Talk:Lucie Stern

Did you know nomination

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. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:36, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

Stern before 1925

• ... that child prodigy Lucie Stern (pictured) made her Town Hall debut at the age of 11?

• Source: "Lucie Stern, Pianist, once a Child Prodigy; Pupil of Josef Hofmann made Debut in 1925 at Age of 11". The New York Times. 16 May 1938. Retrieved 28 January 2026.

• ALT1: ... that Josef Hofmann called Lucie Stern (pictured) "the rarest talent of any child I ever heard"?

• Source: "Lucie Stern, Pianist, once a Child Prodigy; Pupil of Josef Hofmann made Debut in 1925 at Age of 11". The New York Times. 16 May 1938. Retrieved 28 January 2026.

• ALT2: ... that child prodigy Lucie Stern (pictured) "first appeared on the New York concert stage at Town Hall" in 1925 at the age of 11?

• Source: "Lucie Stern, Pianist, once a Child Prodigy; Pupil of Josef Hofmann made Debut in 1925 at Age of 11". The New York Times. 16 May 1938. Retrieved 28 January 2026.

• ALT3: ... that Josef Hofmann, the head of the piano department at the Curtis Institute of Music, called Lucie Stern (pictured) "the rarest talent of any child I ever heard"?

• Source: "Lucie Stern, Pianist, once a Child Prodigy; Pupil of Josef Hofmann made Debut in 1925 at Age of 11". The New York Times. 16 May 1938. Retrieved 28 January 2026.

• Reviewed:
• Comment: A bit late but I give it a try.

Created by PaulasBunt (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

PaulasBunt (talk) 06:36, 7 February 2026 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - one sentence missing
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting: - a little too inside baseball

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: @PaulasBunt: article was nominated just outside the seven day window, but it is still inside the discretionary window and so it is fine. No QPQ is required, spotchecks check out, there is no copyvio, and article is long enough and neutral. The final part of the last sentence is uncited, so that needs to be remedied (it looks like you might’ve just put the cite in the wrong place, but I can’t verify). Hookwise, I think both items are just a little too inside baseball. I think this could be easily remedied by just saying what the town hall is (is it like a professional stage?) or by explaining who the people are (saying she is a child prodigy in the second hook and who Hofmann is). Great article, I now have the desire to listen to some classical. 1brianm7 (talk) 17:40, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

I tried to follow your advice (ALT 2 and 3). The source confirms both points; I've even included a quote from it in the article... "fitst appearance at New Yorks concert stage Town Hall...1925...age 11". Thank you for reviewing! + Enjoy listening to classical music! :) PaulasBunt (talk) 19:22, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, approving ALT2 and ALT3. 1brianm7 (talk) 22:31, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Comment: The current photo used is AI upscaled. It should be replaced, possibly with File:Lucie Stern (Musical Advance, 1925).jpg. – Pbrks ^(t·c) 16:00, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

• • Pbrks: It was already replaced by yours in the article this morning, and I'm going to ignore the "editing line" and insert the article photo here now. I don't think the nomination depended on the photo. PaulasBunt (talk) 17:14, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

AI-upscaled photo?

The photo of Stern in the infobox is described on Commons as having been retouched via "upscaling", citing an original newspaper source. Does this mean that an AI process has generated a higher resolution image based on the newsprint original? If so, MOS:AIUPSCALE prefers that the original photograph be used. I don't have a newspapers.com account, though, so can't check how the original compares to the image used in the article. Belbury (talk) 16:33, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi Belbury, thanks for the note. You're right, the image was enhanced to improve clarity from a very low-resolution newsprint source. To comply with MOS:AIUPSCALE and allow for verification, I have now uploaded the original raw clipping here: File:Lucie Stern Press of Atlantic City 1924 08 01.jpg.

While the original suffers from heavy halftone patterns (moiré), the restored version was intended to make the subject recognizable for the DYK showcase. I believe the restoration maintains the historical likeness without inventing significant new features. Happy to hear your thoughts now that the original is visible for comparison. PaulasBunt (talk) 19:10, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

The image before and after

Many thanks for uploading the original. That is a much lower quality than I was expecting, which is a shame - but that also makes the AI version more questionable, if it's had to speculate more extensively about what Stern may have looked like, or what she might have been wearing. The difference that stands out to me is that her face looks somewhat younger in the original image, perhaps because AI didn't understand that it was upscaling a picture of an eleven-year-old.

The Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Photography workshop might be able to brighten and clean up the newsprint version without altering the details, if asked to. Belbury (talk) 19:39, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint :) I've submitted the request there. Let's see what the experts say... and/but I definitely won't be using AI upscaling anymore. PaulasBunt (talk) 20:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

The feedback on the portal is that no improvement could be achieved using a method unknown to me. I'll leave it as it is for now; I didn't conceal anything when uploading the image and filled in all the information correctly. I even marked it as "upscaled" and assigned it the appropriate category. If that wasn't okay, a legitimate deletion request could be made for this photo, which, despite back and forth, hasn't happened yet.

Lucie also looked like the restored photo at that time; this can easily be verified with non-public domain images from the Curtis Institute taken at the same time. My focus is on her, the pianist, whose life I wanted to portray, and I certainly won't present a "distorted" image of her. Ultimately, I'm interested in her and won't engage in discussions about whether someone can look like that or not, or what AI has done wrong. I understand their objections and, as I said, I will no longer use AI retouching in the future... but for me, this matter is now closed. PaulasBunt (talk) 12:11, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't find the version in the article questionable; it clearly is a huge improvement on the original without falsification and it would be a mistake to discard it. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:11, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The upscaled image looks much sharper and more detailed, but we can't know how true or false those details are. If I ask a different AI tool to upscale the same newsprint image, it gives me back https://snipboard.io/n70x4r.jpg, which looks significantly different - she's now smiling, her face and lips are thinner, her plain white dress is now a ribbed fabric with an elaborate lace collar, she's unambiguously wearing a necklace, her shoes no longer have black soles and she's wearing them with socks, and (perhaps the most ambiguous aspect of the original photo) the AI has decided that the faint vertical lines to the right of her body are the fingers of her other hand, and her arm is resting quite naturally on the piano rather than fading away behind her. All of this is very plausible, but we don't know whether it's more or less accurate than the other upscale - and neither is a fully true representation of what Lucie Stern looked like on that day.

The guideline at MOS:AIUPSCALE is that AI upscaling software should generally not be used to increase the resolution or quality of an old or low-resolution image. Original historical images should always be used in place of AI upscaled versions., and I think that should be applied here.

If the Curtis Institute has a better portrait photo that's not yet in the public domain, it may fall under WP:FAIRUSE in this case, if it could be argued that no free equivalent is available, or could be created, that would serve the same encyclopedic purpose of giving the reader a clear impression of what Lucie Stern looked like. We could include the low-quality newsprint later in the article to illustrate the lesser concept of the press coverage she received.

It may also be the case that the Curtis Institute photo is public domain! If it was taken in the US before 1931, it should also fall under Commons' Template:PD-US-expired. Can you provide a link to it for reference, @PaulasBunt? Belbury (talk) 17:01, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The Lucie Curtis archive page looks like this:

Where do I know some of the photos from the Curtis Institute from? Well, over the years, some from this collection have strangely appeared on eBay: PaulasBunt (talk) 18:37, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. There are a couple of higher-resolution scans of that photo in magazines at archive.org, which are public domain for being published before 1931. They're both a little damaged, but they could be restored:

• Musical Courier 1928-05-10: Vol 96 Iss 19
• Musical America 1928-05-05: Vol 48 Iss 3

archive.org has a lot of scans of the Musical Courier which mention Stern, which I've only taken a quick look through. A more thorough search might be fruitful: this page has a good photo of Stern as a student, but is from 1932 (so won't be public domain until 2028). Belbury (talk) 19:01, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

You're the best, thank you so much!!!!

I'll take a close look at this over the next few days and select one, two, or three... and after I will submit a deletion request myself for the AI-generated image. PaulasBunt (talk) 19:35, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

@Belbury Thank you for being so patient with me. The photo has been replaced, the AI-generated one has been suggested for deletion... and I've learned so much from you. PaulasBunt (talk) 07:51, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Great to see that people have been able to find some good photos for the article! Belbury (talk) 15:43, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

{

@Michael Bednarek My first thorough reviewer for my first article here... Thank you, I still sometimes look at your source editing to use the Wikitools correctly. Thanks! PaulasBunt (talk) 07:56, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I've also grabbed a better version of a photo on Commons, if this meets your needs. . – Pbrks ^(t·c) 16:03, 26 February 2026 (UTC).

@Pbrks It meets me needs . Wow, I'm a little overwhelmed by your uploads and discoveries! Thank you so much!

(FYI: I've sent the portrait to the Wiki Lab for improvement.) PaulasBunt (talk) 07:48, 28 February 2026 (UTC)