Grant's page. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 20:33, 4 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Update: 1861–1930 records appear to be accessible to visiting researchers at the National Archives in DC. Pharos ( talk) 20:18, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

The heavy dependence on modern political articles about Trump's woes, while using this 150 year old story that claims an event of huge significance is a WP:REDFLAG. We want to call these sources WP:GREL, but they are outside their Areas of expertise on this. The WaPo source cannot be relied upon here. This shows in their own citing. The WaPo leans on Cathy Lainer, the DC police chief in 2012, which leans on the DCist, which cites nothing except a bathroom reader from the 80s. And all of them are not historians. The rest are blog level sources or sourced for ancillary topics. The closest I can find is the Ben Kemp blog (currently source 8) citing "The Marion Enterprise (NY), June 20, 1885". No one knows what that is or where to find it. It looks like it might be a close to contemporary newspaper. There's also the supposition that Lainer was referencing the DC police logbook, but that is not clear. I even put in a few emails, no reply, and it doesn't seem like the logbook has been digitized nor is available for public view.

Without reliable sources in their area of expertise, I recommend deleting the article. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 20:59, 4 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I found the Marion Enterprise article [1] and it's got nothing to do with the alleged incident we're discussing. It's the source for the paragraph in [2] that starts "During Grant's final days...". E Eng 08:08, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I firmly agree with Tamzin's removal of the PROD tag. This is notable and the issues you've raised can be fixed. Philipnelson99 ( talk) 22:18, 4 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Notability was never a question, but this means you recognize that the current sources are all inappropriate for this article? I've raised these concerns on the reliable sources noticeboard. In the least, the article should have a tag. Maybe something like ^{dubious – discuss} 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 22:32, 4 April 2023 (UTC) reply

You implied notability issues with WP:PROD, sourcing issues can be fixed if that's an issue, and I don't agree it is an issue. Philipnelson99 ( talk) 23:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC) reply

( edit conflict) So, the logbook thing was my mistake, thankfully caught by Pharos. I'd gotten mixed up with the Lincoln assassination logbook, referencedd in the same article. I do apologize.

As to the rest, my response is in two points: First, even if all of this critique were correct, that wouldn't make deletion the proper remedy, because apocryphal stories and myths can be notable, and quite a few are. There's no dispute that this is a well-known ancedote, whether or not it happened. Second, it did happen, in some form. Or at least, that is what every reliable source to ever discuss it has said, including something I've just added from Grant expert John F. Marszalek. In writing this, I was much more conservative than most media sources in how I described West's narrative, deferring to Rosenwald's comment that parts may be untrue. Rosenwald, notably, is not a source that has credulously regurgitaed the narrative; he looked at it critically and concluded that, in broad strokes, it happened. Likewise Marszalek, or maybe even more so, since he seems to accept West's full story as true. There's a fine line between source review and original research, and if the argument here is that Grant wasn't arrested at all, the bare minimum to make that argument is a reliable source saying that. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 22:35, 4 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Marszalek at least seems like an authority on the issue. It would be so much better if any history textbook or something a lot closer to historical authority were the sourcing material. The currently titled "assessment and legacy" section is also interesting, but talking about that verges on wp:synth until someone else actually reports on this without "credulously regurgitating the narrative", as you put it. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 22:51, 4 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Comment. I think the points being raised here are entirely groundless and unsubstantiated by the evidence. The topic clearly is supported by multiple independent sources with editorial oversite. None of the sources utilized in this article could by any stretch of the imagination be considered "unreliable" per our written policies at Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Further, the number, quality, and breadth of coverage across a century clearly demonstrates the topic passes WP:SUSTAINED, WP:NEVENT, and WP:SIGCOV. The text as written also accurately reflects the published literature. In short, the article is perfectly fine as written and well within our policy guidelines. 4meter4 ( talk) 19:39, 5 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Please note this is a myth created citing fictional sources. The topic does not exist in reliable source materials or even in Ron Chernow 1,100 page biography on Grant published in 2017. It’s a deep fake for history anecdotes. 2600:4040:7E7C:8100:E92F:8338:D13D:688C ( talk) 04:23, 6 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Given that the leading Grant scholar John F. Marszalek, who is the executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association which oversees the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library presented the event of Grant’s arrest as fact in an NPR interview, I don’t think you can claim that the topic lacks support from an established expert on Grant. 4meter4 ( talk) 08:17, 6 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  The established expert introduces the tale with "The story goes...", which is code language for "There's an unverified legend that..." E Eng 03:40, 7 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  No the established expert did not say those words. The presenter introduced the speaker with language similar to what you wrote above in a voice over edited in after the actual interview. The expert did not preface his remarks with the story goes... I think your reading is editorializing in doubt beyond what the source actually presents. 4meter4 ( talk) 06:25, 7 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  @ EEng and 4meter4: I think y'all are talking about two different interviews. Freed in DCist quotes Marszalek recounting something similar to West's narrative, prefaced with "the story goes". That can mean a lot of things, anywhere from "This probably didn't happen" to "I haven't personally verified every detail". However, in the NPR interview 6 years later, there is no equivocation. It would certainly be better to have a paper by Marszalek, or even a blog post, but it's clear from the NPR interview that as of 2018 he does not doubt that the arrest occurred roughly as West described in 1908. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 02:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I'm sorry, but I don't read (or hear) it as clear at all. For one thing, we're hearing an edited slice of what is clearly a larger interview -- where any The story goes bit would be found. If there's any source in this entire article that's definitively not it's-too-good-not-to-pass-on superficial, please point me to it. There still seems to be absolutely no source suggesting anything like this before West himself started telling the story in the 20th c. E Eng 06:57, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I think you are being disingenuous towards this particular interview. 4meter4 ( talk) 14:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Possibly you don't know what disingenuous means, but in any event I am stone-cold serious about this. See my post below. E Eng 15:28, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

There are two possible meanings to the term disingenuous. One is a lack of sincerity, which I do not think you have. You are sincere. The other is a lack of honesty, which I do think you have when it comes to neutrally evaluating the NPR interview. You can question the factual accuracy the expert (but that means little here; as wikipedia isn't interested in what is true but what is verifiably true and NPR and a subject matter expert are going to trump the opinion of an editor every time under policy), but what you can't honestly say is that the expert himself was talking about this topic with equivocation or doubt about the truth of the event because it simply wasn't in the recorded audio at any point of time in this source. The fact that you need to find something that isn't there is dishonest, and hence, disingenuous. 4meter4 ( talk) 17:58, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I don't "need to find" something, but I have a lot of experience evaluating historical sources (including, in my own modest way, being a published expert on a subject known specifically known for great volume of bullshit published about it), and I know a source that needs to be heard in full to be evaluated when I see (or hear) one -- and that "interview" is one such. Marszalek didn't give a 72-second interview, and to evaluate level of gravitas he attaches to this fun story, we need to hear it all. I notice no one's published any serious scholarship on this alleged incident whatsoever. I renew the challenge: show me any source that actually says how it's known that this happened. E Eng 07:28, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

And this reasoning is why I suggest a reevaluation of all these secondary sources. The story they are publishing is apparently not based on any primary sources. Does it really count as "verified" instead of the source being unreliable? They're at least unreliable on this topic, evidently. 50.37.141.179 ( talk) 14:09, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Comment. I do think the article is incomplete without the 1901 narrative, which appears to be the earliest. I don't know how much secondary literature actually addresses the 1901 narrative, but it would seem vital to include in any case.-- Pharos ( talk) 02:49, 6 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I've added this and three other primary sources, although without any sort of commentary, per WP:PRIMARY point 4. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 02:58, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• I'm sorry, but after refreshing my memory at Talk:William_H._West_(policeman), I have to again call bullshit on this story. It's reported over and over and over and over again, yet NO ONE ultimately says how they know it, except (now and then) to point to someone else -- who doesn't say how they know it. I repeat that I'm sorry, but this has all the earmarks of a reverberation in an echo chamber. It's like George Washington and the cherry tree. E Eng 07:22, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  In terms of just my personal view, as someone who's invested quite a bit of time looking into this, I would not be surprised if some future detailed historical review called into question parts of West's narrative; I'd be more surprised by significant doubt being cast on Grant's arrest itself, but acknowledge that it's not impossible.

  However, as I said at RSN, there's a point where source analysis crosses over to OR. Absent any reliable sources questioning the veracity of the arrest itself, there's really not much more that we can do than say "Grant was arrested; here's West's narrative, which may or may not be true" and keep our ears peeled for further RS coverage that could settle things one way or another. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 18:18, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  On the contrary, we can be responsible publishers ourselves and question the reliability of these sources. Good secondary sources are based on primary sources. That is not the case here. The story appears to come from West himself, a self interested party, inflating a real arrest that occurred in 1866, when Grant wasn't president. 50.37.141.179 ( talk) 14:15, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Which is your opinion not supported by published sources. The arguments here are good questions that an academic can/should take on in a publication on this topic. However, until that happens the article in its current state is perfectly fine under policy. We can only write articles supported by the current published literature, and the questions being raised here are not being made in the published academic press or in the media. 4meter4 ( talk) 16:45, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  The article isn't supported by "published literature"; it's supported by blogs, gee-whiz lists, Sunday-supplement items, and two 90-second interviews by the same person (in one of which he suggests he isn't sure himself of the story's veracity). E Eng 16:59, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I didn't realize the The Washington Post, NPR, Sports Illustrated, CBS News, The Washington Star, WTOP News, and Texas Law Review were blogs and gee-whiz lists. If you can't tell, that was sarcasm. It's clear your ability to accurately and neutrally evaluate and summarize sources is not possible with this particular topic. I am not going to waist my time discussing this with you further. wP:STICK would seem to apply. 4meter4 ( talk) 17:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  With respect, EEng, you can slice it however you like, but you can't get around the fact that many RS say this happened and no RS say it didn't. (And the two RS that acknowledge any ambiguity still say it did.) I have no bias for or against historicity—it's an interesting story if true, and an interesting story if false. My only allegiance is to accurately represent the positions of reliable sources. If you really think this event isn't verifiable in reliable sources, you're welcome to take it to AfD, but I think you'll have an uphill battle saying that reliable secondary sources don't affirm the broad strokes of the arrest. If you'd like to hash out the merits of individual sources and how they're used, I'm happy to do so. Or if you'd like to propose a more conservative wording as to historicity, then by all means, let's talk about that. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 00:16, 11 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I've added two more high-quality sources (NYT and Smithsonian) that acknowledge issues with the chain of evidence but treat the arrest as fact. I really really wish someone would go press MPD to comment further on what their evidence is, because it seems a lot rests on that... but so long as these sources treat Lanier's 2012 statement as definitive, I don't see how we can't. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 01:46, 11 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I'm having trouble finding what you are citing in ref name=rashbaum-christobek. Your edit diff here says but the basic details of the event have been confirmed by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. Are you referring to the Lainer interview from 2012 with the DCist? I don't see any reference to the MPD in that 2023 NYT article. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 20:59, 11 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  The story was confirmed more than 100 years later by the Washington Police Department. We'll forgive the yankees at the Times for getting the department's name wrong. Rosenwald likewise defers to the MPD, if you'd prefer a more home-town source. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 00:15, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Except that it's not perfectly fine under policy. WP:GREL is not a given for every circumstance. Sometimes generally reliable sources are in fact not reliable on given topics. This is one such instance. Wikipedia is not designed to be a mindless parrot of certain sources that are unassailably "reliable". Part of the project is evaluating reliability of sources. That these secondary sources do not cite any primary sources is a red flag. We should be discussing what this means for these sources, not doubling down on their GREL status and pushing through a dubious article. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 21:08, 11 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I've come across a development that I think supports my point. That point being, there's a kernel of truth here, but the story by West is a fabrication. I have found The Alexandria (VA) Gazette on April 12, 1866 (copying from another paper, so must have occurred earlier, definitely not during his presidency):

GENERAL GRANT'S CASE -- This morning, the Sergeant of the Second Precinct reports the case of Gen. U. S. Grant, arrested for fast driving, as settled by the General paying the fine. We are informed that when the policeman went to Army Head Quarters and laid his warrant on the table before the General, that officer looked at it, and turning to the servant of the law, remarked, "I suppose you take a pride in this?" The officer said: -- "No, General I only do it because it is my duty." The General pleasantly intimated that under martial law the tables might be turned, and the server of the warrant sent to the guard-house. The officer replied that the General might do as he pleased but he had performed his duty, adding, "I also did my duty under you, General, at Vicksburg, and you did not find fault with me then." The General immediately acknowledged the service of the warrant, appeared before Justice Walter, and paid the fine. -- Wash. Star.

From Camden (NJ) Weekly Journal on April 20, 1866 (also copied from another newspaper, definitely not during his presidency)

General Grant Arrested for Fast Driving. On Saturday, while General Grant was exercising his fast gray nag on Fourteenth-street, officers Bailey and Crown, after a sharp race, arrested him for fast driving. General Grant offered to pay the usual fine imposed in such cases, which, of course, they could not receive; but the General expressed his doubts of their authority to arrest him, and drove off. The case was duly reported to Superintendent Richards. It is stated that this street is becoming a common racing ground, and that a large number of arrests for violations of the ordinance prohibiting fast driving are made every pleasant day, when those who delight in "speed" are out exercising their "stock." National Intelligencer, 9th.

And then a year after his death, The Opelousas Courier, January 9, 1886], discusses the "arrests" of General Grant, not president. There may have been two or more arrests, but this very near contemporary paper makes is a point to call him "General Grant", not President. This 1886 source paper seems to recount the Vicksburg soldier story with more details. The second story, I've not heard one like it yet. However, the paper takes pains to note that he was head of the Army during the arrests, implying strongly before Grant's presidency, but also calls him "the most powerful man in the country" (a little confusing, but maybe that was sensible at the time). Frustratingly no dates are mentioned. The surrounding text reads a little less "reporting" and a little more "entertainment". The writers probably weren't trying to record anything particular.

This article needs to go until historians actually take the time to evaluate it in a format that we can actually scrutinize. That would be the responsible thing to do. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 21:25, 11 April 2023 (UTC) reply

What you're doing here is what we call original research. You are advancing your own interpretation of the events and saying that Wikipedia should defer to that interpretation over that of a leading scholar in the field and those published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Smithsonian. Of the hundreds of reliable sources to say Grant was arrested, I stress those three because each looks at the matter critically and still concludes an arrest occurred. It does not matter whether you or I think Lanier's statement was clear enough confirmation. It does not matter whether you or I think that too long had passed for West's 1908 account to be trustworthy. It does not matter whether you or I can come up with alternative theories. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. You have made clear that you think this article should be deleted. You are welcome to pursue that. But if your argument is, "I, some person on the Internet, think that Wikipedia should defer to my analysis of the primary sources over multiple reliable sources' analysis", I don't think that's going to be a winning argument.

Again, I think it's totally possible that future historical analysis will require us to review how this article is written. But the question is whether the article reflects the current consensus among reliable sources. If it doesn't, explain why and suggest how it could. If it can't, nominate it for deletion. But if you just think the RS are wrong, then your recourse is to go get your own theory published somewhere reputable, or elicit corrections or retractions from the RS already cited. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 00:15, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Perfectly stated Tamzin. I'd further add that the article currently uses the WP:BESTSOURCES available on this topic, and that these publications are widely used and accepted as Wikipedia:Reliable sources encyclopedia wide because of their reputation for fact checking and editorial review. Further, the current text of the article is an accurate reflection of the current literature available in RS on this topic with approbate WP:WEIGHT and WP:BALANCE. The criticisms being raised here are not found in any of the published literature, and are entirely original. WP:WEIGHT policy states, If you can prove a theory that few or none currently believe, Wikipedia is not the place to present such proof. Once it has been presented and discussed in sources that are reliable, it may be appropriately included. In other words, we don't accept this kind of criticism when it comes to both content creation and content inclusion per policy. I'd further add that the calls to not include content easily verified in many reliable published sources just because you don't like the content or opinions of that RS is by definition CENSORSHIP. 4meter4 ( talk) 02:25, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Oh for fuck sake, gimme a break. It's not censorship. No source is 100% reliable or 100% unreliable, rather each use of any source needs to be evaluated in context for the claim made -- that's part of our duty as editors. For an historic event allegedly involving a US president, the complete lack of reference to primary material (other than West's own story, 30 years later) is a serious red flag for these sources, none of which represents serious historical work, and that includes Marszalek's interview. When you add in what the IP has found, we're nearing Doug Coldwell levels of blindness to the obvious, and are setting WP up to look like a bunch of credulous fools when someone (and I'm guessing it will be Marszakek himself, when he gets around to it) does a serious study and shows that this is West's insertion of himself into a true story about General (not President) Grant.

Don't get me wrong -- the article should exist -- but it should present the story as what it clearly is: a questionable story that's received a lot of recent publicity. The best way to do that is to quote the words of the one actual historian we have as a source: Marszalek saying "The story goes".

Pinging some random editors: Tryptofish, Cullen328, Drmies, Iridescent. E Eng 04:34, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Commenting because I was pinged. I do not care very much about this specific incident but I do think that it is quite important (in the context of this specific article) that contemporaneous reports of an incident like this have been identified in 1866, years before Grant became president, as opposed to 1872. Of course, it is possible that Grant was "arrested" more than once for horse speeding, but it appears to have been more like a traffic ticket than an arrest as we think of it these days. He apparently went to the nearest police station, paid a fine, and went on his way with no further legal consequences. There are relatively recent book length biographies of Grant by Ron Chernow, Don Sherman, Ronald C. White, Josiah Bunting III, Michael Korda, H. W. Brands and others, all published in the 21st century. I assume that some of these biographies have been more favorably reviewed than others, but have not examined their reviews. It would be very useful to determine if any of these books or other respected Grant biographies describe this incident (or these incidents). Unfortunately, the "great American men" section of my personal library is skewed toward Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Lincoln and MLK Jr., although I do own a copy of Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. I think the skepticism that EEng expresses is justified. When writing about an (admittedly minor) event of about 150 years ago, we should rely on the work of respected professional biographers instead of reminisces published 30 years after the fact, or quickie journalism published 150 years or more after the fact. Cullen328 ( talk) 06:52, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

To my knowledge, the topic isn't addressed in any of the Grant biographies or in scholarly journals, and all of the RS which addresses the issue is already here. The article accurately reflects the published literature, and adding the "story goes" to the article doesn't accurately reflect Marszakek's opinion in the most recent source; and I believe would misrepresent the most recent opinion by that scholar. Further, there isn't anything in the RS beyond what is already in the article to question the veracity of the event. The objections being raised here are based in original research. As stated above, If you can prove a theory that few or none currently believe, Wikipedia is not the place to present such proof. Once it has been presented and discussed in sources that are reliable, it may be appropriately included. At this point source analysis has turned into original speculation/critique (ie WP:OR) not presented anywhere in RS. We can't express opinions not in RS. Be skeptical, but accept that there isn't any published skepticism to support putting that in the article. 4meter4 ( talk) 14:36, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• adding the "story goes" to the article doesn't accurately reflect Marszakek's opinion in the most recent source -- The most recent source is not by Marszakek, but is an interview with him edited by someone else. We're not hearing what he said before or after the soundbite we're presented with, and before or after is precisely where we'd find the same kind of qualification he gave in the earlier item: "The story goes..."
• To my knowledge, the topic isn't addressed in any of the Grant biographies or in scholarly journals -- Well, DUH, and doesn't that tell you anything???
• You manifest a common misunderstanding of WP:OR. Editor are not allowed is to present OR in articles, but they are not only allowed, but where indicated required, to use their own research and common sense to evaluate source reliability. That's what's happened here, and the clear result (to those with eyes to see) is that sources telling this story aren't reliable for the purpose. You keep referring to sources that are reliable as if a given source is either reliable, period, or unreliable period, and (as mentioned above) that's not true, rather each use of any source needs to be evaluated in context for the claim made. It would be unusual, but it is certainly possible for us to reach the conclusion that there are no reliable sources for this story, so that we're left to present the fact that the story has been popular recently, without narrating the story itself as fact in Wikivoice.

E Eng 04:50, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

"We can't express opinions not in RS." This is true. We also shouldn't express opinions that very well appear false, regardless of popularity. Instead, a re-evaluation of these RSs is in order. The only sensible approach I can see at this time is article deletion, until such time that we have more clarity from historical experts. 50.37.141.179 ( talk) 15:59, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

For the last time, Idaho IP, if you want this article deleted, AfD is thataway. Talkpage discussions cannot form a consensus to delete. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 16:48, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I don't see the problem discussing it here first. You might change my mind; I might change yours. We might find a different solution we both like, otherwise very similar to consensus. There's no deadline, and I'm not hounding anybody, etc. I know you created the article, and you did a fine job. It's not a personal attack that I suggest deletion. 50.37.141.179 ( talk) 17:59, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I don't think anyone took it as a personal attack 50.37.141.179. I believe Tamzin's point was discussing notability and deletion here is fruitless, and a waist of time. If you want to have that discussion, nominate the article at WP:AFD and then editors will comment on the issue. Otherwise, nobody wants to engage with you on that topic here because its the WP:WRONGFORUM. 4meter4 ( talk) 18:23, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Waist of time -- Is that anything like an hourglass figure? E Eng 04:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Lol. I'm hoping that was an autocorrect typing error. Thanks for the laugh EEng. 4meter4 ( talk) 14:50, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Let that be a lesson to you. Even though I'm mean and evil and disingenuous, I can still make you laugh. E Eng 15:00, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I fail to see how pointing out the 1866 coverage in the Camden Weekly Journal constitutes "original research", 4meter4. Cullen328 ( talk) 15:54, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

It does in the sense that editors here are trying to assert that the 1866 arrest is the real event, and that the arrest while he was president never happened. None of the RS connects the two; so trying to present them as having a connection is tenuous. 4meter4 ( talk) 16:34, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Specifically it would be WP:SYNTH to mention the 1866 arrest as a check on the historicity of the 1872 arrest without RS saying that. (See below regarding Benton's tweets and the expert self-pub exception.) It could potentially be mentioned in § Background, as a few secondary sources do mention it in the context of "Grant had been arrested before" (rather than "this was the real arrest"). -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 16:48, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Yes, it would indeed be SYNTH / OR for the article to assert that the 1866 arrest is the real event, and that the arrest while he was president never happened. But as I explain in another post halfway up in this thread, it would not be OR for us to use the obvious real-world facts we can all see (total lack of evidence, other than West's own story, presented by sources; obviously factual earlier event which parallels the one claimed here) to conclude that there are no reliable sources we can use. That's no OR or SYNTH -- it's judgment and common sense. E Eng 14:03, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

What would you have the article say, then? -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 05:20, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I do think the 1866 arrest bears mention in § Background, without stating that it is the "real" arrest. It's significant in either case. After all, Grant would hardly be the first person to get in trouble for speeding more than once. Pharos ( talk) 03:49, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• I'm replying as one of the random editors who were pinged. I'm sorry to say that I don't know, and I'm not particularly interested. I heard mention of this topic during NPR coverage of the indictment of you-know-who, which I see is covered near the bottom of the page – I suspect that is what draws attention to the topic, and editors should be careful that agendas growing out of that not affect judgments here (not that I see any evidence of it, please understand). It sounds like it's a matter of whether the event should be treated as factual or as urban myth, depending on what the sources say, and I think either one of those is possible. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:42, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Down to brass tacks

@ EEng & IP-hopping editor from Idaho: We've been talking in circles for over a week now. I think the main reason for that is that no one has actually proposed any improvements, so there's not much to do but repeat the same general arguments back and forth.

Let's review what the article currently states in wikivoice about the arrest:

1. Grant was arrested while in office
2. in 1872
3. by William H. West
4. for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage. (N.B.: I have added an {{ efn}} to the lede acknowledging the minority claim of the arrest being for riding on a pavement.)

This is sourced to the four most reliable sources available—three news organizations that found the MPD's statement satisfactory despite some concerns, and one academic as quoted in a news source known for its accuracy and integrity; no reliable sources disagree with any of the above four points.

All other statements about the arrest are attributed in-text. The article already points out the lack of contemporaneous records (per NYT) and the concerns about West's account (per WaPo and Smithsonian), and lists rival narraatives.

If y'all would like the article to say something else, could you please explain what, and how it would comply with WP:NOR and WP:NPOV? -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 03:17, 15 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• First of all, stop pretending it's just me and some disreputable "IP-hopping editor from Idaho" objecting; Cullen328 and Oooooooseven have objected strongly as well.
• At this point the answers are as follows:
  1. Should not be stated in wikivoice.
  2. Should not be stated in wikivoice.
  3. Should not be stated in wikivoice.
  4. Should not be stated in wikivoice.
• None of these things should be stated in Wikivoice because there are, in fact, no reliable sources for them -- not reliable under the full meaning of "realiable sources" as used on Wikipedia, anyway. This all started with WTOP interview with WPD's Chief Lanier, in which "she was asked to describe a few funny stories in the history of the Metropolitan Police Department" and reeled this one off (along with, I happen to notice, the assertion that the guard assigned to Lincoln on the night of Lincoln's assassination was drunk -- yet more of the kind of apocrypha you get when you ask a civil servant on the radio to tell you some stories). And from that one spark was born this dumpster fire of an article. For this extraordinary claim we need solid, serious, historical sources. E Eng 04:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Yeah, I'm honestly surprised this article hasn't been reworked or deleted yet. It would be a pretty big flaw in Wikipedia policy if we weren't allowed to use common sense to establish that a hypothetical arrest of a sitting president of the United States, in Washington, in broad daylight, in an election year, would surely have been covered by the press and then use elementary logic to get from "this event that definitely would have been covered in the press at the time if it had happened was not covered in the press at the time" to "this event didn't happen" and were instead forced to throw up our hands and keep an almost certainly inaccurate article untouched because a handful of media outlets retold a viral story with a connection to a current event without adequately fact-checking it. Oooooooseven ( talk) 02:57, 19 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Unfortunately, it's not just a handful of media that reported this. It was virtually all major news outlets. If I might reveal a moment of candidness, I see the media do this all the time, especially on politics and doubly so on politics that touches particular people (Trump, in this case). For Wikipedia, the flawed part is that this are still called GREL sources for those political topics. EEng says he's never seen this in 16 years of editing. I feel like I see it every fifth time I read WP. I stepped in on this battle because I was pretty sure I'd convince somebody. My hope is that the convinced people start evaluating these RS a little more scrutinously. WP will be better for it. As for what WP rules would allow, my editing experience is limited, but common sense seems to be clear enough. A high degree of skepticism is warranted, and if the rules mean we simply don't publish it, well then that's what we do. I'd prefer that we can tell the story as self-reported by West, and resoundingly repeated by modern media, and without any corroboration found in contemporary sources or rigorous historical analysis, Grant was arrested... Unfortunately, that appears to be too much OR and Synth. Or maybe it's not, I don't really know. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 21:21, 19 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Perhaps the more general problem is overly broad application of reliability standards. Major newspapers are reliable when it comes to reporting the news, but they're apparently quite a bit less reliable when it comes to telling history. I'm not sure if this is because the hollowing out of newsrooms has forced newspapers to ration fact-checking or if it's always been a problem, but this may be a good time to consider whether news outlets should be anything more than a supplemental source for subjects that are by no stretch of the imagination news. Oooooooseven ( talk) 04:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Where did I say anything about the IP-hopper being disreputable? I was addressing the two people who've had the most to say, one of whom happens to edit anonymously from multiple IPs, as editors are welcome to.

  Anyways, "should not be stated in wikivoice" doesn't really answer my question. What should this article say, and how would it comply with NOR and NPOV? -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 04:43, 18 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  It's nice that you addressed the two people who had the most to say, but the fact remains that by addressing only two of a larger group of editors objecting (not to mention pinging me and me alone), you give the casual observed the impression that there really are just two of us. And you really need to take your funnybone in for a tune-up.

  I am increasingly convinced that the IP's comment over at the DYK review [3] may be our only way out of this: WP rules are what they are, which leave me with the only solution that [this alleged incident] ought to remain unwritten on WP. We wouldn't report an alleged battle of the Civil War, unmentioned in any history book or journal, just on the say-so of some modern newspapers, nor should we report this under the same circumstances. If we had sources commenting on the sudden interest in West's story, then I guess we could have an article talking about that, but we don't have such a source either. I've never run into a situation quite like this in my 16 years of editing, but I'm not sure there's anything Wikipedia can say about this at all. E Eng 05:11, 18 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  @ EEng: That's sort of what I was getting at. Either there's sufficient sources to say something about this event in wikivoice, or there aren't and thus this should be deleted as failing WP:V and by extension WP:N. While it's rare for a widely-discussed topic to be ruled an N fail, and I likewise (as an admittedly more junior editor) can't think of an example for something with this amount of coverage, there's nothing in policy saying some amount of breadth guarantees notability, and I can think of some lesser cousins. All of this may sound like I'm making your own case for you, but I'm actually pretty sympathetic to the argument for AfDing. I anticipate I'll oppose on the merits, but it makes a lot more sense to me than the case for adding any further hedging to this already heavily-hedged article. In the event of deletion/draftification, there'd still be room to discuss the broader implications of Grant's arrest at Presidential criminal immunity in the United States, and I'd take such an outcome as consensus to reframe that article in a manner more agnostic as to the arrest's historicity. So I dunno, if you wanna AfD it, I certainly endorse that idea, not that you need my blessing.

  P.S. My funnybone works fine, you just need to be funnier. :P I really hope there's no hard feelings here. Arguing over this with you has been maddening—and I probably haven't been at my best rhetorically, amidst a cross-country move—but I respect your motivation here to keep Wikipedia free of errors. I learned myself, over at Draft:John W. Boucher (abandoned, probably for good), just how unreliable old newspapers can be, so I don't disagree with where you're coming from. I hope it's clear that my position here has always been motivated by a feeling that there is no option under policy other than to state the arrest in wikivoice, not that I'm particularly a diehard believer that that's what happened. I feel like we've both been caught between a rock (NOR and NPOV) and a hard place (wanting to get it right) and have prioritized differently. Or maybe the bridge is burnt; that's fine too. We're both WP:HERE and that's what matters.

  Do let me know if you take this to AfD, or even—weird as this may sound—if you'd like a co-nom who is undecided as to the merits but supports the policy basis for your argument. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 06:55, 18 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  For the record, no hard feelings of course. I'm going to try to move the discussion forward in a new subsection below (but give me some time), so let's keep working together toward a solution. E Eng 03:20, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  @ EEng: Meanwhile I was literally just writing a comment here to say I've read the most recent round of comments, thank you for all the research you've done, and will have further thoughts soon. I've been sick the past day and a half, and have limited availability the next 3 days, but think I see a path toward a solution here, and will post that as soon as I'm able to. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 03:25, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Just home, exhausted, gotta get to bed, so I'll give this more thought tomorrow. But before I lose my notes: I spent several hours this afternoon at the library (library: a big building full of books), where I examined 79 (I kid you not) volumes -- most general bios of Grant (of which there are a shitload) but also books specifically on his presidency, and several with titles like Presidential Mischief, Morals, and Malarky and Presidential Pets and Personal Recollections of General Grant and Reconstruction Presidents and Bad Presidents and Presidential Anecdotes, plus a half dozen legal works on presidential immunity, presidential corruption and scandals, and so on. I really spread my net wide. And there's nothing like this story in any of them. What I find particularly convincing is that most of the modern bios have horsemanship in the indices; one bio had eighteen page entries under that heading, including one describing Grant participating in a carriage race. It may seem like excessive work, but I wanted to be certain: there's nothing about this alleged incident anywhere. E Eng 04:51, 19 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Wow, that is impressive! I applaud your commitment. Oooooooseven ( talk) 04:04, 20 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  There's nothing like having grading to do to get me to find something trivial to obsess on for a few hours. I hate grading. Grading is to teaching what cleaning the bathroom is to housework: the dirtiest part of the job that you put off as long as you can. E Eng 14:08, 20 April 2023 (UTC) reply

@ EEng: Did you happen to notice whether any of the general bio volumes you looked at mentioned the 1866 incident? If they did, and did not mention any similar incident during his presidency, that would be further indication the authors gave credence to one and not the other. Wasted Time R ( talk) 11:56, 20 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I did generally skim portions covering those years, which was easy given that most bios are pretty light on their treatment of the period between the end of the war and the start of his presidency; but I can't say I was really focused on that. In modern bios, as I've said, the horsemanship index entry should have picked this up (and one bio does mention an example of Grant racing in a carriage, but with nothing negative attached to the incident). 19th-c bios, I should say, made a big thing of his humility, respect for the common soldier, that sort of thing, and since the 1866 incident (as reported in newspapers quoted elsewhere on this page) seem to spin this as an example of that, one would think that incident might have shown up in those paeans. E Eng 14:08, 20 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Followups:

• I've since got my hands on Law and order in the Capital City: a history of the Washington police, 1800-1886, Alfers, Kenneth G. (1976) [4], a careful (if relatively brief) academic study.
  • No mention of this incident.
  • But it does mention Grant in several other contexts related to the police. In particular, in 1877 Grant asked the members of the Board of Police to resign, and there was "much speculation" as to the reason (a lot of it gossip, obviously); one such speculation was that "Grant was fearful that his alleged betting on horses would be exposed". You might expect any "arrest" incident to be mentioned in this context.
  • But most interestingly, the bibliography shows that the National Archives has the complete, bound record books of all arrests made 1861-1887. Now, I'm not going to say that if the Grant incident isn't reflected in those records then it didn't happen -- an historical source might conclude that the records are incomplete, and verify the incident in other ways. But any source that neither mentions having consulted such records, nor points to source that does, can't be considered serious, or reliable, for the purpose at hand.
• Through Alfers I found District of Columbia police; a retrospect of the police organizations of the cities of Washington and Georgetown and the District of Columbia, with biographical sketches, illustrations, and historic cases, Sylvester (1894) [5]. Now, what's interesting about this work is its 50-page compilation of "Historic notes and cases", including such fascinating entries as:
  • "David Bond, the elevator boy at the Metropolitan Hotel, was crushed to death June 18, 1881"
  • "June 22, 1881, the police were ordered to inspect all alleys, and those found unsanitary were disinfected under the direction of Sanitary Inspector Robinson."
  • "Rev. Father Felix Barotti died suddently of heart trouble May 2, 1881"
  • (This one's my personal favorite...) "When the Treasury was on fire in the first President Adams' time, he was in line passing buckets of water from the nearest pump. The people induced him to desist for fear he would catch cold."
  • "In December, 1871, 'Reddy' Welch, known as the wickedest man in Washington, announced that he had reformed through the influence of the 'Woman's Club', represented by Mrs. Sara J. Spencer."
  • And finally (p. 247), there's almost a full page re police efforts to put a stop to Union soldiers using Pennsylvania Avenue as a racetrack during the war.

I think we can all agree that one would expect the arrest of President Grant to appear in this august list, if indeed it occurred.

• For completeness, I've got another work (mentioned by Alfers as being similar to Sylvester) on order, but I'm going away so won't see it until late May.

E Eng 03:10, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

The "another work" came faster than anticipated: The Metropolitan police department, Washington, D.C. Official illustrated history. Young, John Russell & Humphries, Edwin C. R. (1908). Grant isn't mentioned at all except in relation to having appointed some commissioners and appointing Judge Snell -- the very judge that West says Grant was supposed to appear before. Here again we have something that certainly would have been newsworthy: the president appearing (or defaulting to appear) as a defendant before a judge he himself appointed. E Eng 20:53, 24 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• I'm glad you seem now receptive to my arguments. A high degree of skepticism is warranted, and if the rules mean we simply don't publish it, well then that's what we do. I'd prefer that we can tell the story. For my sense of honesty, it would need to be in a frame that includes these points:

  1. A story as self-reported by West
  2. Resoundingly repeated by modern media
  3. There exists no legal record of the arrest
  4. There exists no corroboration found in contemporary sources
  5. There exists no mention in any rigorous historical analysis

  The sensible reader should see those points, read the story, and then conclude "Oh, it's probably apocryphal, it's just that no historical authority has said so yet". Unfortunately, that appears on it's face to be OR and Synth. Or maybe it's not, I don't really know. That's why I haven't edited anything on this article.

  I have edited Presidential criminal immunity in the United States and Absolute immunity. Phrases I have used are Though there are no legal records of the arrest of Ulysses S. Grant, the story is regarded as factual. and Grant was reportedly arrested in 1872. I've been thinking of changing "regarded as factual" to "reported as factual by modern media". These are true statements. The question is whether Wikivoice can say them. Anyway, I've also made a lot of changes and Talk suggestions on those pages unrelated to this.

  Then there is the amount of modern reporting; that's the news here. That's what's actually interesting. That so many "reliable sources" just spit this story out there like cold-hard-settled fact so they could all daydream about arresting Trump. As I said above, if I might reveal a moment of candidness, I see the media do this all the time, especially on politics and doubly so on politics that touches particular people. For Wikipedia, the flawed part is that these are still called GREL sources for those political topics and WP editors just keep "credulously regurgitating" whatever they say. EEng says he's never seen this in 16 years of editing. I feel like I see it every fifth time I read WP. I stepped in on this battle because I was pretty sure I'd convince somebody. My hope is that the convinced people start evaluating these RS a little more scrutinously. WP will be better for it. I would love to report on these sources being really rather shoddy in their reporting. More people need to understand and see clear examples that "unbiased" reporting is not a real thing. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 21:43, 19 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Sorry, but this has nothing to do with any need to revise our policies and guidelines on RSs; the closest we come to that is that some editors here needed reminding, as editors sometimes do, that (and here I'll be a bit of a broken record) sources are not 100% always reliable, for everything, or 100% never reliable, for anything -- but rather need to be evaluated in each case, in light of the assertion being made.
  • Please stop attributing dark motives re Trump to sources. The Grant story is a fluffy fun sidelight to what's happening with Trump, and sources are offering it in that spirit -- though unfortunately with only the kind of scrutiny that's often given to fluffy fun stuff.
  • Let me be clear about what I have or haven't seen in 16 years.
    • (1) I've seen plenty of cases in which we decline to include, in an article, an assertion made by a generally reliable source, because we judge that source to be not reliable for that particular assertion. Here's an example: [6]. But in all these cases, the notability of the subject wasn't rooted in the sources rejected, so the notability of the article subject wasn't in question.
    • (2) But what we have here is a situation in which, after rejecting unreliable sources, there's nothing left to establish notability of the article subject -- and (to be clear) that subject is the (alleged) historical incident of President Grant being arrested. So it seems like we can't have an article at all.
    • (3) Meanwhile, there's a different subject which it seems like we maybe could have an article on, and that is the phenomenon of all these sources reporting this alleged incident. But the only source we have on that is [7], and that's not enough.

  It's the combination of (2) and (3), leading to (it seems) the spectre or having no article at all on something our readers will quite naturally expect us to have an article on, that I haven't seen in 16 years.

  E Eng 03:27, 20 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Maybe I misread you [8]. Regardless, at least we seem at or very near consensus on this talk page. The article probably needs to be deleted. I'm not super involved in WP, but the AfD help page made it sound like an IP can't even submit all the steps, so I'll leave that to you guys. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 18:35, 21 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Comment. I really don't see a problem with the article in its current state. The arguments here against the article are entirely non-neutral POV pushing with no evidence supporting that POV push in reliable RS. I suggest that this group of editors take this to AFD or start an RFC so we can put this to bed because I'm not seeing a legitimate policy based rationale from Eeng, the anon IP, or Oooooooseven. I am fairly confident that wider community input through either process will most likely support the article in its current form because it is in total compliance with all of our policies. 4meter4 ( talk) 19:21, 21 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I've asked the IP to refrain from ascribing inappropriate motives to the sources; now will you, please, stop ascribing inappropriate motives to those evaluating the fitness of the sources. There's nothing non-neutral about doing that, and it's not "POV-pushing"; it's our duty as editors. The policy-based rationale which I (and others) have been giving, from the beginning, is that the extraordinary claim that a US president was arrested (and nobody noticed, other than the officer telling the story 30 years later) requires very high quality sourcing, and the sources we have do not come even close to qualifying -- no matter how many there are (see citogenesis). E Eng 14:17, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I'm fine with going through with the RFC, or anything else. At glance now, I see you as the last holdout. Tamzin seems to be coming around to our opinion. I just want to check that you saw my edits on the DYK template [9] [10] [11]. I lay out the problem pretty clearly there, applying what looks like a legitimate policy based rationale to me. If you'd like to address that directly, here seems best, instead of on the DYK template. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 20:15, 21 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I am not seeing that at all from Tamzin's comments; merely that Tamzin welcomes a conversation with a wider cross-section of community input. We're talking in circles here. One of you three needs to get moving and either start an RFC or an AFD. Those of us in support of the article as it is currently written are not the ones who should be doing that. The burden is on those opposed to the article. We aren't going to accomplish anything on the talk page here. Take it to a forum that is able to address the issue. Best. 4meter4 ( talk) 22:45, 21 April 2023 (UTC) reply

No, actually, the burden is on those who want to include material to show that it's supported by sources reliable for the claims made. And you keep understating the number of editors who have expressed serious concern on this topic: there's me, the IP, Oooooooseven, and Cullen328 (who I'm reluctanctly pinging here again, since I can see this is going to be a hard slog); Tamzin is, at worst, on the fence. You're the only editor rejecting out of hand the concern that the key sources may not be reliable. E Eng 05:45, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

As I stated repeatedly, the sources being used are from sources generally considered reliable across the encyclopedia. We do consider The Wall Street Journal, The New Times, NPR etc. as reliable RS. Arguments that they should be considered unreliable in this case are entirely in error. We can't use original research and original synthesis of historical documents and publications to impeach publications generally considered as reliable secondary publications. That is strictly against our policies at WP:Verifiability, WP:No original research, and WP:WEIGHT. I don't know how else to say it. This is wikipedia not a publishing house, not a journal for historical research, or an editorial review board at a university. We aren't researchers looking to poke holes and find gaps in published research. That is the role of an academic writing on a topic and looking for an angle to get published. We defer to writing on topics based on what has been published by sources with strong editorial oversight, and you would be hard pressed to argue that any of the sources here lack proper editorial review. Further, the number, length of time, and quality of the publications covering this topic easily make it pass our guidelines at WP:SIGCOV and WP:NEVENT, and WP:Verifiability. You may not personally like the scholarship/media coverage in this area, but that doesn't mean the topic isn't notable and doesn't mean we can't build an article based on the current published literature which meets our polices on verifying content. You need to take your researcher hat off and put your wikipedia hat on because you are confusing the two. I have also been trained in historic research and have some expertise in this area professionally. I think many of the insights you have would make a great journal article, and I would encourage you to write it and get it published. But until then, these points are entirely irrelevant for how wikipedia treats this topic. We can only use sources as written, and only use analysis found in the publications themselves. We can not form an original analysis or synthesis of sources, and we can not impeach sources generally considered reliable that haven't been impeached in reliable RS. It's that simple. 4meter4 ( talk) 18:21, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Notice. I have reported this conversation to the Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard. 4meter4 ( talk) 19:23, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

More brass tacks

From comments elsewhere it seems that Tamzin and I are getting our thoughts together at about the same time, and on the principle that great minds think alike I'm wondering whether we're headed in the same direction. So here's my bid: I think the thing to do is to make this page a redirect to Presidential criminal immunity in the United States, where we would give an extremely brief summary of where the story originated (i.e. West), and fact that numerous sources repeated it during and after Trump's presidency -- see [12]. I think that's the limit of the facts we can state, given the very odd sourcing situation we're in. Statements like "There appear to be no legal records of the arrest" we can't present, because it's OR. E Eng 05:45, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I rather disagree, giving even less context by an "extremely brief summary" is hardly the solution. We should give enough context so that readers have a reasonable idea of the different accounts and their credibility. Pharos ( talk) 15:09, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

For that we would need either a set of reliable sources having different views about the event; then we could present the different views of those sources according to our usual NPOV practice. Or if we had one or two reliable sources which themselves discuss the different versions, we could summarize those discussions. But neither of those cases applies, because we don't have a single reliable source for even the existence of the event -- we've got citogenesis triggered by the Lanier's offhand story in 2012.

And we don't even have all of that. We've been acting like the "WTOP" source [13] is an interview with Lanier "dated" October 6, 2012. But the dcist.com source [14], which is dated October 4, says D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier went on WTOP for her regular “Ask the Chief” interview. In today’s segment [i.e. apparently Oct. 4] though, she was asked to describe a few funny stories in the history of the Metropolitan Police Department. So the WTOP source was published two days after Lanier's actual broadcast interview, and consists of tiny snippets from that interview, under the "byline" "WTOPstaff". So we're not actually getting the full interview, in particular not any introductory remarks Lanier may have made about the "stories" she was presenting, and we don't even have a byline for who did the excerpting. Everything about this "incident" is built on sand.

My link to the Presidential criminal immunity article gives a bare-bones version of what we might say. It could be very judiciously expanded to mention West's name, and a very detail about his story(ies). But not so much that the reader gets the impression the story's verifiable. E Eng 16:45, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I'm tempted to ask Snopes or PolitiFact or something to look at this story — I imagine they would come to the same conclusion we have (maybe they could even get in touch with MPD to find out where they got their information), and then we'd finally have a Reliable Source to which to attribute that conclusion — but I'm hesitant to do anything that could further reduce trust in the mainstream media (even if in this case it's kind of deserved). Oooooooseven ( talk) 00:56, 23 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• I believe this article is sufficiently sourced to remain in existence on its own (not as a redirect). I recognize that despite the numerous news articles from RS cited, the root of the sourcing is rather scant - a 1908 publication of the policeman's story, some old WaPo articles that seems corroborate at least one version of the story, and a confirmation from a modern MPD police chief. Despite this, I think the story has received enough coverage to be considered notable, and I think this article is written in a sufficiently hand-wavy way that the story isn't presented as fact. As tends to be required when dealing with history.

Though, @ EEng I agree with your initial concern about the DYK. While I think the story is interesting and well-documented enough to be an article, I believe it's quite a jump to present it as fact, which the DYK hook format invariably does. The sourcing for this is not rock-solid enough for that. PhotogenicScientist ( talk) 21:03, 28 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I'm sorry, but no. You're overstating the sources.

• There's no "confirmation" from the modern police chief. I'll say it again: the chief was asked for some "funny stories" and rattled off a few sentences that don't even match West's version of the story. Plus another of the chief's stories (Lincoln's guard being drunk) is flat out ahistorical. This isn't "confirmation" -- it's just one more person playing oh-what-does-it-matter-it's-just-fun-story-so-who-cares-whether-it's-true.
• "Interesting" has zero relevance.
• "Well-documented" -- I'm not sure what you mean. WP:V requires coverage in reliable sources.
• the story has received enough coverage to be considered notable – If the sources covered it as a story then we could report it as a story. But they don't, so we can't. What the sources so is present this story as actual fact, which unquestionably it is not, so we can't present it as fact either, and (furthermore) this leaves zero reliable sources at all, so there's no WP:N either. This is what I've said several times is something I've never quite seen before: after dropping the unreliable sources, there's nothing left at all.
• this article is written in a sufficiently hand-wavy way – Yeah, no. Articles don't do that.

E Eng 23:51, 28 April 2023 (UTC) reply

You say that sources do not cover it as a story, but you also say that the source asked a police chief for some "funny stories", and this was one. I think that there is appropriate sourcing to treat this as a story, but we should not treat it as historical fact. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 00:07, 29 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Well here we get into the shades of meaning of the word story -- narration of fact vs. telling of a tale of unknown veracity. While we can't be certain which of those the interviewer meant when asking for "funny stories", it's clear the the police chief intended to present this "story" as a narration of fact. (And indeed, other sources interpreted it that way as well -- all the ponderous "The event was subsequently confirmed by the DC Police" bullshit.) Since, as I'm sure we're all agreed, this is categorically a tale with no foundation except West's telling of it, that makes that source unreliable like all the rest.

Look, I'd be perfectly happy with an article reciting West's story, and noting its many versions, if the article makes it unmistakably clear that all it is is West's story. But I don't see any sources we could use for making that last point. E Eng 05:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I think we can start by all agreeing that what it is not, is an historical fact. It's something that has been said, repeatedly, over time. Where that sits on the range between "story" or "tale" comes down, on a practical level, to us not describing it in any of the multiple potential wrong ways. At the top of that list, is that we should not call it historical fact. West's telling of it (or is it tellings of it?) sits at the foundation, but we don't have to specify to what extent it is all West's doing, as opposed to something that changed over time, as in a game of telephone. So we attribute the start of it, and a considerable amount of it, to West – but we don't get ahead of the sources in making any kinds of statements in wiki-voice as to whether or not it's all West. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:12, 29 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I see two paths forward and don't really like either

Hello again, all. Sorry for the delay in getting my thoughts together here. Three days turned into six when... right, right, no one cares.

The way I see it, this comes down to a trilemma:

1. To say, in wikivoice, that the event occurred risks overstating sources of suboptimal reliability (generally reliable, but well below the gold standard for historical claims).
2. To say, in wikivoice, that the event did not occur, or even that there are significant questions about it having occurred, would violate WP:NOR and and WP:NPOV.
3. To say anything like "According to some sources, the event occurred" would still violate NPOV, since inasmuch as any sources can be considered reliable here, they are unanimous that the event occurred.

Meanwhile, as EEng says, there is nowhere near enough tertiary analysis (just the single tweet thread from Benton) to make this article about the historicity question itself.

One solution to that trilemma is that if the sources aren't reliable enough for (1), they aren't reliable enough to support an article at all. But, again per EEng, that would lead to the rather astonishing outcome of Wikipedia intentionally lacking an article on a topic that by all outside appearances seems notable. And these sources are reliable to an extent, just not as reliable as we'd like.

So I see two paths forward. One is to write the article about the claims, making no comment on their accuracy. Tryptofish's recent edit is a step in that direction. I would suggest something like

The other path is EEng's suggestion of BLARing this to Presidential criminal immunity in the United States. (I have some quibbles with his current synopsis of the event there, but that's easier to sort out.)

I don't really like either of these options, but they're both at least workable options, as opposed to the three impossible prongs of the trilemma. Between the two, I have a slight preference for "write about the claims" over just BLARing, but really just want to see this resolved. Should we maybe just do a straw poll here? -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 05:30, 29 April 2023 (UTC) reply

P.S. I toyed with the idea of a move to " Only Policeman Who Ever Arrested a President" (i.e. making it about the 1908 article), but I just don't see any way to scope the article that narrowly without being dragged back to all the broader questions. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 05:52, 29 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Thank you for what you said about my edit. I think you summarize the multilemma pretty well. I think that, by far, the best option is to keep this as its own page, but to treat it as an article about the claims, or, as I said in the talk section above, as the story. What matters the most is that we not present it as something that actually happened. If we can come to an agreement with the always lovable EEng as to how to describe it as a story-but-not-a-story, and write the page in that fashion, perhaps as something that has been repeated multiple times but for which there is no verifiable proof that any of it is right, that could be a good result. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:05, 29 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Now seems a good time to ping everyone who's opined so far, to see their opinions now that we've distilled things a bit. Having already pinged you and EEng, also pinging @ 4meter4, Banks Irk, Blueboar, Caeciliusinhorto, Cullen328, Eddie891, Jerome Frank Disciple, Masem, Oooooooseven, Pburka, Pharos, and Philipnelson99. And a ping in spirit for our Idahoan colleague. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 04:45, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

There are contemporaneous sources that provide solid evidence that Grant had police encounters regarding fast horses in Washington, DC before he became president. These excellent contemporaneous sources are excluded from the article for no known reason except that Grant was not yet president, which looks like a series of editorial decisions to advance the "a president was arrested" narrative, instead of summarizing what actual contemporaneous sources say. Is this about Grant and fast horses or some sort of an obsession with a president? Does no one care what Grant did with fast horses before he became president? Every single assertion about an alleged arrest when Grant was president derive from an account, decades later, by a person whose credibility was repeatedly called into question. The current version of the article excludes, for some unknown reason, any content that might impeach the credibility of the highly unreliable source William H. West, who had a long record of disciplinary problems as a police officer. So, the enthusiasts for this article exclude contemporaneous sources and include the ramblings of a very old man 36 years later, and doggedly include all the sources derived directly from that questionable source. I prefer good editorial judgment, but some people just love fried baloney sandwiches. Cullen328 ( talk) 07:46, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

No one has kept any information out of this article about the 1866 arrest or West's background or anything else. The "unknown reason" this article excludes them is simple: no one has added them. I even said a few weeks ago that I agreed the former should be mentioned. One would have to be very careful in using primary sources to write about petty legal and disciplinary dramas West was involved in, because we don't want to echo the racial prejudices of the era, nor impose ahistorical assumptions about what it meant for him to have gotten in that kind of disciplinary trouble; but I don't have any categorical objection to inclusion.

As to summarizing what actual contemporaneous sources say, if that's your desire, that's one thing I don't think I or anyone here can provide, because there are no contemporaneous sources, at least not that anyone's found; that's the whole crux of the issue. Documentation of the 1866 arrest isn't a contemporaneous source, any more than documentation of the '93 World Trade Center attack is a contemporaneous source for 9/11. Whether or not the 1872 arrest happened, the 1866 arrest is a different thing. It should, again, probably be mentioned here, but it's useless toward describing what this article is about, which is the widely-reported claim that Grant was arrested in 1872 while in office. (West's account isn't the only one, by the way; just the best-known, most detailed, and, relatively speaking, most reliable.) -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 08:30, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

If we're brainstorming new names, why not something like Ulysses S. Grant speeding incidents? The 1866 events in my opinion would be notable on their own, even if noone had heard of West and there was no such thing as the account of 1872, and we should logically cover these things all together. Let's not count angels on the head of a pin too much, it's alright to put in the context that one of these has contemporaneous reporting and the other doesn't. That's only providing a service to our readers. Pharos ( talk) 19:23, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I like that idea. Or, if that's too narrow a topic for an article on, it could perhaps be accomodated at Horsemanship of Ulysses S. Grant. PhotogenicScientist ( talk) 19:35, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I honestly think an article on the arrest is preferable, given how it's been cited by various scholars, courts, etc. I'm still a little confused what the objection to the current version of the article, which focuses on the account, is.-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 19:44, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Sorry... scholars and courts? I've been distracted for a week or two (and will be for the next three weeks as well -- traveling), so maybe I missed something, but what scholars and courts have cited this "arrest"??? A law student writing a law review articles isn't a scholar and isn't a court. E Eng 21:04, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

... I mean, I'm just going by the article? Where did you get the idea that a law student wrote the article cited therein? That's not correct—the author's a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law ( [15]). For future reference, generally speaking, law students will write notes or comments, but not articles. And, in this case, if you scroll to the bottom of page 1 of the article, you can see that the author was a Professor at UVA when it was published. And, okay, a dissent, but I was referencing the Supreme Court of the Philippines opinion.-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 21:16, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

While I was mistaken in making the assumption in this particular case, articles in law reviews (in the US anyway) are often or usually student-written. And they are always student-edited, and therefore can be used only with caution, if at all, no matter who the author of the particular article. Prakash (the author we're talking about here) should be ashamed of himself for taking the 1908 Star article and treating it as straight-out fact [16]:

In 1872, a Black police officer, William H. West, arrested President Ulysses S. Grant for speeding in his carriage. Then, as now, reckless driving imperils innocent bystanders. The day before the actual arrest, West had merely stopped the President. After Grant asked what was amiss, something every speeder does in the hopes that feigning innocence will somehow confuse the police, Officer West replied, “I want to inform you, Mr. President, that you are violating the law by speeding along this street.” West apparently said, “I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation . . . but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.” “All right,” said Grant, “where do you want me to go with you?” West drove Grant’s carriage to the police station, and Grant posted twenty dollars in collateral for the next day’s court appearance. The President’s compatriots, each of whom was also guilty, also posted collateral.In today’s money, this would amount to north of $400. But President Grant did not appear the next day, likely because he was guilty and thought it better to forfeit the collateral.

The champions of presidential immunity have yet to address President Grant’s run-in with the police, his arrest, and what I would regard as his de facto guilty plea. They have not attempted to fit the episode into their theory of presidential immunity from arrest, trial, and punishment. Officer West’s respectful but firm treatment, and President Grant’s willing acceptance of it, are highly pertinent. The man known as “Unconditional Surrender” wholly surrendered to West. Grant’s submission signaled a welcome willingness to honor a familiar principle: every American is equal before the law. President Grant did not hide behind his title and position, resist arrest, or even contest his obvious guilt. It would have been galling and absurd had Grant declared that he could not be bothered to go to the police station because, after all, he had to conduct the nation’s business. A President engrossed in the idle and dangerous amusement of racing carriages on city streets simply could not be seen to moan that an arrest and a trip to the police station would distract from his official calling.

All of the above is cited to, simply, West's 1908 story. I don't know what it is about this topic that anesthetizes people's critical faculties. As for the Philippine Supreme Court, well let's see the full paragraph touching on (as we might charitably call it) the alleged Grant incident:

As Greece was the cradle of democracy in the West, so the Philippines is the cradle of democracy in the East. If the first occidental democracy was born in Greece centuries before the Christian Era, at the end of the last century the Philippines gave birth to the first democracy in the Orient, the abode of more than one-half of all humanity. That first oriental democracy was born with the drafting of the Malolos Constitution in the most difficult and trying circumstances, under conditions less appropriate for a healthy and vigorous growth, when our country was enduring the hardships of an uphill bloody struggle for national independence. But America, the greatest occidental democracy, came to offer us a helping hand as a second mother. With solicitude she nursed the small child. She reared and cared for her with the self-sacrificing earnestness of maternal love. The child has grown into a brown girl, full of the joy of life. The girl learned from the American teacher the full meaning of constitutional guaranties, of civil liberties, of fundamental human rights. She studied at heart the accomplishments of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. She followed the teaching of Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison. She saw how law is really above all men, and how a humble police officer in the discharge of his official duties, arrested President Grant, and how the Chief Magistrate of that great nation, the United States of America, submitted to the arrest. That girl has grown into full maturity, the personification of beauty, bewitching, the sweetheart of one billion lovers, the greatest pride of America in the continent of Asia, on the shores of the vast Pacific.

After giving you few minutes to recover from that revoltingly saccharine paean to the "brown girl", I'd like you consider a recent circuit opinion [17]:

American history teems with stories and myths of trees. Johnny Appleseed’s apple trees and George Washington’s cherry tree are but a few of those timber tales that inspire and teach.

I hope no one's going to use this to suggest that the ol' "I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree" story has the endorsement of the Sixth Circuit. E Eng 00:39, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Hi! First—you're confusing what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the references in the law review article and the dissent add to credibility. I'm saying that they contribute to the account's notability.

Second, I went to a T13 law school in the United States. I was an editor on the law review. I'm very familiar with legal scholarship. I'm flat out telling you, no, articles in law reviews are not usually student written. Law reviews and journals are the medium by which legal scholarship is published; there are a few very small independent journals, but they have nowhere near the prestige. Again, students will often write notes or comments, but they will rarely write articles. That you're clinging to this wrong idea even after I've pointed it out is really making me question the veracity of your other claims, because clearly your rhetorical confidence isn't at all affected by your knowledge of a subject. If you really want to push back here, by all means: (1) remember, to save time, look at anything labelled an article—not note, comment, or feature; (2) click on the pdf version of the article and just scroll to the bottom of the first (sometimes second, if they lead with the TOC) page—again, time saver. Now, here's the Yale Law Journal; Harvard Law Review; Stanford Law Review—and, hey, since the article we cite was in here, the Texas Law Review. (For Texas Law Review articles, you'll find the download button at the bottom of the article's online version—a little inconvenient, I know.) Count how many of those articles are written by students. Enjoy.-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 12:32, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

A slightly different option might be Arrests of Ulysses S. Grant, in the plural form. Pharos ( talk) 21:52, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Do we actually have sourcing for Grant having been arrested (as in taken into custody, not just pulled over for speeding) ever, whether before or during his presidency? -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:56, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I assume you mean sourcing that relies on more than the West narrative?-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 22:00, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Ha! Yes. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:04, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

This comment from the IP editor collected 3 contemporary sources which all said that Grant was arrested at least once. Though the nature of the arrest(s) differ in each account. PhotogenicScientist ( talk) 22:04, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Broadly, I'm inclined to like the idea of renaming the page to "arrests", plural. However, when I try to look at the links given by the IP, it looks like primary sources, and I'm not sure that we really have a secondary source that establishes Grant's multiple arrests as a connected topic, so we have to be careful of WP:COATRACK. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:35, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

But with #News from Grant HQ, below, my concern about a secondary source has been solved. On a quick look, that looks like a very useful source for our purposes. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 01:15, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Yes, wp:primary is the problem with this idea. WP policies do allow primary sources, but it gets sticky. That's the basis of WP:synth. I think a lot of us are clever enough to editorialize a factual article, but that's not allowed.

For the title, "Arrest of" is fine. It's only the title, and wp:commonname and a little wp:commonsense goes a long way here. The title is so people can find what they were looking for. I'm always worried about titles and links that wp:astonish the readers. We still have the rock and a hard place with this article's topic. We're all pretty sure the widely cited-as-fact West's account is false, and at the same time there's no RS that wikipedia recognizes that call this out. Fiddling with the title doesn't fix this OR/Synth problem if we try to explain that in the article.

Really, I'm all for wp:iar and telling the facts and reality of the situation here, but who really thinks we can do that without looking like a bunch of duplicitous turds? At the end of the day, if we don't delete the article, we have to get really close to some weasel words and synth.

That all said, I think the article's current content is not too bad at conveying that there's a lot more to it than the recent NYT or WaPo articles they may have read, even if it doesn't outright say, "Yeah, West's account is BS". 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 18:39, 12 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the ping, Tamzin! As to the proposed text—and I don't mean to at all be disrespectful to a noble effort—I think it's a bit blatant on the POV pushing. You can practically feel the text trying to push back against the claims. There's also a stark difference between the text and the reliable sources it relies on—we include a reference to the Post's line, "it's nearly impossible to know if this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth" (which we ... uh, loosely ... paraphrase as "the full accuracy of which will likely never be known") but we don't include the definitive statements that it happened? I mean, if that's not an NPOV/DUE WEIGHT issue, what is?

I do want to briefly reiterate what I said over at the noticeboard, I fully acknowledge that original research is often required for determining whether content should be included—at the meta level. We don't, for example, require a third-party source describing a view as "fringe" before WP:FRINGE applies. But I'm very wary of saying that OR as to source accuracy is a legitimate basis for exclusion. Can you imagine an RFC on the merits of a medical journal piece's methodology? Or what about trying to settle which of two rocket-scientist Wikipedians are correct in a dispute? Would participants in the discussion have to show their work? I think our job is to effectively reflect what reliable sources say. I know it can be frustrating if those sources are wrong, but we have faith that the sources (or, at least, some sources) will, eventually, get it right.

This claim has been made—and stated as fact—in several reliable sources. I do think it's notable enough for its own Wikipedia article—it's a significant claim, it's been openly contemplated by some Grant experts, and it's been invoked recently and in the past. That said, we do have several sources openly debating its merits. Even if they all conclude it happened, we can include a section on the "historicity" of the event. I'm also fine with including the "no contemporaneous accounts" in the lede and noting the source of the story. To be honest, I think User:Tryptofish's version of the article—where it stands now—is a bit more subtle than the proposed lede. That said, on principle more than gut reaction, I still have some POV concerns about taking a bunch of articles which generally say "this happened, here's a claim" (and a few which say "here's the claim and there are other sources supporting it") ... and turning it into "there was a claim this happened".-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 12:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

@ Jerome Frank Disciple: Well, if I'm being accused of POV-pushing in both directions, I'm either doing something very right or very wrong. I do sympathize with your concern. I've repeatedly objected here to proposed changes that would slant the article based on original research, as in point 3 of my trilemma. I think what your concern about source-accuracy OR misses is that accuracy is an aspect of reliability, and reliability is one of those "meta" concerns you refer to. Consider: I recently removed a claim that Cape May Point is the southernmost point in New Jersey. That claim was unsourced, but I did find some article on bird ecology that says the same thing. However, the statement is trivially false. You literally only need to look at a map of Cape Island to see the bit of Cape May City that is farther south than it. So, while the scholarly article is (I assume) an RS for writing about bird ecology, we can make the "meta" determination that it's not an RS for the particular claim being made about geography.

This approach is consistent with, and indeed required by policy. WP:NOR says Deciding whether primary, secondary, or tertiary sources are appropriate in any given instance is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, and should be discussed on article talk pages. WP:RS makes clear that reliability is always a case-by-case determination, and emphasizes this for news media sources: Whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis. And if there's a determination on talk (where OR is explicitly allowed) that a source is unreliable for a claim, then that can affect the article. And in WP:V we have the "exceptional claims" rule, which couldn't very well be enforced if editors weren't making determinations about what's an exceptional claim and what's a high-quality source. See, for instance, Talk:Construction of the World Trade Center § Number of workers who died building the WTC, where Epicgenius and I agreed to disregard a normally reliable source from use in an FA for a particular claim, based on a common-sense analysis of what that source and others say. (Psst, Epic, I think it's safe to just remove that bit now, btw.)

Now, to me, one of the most important distinctions in any use of news media sources is passing mentions versus confident assertions. If The New York Times says in passing "Delaware, the state of Mr. Biden's birth", that's a simple mixup and can be ignored. If The New York Times publishes an in-depth article on how Joe Biden was secretly born in Delaware and transported to Pennsylvania in the dead of night, that claim needs to be taken seriously. And so that's why I draw a distinction here around the three news media sources (NYT, WaPo, Smithsonian) that explicitly say they considered the historicity of the arrest and concluded that it happened. There's a big difference between that and regurgitating the 1908 story (or its racially-tinged 1920s counterpart) uncritically, which is basically a whole article built out of passing-mention-caliber journalism.

With all that said, no policy or guideline ever requires us to assert something in wikivoice just because it appears in RS. Rather, it's the converse: WP:INTEXT counsels to not imply a statement is more controversial than it is by way of in-text attribution. So we definitely should not say something like "According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, Grant was arrested", because that implies some dispute among RS. So if my proposed lede comes off as too much implying the event didn't occur, then that's an error in writing on my part, but I don't think invalidates the "write about the claims with no comment on accuracy" approach. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 17:02, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Not saying you're specifically pushing it! Just that the resulting text, from my perspective (say, in its treatment of the certainty of some claims vs. the hedging in the post article), feels like it is.

As to "accuracy is an aspect of reliability, and reliability is one of those "meta" concerns you refer to" ... I'm not sure. It's quite easy for anyone to pretend to be a historian and feel relatively competent in doing so—to think that they're just looking at a map. But ...

1. First, this logic opens the door to a lot of discussion that Wikipedia isn't suited for—again, consider the rocket science example ... or perhaps a disagreement over relativity.
2. Second, to be clear, I also think the problem shows up—and perhaps most frequently shows up—in history contexts. Consider the group of non-genealogists at the University of Virginia—the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society—who publicized their study that Thomas Jefferson did not, in fact, have any sexual relations with Sally Hemings. But, the fact that such a group—which, if I recall, included lawyers, some historians, a movie director, and more—felt confident enough to make such a claim (and their work was subsequently trashed in a Genealogy journal) itself reveals that we should be wary of thinking that an RFC could resolve this kind of dispute.
3. Third, I'm not sure your Cape May City / Point example is on point. There, the question is really whether to value a primary source over a secondary source—but you could write in the Cape May City article that it's the southern-most point and cite the map. Moreover, there are other reliable sources saying the City is the southernmost point.

I'm curious, though, what the arguments are for your version of the lede over the current version (drafted by Tryptofish).-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 17:27, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

That's a lot of words without saying "We do verification, not truth". Bleh. And it's depreciated. What you don't say is "Well, actually, I believe the reliable sources saying this and I believe West's account." If you say that, then you have standing to argue that we should just say repeat what the RS have spit out. Because what most of us are saying on the talk page, and with good reasons provided, is "Yeah, right, this is total bollocks." The editorial judgement of every wikipedian necessarily includes the good conscience that we are representing reality, facts, and truth in every article. That's the basis of "good faith". 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 18:44, 12 May 2023 (UTC) reply

• I'm about to leave for a month in Croatia, so I'll be unable to stay with this for a while. I think Tamzin's proposed text is pretty good, with these suggestions and reservations:

  By all accounts – This phrase generally means that we are crediting the truth of the thing asserted. Why not just say "In all versions of the story as told by West"?

  {{tq|the event has been} – "The alleged event has been"

Gotta run, flying out in a day. E Eng 01:04, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

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 Lightburst ( talk) 14:19, 16 May 2023 (UTC) reply

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

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This was originally a double nomination, but has been split into two separate nominations, the other being Template:Did you know nominations/Presidential immunity in the United States. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 19:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC) reply

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Pertains to an older version of the article. -- Tamzin cetacean needed (she|they|xe) 19:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC) reply
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
William H. West in 1908 ... that when William H. West, a Black man, arrested U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage, Grant did not claim any presidential immunity? Source: Texas Law Review (passage beginning "in 1872") Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Achaemenid royal inscriptions; Template:Did you know nominations/Ky Schevers Created by Tamzin ( talk). Self-nominated at 06:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Arrest of Ulysses S. Grant; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page. reply General: Article is new enough and long enough New enough: Long enough: Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing: Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting: Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px. Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px: QPQ: Done. Overall: A pair of well-sourced and interesting articles. AGF on the citations via ProQuest. Earwig detects a possible copyright violation for the arrest article, but this appears to be because of the extensive quotes included therein. The general thrust of the ALT is very appealing, but needs a little tweaking. Seeing West's image, his name mentioned first, and especial mention of his race (although it appeared not to be relevant to the arrest) led me to briefly misperceive this DYK nom being about him. If the syntax were reordered—say by first mentioning the arrest, then the officer involved, and finally Grant's tacit refusal to invoke presidential immunity—that would make the subjects of this DYK nom clearer to a reader. I would also suggest replacing the image used here with one of Grant; in this case, it's the arrestee and his office that make this incident notable and relevant. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 00:19, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply In case it's not obvious, the central claim of this article is in considerable question ( Talk:Arrest of Ulysses S. Grant) and this can't run until that's well resolved. Also, why does the hook go to pains to point out that West was black? E Eng 03:22, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply I feel like it should go without saying why a Black man arresting the sitting president in 1872 is notable... Sources commenting on the event basically always emphasize this detail. That said, I've removed the detail from ALT1 for reasons of flow. And no, the central claim is not "in considerable question", at least not in any way relevant to how we write encyclopedia articles. You and one other editor don't think the arrest happened, which is a view that you're perfectly entitled to, and which may even be correct, but it's not one consistent with any reliable sources' analysis, including multiple high-quality sources that have examined the historicity of the event. No one seems to have been persuaded by your argument, and even if people were, a local consensus could not override the global consensus that we don't use articles to publish editors' personal theories, so I'm not sure what is left to resolve here. The article already notes, at length, the uncertainty regarding many details, but the hook focuses only on ones that, again, no reliable sources dispute. -- Tamzin cetacean needed (she|they|xe) 05:36, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply @ CurryTime7-24: This could also work, sans image: ALT1: ... that when U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage, he did not claim any presidential immunity? Although I still strongly prefer ALT0, as I think it tells a more interesting story. -- Tamzin cetacean needed (she|they|xe) 05:36, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply Actually, there are at least four five editors (me, at least two IPs, Oooooooseven, and Cullen328 -- who I'm pinging here so he can help me gang up on you further) who have expressed skepticism about this story, and against that there's you and 4meters4. No one's suggesting we publish anyone's personal theories; the question is whether we should present this story as fact narrated in Wikivoice, rather than as a tale which has been circulating recently. While it's clear the article should exist (either in the former or latter form), and I'm uncertain of how to thread that needle, there's no way in hell that DYK is going to feature on the Main Page this obviously questionable "fact" until that issue's resolved. And no, it does not "go without saying" that we should point out in a strained way that West was black. Were black policemen unusual in Washington at the time? Were black policemen less likely to do their duty, so it's nice to point out one who did? What exactly is the point of including this fact? E Eng 07:19, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply Those jokes about West's race are in exceptionally poor taste and I would urge you to rethink them. -- Tamzin cetacean needed (she|they|xe) 08:24, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply They're not jokes. I'm honestly trying to imagine why in the world your first impulse is to reduce this man to his skin color. Christ, you don't even mention he was a policeman. E Eng 14:06, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply The only known contemporaneous coverage of anything like this event was published in the The Alexandria Gazette on April 12, 1866 and in the Camden Weekly Journal on April 20, 1866, roughly three years before Grant became president. These reports are not mentioned or referenced in this deeply flawed article, although they are discussed on its talk page. In my view, this article needs a major rewrite based on good editorial judgment, setting aside credulity. Cullen328 ( talk) 07:39, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply @ Cullen328: EEng has been pushing a narrative here that this article is built only on clickbait and credulous coverage. This is, quite simply, false, and it has been explained to him multiple times now, but for a week he has persisted in repeating the same speculative arguments. To be clear, several cited sources do mention the 1866 arrest; they treat it as separate. As to "good editorial judgment": Rosenwald in The Washington Post acknowledges issues with West's narrative but finds the MPD's statements about an arrest to be dispositive. Solly in Smithsonian explicitly endorses Rosenwald's conclusion. Rashbaum & Christobek in The New York Times acknowledge the lack of contemporaneous sources but also find the MPD's statements dispositive. Marszalek, one of the preëminent Grant scholars, as interviewed in NPR accepts a version of West's narrative as fact. (EEng's rebuttal to this has been an unsubstantiated allegation that one of America's most reputable news sources selectively edited Marszalek's words.) If not for these four sources, yes, we'd be in the territory where editorial judgment governs. But the source analysis has been done for us here—by The Washington Post, The New York Times, Smithsonian, and John F. Marszalek. They all find that the arrest occurred. If we were judging based just on primary sources, of course we would be more cautious. And I have my own doubts about MPD Chief Lanier's statement in 2012... But that doesn't matter, because actual professional RS have weighed in on that statement and said they take it at face value. I don't see how we can second-guess that. That wouldn't be editorial judgment; that would be supplanting individual editors' pet theories for what reliable sources say. Keep in mind, the article makes almost no claims about the arrest in wikivoice—just the broad strokes, the ones that are accepted by these four sources (and by many others, but I stress these four since one is an expert and the other three all demonstrate they looked at the story critically). Verifiability issues are stressed in both the lede and the body. I don't know how else it could possibly be written. To say anything other than that Grant was arrested would be a violation of WP:NPOV, failing to represent the consensus of reliable sources. -- Tamzin cetacean needed (she|they|xe) 08:24, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply I think you ought to step back for a day or two. EEng is not pushing any narrative or POV, and we should AGF. In fact, it's a position that is based on research (admittedly original, and so cannot be included as such) and very soundly calls into question these sources. I and two others have very similar positions to it as well. This is without an RfC or post to the NPOV board or something. Which is actually what I would want to suggest at this point. We need more eyes and evaluation on the issues I, @ EEng:, and @ Cullen328: have raised. But the source analysis has been done for us here actually, we are challenging that notion entirely. A relatively light dive into the topic leads to a great deal of skepticism for us that these sources have actually lived up to our editorial judgement expectations. actual professional RS have weighed in on that statement and said they take it at face value. I don't see how we can second-guess that. That wouldn't be editorial judgment; that would be supplanting individual editors' pet theories for what reliable sources say. Don't stretch the bona fides here. Marszalek is the only source reasonably called "professional", but his venue for this source is a pop culture interview which we don't even have the full audio for. If he put it in one of his books, then we'd have something. Actually, the fact that no one seems to have put it in their books about Grant should tell you something. These concerns are not "pet theories", and I don't think any of us are advocating OR or Synth be in the article either way. Instead, it's concern over the fact that clear evidence from the primary sources shows that these secondary sources are not being rigorous with their assertions. As you say, they simply take it at face value. I don't know how else it could possibly be written. Well, I agree. WP rules are what they are, which leave me with the only solution that it ought to remain unwritten on WP. And the onus is on you for inclusion. From WP:verifiable While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. This article contains much information that very possibly could be false. This is the objection you have to overcome. See my reply to 4meter4 for more on this. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 19:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply Comment. The criticisms being raised here by EEng are not found in any of the published literature, and are entirely original research. The 1866 arrest is addressed in the current published literature as a prior arrest to the later arrest while he was president, and has not been used in any sources to challenge or check the historicity of the 1872 arrest as editors are trying to do here. WP:WEIGHT policy states, If you can prove a theory that few or NONE currently believe, Wikipedia is not the place to present such proof. Once it has been presented and discussed in sources that are reliable, it may be appropriately included. The article as written is balanced and is an entirely accurate reflection of all published literature anywhere on this topic. The fact that Eeng and a few others are questioning the historicity of the event in a new and novel way not found anywhere in published literature should be dismissed as entirely spurious for wikipedia's purposes. We are not interested in what may be true but what is verifiably true. Wikipedia isn't the place to bring original analysis or material and promote one's own original pet theory. 4meter4 ( talk) 13:38, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply You are obfuscating the issue by overstating the verifiability of the story and misapplying what wp:verifiable policy comes from. It comes from the evaluation of the sources themselves, not an authoritative decree that some sources are always right (ie GREL). This issue is specifically addressed While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. Do you believe it's ok for WP to make articles based on secondary sources that are not supported by primary sources? This is the crux of the problem. I think it's a bad idea. Verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source. When we click through and down the rabbit hole on this article, we find what I put in the other talk section. Primary sources that are like this story, but a far cry from it. This should be a concern for technically verifiable content from GREL sources, but very possibly false information. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 19:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply I disagree. I think you are applying an entirely original analysis of primary materials, making assumptions not found in textual evidence, and essentially arguing for an original take on the source materials not supported by an expert on this topic or in any published RS. In short, the language at WP:WEIGHT and WP:No original research is 100% applicable to what you are trying to do here, and rightly should put a stop to this nonsense in favor of the article as it currently stands. 4meter4 ( talk) 22:40, 21 April 2023 (UTC) reply : Getting back to the DYK nomination, thank you Tamzin for your reply. Approval for ALT1; you're all set to go! — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 18:01, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply Sorry, but while DYK reviews are a lightweight, one-editor process in straightforward cases, where issues arise it becomes a consensus process just like everything else on WP. There are three editors here objecting, and at least two more on the article Talk. This cannot run until that discussion is resolved. E Eng 00:20, 15 April 2023 (UTC) reply That's fine. I will say that this debate would be better served by keeping it at the article, rather than letting it spill over here. The discussion here should be about the merits and qualifications of this DYK nomination, which, at least to me, seems OK. So—my approval stands, albeit contingent on the fracas over the Grant article being settled in its favor. If this is going to turn into an internet shouting match, however, then I withdraw from reviewing this DYK nomination. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 01:28, 15 April 2023 (UTC) reply There's no shouting. I simply noted above that there was a dispute on the article Talk. Others decided to fork the discussion here. E Eng 03:09, 15 April 2023 (UTC) reply Notice. I have reported EEng and 76.178.169.118 to the Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard. The objections being raised to this article are entirely based in original research and synthesis, and have no validity whatsoever in regards to published RS. In my opinion, this article is absolutely fine as is under wikipedia's policies, and should pass a DYK review without any modifications. However, it shouldn't get ticked until the conversation at the noticeboard resolves this conflict one way or the other. Best. 4meter4 ( talk) 19:56, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply Comment. I have no opinion on the adequacy of sourcing, one way or the other. But as a matter of policy, we should not be putting anything on the Main Page when there is a legitimate dispute about verifiability that remains unresolved. And there is a legitimate dispute about verifiability, insofar as stating the hook in Wikipedia's voice. I ask the admin who considers promoting the hook to hold off until editors resolve it. (I was pinged some time ago to the article talk page, and didn't have much of an opinion on the content dispute. My attention was drawn back to it by seeing the notification about the NORN report, which is how I got here.) -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:06, 22 April 2023 (UTC) reply FYI, Tryptofish, with the ? icon being the last on the page, the bot won't even move this from the under-review pool to the approved pool, so no danger it will be promoted. E Eng 03:48, 23 April 2023 (UTC) reply Thanks, I didn't know that. But I still feel moved to express my indignation. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:54, 23 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Alrighty, so, after a few weeks' more developments, which have now seen both pages rescoped and renamed, I think the best thing to do here is split the nom (see Presidential immunity in the United States nom) and restart this discussion as a new review from the ground up. Since this is a rewrite, I've contributed a new QPQ. Ping @ CurryTime7-24: if you'd like to review either article's new version. EEng is on vacation, but I think would be happy with the changes that have been made; pinging Tryptofish in his stead to see if there are any outstanding objections. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 19:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC) reply

• that Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding with a horse twice as a general and, according to a popular narrative, once while president of the United States? Source: "Was General Grant Arrested for Speeding in Washington, D.C.?" ( Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site)
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Corrinne Tarver

Created by Tamzin ( talk). Self-nominated at 06:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC) [renominated 19:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC)]. Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Arrest of Ulysses S. Grant; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page. reply

• Comment. Thanks for the ping, and I have this template page watchlisted. I'm replying with my own opinion, as I know better than to try to speak for my excellent friend. Anyway, I do think that things are much better now that the page has been renamed and rewritten, so my previous strong objection to the DYK no longer applies. Instead, I see this as a simple situation of tweaking the hook. I don't like the phrase "according to a popular narrative", because it isn't apparent to a general reader of the Main Page that this refers to the fact that the popular narrative is likely to be untrue. As before, I want us to be very careful about not misleading readers into thinking we are saying that something happened, when we cannot be sure whether it happened. (Also, "speeding with a horse" sounds like he was racing against the horse.) I also think that the hook can be simplified. So I'll propose ALT1. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:26, 8 May 2023 (UTC) reply
• ALT1: ... that Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse carriage when he was a general?
• New enough, long enough. Hook short enough and sourced. No neutrality problems found, no copyright problems found, no maintenance templates found. QPQ done. Although the entire West's 1908 Star account very obviously comes from that one source at the end, each paragraph/quote does need a source.-- Laun chba ller 13:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC) reply

  @ Launchballer: Would this not fall under the "plot summary" exception to the citation-per-paragraph rule? Or at least the spirit of it. Otherwise it seems strange for DYK rules to require footnotes in a case where I think most GA or FA reviewers would say there shouldn't be footnotes. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 21:53, 13 May 2023 (UTC) reply

  • • Fair cop. Good to go.-- Laun chba ller 22:39, 13 May 2023 (UTC) reply
• With it being good to go, I want to note that I strongly prefer ALT1 over the original ALT0. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 00:31, 14 May 2023 (UTC) reply

High Copyvio score, they are long quotes. Interesting hook. Lightburst ( talk) 14:12, 16 May 2023 (UTC) reply

To Prep 4

... or at least not in 1872. I came here after reading a Twitter thread [18] that very convincingly explains why the story of Grant's arrest was almost certainly made up entirely. The short version: There is no way that the arrest of the sitting president, during an election year, would not have been reported in the press at the time. Oooooooseven ( talk) 00:12, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Joshua Benton, while a respected figure, isn't a subject-matter expert AFAICT, so we do not accord any weight to self-published statements of his. If he cares to advance his argument in an editorially-reviewed source, this article will be updated to reflect it. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 00:23, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Benton probably is a subject matter expert in the field of journalism. It's further worth noting that he does have a BA in history, and has published historical pieces in reputable publications (ie [19], [20], [21]). I would argue that his commentary on (historical) journalism (which is fundamentally what this is here) is quite include-able here. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 01:00, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Fair enough. I don't think that gives him expertise on the core question of whether Grant was arrested (and he indeed doesn't claim to have investigated that claim beyond looking at his particular area of expertise, newsmedia accounts), but he's an expert on journalism, so I've added his skepticism about the reliability of media reports. Does that work for you? -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 01:22, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I understand the preference for published sources, but just because a source is generally reliable doesn't mean that it's infallible. I'm not necessarily saying that we should declare that the arrest never happened (although I suspect that that will become the expert consensus before long), but right now the article confidently asserts, based on reporting supported by very little evidence that defies logic and common sense, that it did happen. Oooooooseven ( talk) 02:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I think he very likely was arrested, but in 1866, before he was president. I suspect the "arrest" was probably not as we typically envision, (ie. officer orders you under arrest, cuffs you, takes you downtown, you sit in a cell, appear before a judge, etc). It was probably more like "You'll have to come to the court house tomorrow and pay a fine." I'd blame that on differences in word usage across a century and a half, and a Hollywood understanding of what being arrested looks like.

Either way, I'm very certain there's a kernel of truth. Grant almost definitely was stopped by a traffic cop in 1866. See above where I point to three contemporary sources diff. He also definitely hit a boy with his carriage, but equally definite, he was not president nor was he arrested for it. 76.178.169.118 ( talk) 19:21, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Fair; I probably could have named this section better. I'm specifically disputing the 1872 arrest story. Oooooooseven ( talk) 03:17, 15 April 2023 (UTC) reply

1866 and 1872 both researched by the National Park Service. Pharos ( talk) 23:40, 1 May 2023 (UTC) reply

On a quick look, that looks like a very appropriate source. Thanks for finding it! -- Tryptofish ( talk) 01:16, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

The most relevant passage is Park staff conducted newspaper research and were unable to find any articles from 1872 announcing President Grant’s arrest. Given that Washington, D.C. had seven daily newspapers at the time and 1872 was a bitterly divisive election year, the arrest would have made national headlines had it been announced by police or legal authorities in the city. Tentative research of other primary source documents from time has failed to produce definitive evidence. Additionally, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant provide no information on an arrest of Grant that year, nor do they indicate that Grant and West maintained a friendship after 1872. Interestingly, evidence from the time suggests that Grant was pulled over for speeding in 1866, when he was still Lieutenant General of the U.S. Army. I have been saying something very similar for weeks now. Cullen328 ( talk) 01:27, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Now we're getting somewhere. I wish it were more formal, but it does end with The park would like to thank Director of Research Ryan Semmes at the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library for his assistance with conducting research for this article.. E Eng 02:57, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Looks great! Nice find.-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 13:09, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Wow - that source is incredibly applicable to this past month's worth of discussion.

In my mind, this source solidifies the idea the 1866 story(s) is better sourced and more notable from a historical perspective. But it remains that the 1872 story has received more coverage in the news for its (current) relevance from a legal/judicial perspective. And I'm not sure if this article would be best written by focusing primarily on the former, the latter, or both equally... PhotogenicScientist ( talk) 13:42, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I think we can cover both without worrying about whether or not they are treated equally. Given the now-sourced differences between them, it's fine to treat the 1866 event as an event (I think), while treating the 1872 story as a story that has had a notable role in legal and political discussions. I notice, however, the wording the source uses above for 1866, "Grant was pulled over for speeding", so we need to establish sufficient sourcing for him having been "arrested", and not just "pulled over", if we are going to call it an arrest. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 17:40, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Their use of "pulled over" in place of "arrested" in that particular instance seems like just a stylistic decision. Overall, I don't feel a meaningful distinction is being made by NPS between the two in that article. Moreover, in discussing a second incident later in the article, they say that "Grant was arrested a second time for speeding" - implying a first arrest.

But I notice that in the conclusion of that article, the NPS still refrains from saying outright that Grant was arrested. They say that Grant definitely broke the law by speeding, definitely did so in front of police and was informed as such, and definitely paid fines related to his speeding. Maybe they're keeping their distance from the word "arrest" because of the modern connotations of the word, of being taken into custody and sitting around for a bit while things get processed. Or to avoid comparison to Trump's recent "arrest." Who knows. But they do repeat the old newspapers' use of the word "arrest" when describing the incidents, at least.

Anyways, could we not use the newspapers themselves as sources to state that Grant was arrested (in 1866), per WP:PRIMARY? PhotogenicScientist ( talk) 20:35, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

That's good enough for me. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:42, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I do think that, if we cite the earlier arrest at all, we should keep in mind that the reactions—the commentary on the significance of Grant's (supposed) arrest, should be clearly denoted as referring to the 1872 arrest.-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 20:49, 2 May 2023 (UTC) reply

• Well, that's an almost comically-timed deus ex machina to resolve our trilemma. I'm going to take a stab at a bold rewrite. Bear with me... -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 18:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply
  • ( edit conflict) Alright, done with the initial rewrite. @ Tryptofish and PhotogenicScientist in particular, but also of course @anyone, please let me know your thoughts; and improvements of course very welcome. Stylistically this is probably a bit sloppier than before, because that's what happens when I rewrite all in one go, but I think it does a much better job now at framing the topic (now that we thankfully have some proper secondary analysis). Also, I've moved the page to match the rescope. I hesitated a bit on the name, but decided on "Arrest or arrests", as explained in my move summary: boldly moving. per the NPS and as discussed on talk, the first 1866 arrest doesn't seem reasonably in dispute, but the NPS seems insufficiently confident in the 2nd '66 arrest to definitively use the plural ("Grant’s alleged arrest or arrests"), so echoing that phrasing, even if it's a bit clunky. If anyone's got a less clunky wording that doesn't misrepresent anything, I'm all ears. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 20:44, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

    Overall, I think great job! One issue: the last paragraph of the lead ... I think this should probably be altered:

    With both the second arrest and As to the alleged third arrest, Grant is characterized as deferential to the arresting officer's authority, an image that has been cited as a symbol of the rule of law, including in a dissenting opinion at the Supreme Court of the Philippines, in children's education, and in discussions of presidential criminal immunity in the United States.

    I'm not sure about the children's education, but the dissenting opinion and the discussions of presidential immunity (obviously) are only referring to the (supposed) third arrest.-- Jerome Frank Disciple ( talk) 21:01, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

    Great job on the rewrite - on first reading, I think it presents all the information and sources in a very understandable way! I'll see if I can help out on the style. PhotogenicScientist ( talk) 13:12, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Resolved

 – Moved again per below. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 21:01, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

About the rename to "Arrest or arrests...", I find that more wordy than is necessary. Given that there is sufficient sourcing to back up the existence of two arrests, I'd suggest instead Arrests of Ulysses S. Grant. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:43, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Edit conflict; see above for explanation of issue with just "arrests". -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 20:45, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I'd be interested in hearing what other editors think about it. I still find the current pagename awkward. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:05, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I re-read the NPS source, and it doesn't sound to me like they are really doubting the second incident. They treat the first arrest as being well-documented from multiple sources, the second as documented by one, and the third as being dubious. It's true that they use the phrase "arrest or arrests", but, in context, it sounds to me like they are treating it as mainly the third one as being in doubt. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:13, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Rereading what I've written, I think I've been inconsistent in how I've treated the second one (fact(ish) in body), questioned in title), but I'd tend toward resolving that in the other direction, i.e. not presenting the second as undisputed fact. A single contemporaneous newspaper article definitely counts a long way toward establishing historicity, but doesn't necessarily get us all the way. The entirety of the NPS' commentary on the second alleged arrest is

Several months later, the Fourth of July issue of the Richmond Daily Dispatch reprinted a National Intelligencer article announcing that Grant was arrested a second time for speeding. “The General took the arrest very good humoredly, said it was an oversight, and rode over to the second Precinct station house and paid his fine.”

While the exact details of Grant’s alleged arrest or arrests are shrouded in ambiguity ...

No part of that asserts that the second arrest actually occurred, unlike with the first arrest, where they say evidence from the time suggests that Grant was pulled over for speeding in 1866 [emphasis original]. Since we're trying to be as conservative as possible here regarding historicity, I think the appropriate way to treat the second arrest is as something that there's no reason to think didn't happen, but hasn't been significantly analyzed by secondary sources. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 21:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Well, as I said, I'm interested in hearing what other editors think. Myself, I'm still stuck on "Arrest or arrests" being too clumsy, like saying "this page might not be about what it says it's about". I know I said above that "there is sufficient sourcing to back up the existence of two arrests", but I can also see an argument for saying "arrests" in the title, and then discussing three things in the text. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:31, 3 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I'm leaning toward "Arrests of..." for the title. Fundamentally, it seems to be a WP:PRECISE vs WP:CONCISE issue. But, to quote PRECISE: "Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that." I think the topical scope would involve discussing the many reported incidents of Grant being arrested, and trying to pronounce the ambiguity of subsequent arrests in the title is a bit too much.

Also, (though we are not the news) I'm reminded of the spirit WP:HEADLINES. PhotogenicScientist ( talk) 14:42, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I could see the argument that "Arrests of" doesn't per se say that multiple arrests occurred, just that there is some cognizable topic that can be described as the arrests of Ulysses S. Grant. I guess we do have titles like miracles of Jesus without saying that Jesus objectively performed miracles. And just to float an idea in a different direction, we could do something like Ulysses S. Grant and speeding. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 18:34, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I think you're perhaps overinterpreting - I don't detect any skepticism in the NPS piece about the second 1866 arrest. The reports are from similar brief articles in the National Intelligencer that year. Every other source that bothers to mention both 1866 events treats them as equally valid, and although it's worded a little oddly I don't think the NPS piece is really saying anything different. Pharos ( talk) 19:34, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

I, too, had thought about a title based on "speeding", but I think it doesn't work well with WP:COMMONNAME. I agree with all the points being made in favor of just saying "arrests". -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:56, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Yeah, fair enough. Seems I'm the only one who takes issue with "Arrests of", and it's only a weak preference on my part with some good arguments made by others, so, moved to that. -- Tamzin ^{cetacean needed} (she|they|xe) 21:01, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Thanks! -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:02, 4 May 2023 (UTC) reply

The redirect Arrest or arrests of Ulysses S. Grant has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 May 5 § Arrest or arrests of Ulysses S. Grant until a consensus is reached. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:24, 5 May 2023 (UTC) reply