Talk:Presidency of Benjamin Harrison

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or[edit]

The following presidential polls are parimary sources.^[1]^[2]^[3] It goez against WP:PRIMARY to interpret from a random selection of polls that Benjamin Harrison is generally ranked as a below-average president by historians, when these sources do not make that observation. Per WP:OR, we should stick with what secondary sources say about Harrison's reputation. The secondary sources that actually make that analysis say that he is not ranked as a below-average President; i.e.:

Because of his lack of personal passion and the failure of anything truly eventful, such as a major war, during his administration, Harrison, along with every other President from the post-Reconstruction era to 1900, has been assigned to the rankings of mediocrity. He has been remembered as an average President, not among the best but certainly not among the worst.^[4]

Hunan201p (talk) 20:19, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

^ Rottinghaus, Brandon; Vaughn, Justin S. (19 February 2018). "How Does Trump Stack Up Against the Best — and Worst — Presidents?". New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2018.
^ "Presidential Historians Survey 2017". C-SPAN. Retrieved 14 May 2018.
^ Fieldstadt, Elisha (September 12, 2022). "Presidents ranked from worst to best". CBS News.
^ Spetter, Allan B. (4 October 2016). "BENJAMIN HARRISON: IMPACT AND LEGACY". Miller Center. University of Virginia. Retrieved 16 May 2018.

Hunan201p (talk) 20:19, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So just so I understand this, you think it is appropriate to write that "scholars and historians generally rank [Harrison] as an average President" when there are three rankings cited in the article that rank him as well below average, and when the sentence wikilinks to a separate article that contains dozens of historical rankings in which the overwhelming majority of rankings have him as a below-average president? And you think that this is appropriate because (despite what your wrote above about sources with an "s") a single source from the Miller Center calls him average a couple times? You seem to have a pretty good ability to use Wikipedia policy to support your arguments, but a total lack of WP:COMMONSENSE. Also, despite your apparent willingness to cite Wikipedia policies, it would not be "President" with a capital "P", but "president" with a lower case "p"; see MOS:JOBTITLE. Finally, in the future when reverting someone's edits, please either explicitly revert the edit or tag the person you are reverting in the talk discussion, rather than silently reverting the edit without notifying the reverted user in any way. Orser67 (talk) 19:17, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hunan201p, I removed the paragraph in the lead about Harrison's historical ranking, based on the copious evidence I provided above that Harrison is ranked as a below average president. It's better to say nothing in the lead, than to say something that is factually inaccurate and doesn't accurately describe the body of the article. Orser67 (talk) 14:03, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Rottinghaus, Brandon; Vaughn, Justin S. (19 February 2018). "How Does Trump Stack Up Against the Best — and Worst — Presidents?". New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2018.

[2] "Presidential Historians Survey 2017". C-SPAN. Retrieved 14 May 2018.

[3] Fieldstadt, Elisha (September 12, 2022). "Presidents ranked from worst to best". CBS News.

[4] Spetter, Allan B. (4 October 2016). "BENJAMIN HARRISON: IMPACT AND LEGACY". Miller Center. University of Virginia. Retrieved 16 May 2018.

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