File talk:BrigGen John Frederick Pierson.jpg

Identity

Frederick Wolf

Moved from User talk:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): De728631 (talk) 17:35, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Hello again. I just noticed that the man in the photo is wearing Brigadier General's insignia rather than those of a Colonel. Also I at least could not find a Frederick Wolf in the Civil War Photo Sleuth search. However, I'll also keep searching for this particular portrait. De728631 (talk) 07:58, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

• @De728631: Hello! I was working on him last night till 2:00 am, and like you I have extreme doubts. All the documents I find list Frederick Wolf as a farmer. I think the best action will be to deprecate all the facts about a military career in his Wikidata entry and remove the image from Wikidata. Then we can write a short paragraph explaining how the image is most likely not Frederick Wolf because the uploader is known for manufacturing fake biographies. We can then label the image as "unknown American Civil War Brigadier General" temporarily. Did you submit the image for AI recognition, or just look through the index like I did at Civil War Photo Sleuth? I believe the database has almost every General and should find an AI match if we submit it. I also don't think we should delete the image because someone in the future may come across the bad information and we need to counter the bad with what we can forensically determine. Any thoughts? --RAN (talk) 16:09, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, we should eventually rename the image and adjust the description. I did not yet try the AI recognition though, I only looked for the name and browsed the generals and colonels from Michigan. On that note, there is also no such entry at en:List of American Civil War generals (Union). Another photo detail that struck me as peculiar is that the uniform coat does not have the typical shoulder patches but has the stars mounted on the lower sleeves. I will now try to find this guy through AI recognition. A reverse image search with TinEye didn't come up with a result though. De728631 (talk) 17:01, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
    • We should probably migrate this thread over to the discussion page for the image when we are done. Do you have a subscription to newspapers.com or genealogybank? I am looking for an obituary for Frederick Wolf. I found an obit for the other fake biography, showing he was a farmer, and not a senator. --RAN (talk) 17:16, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
      • Agreed, we can move this to the image talk page. I am very positive now, however, that this is John F. Pierson. I just signed up at the Civil War Photo Sleuth and ran this through the facial recognition tool. Regarding Wolf, I have no accounts at those other websites though. De728631 (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Excellent! I wonder how he found a previously unknown image of someone not in his family. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk • contribs) 17:27, 12 June 2022‎ (UTC)