Talk:Wiley Griffon

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 TarnishedPath (talk) 05:16, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Wiley Griffon

Wiley Griffon with his streetcar

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that despite Black settlers being outlawed there, Wiley Griffon became the first streetcar operator in Eugene, Oregon? Source: O'Neal & Bigalke 2018; Thompson 2017, pp. 74–75.
  • ALT1: ... that despite Black settlers being outlawed there, Wiley Griffon held a favorable reputation with other residents of Eugene, Oregon? Source: O'Neal & Bigalke 2018.
  • ALT2: ... that despite living in a culture of overt racism, Wiley Griffon held a favorable reputation with other residents of his community? Source: Keeper 2013, p. B2; O'Neal & Bigalke 2018.
  • ALT3: ... that despite Black settlers being outlawed there, Wiley Griffon was the first recorded property owner in Eugene, Oregon? Source: Hill 2019; O'Neal & Bigalke 2018.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/The Wandering Village
  • Comment: I'm open to additional ALTs mixing and matching the information for interestingness.

Moved to mainspace by TechnoSquirrel69 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 10 past nominations.

—TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:44, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

• I'll review this. ミラP@Miraclepine 20:12, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

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 eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting: - Could be made more interesting with "outlawed there" replaced by "outlawed in the state" (including the link), given how exceptional Oregon's situation was.

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Promoted to GA two days ago, prose 4443 B. Made some minor fixes. Prefer ALT1 since first hooks are historically problematic. @TechnoSquirrel69: what are your thoughts on my hook idea? ミラP@Miraclepine 22:13, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the review, Miraclepine! I'm fine with your phrasing adjustment, but I wonder if the link should be left off to avoid distracting readers from the bolded link. I know that DYK has been shying away from "first" hooks, but ALT0 is supported by the best possible source for that statement (a book published by a subject-matter expert) and ALT3 has the necessary "first recorded property owner", although I understand that might not be as interesting as a result. Let me know what you think. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:26, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Noting also that, if approved, this hook could be set to run on January 19 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year), as there seems to be interest for a themed set. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:42, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

@TechnoSquirrel69: Sure, I'll approve the hooks with the phrasing change (without the link), as well as the MLK Day proposal. However, the first hooks are still more likely to be challengable for accuracy and WP:DYKDEFINITE says Such hooks require sourcing that discusses the set in some detail (no exception for the SME, sorry), so I'll still go with ALT1 absent objections. ミラP@Miraclepine 20:16, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm confident ALT0 should be able to stand up to that scrutiny, but not such much with ALT3 after some thought, so I've withdrawn it. For the promoter's benefit, here are the hooks with the slight rephrasing discussed above:

• ALT0a: ... that despite Black settlers being outlawed in the state, Wiley Griffon became the first streetcar operator in Eugene, Oregon?
• ALT1a: ... that despite Black settlers being outlawed in the state, Wiley Griffon held a favorable reputation with other residents of Eugene, Oregon?

—TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 01:41, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

For the record, I prefer ALT1a over ALT0a. ミラP@Miraclepine 20:27, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

• I've added two images from the article to this nomination per this discussion about needing more options for the image hook. The images will need approval, so I'll throw out pings for Miraclepine, Dclemens1971, and Viriditas. Thanks also to Based5290, who figured out the public domain status and uploaded these! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 23:33, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
  • That's a tough one! I like the streetcar image, but others might prefer one over the other. My take is that the streetcar image displays well and is unique in showing us the mule-drawn railway, which conveys more info than just the person. I would choose that one and update the caption to "Griffon with his mule-drawn streetcar". Again, others might disagree. Note: has this streetcar image ever appeared on the main page before? There doesn't seem to be any links indicating it has, but I can swear I saw this image on the main page before. I must be imagining things... Viriditas (talk) 23:54, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

    I can't imagine it has, since it was only uploaded last week, but there are no shortage of grainy sepia-toned photographs of trains in the world. Thanks for weighing in! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 00:12, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

• Happy to approve both images for use. @Viriditas: Reviewing this for promotion into Prep 6, and are we sure the Thompson book is a reliable source? It's published by History Press, an imprint of WP:ARCADIA, which does not have a reputation as a reliable publisher over at WP:RSN. Dclemens1971 (talk) 03:04, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
  • It doesn’t look like there’s consensus about Arcadia on RSN, with two camps firmly entrenched. Speaking just to the author, Thompson’s CV looks professional and he appears to meet the definition of an expert source. Viriditas (talk) 03:52, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
    • Just wanted to be sure it was discussed. Will leave it to the promoter! Dclemens1971 (talk) 00:59, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Wiley Griffon/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs) 06:00, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: MCE89 (talk · contribs) 12:58, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Will review this — I'll aim to add my comments within the next day or so. MCE89 (talk) 12:58, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Happy new year, MCE89! Looking forward to it. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:21, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Happy new year to you too! Have added all my comments below. Thanks for writing this, it was a really interesting article and a nice piece of work. Just a couple of optional suggestions on prose and one source query, otherwise all looks good. MCE89 (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, MCE89! Responses below. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 04:41, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Looks good! Passing this now :) MCE89 (talk) 02:46, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Initial checks

• Images: Infobox image has an appropriate NFUR, and is compliant with the NFCC (I'll assume you couldn't locate any images with a confirmed publication date that would make them PD?). The map is a nice addition and is also free
• Copyright: No copyright issues apparent on Earwig. Will do further checks for close paraphrasing as part of my source spot checks

Prose and general comments

• A handful of small suggestions on prose — none of these are essential to meeting the GA criteria on their own, so feel free to disregard or push back on any that you don't see as an improvement:
  • According to The Oregon Daily Journal, he was employed by Henry W. Holden, a Texan businessman, at age 19 — I'd suggest adding something like According to his obituary in The Oregon Daily Journal to make clearer that this was a 1913 report rather than the result of modern research

     Done, along with the other fix below. —TS

  • Griffon lived in a house along the Mill Race, the first Black property owner on record in Eugene - I’d suggest changing the structure of the sentence to something like ...along the Mill Race, and was the first Black property owner... to make this easier to parse. I initially read the second clause of this sentence as referencing a person called "Mill Race"

     Done —TS

  • as a waiter at a restaurant and in the railway, and others in Eugene and elsewhere in Oregon - I'd suggest changing this to and in other roles in Eugene and elsewhere in Oregon to make it read a little more smoothly. You could also consider mentioning that he worked as a hotel porter and for a logging company, since that is referenced in a few of your sources

     Done. I'm trying not to add too much bloat to this sentence, although I've added a detail about one that's already there. —TS

  • The owners of the Elks Club, where he had been employed at the time of his death, hired a caretaker for him - This feels a bit premature, as you don’t tell the reader that he died from this illness until the following sentence. Perhaps "where he was employed at the time"?

    It was indeed originally after that sentence;  done —TS

• You could consider adding a sentence or so to give some context on Oregon's black exclusion laws and how they functioned during Griffon's era. The fact that he moved to the state despite these laws is interesting — is there anything more that could be said about how he did so or about the historical context in Oregon at the time?

  I've rephrased here a little and cited another source, Keeper 2013, which goes into more detail about the legal situation in Oregon for free Black people at the time. None of the sources say much more than that; there isn't much, really — it seems the law was not well enforced and didn't appear to have much of an impact on Griffon's life, at least from a historial perspective. —TS

Source review

• No concerns regarding source reliability. Sources are largely local news outlets, and the contemporaneous sources are used appropriately and attributed in-text where needed. Ref formatting and layout meets GA criteria.
• A brief search for additional sources didn't turn up any obvious gaps in the breadth of coverage.

Spot checks

This table checks 8 passages from throughout the article (24.2% of 33 total passages). These passages contain 8 inline citations (24.2% of 33 in the article). Generated with the Veracity user script. MCE89 (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
According to The Oregon Daily Journal, he was employed by Henry W. Holden, a Texan businessman, at age 19.
4	a	The Oregon Daily Journal 1913, p. 10.			I might just be missing it, but I don't think I see "at age 19" anywhere in the source? Good catch; cited the wrong source here.  Fixed —TS
Although he resigned from the railway after three years, in July 1894,
7		Daily Eugene Guard 1894b, p. 4.
Griffon lived in a house along the Mill Race, the first Black property owner on record in Eugene.
10		Hill 2019; O'Neal & Bigalke 2018.
He sustained various injuries while engaged in manual labor.
12		Daily Eugene Guard 1894a, p. 6; The Eugene Daily Guard 1907, p. 6; Morning Register 1904, p. 6.
however, the historian Jennifer O'Neal found that "evidence suggests he weathered those times positively" and held a favorable reputation.
1	c	O'Neal & Bigalke 2018.
Several public displays dedicated to Griffon have been installed in Eugene. To highlight the history of public transportation in Eugene, the Lane Transit District installed an exhibit in Eugene Station for its first anniversary in 1999, including a display on Griffon.
2	c	Maben 1999, p. 1C.
In 2017, the EWEB partnered with the local NAACP branch to construct a sign about Griffon at its headquarters,
20		Caltabiano 2017.
Scott Maben of The Register-Guard wrote that Griffon was born in the state of Illinois, possibly to a slave family.
2	b	Maben 1999, p. 1C.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.