Talk:Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.

Abraham Lincoln has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 5, 2004.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
February 16, 2004	Featured article candidate	Promoted
October 8, 2006	Featured article review	Demoted
December 24, 2006	Good article nominee	Not listed
March 18, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed
February 22, 2008	Good article nominee	Not listed
September 23, 2009	Good article nominee	Not listed
September 16, 2010	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
December 16, 2010	Good article nominee	Listed
March 16, 2011	Peer review	Reviewed
May 1, 2011	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
June 9, 2020	Peer review	Reviewed
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on March 4, 2004, April 14, 2004, April 14, 2005, and February 12, 2009.
Current status: Former featured article, current good article

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Text and/or other creative content from this version of Abraham Lincoln was copied or moved into Medical and mental health of Abraham Lincoln with this edit on 17:40, 12 October 2009. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

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GOAT

Reading about "often ranked as the greatest" reminds me strongly of what we have gone through in the biography articles about chess world champions.

Wikipedia should be used to settle arguments, not to start them. If experienced editors go back and forth endlessly about how to exactly to say superlative things about Lincoln, then sure enough, we are starting arguments. Something calmer, along the lines of "generally highly ranked", would be perfectly acceptable.

The word "often" technically gets you off the hook for puffery, but it gets you on the hook for weasel words. You can't win. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:20, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think "generally highly ranked" or something similar would be fine. "Often" was cited in the latest revert along with "We've been through this". I don't care that this has been discussed before, I care about the preciseness of the prose and my understanding of what Wikipedia is stating in its voice. "often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as one of the greatest presidents in American history" seems more precise to me (as well as, frankly, less hagiographic to "Saint Abe Lincoln") than "often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history". The main article text of Abraham Lincoln#Historical reputation that the lead is supposed to rely on seems much more nuanced in its assessment of Lincoln's historical reputation, that text is what we should take into account when rendering the lead. - Shearonink (talk) 16:37, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]