Talk:Franksgiving

A fact from Franksgiving appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 February 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the American Thanksgiving holiday was moved a week earlier from 1939—1941 because of The Great Depression and was referred to as Franksgiving after President Franklin D. Roosevelt?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/February.

Wikipedia

Need for rename and refactoring of the content[edit]

Franksgiving is a valuable Rdr to an article covering the matters currently covered by the accompanying article, and IMO a bold reference to "Franksgiving" belongs in the lead 'graph. Nevertheless, the title "Franksgiving" is PoV in presenting a partisan mockery as the appropriate title, and requires the content to start out by overdignifying the term, and distracting from evenhanded treatment of the (BTW long forgotten) controversy, the nature and intention of the measure, the practical events, and the lasting effect of those events.
The title could be something like Roosevelt era changes to Thanksgiving calendrics or Changes in 20th century to calendar for Thanksgiving; unfortunately the action was partly in the late 1930s and partly in the early 1940s, ruling out a more precise title.
There are plenty of other problems with the article, but they will be better addressed in the context of a proper title that lets the lead be appropriately written.
--Jerzy•t 06:28, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Franksgiving is a much simpler name, is historic in nature, and less cumbersome.--Gen. Bedford ^{his Forest} 06:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Historical fact, yes (tho still lacking a citation), but you don't get to ambiguously call it "historic" with its connotations that the use of term stands out in history, like the historic "Four Freedoms" speech that set the tone for a long-term political tendency.
Simpler is only better than cumbersome when the simpler term adequately does the job that the cumbersome one is created to do. In any case, the first two alternatives i came up with are just demonstrations that the substance of the article can be stated without use of a PoV term, and in fact describe the scope of the article more accurately. This is not about, say the wording "Changes in 20th century to calendar for Thanksgiving", but about the unacceptability of "Franksgiving" as title for an article about those changes.
NPoV is probably the single most fundamental principle of WP, and you have utterly disregard the need to address it here as an issue. That means that you have so far not participated in this discussion. Perhaps you are more interested in the term, than in making a good article out of the 99% of the current text that could be adequately covered (tho i don't think it should be) without more reference to the term than, say "... including a sarcastic coinage based on the president's name" (And there's nothing wrong with that; i am not your assignment editor.) If so, your needs can be met when the article is renamed, by overwriting the resulting move-tool Rdr with the first two existing sentences, which can perhaps be expanded upon slightly. In that case, the second sentence would need a lk to the new title, and the larger article would lk to that new "Franksgiving" page.
--Jerzy•t 21:52, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh, i made a mistake: i said "valuable Rdr" without qualification. The correct statement would be "barely useful". A Google search gives

about 1,980 for Franksgiving Roosevelt -Wikipedia.

and asking to look at the 990^th thru 999^th hits, without saying to show "some entries very similar to the 162 already displayed" (i.e. presumably copied from site to site) gives

162 for Franksgiving Roosevelt -Wikipedia.

Since those 162 are (it seems clear) drawn solely from the first thousand of the 1,980, the low-grade hits in the (fairly inaccessible) remaining 980 could in theory provide anywhere from 0 to 980 additional independent hits, but they are lower scoring hits, and those lower scores suggest that the rate among them of copying from the first 162 will be if anything higher than the 6-for-1 replication rate among the first 1000. So 364 significantly different articles, not derived from the WP article, would be a very generous estimate.
The point of that analysis is that "Franksgiving", in the sense that involves Roosevelt, is an extremely esoteric term. (In fact, there are something like 25% more hits on "Franksgiving" without mention of "Roosevelt": references to Frank TV's ep. 1, other new coinages, adaptations of the old one in contexts unrelated to ours, and sites offering -- without giving away any free details -- essays (probably raw or lightly edited student products) for use by students who intend to represent someone else's research, analysis, and perhaps writing as their own.)
--Jerzy•t 21:52, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removed "by whom" Weasel Words tag[edit]

The answer to this question is the point of this entire article. 68.9.133.244 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 20:34, 24 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Thomas Taggert[edit]

The article link is to the wrong Taggert. The link goes to the mayor of Indianapolis in the 1910s/1920s. The Taggart of Atlantic City served from 1940-1944 according to the "Mayors of Atlantic City tab" 74.69.11.229 (talk) 19:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Discrepancy in Dates[edit]

The 2nd paragraph under History states that “By late October of that year, President Roosevelt decided to… declare November 23… as Thanksgiving that year…”

This implies that FDR didn’t make his decision until he issued the official proclamation in October. But the 6th paragraph notes that on August 31, 1939 he announced “that he would similarly designate November 21, 1940 (the next year)” as the (moved) holiday, implying that he announced the 1939 change the same day or earlier. This is still short notice, but not as short. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.189.166.173 (talk) 16:26, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How does the fact that he announced the 1940 change in August 1939 imply that he announced the 1939 change at the same time? It doesn't. Just because he gave 15 months' warning for one, doesn't mean he didn't give just 1 month's warning for the other. 74.105.182.73 (talk) 10:37, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So this is incorrect. I finally discovered a source that revealed the actual proclamation date, it was in August, not October, which jives with the Poll dates now. Updating text and adding my source. Bohn002 (talk) 03:49, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

History[edit]

There should be a paragraph explaining the history of Thanksgiving because there are readers from all over the world who may not be familiar with the holiday. --The Vital One (talk) 21:23, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ItalicSmall 72.24.7.33 (talk) 16:21, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]