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BrownHairedGirl (talk | contribs) →I'm outta here: new section |
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:Nice to see that it's spreading. :) |
:Nice to see that it's spreading. :) |
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:BTW, my shiny new Lancs Library card arrived across in the post t'other day across the Pennines, having apparently escaped scrutiny at [[Wars of the Roses|the border]]. Hand-written envelope, pretty little holder for the card, so it seems that they really don't mind allowing their library to be used by ppl outside of Lancs. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#996600; cursor: not-allowed;">Brown</span>HairedGirl]] <small>[[User_talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 17:51, 15 August 2010 (UTC) |
:BTW, my shiny new Lancs Library card arrived across in the post t'other day across the Pennines, having apparently escaped scrutiny at [[Wars of the Roses|the border]]. Hand-written envelope, pretty little holder for the card, so it seems that they really don't mind allowing their library to be used by ppl outside of Lancs. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#996600; cursor: not-allowed;">Brown</span>HairedGirl]] <small>[[User_talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 17:51, 15 August 2010 (UTC) |
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== I'm outta here == |
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... for about a month. |
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Back in mid-September, if all goes according to plan. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#996600; cursor: not-allowed;">Brown</span>HairedGirl]] <small>[[User_talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 19:55, 15 August 2010 (UTC) |
Revision as of 19:55, 15 August 2010
MPs
I'm a little puzzled, as I can not believe you do not rfully know this, but all MPs are individually notable. See WP:POLITICIAN. We do not merge them by constituency. Please stop putting A10 tags on them. I'm not sure what your point is, but it seems pointy--if the articles are sparse, add some information. DGG ( talk ) 17:22, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
- Of course the MPs are notable, per WP:BIO. However, as you should have noticed from the very clear speedy-deletion tags, notability was not the reason for deletion.
- All of the articles which I tagged say less about the subject than is already said in the list articles on the constituencies, and as such they are speedily deleteable per WP:CSD#A10, because they serve no purpose to the reader. A reader who opens one of those articles from the link on the constituency page or a dab page will learn nothing about them from opening the page. That wastes the readers's time, and degrades their confidence that other pages contain anything.
- Anyone who wants to do the research can of course create a stub article which actually has some content, but editors are not in any way helped by the existence of these substubs, and readers are positively impeded by them. That's why WP:CSD#A10 exists. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:17, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
- there is no policy against stubs. Stubs can easily be added to by people who might have trouble startingan article.In any case, as you know very well also, once someone other than the originating author has removed a speedy tag, you may not replace it. DGG ( talk ) 19:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
- Drop the red herring: I have no objection to stubs. But these are not stubs, they are copy-pasted factoids which meet clear criteria for speedy deletion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
- Suchlike Le Passe-muraille. The only piece of information is that it is a 1951 Italian film, information that was already obvious from its presence in Italian films of 1951. –xenotalk 19:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
- Drop the red herring: I have no objection to stubs. But these are not stubs, they are copy-pasted factoids which meet clear criteria for speedy deletion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
- there is no policy against stubs. Stubs can easily be added to by people who might have trouble startingan article.In any case, as you know very well also, once someone other than the originating author has removed a speedy tag, you may not replace it. DGG ( talk ) 19:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree that these are not valid A10 deletions and should be restored. This is not what that criterion was intended for at all. If it is going to be used like this, I'll be the first in line to repeal it. Calliopejen1 (talk) 02:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Le Passe-muraille restored, since on checking it was a year old. Howver, look at the current state of the article: it consists in full, of the title and five words, plus an external link. What does that do for the reader? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Butting in here, it does nothing at all, apart from perhaps disappoint someone who went there looking for information. It looks like it was created en masse too. I can see the arguments for creating these sub-stubs - they are building foundations for new articles. But on the other hand, we must consider that Wikipedia's users are mostly readers and won't be interested in expanding it. I don't believe A10 fits in these cases as they are not recent creations, but they can certainly be prodded. It might be an idea to create a new CSD criterion, or expand an existing one, for substubs like the example you gave. The negatives of such articles outweigh the positives. Aiken ♫ 12:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- I think it would be better as a redlink. –xenotalk 15:20, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- In general, I agree that a redlink is better than a redirect in such cases ... but in practice many of them will end up as redirects, because a vocal minority of editors doesn't like sub-stubs being deleted.
- In the case of Le Passe-muraille, I'm pleased to see that someone has expanded it a bit by adding a short list of cast members. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- I think it would be better as a redlink. –xenotalk 15:20, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Butting in here, it does nothing at all, apart from perhaps disappoint someone who went there looking for information. It looks like it was created en masse too. I can see the arguments for creating these sub-stubs - they are building foundations for new articles. But on the other hand, we must consider that Wikipedia's users are mostly readers and won't be interested in expanding it. I don't believe A10 fits in these cases as they are not recent creations, but they can certainly be prodded. It might be an idea to create a new CSD criterion, or expand an existing one, for substubs like the example you gave. The negatives of such articles outweigh the positives. Aiken ♫ 12:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Le Passe-muraille restored, since on checking it was a year old. Howver, look at the current state of the article: it consists in full, of the title and five words, plus an external link. What does that do for the reader? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Or Xeno, it could simply be expanded. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 16:40, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think that anyone disagrees it could be expanded. But unless and until it's expanded, it's just a nuisance for the reader. Whoever created it should have added some content at the time, rather than just leaving it there for readers to open in the false hope of finding some content.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:00, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
It has been expanded even further. Unless the article is a copy vio or a is a potentially libel case by containing unreferenced claims about a BLP I really do not think you should be deleting articles like this, that goes for Boleyn's too. If you have a problem with a stub kindly ask the creator to expand. If they don't then delete it. I agree it was a useless stub but a stub canbe made into something half useful with only a few minutes work.. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 17:06, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Indeed a stub can (in many cases) be expanded, tho an editor who encounters a sub-stub may not have suitable refs to hand to allow that to be done, or may not be ware of where to find such refs. If it was only a few minutes work to create a decent stub, then why start by creating something which even its creator agrees to have been useless? Complaining wheen other editors decline to tidy up a mess is not really very fair.
- In the case of Le Passe-muraille, the expanded article turns out to be about a French film, not an Italian one ... so even though the 5 words of the sub-stub only asserted two facts, one of them was wrong. Luckily the page-view stats tell us that this useless and wrong sub-stub was read by only about one to three readers per month ... but really, it would have been much better to have A10 deleted it as soon as it was created. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- "If you have a problem with a stub kindly ask the creator to expand." <-- Please kindly expand each and every "Xxx is a yyy film" stub you've created. –xenotalk 17:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Similar requests have been made repeatedly to Boleyn, but she perceives them as harassment, so I don't repeat them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Xeno you've got a nerve. I thought I expanded well over a hundreds such stubs under your command. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 18:04, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- You did, but there's many more still out there... This is the work you cut out for yourself! –xenotalk 18:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
LOL Um, no actually I'm under no obligation to expand them, contrary to what you might think that I am your employee, working hard for the bureacrat. We are all volunteers here, I'm certain you forget this at times. I had thought you had caught them all in that previous list,obivously not. Early 50s Italian film I believe then, I'll expand them all in good time. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 19:08, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- I never said you were obligated, but you said above that "If you have a problem with a stub kindly ask the creator to expand." I have a problem with any one-sentence formulaic article of the form "Xxx is a yyy zzz" where the same information is contained in the "List of zzz". So I kindly asked you to expand them! –xenotalk 19:14, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- (ec)Dr B, it's a long-standing principle that editors are responsible for the quality of the content they add to wikipedia. It's not a matter of you or anyone else being anybody's employee, simply of all editors not leaving a mess for others to clean up.
- And BTW, if you post to my talk page, please don't leave an edit summary with a section header which points to a different section. It creates unnecessary nuisance to anyone wanting to reply. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Undeleting articles
Please restore the following articles you deleted and I will do my best to help reference expand a little if I can:
- Sir William Russell, 1st Baronet, of Wytley
- Thomas Stanley (1749–1816)
- Henry Norris (English politician)
- Thomas Wallace (MP)
- Sir Alexander Allan, 1st Baronet
- Thomas Browne Wallace
- Robert Hall (MP)
- John Griffith (1687–1739)
- James Butler (1651–1696)
- John White (1634–1713)
- Sir William Williams, 6th Baronet
- Henry Jones (MP)
- Thomas Davies (politician)
- John Charles Wilson
- John Matthews (politician)
- Thomas Wood (1708-1799)
- Sir John Chapman, 2nd Baronet
- Sir William Wray, 1st Baronet, of Ashby
- John Chapman (1810-1877)
- John Campbell (Scottish politician)
- John Campbell (1798–1830)
- William Adams (MP)
- John Campbell (Northern Irish politician)
- Henry Holmes (d.1738)
- John Campbell (Irish politician)
- John Gordon Drummond Campbell
- John Hall (Buckingham MP)
- Thomas Samuel Beauchamp Williams
- John Stanley (1740-1799)
- John Parker (MP)
- Edward Berkeley
- William Moore (1699-1746)
- John Williams (Macclesfield MP)
- John Williams (Windsor MP)
- John Williams (d. 1751)
- Sir John Williams, 2nd Baronet, of Eltham
- John Williams (died 1743)
- Robert Jones (d. 1715)
- Baptist Noel (MP)
- William Henry Flanagan
- John Kerr (British politician)
- Robert Thomas Jones
- William Oliver (UK politician)
- Thomas Watson (Berwick-upon-Tweed MP)
- Robert Jones (d. 1774)
- John Wells (19th century politician)
- Thomas Bacon (politician)
- Tom Forrest Howard
- Alexander Robertson (MP)
- William John Lane
- Edward Lewis (Devizes MP)
- William Stanley (1640-1670)
- Sir Charles Turner, 2nd Baronet
- John Heathcote (d. 1795)
- John Buxton (politician)
- Charles Henry Williams
- Thomas Eustace Smith
- John Fleming (Devonport MP)
- Thomas Atkins (MP)
- Richard Pates (MP)
- Arthur Porter (MP)
- Sir Marmaduke Wyvill, 1st Baronet
- George Horsey
- Edward Baeshe
- John Brograve
- George Catelyn
-- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr. Blofeld (talk • contribs) 18:13, 5 August 2010
- I will now undelete the first five, for you to be getting on with, and put them in your userspace.
- However, there are over 60 of these deleted sub-stubs, and doing something substantive to them all will involve a lot of work. They all contain so little content that there's not much gain in starting from what was there, and many of them have serious errors of fact, because as Boleyn acknowledged most of them were created without any examination of reliable source; most were just copy-pasted from dab pages, and a few seemed to have been based on existing WP articles.
- If you seriously want to use them as the basis for a proper stub, that's up to you, but I'd seriously advise you to consider starting from fresh, using reliable sources to add facts rather than looking for sources to conform all the errors. However, if you really do want to work by expanding the sub-stubs, let me know and I'll restore them to your userspace. The problems which led to their deletion are such that I won't be responsible for putting them back in mainspace unless they are fixed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:38, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Would you rather I opened another ANI about you and requested that another administrator restore them or would kindly restore them so that they can referenced within the next few days. None of them are BLPs so this shouldn't be a problem. It is just a waste of everybody's time to delete article which you know are notable and will be recreated at a later date. I had hoped that Boleyn had learned her lesson last time about sourcing. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 18:33, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I'll give you 30 minutes to begin restoring these, otherwise I'm be moving this to ANI and reqesting another administrator restore them so they can be worked on. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 18:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Blofeld, your angry tone is uncalled for. After adding the sig you neglected to add, I typed out a reply to you, and then saved it to find that you had added the rant above. Please calm down; going to ANI to complain that I took five minutes to type out a reply to you is not a great idea.
- None of them are BLPs, but as agreed above by other editors, the sub-stubs are a waste of reader's time, and per policy unref material should not be reinstated to mainspace.
- From the core policy WP:V: As Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has put it: "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons" (Jimmy Wales Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information, WikiEN-l, May 16, 2006, accessed June 11, 2006). Note that Jimbo does not say that this applies only to living people. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:45, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- I'll list them here as I restore and userify them:
- --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:53, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:08, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that for a lot of these articles I can't find any sources. Boleyn has access to a lot of material. Ohhh I do wish she'd sourced them first time. After all that happened too. Never mind if you'll kindly restore them all to my work space I'll source the ones I can and ask Boleyn to reference/expand them before they are restarted, Thankyou. It wasn't an angry rant at you, just frustration more than antyhing that despite all that happened we seme to be going around in circles. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 18:55, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- (ec)At last, we agree on something! :)
- The lack of available sources for the older ones is one of the points I have noted for over a month, and it's one of the reasons why I will not restore them to mainspace: despite my belief in your good intentions, I am not persuaded that sources will be easy to come by for many of them, so I'll leave it to you to move them mainspace if and when you can source them.
- The reason that Boleyn didn't add refs to reliable sources is simply that she did not use any reliable sources in most cases: she was simply copy-pasting from dab pages, despite wikipedia being an unreliable source. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:04, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Can you restore them all to User:Dr. Blofeld/DNB. They are mostly one liners so should easily fit. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 19:00, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, that's more work than I want to do, and in any case I will not be a party to putting them under a DNB header unless I have verified that they are something to do with the DNB. I'll restore them to your userspace; therefater, if you want to make a list of them or merge them, or whatever, that's up to you. I need to go out now, but having done the first five, I'll do the others later tonight.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
OK don't worry about restoring any more for noe. Some of them are a nightmare to source. Well I understand Boleyn has the ONDB so her sourcing these types of articles shouldn't be problem. The concern I agree is that they are not sourced and may be original research. I hope Boleyn learns from this and that in the long run it is best to source articles upon creation. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 19:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- OK, I'll leave them for now, but pls do come back to me if/when u want them userified. My concern is not just that they are unsourced, but that if even if referenced hey would still be pointless unless they say more than the constituency articles.
- As to Boleyn learning from this ... well, we can all live in hope. However after more than a month of her work being scrutinised, she is still restoring and creating sub-stubs, and still adding falsehoods and misleading statements to articles. Dr. B, we need your continued good work here ... so please please please please please don't hold your breath. Your body needs oxygen well before the flying pigs are lit by a blue moon over satan's ice rink. :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- PS I will be way from some time in the middle of next week, for about a month. (Had intended yo be away from last wk, but my itinerary got chopped in two, so I had a short break last weekend and am heading off again on about the 12th). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Answered on my talk page. Remember though we are all on the same side and love each other passionately. LOL. Can you find the right category for Thomas Stanley (1749–1816). I can find a 1801 cat but not 178-. I do hope I have it right I'm sure the UK parliment started in 1707. Well I think that deep down Boleyn is a good egg and her heart is definately in the right place but she just needs a bit of help and to be more consistent I think and to learn that unsourced stubs are likely to be deleted by you. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 20:28, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Love you too baby :) ;)
- However, in that spirit of mutual ecsatasy ... I'm sorry to say that you are wrong. The Parliament of the United Kingdom was created in 1801, when the The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was created by the merger of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland under the Acts of Union. This is all set out at Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament and in each of its five national sub-cats such as Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies.
- Since Thomas Stanley (1749–1816) was an MP in the 1780s, he was at that time a member of the Parliament of Great Britain ... so for the period 1780-1800 he belongs in Category:Members of the Parliament of Great Britain (or rather in some of its subcats).
- As to Boleyn ... well, I started out assuming as I do with everyone else that she is acting on good faith. But even after this length of time, when I and so any other editors have pointed out to her that sub-stubs are pointless, and that facts need to be checked, she is still fixated on quantity rather than on quality; even when she uses references, she frequently misuses them to support facts not in the refs, and her articles are full of serious but straightforward factual errors. I want to assume in good faith that she doesn't do this as vandalism, but to assume that she has some difficulty in understanding the topics she chooses to write about. But if it is simply a matter of not figuring out how to do it right, then a genuinely good-hearted editor would seek a mentor or create drats in userspace and ask others to review them. So I dunno; she may well be a good person, but her attempts to create a flood of new articles on wikipedia remain a problem which she refuses to resolve, and whatever the causes of that, it should have been abundantly clear to her a long time ago that the result is bad for wikipedia. I simply cannot believe that an editor who was both genuinely a good egg would continue to stand over such abysmal editing despite all the criticism. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:35, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing that up. Well Boleyn has created a lot of valid DNB articles recently so I think "abysmal" is a bit harsh even if some of her past stubs are problematic. I can see that a lot of unsourced articles and minor errors like categories, dabbing etc winds you up and when you see a run of them you think, "the cleanup is huge". The biggest concern was sourcing I think, if there are any outstanding list them in the link given below. I will try to help fix the problems. But time is needed, there is no big rush!!
The easiest thing is for you to restore the lot to the workspace and you have my words I'll have all of them sourced and categories added by this time tomorrow evening. I'll be logging out in about 30 minutes. If you don't want to I'll ask another admin to restore the articles on condition that I source/fix the problems tomorrow. You can trust me on this. It will make it so much easier to not have to keep copying form my workspace etc. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 21:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, but Boleyn has not "created a lot of valid DNB articles". She has created a lot of abysmal and CSD-A10-able sub-stubs, a small minority of which were about people who were identified by other editors as having DNB entries. That would have been better achieved by her simply making a list of redlinks and inviting other editors to identify the DNB-covered topics.
- As to no big rush, well ... Boleyn at her peak was churning out dozens of new sub-stubs a day, with apparently no checking whatsoever of the facts. If you have a complaint about haste, take it to Boleyn.
- So-called "articles" which contain nothing but a single sentence of text cop-pasted from a dab page have added nothing to wikipedia, so their deletion or redirection is no loss, so you needn't make haste to do anything with them. They can be re-created to the same state in the same few seconds that Boleyn took to create them.
- Your final comment confuses me. You wrote above "don't worry about restoring any more for noe. Some of them are a nightmare to source", but now you say "restore the lot to the workspace". Is that you changing your mind and now wanting them restored to your userspace? If that's it, then no prob, but pls clarify. (And, I don't know what you mean by "workspace", but I simply will not restore that crapflood to mainspace. If restored, it'll go in userspace). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Unsourced Boleyn
Xeno if you are watching this I propose that that no article of Boleyn's is ever deleted in this way again. I strongly recommend if Boleyn's stubs about historical politicians are going to get deleted and be picked on in this way that all unsourced articles go in a User:Boleyn/Unsourced page. This way I will help go through and ensure they are sourced. I think it is important that we have these articles and also that Boleyn feels happy editing as I believe overall she is a great addition to the site and needed some help. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 21:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- There appears to be no sign that Boleyn is both capable of and willing to create stubs which are referenced, factually correct, reasonably categorised, and which say more about the person than the list articles. Since she refuses help, the "crapflood" (as another editor called it) seems likely to keep on coming ... but if you are willing to expand, correct and reference them, there will be no need to delete them. Boleyn lists each sub-stub she creates at User:Boleyn, so if you just follow that page you can track them as created. If you cannot source them, I trust that you will propose their deletion.
- You're taking on a big job, and I wish you luck and patience. Cleaning up the crapflood requires spending a whole lot more time on each article than Boleyn does, so
- I do not rule out the possibility that Boleyn may in time become an asset to wikipedia, but so far she has devoted a huge amount of effort to ignoring requests to raise her game, and has continued creating junk which requires much much effort by others to clean up. I hope ypou have more success than the rest of us in persuading her to try to learn a little bit about what she is doing. Competence is required, and Boleyn is glacially slow at gaining any competence in article creation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- I had a look at the last entry in her list: Robert Jermyn. Not pretty. Another editor had added a link to ODNB (just to ODNB, no specific article!) and called it a reference, and removed the {{unref}} tag, but on checking ODNB it appears that there are probably 2 different RJs conflated here: by his death date he can't have been MP for Penryn as given. So the removal of {{unref}} was unjustified - just because someone called RJ appears in ODNB doesn't make this article referenced. PamD (talk) 23:05, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the pointer, Pam. This is the sort of thing which is happening all the time: Boleyn has created unref sub-stubs on topics of which she demonstrates no understanding ... and then she or another editor who is often equally unfamiliar with the field but wants to help her is "fixing" the article by adding new errors because of inadequate checking and cross-checking of sources.
- This process of hastily-patch-on-any-old-ref-to-something-and-say-it's-OK is no way to build encyclopedic content. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
- I disagree. I'm more experienced than anybody in article building and I know that a referenced stub with soime sourced content is better than nothing. In fact it often invites expansion e.g Arthur Ingram, and your excellent work on Robert Needham Philips. The fact is these MP stubs do contain information about the dates they served which is a start. however basic and make it easier to build upon than starting it from scratch. Somebody somwhere is going to have to the hard work in expanding them though, as with every article on wikipedia. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 10:22, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you for pointing out that there is indeed a problem with Robert Jermyn. I must protest though that adding the ODNB ref was the right thing to do, and there is no ambiguity since there is only one ODNB article of that name. My current practice would be to add the whole ODNB title, i.e. Jermyn, Sir Robert (1538/9–1614), gentleman and patron of puritans by John Craig in this case, so that I accept the reprimand as deserved. On the other hand the article was then referenced and the Penryn problem was accurately identified by you. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- I had a look at the last entry in her list: Robert Jermyn. Not pretty. Another editor had added a link to ODNB (just to ODNB, no specific article!) and called it a reference, and removed the {{unref}} tag, but on checking ODNB it appears that there are probably 2 different RJs conflated here: by his death date he can't have been MP for Penryn as given. So the removal of {{unref}} was unjustified - just because someone called RJ appears in ODNB doesn't make this article referenced. PamD (talk) 23:05, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
You have a point about the stubs containing the same info as the constituency but can you at least wait a week or two before they can be expanded? Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 10:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- Dr. B, it seems to me that you are trying to have it both ways. You complained that my run of speedy deletions was performed too long after the articles were created, but now you seem to be asking for them not to be deleted pronto. If anyone wants to create a meaningful stub on these people, the sub-stub is not needed as a starting point.
- Your example of Robert Needham Philips is misplaced; it actually illustrates a v difft point. I had started doing what I usually do when I'm not tidying up the crapflood: I set to work on Bury, checking that the list of MPs was complete and accurate, and started by creating a stub on the missing article Richard Walker; I hadn't much on him, but created a referenced stub with a succession box. It was pretty minimal (and I was surprised by an editconflict when I started categorising in seconds after the first save), but I left it with two refs to RS, and not a dead-end: links to the elections, and a succession box. That to my mind is little more than the bare minimum needed for a stub which serves a purpose to the reader: not much new info (his vital dates, and the fact that he stood down rather than being defeated), but fully-categorised to make it findable by other readers and editors, and with enough links (party, 2 elections, successor, external link to Hansard) to allow the reader to navigate somewhere other than back to the constituency article. Anything much less than that creates a pointless dead-end.
- Having done Walker, I fixed a link on his successor, checked his successor's successor and found it was one of the useless sub-stubs, so I completely rewrote it. The existence of the Boleyn-created sub-stub did nothing whatsoever to either identify the need for the article or to assist in its construction: the only thing I kept was the categories, which had been added by another editor tidying up Boleyn's mess.
- That's how I and other editors in this field routinely work: find articles which are needed, and create them. With the use of a few sources, it's not hard to create a minimal but still just-about-useful stub such as Richard Walker, and sometimes more turns up to allow a bit of expansion (lots more, in the case of Robert Needham Philips). Plenty of other editors work in the same way: identify a needed article using constituency MP lists, the Lists of MPs elected in United Kingdom general elections, the by-election lists or red-links in succession boxes ... and then uses sources to create a stub which adds some content to Wikipedia.
- Boleyn's sub-stubs add nothing to that process beyond the first few seconds work of typing the sentence "Foo was MP for Bar" (tho even that usually needs a rewrite) ... and in many ways they actually impede finding needed stubs, because there is no longer a redlink. In such cases it takes a trawl through existing articles to find that one of them is just a useless sub-stub which wastes the reader's time by creating a pointless dead-end. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:33, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
So now that Boleyn has departed you think you are going to start picking on me right? Do you think it is normal behaviour to stalk editors and identify every tiny issue and erorr you find? Does that make you feel good about yourself conveying other editors as a piece of shit and implying you know it all? If you truly want these articles you and to improve wikipedia you'd help me and fix any issues you see yourself rather than making every tiny one of them known to me. The way you conduct yourself is belligerent, as if you enjoy the conflict. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 14:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- Dr. B, kindly drop the abuse and focus on content.
- You took it upon yourself to re-create the deleted articles, and as you know everything you add needs to be verifiable. I have been checking the articles created, and some of them have been good -- Charles Mathews has done a great job on some of them -- but so far I have found that out of about half-a-dozen articles created by you, several have had serious problems: one citing a ref which I wonder I am very surprised that you could actually consult, another using a ref to a questionable source which actually referred to someone else, and a third which was A10-able. I raised these probs politely, and your reply should have been "thank you". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:10, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm warning you now if you plan on drilling me messages all day about every flaw you find I might as well open the long awaited investigation into your editing. There is enough evidence of you badgering other editors to have you stripped of your tools by the arb. You can deny it but the proof is there is your editing history. If this is what you want you'll leave me with no choice. Other than that you can assume good faith, back off and allow some air to breathe by allowing another editor to expand upon what has been recreated and help fix any issues you see yourself.
Oh yeah, and have I seen a word of thanks from you for my edits? My new re stubs may not be perfect but at least I could give a damn that these articles exist, which is more than I can say about you. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 14:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- Dr. B., if you want to start a complaint because I have politely raised concerns about your use of sources, you are of course free to do so.
- A little less personal abuse from you might help strengthen your case if you want to go down that path. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:18, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. If you lay off of the speedy deletions and work with me to build decent stubs or content using our resources and build upon the shite that exists on wikipedia I'd be happy to work with providing we are on the same level and believe we have a common goal. No short redundant stubs, speedy tags, no insult, no ANI, no block. Its avoidable! As that metric tonne Scottish Fat Bastard once said "Its a vicious cycle". I've responded somewhat on my talk page. I started on more this morning because you weren't here/have expanded those I thought you had already posted. If you would rather help me flesh them out first this at your own pace this is fine by me. It is best for now to let this pass and let DGG or Charles start the others in their own time but if you ever need my help to help you clean up articles I'll glady help. I mean that. I apologise for being abusive, at times though you are incredibly persistent which I am not used to. Now LOL you better stay away from my piranha tank! Please though no more conflict!!! Saludos. Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 19:20, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- Hi Dr. B .... thanks!!! Sorry if some of what I did came across wrongly, but any angry words are best forgotten, so let's both move on and get back to work. As you say, we're on the same track :)
- Creating decent stubs on MPs and constituencies has been my prime focus on wikipedia, and has been for over 4 years. Over the years I have encountered an awful lot of stuff which falls well blow the basic minimum standards, and most of it I just get on with cleaning up. If I wab't persistent I'd have given up on it all yeras ago! :)
- My concern with Boleyn was the sheer volume of abysmal sub-stubs, and I was very disappointed that she persistently rejected efforts by me and others to improve the quality of the output. I know that you usually work to much higher standards, and it's a pity that we got our wires crossed and ended up at loggerheads. Glad that's over, without too many dead :) ... and esp that you are back contributing again.
- Anyway, there are squillions of stub articles still needed on MPs, and hundreds which are way below the useful-to-the-reader level ... so if you want to direct some of your energy to them, I'd be delighted to help with a few pointers. I was planning to write an essay with some suggestions on how to go about this (basic content, posss sources, some pitfalls), and I think at this point it'll try to do it soon ... and in case it's any help I'll drop you a note with a link to the draft as soon as I have one in place, just in case it's any use.
- And don't worry about the Piranha tank ... I'll let my crocodiles deal with that <grin> while we get back to improving content. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:41, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
LOL. Is this is Steve Irwin's missus? Well I do have zillions of DNB articles to transfer. The articles are already written but need minor wikifying. The system seems to be to mention it incorporates PD material from DNB. Ideally they'd be created with multiple sources including inline citations first time. I'd be interested to hear your views on that. The task needed in just starting the articles is so tremendous so many MPs and ministers. Are you content with text copied from DNB as a start? We could certainly do with transferring many of them from DNB. I think its OK to start with, not ideal but somehow this work needs to be done. Its a gruelling task. Uuurggh I really have been poisoned by those chilis I had for dinner. Horrific. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow and we can discuss the way forward. Buenos Noches! Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 20:09, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks! Well I've just drunk about 5 gallons of water. The dinner was overboard in chilis with rice and potatoes. I usually have small proportion of chilis in with a curry but rarely a dinner of pure chilis at that level. I think there may have been enough of them to mildly poison me! They didn't feel that potent until about an hour after eating the sweats came on with a monstrous headache. I wonder if there is something in them which causes that. You hear about coffee, chocolate, cheese but rarely chilis causing headaches. I've gained access to Oxford Dictionary with my library card now. It is a highly valuable source. Perhaps you could draw up a User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles needing expansion from ODNB and User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles needing creation from ODNB. Obviously you wouldn't list the entire lot as you;d be here for years drawing it but say 50 odd MP articles at a time so it can be done in stages, This way we could work through a filtered list where we can access adequate content upon creation and avoid creating lame stubs. At a later time the MPs with less info available will need starting but in my view it is best to work with where the knowledge is easily accesible first. Agreed? Dr. Blofeld - 15:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC) 20:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
More MPs
Hola, thanks for tweaking William Murray. The best place though would be start where info is abundant. Are you interested in adding a few to your talk pages to work on? Dr. Blofeld 10:09, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
- G'day, pom! ;)
- I tend to try to concentrate on getting weak articles up to decent stub-class, with full electoral history, categs, succession boxes etc ... partly because IMVVRHO <grin> that's kinda the basic minimum that makes a stub useful to the reader, and partly cos I have the rare reference books which allow me to check that stuff against v reliable sources (F. W. S. Craig was notorious as the perfectionist pedant from hell, and Stooks Smith is pretty good too on the pre-1832 MPs). I know there are other sources which allow the articles to be taken further, but I reckon that it's usually more useful for me to concentrate on maximum use of the scarce refs.
- Sometimes I do get stuck in and take an article further (e.g. Archibald Church or Robert Needham Philips) just cos I get curious (or bored with the minimal stuff), but in general I focus on the basics ... cos anyone can trawl the London Gazette or the Victoria County Histories or the public domain Debretts etc. Once a stub has the basics (categs, succession boxes, vital dates, electoral history, party affiliations), there's stuff there for others to build upon, even if they don't have the specialist refs. (e.g. next on my list is Edgar Rees Jones: dead end, no party affiliation, no succession boxes, etc.)
- At the moment I have a lot of tabs open on weak stubs which don't have all those basics in place, so I'm gonna work through those ... but if you wanna show me a list of others, I'll take a peep and see what I can do. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:40, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Aye, weak they certainly are. Mmm i presume I have the right MP in the book source I've added which says he was a Liberal. There really should be more about him... Oh if you want to transfer any politicians from wikisource of the DNB take your pick. Most of them though appear to be theologians. ministers, sailors etc. Dr. Blofeld 11:29, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Edgar Rees Jones is now start class an I'm nominated it as a joint DYK.. Hope this is OK. Dr. Blofeld 12:20, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
- OK????
- No, it's not at all OK. Absolutely definitely not OK in any shape or form. <grin>
- On the contrary, it's great! A lame little stub transformed into a really useful start-class article which gives some flavour of the man's life; just what's needed. Be careful, good Dr, or you'll find low-flying barnstars headed your way ;)
- I have started expanding his electoral hist a bit (the usual sad 1920s saga of a nomadic Liberal candidate in a fruitless search for anywhere hat will send him back to Westminster), and have two other sources (Times Guide & Debrett's) which should allow a bit more to be done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:34, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Haha good one. Well the good thing is that you have some publications which can add to it, that's what wikipedia is all about. Somehow by finding scraps from google books we were able to piece it together. I only wish that books were not subject to copyright and we had proper access to every page of every book. The web sources for such topics are pretty dismal, an important part of the Internet is putting information online which is poorly covered right now. I'd imagine you'd find a lot of newspaper extracts on him from the Rhondda library, a picture might even be available of him in the archives. I know the online library has a great number of old images, I used a few for articles I've written on old mining villages in the valleys. You;d be very lucky to find an image though... Dr. Blofeld 13:48, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
- Hey, I meant to say thanks for crediting me in the DYK nom -- v generous of you, 'cos it was 95% your work.
- If you do want to go further with Jones, I'd suggest following up by registering with Lancashire libraries (via the link PamD posted on your talk); the Times archive, to which that gives you access, is likely to at least have good reports of his parliamentary activities. My local lib also gives me access to a broader 19th cent newspaper site, and if you can get that you'll probably find a lot about him in the Western Mail. But if it's OK with you, I'll drop a note to Graham Lippiatt (talk · contribs), who is a wizard at constructing great C-class bios of early-20th-cent Liberals. Jones could benefit from some of Graham's magic dust, to take him a little bit further than your excellent start.
- BTW, if you're interested in an example of some disentanglement you may want to take a peek at the history of Sir Thomas Palmer, 4th Baronet, of Wingham (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). It's one of Boleyn's stubs, which I found in the should-be-empty Category:British politicians. She'd conflated two difft people of the same name, which is easily done if reliable sources aren't used. A quick check at Rayment's lists of constituency MPs showed difft birth dates, so I have separated the two baronets ... but this sort of thing happened a lot with Boleyn's work, because she was just looking at whatlinkshere rather than checking. It's an illustration of why I think it's better to just delete that sort of stuff en masse rather than leave it hanging around for readers, because it needs a complete rewrite anyway. I'm not going to delete more of her stuff (at least not on my own), because the drama caused is too wearisome, but I do feel sad that our readers will be served up so many sloppy and misleading sub-stubs until the massive cleanup is complete. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:07, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Don't worry. I'll have a look at this shortly. You really were terrifically productive yesterday, especially with Joseph Binns. Excellent. Dr. Blofeld 10:06, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Mmm Thomas Palmer is a little too far back in history, I can't seem to find much on him... There is a list of boleyn's stubs on her user page. When I have a moment I'll try to expand what I can. Today I have DNB articles to transfer. Dr. Blofeld 10:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Similar names certainly do get confusing. I need your help to verify whether the info in the Notthinghamshire source for Charles Ichabod Wright is actually for Ichabod Charles Wright. Which one was the colonel? I was actually about to post an expansion in the Charles Ichabod article when I suddenly I thought. Hang on, if he was in 1828 how could he had joined his father in 1825!! It would appear that the translator info is about his father and that Ichabod Charles Wright's son Charles was born in 1828. Dr. Blofeld 10:39, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for yr kind words on Binns. I hit it lucky there: he was just recent enuf to be in the one vol of Stanton&Lees in my collection, and his name was rare enuf to make it easy to find a few bits in The Thunder and the Gazette. John Smiths etc (and Thomas Palmers!) are a harder job.
- I'm just tangled in MPs for Don Valley at the mo, after stumbling on a gazette ref for one of them while looking for something else, and noting that they are all very stubby. When I'm done with them take a look at the Wright family. Abut an hour, I think.
- As you'll have noticed, one of the more frustrating habits of English and Welsh gentry families (at least from our biographers POV) was their enthusiasm for recycling first names: my wall still has the dents where I banged my head trying to disentangle a crop of William Williamses and John Cottons a few years ago, and even the Gladstones were at it too. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:06, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I've accessed the Oxford Dictionary and I would say that the colonel was our MP not his father. His father was too engrossed in Dante to worry about the army I think. Definately needs verifying though. Yes the names are often a nightmare especially when they are like 10 with the same name of the same family! But equally headachy is the amount of red links that often appear in the articles and the extent which is actually missing from wikipedia or could be written about. In particularly we seem to be missing an awful lot of manor houses. I'm particularly interested in old manors, especially Tudor mansions. Wormleighton Manor was the last I created I think. No I tell a porky it was Maesmawr Hall. Maybe I'll create a few hall articles related to the Wrights shortly, dependent on sources of course. Dr. Blofeld 12:48, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
- The very detailed Victoria county histories (online at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/) are a good source for manor houses and the like. As with stately homes, many of them were demolished in the early 20th cent as death duties took effect, but unlike the stately homes many were not more widely documented, so google searches throw up a lot of flaky-looking tourist guides and amateur-historian sites. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Funny enough as I received your message I was viewing Michael Welsh (Labour politician) and thinking how useful it is to have the succession box and how nice it would be to see consistent quality articles! We could surely do with several thousands clones or minimes of article writers, whatever the size! Yeah I tend to get in the mood for DYKs every few weeks. I always have one or two on the go but most of them end up being created in quick succession and then I have a break for a while and stub or cleanup articles. Yes the British history site is an excellent resource, in fact Ambrosden narrowly scraped GA thanks to that source (with access to the detailed book material). Again it is scary how many missing articles.potential articles you can spot within their entries if not the articles themsevles. And when we have loads of small stubs to be expanded on here the task often makes you feel like screaming. It doesn't help either by my big range of interests. Right now I think i'll resume with DNB, if you want me to start expanded one of Boleyn's stubs andpoint out some potential sources i'll see what I can do later. You could definately use a hand with them. Dr. Blofeld 14:47, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, lots to do! And sorry for teaching garnnies to suck eggs wrt to the Victoria histories. I should have guessed you'd know it well.
- You're right about succession boxes: they make navigation between holders of the same post so much easier that even a rather lame stub is not much of a nuisance to readers, because they can at least jump quickly to the prev/next holder of the post. I often sit down and try to complete all the boxes for MPs of a given constituency (e.g. Devonport last night), so that readers trying to follow the politcal history don't have to jump back to the constit article. Problem is, many MPs represented more than one constit, so then I open the refs for the other one and start doing those MPs, some of whom have in tunnels other seats ... and after a few hours my browser has so many open tabs that it hits a 1.5Gb mem usage limit, at which point it goes into a disk-swapping death mode.
- I'll be winding down my editing later today, and not doing much more before I go away for a month later this week. My soul needs time camped out on a remote hillside! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:03, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
- Why is now I visual one of these. Peace maaaan... Sounds fun though providing the weather is good. Hey you can see the hall article on google street view. Large white building but is too hemmed in, has little grounds. Dr. Blofeld 16:01, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, Manorhouses and other buildings: I had a look at B's stub list y'day and picked a non-personal name to explore: Romeland which appears to have been an open space rather than a palace (though the name is also used for an open space in St Albans), and the only mention as a palace is indeed in an "amateur-historian" site, and .... aaaargh ! Gave up and PRODded. Didn't put a mention on Boleyn's page - should I have done, do you think, after she's announced her retirement? (You've probably both seen my note on her talk page). PamD (talk) 14:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
- Probably a good idea to leave a notice just in case she comes back, but also for the benefit of other editors watching that talk page (lots of them, I guess).
- That illustrates again why I think it's a bad idea to keep those unref sub-stubs. It took Boleyn a few seconds to create them, but if the radical inclusionists are to be believed, we should spend hours trying to verify each little factoid, even tho many of them turn out yo be the product of flaky syntheses of unreliable sources. I think that's a disastrous approach: far from helping build the encyclopedia, those splatter-gunned snippets sap the energies of the most diligent researchers into trying to verify throwaway comments. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:09, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
- Yikes! See my my comment in support of the PROD, and note google maps at http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=romeland&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl -- it's not a palace, it's a residential cul-de-sac.
- That's a great illustration of how unreliable Boleyn's contribs are: even when a source is cited, it may have been grossly misinterpreted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:21, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
I've expanded it, most miserable looking "palace" I've ever seen. BHG I see similarities in prfoession between Thomas Samuel Beauchamp Williams and Whitelaw Ainslie. Maybe a category "British medical doctors in India or something would be suitable. Dr. Blofeld 17:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
George Goodman (MP)
Just stopping by to say thanks, BHG! I was pretty tired when I left off with George Goodman (MP) last night and looking at the article now, I gotta say I was grateful to see you had given it attention. --Rosiestep (talk) 13:38, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
- No prob, Rosie. You'd done a great job on it, and all I did was a quick and trivial bit of polishing at the end. The list of sources is impressive, and you must have put a lot of work into it ... so I do hope you'll do the same for more MPs! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:40, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
DYK for Robert Needham Philips
The DYK project (nominate) 00:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
FYI. Pedro : Chat 14:37, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the note, Pedro.
- The ANI thread will be a useful place to discuss the Dr. B's use of references to sources which he appears not to have consulted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:52, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
article expanded on famous MP/Lord Mayor
@BHG and Boleyn: You will both be glad to know that John Moore (London MP), which was made into a stub article by B. and redirected to the constituency by BHG, turns out to be the John Moore who was earlier Lord Mayor of London, was famous both politically and as founder of a famous school with a Wikipedia article, famous to the extent that political ballads were written about him, and has an article in the DNB. My quick check on G Books found that, and I made a start at what could be a very substantial article. I hope that one or both of you will want to expand it into a GA. Myself, I'm going to rescue some more articles. I wish , B, that you'd do this basic research when you write the article in the first place--it is primarily your responsibility and you can easily find the sources; but, BHG, if she doesn't, I wish you'd do it before you redirect or delete. It's a little much to expect others to make good on what each of you should rightly have done. DGG ( talk ) 15:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
- DGG, well done creating the article.
- However, I don't accept the complaint that it was my job to remedy the lack of research in Boleyn's sub-stub. My sole concern in redirecting it was whether the reader befitted more from the existence of a dead-end sub-stub or from going directly to the constituency article. If there had been a bit more, I would have expanded it further, but the content as it existed was below the more-useful-than-a-redirect threshold.
- Of course, like any redirect it can be reverted and expanded, which is just what you did. Good work!
- I probably won't be working on getting it to GA status, because I like to concentrate my efforts on getting articles to a decent stub state or a good start-class, but wish you luck if you want to do that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:22, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Expert opinion on image categorization?
Hi BrownHairedGirl! I find your user page userboxes very jolly indeed, and I'm especially pleased to learn that you're relatively sane. Perhaps that's not so monumental an achievement, on consideration, given that "relatively", and taking into account the typical standard of mental well-being in evidence here, but it's always encouraging to know that one can sleep through the night in peace! Trusting to that basis, then, I venture to ask your opinion on a question of categorization, since I see that you seem to be pretty familiar with the topic overall.
I came across another editor who, in all good faith, makes it a practice to delete category information from image files when he encounters such on Wikipedia. We've politely exchanged some ideas and opinions about that, as you can see from the first thread for August 2010 at Category_talk:Slavery in the United States, but I'm not really familiar with categorization, and am somewhat out of my depth. On the face of it, I find it hard to understand how removing category information from images benefits the encyclopedia, since it means (?) that images are unlikely to be reused, but I admit the other editor has more experience by far in dealing with categorization than I do.
The particular edits I took exception to can be found here and here, and are discussed as points (7) and (8), respectively, in our discussion at Category_talk:Slavery in the United States. But rather than just commenting on those particular edits, I was hoping you might be able to clarify this issue more generally for me. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I might be mistaken in my objection, but since the policy statements I've found about the categorization of images on Wikipedia and on the Commons seem to support image categorization, rather than otherwise, I thought it might help me understand this better if I were to ask another editor who has substantial experience with categories for her opinion. I won't quote you, unless you choose to jump in to the discussion on Category_talk:Slavery in the United States ( which you're perfectly welcome to do, of course ), but as I say, I'm a bit out of my depth, and would very much appreciate any clarification you might be able to offer. Many thanks, – OhioStandard (talk) 07:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
DYK for List of MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1832
— Rlevse • Talk • 12:02, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
George Nicholls (MP)
I have added a couple more biographical snippets from the usual sources. I will try and track down a bit more about him if I can. As ever, --Graham Lippiatt (talk) 14:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks, Graham. Those additions give more a sense of him than the pile-of-electoral facts which I had created! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
Barnstar
The Politics Barnstar | ||
Awarded to BrownHairedGirl for amazingly productive and quality editing and improvements to politician stubs for several days consecutive. You have earned your well deserved break! Keep up the good work later! Dr. Blofeld 15:36, 11 August 2010 (UTC) |
- Thanks muchly, Dr B! Given our recent (and resolved!) disagreement, that's a particuarly welcome barnstar.
- Most of it is due to an unexpected spin-off of the Bolyn saga: PamD's pointer on your talk to a way to access The Times archives. There's a lot of good stuff in there, and it's allowed me to do more with the articles than merely list electoral facts. I particularly like the bowler-hatted bricklayer in the Palace of Westminster — a thoroughly Pythonesque combination of formality and absurdity, masking a rather brutal make-those-blasted-bolshy-workers-sweat-a-bit-more dose of serious politics :)
- Holiday been delayed a few days by illness in the family, so I may manage a few more before I go. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:18, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Glad to have been able to help - I'm sure there are loads of people out there who would make good use of the online resources of their local library (or Lancashire's) if only they knew about them! Do spread the word to other like-minded people. The full OED is one of the joys as well - when I first retired I could still access it via the University but then they worked out how to comply with their licence requirement by not allowing retired staff to have access, which would have been a great loss if I hadn't already got access via the public library. PamD (talk) 17:23, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Pam, it's been really useful: thank you! My local library gives me DNB access, but most of the MPs I work on are too obscure to get a DNB entry, so I have been short of sources to add colour to their lives. I just hope that all of these services survive the
slashing-of-public-services-to-pay-back-the-bankersfiscal tightening, because without the public libraries it'll only be students who can do the research on these topics. I wonder if David Cameron knows that his cuts may cripple the work of us wrinklies on Wikipedia? - Pity, tho, that your uni couldn't make you some sort of nominal employee to get round the licensing glitch. I hate seeing skilled people deprived of their tools just because they no longer work fulltime. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:33, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- My relationship with my manager was such that there weren't any options of part-time re-engagement - and getting out was necessary to save my sanity anyway! Dealing with licenses for e-journals etc was part of my work, so I was all too aware that in most cases we weren't allowed to be letting retired staff access them. PamD (talk) 18:24, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- What a pity, Pam. That must have been a tough time for you :(
- But the uni's loss has been wikipedia's gain :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:27, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks. I was very lucky to get out when I did, I think - and if I was still in gainful employment my recently-widowed Mother would now be in a care home instead of being looked after, and occasionally shouted at, by her daughter, so things have worked out pretty well. PamD (talk) 18:55, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- My relationship with my manager was such that there weren't any options of part-time re-engagement - and getting out was necessary to save my sanity anyway! Dealing with licenses for e-journals etc was part of my work, so I was all too aware that in most cases we weren't allowed to be letting retired staff access them. PamD (talk) 18:24, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Do you think I can get an online account at Lancashire based on my living in a former British colony? =] –xenotalk 18:30, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Nah, they'll just get annoyed and invade you. Do you really want to go through all that again? ;)
- Seriously, tho, there seems to be no geographical constraint involved, so why not just try it and see what happens? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:33, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- I almost did the other day when someone posted the link here, but then I figured they implicitly meant UK residents only. I'll give it a shot. –xenotalk 18:34, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Xeno: The fact that they specify that they post out tickets only to UK residents seemed to me to imply (to my surprise!) that other people could join but could only get a physical ticket when they visited the UK. Let us know whether you're successful. Meanwhile, I've spread the word (again, I think) at Wikipedia_talk:UK_Wikipedians'_notice_board#Useful_online_resources_via_UK_public_libraries. PamD (talk) 18:44, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- I almost did the other day when someone posted the link here, but then I figured they implicitly meant UK residents only. I'll give it a shot. –xenotalk 18:34, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
- Pam, it's been really useful: thank you! My local library gives me DNB access, but most of the MPs I work on are too obscure to get a DNB entry, so I have been short of sources to add colour to their lives. I just hope that all of these services survive the
- Glad to have been able to help - I'm sure there are loads of people out there who would make good use of the online resources of their local library (or Lancashire's) if only they knew about them! Do spread the word to other like-minded people. The full OED is one of the joys as well - when I first retired I could still access it via the University but then they worked out how to comply with their licence requirement by not allowing retired staff to have access, which would have been a great loss if I hadn't already got access via the public library. PamD (talk) 17:23, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
I created this from the DNB. It need a lot of work but he was supposed to have been an MP in 1796. I wondered if you had some sources to verify it/improve it? Dr. Blofeld 11:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
- Hi Dr B.
- I see that he was an MP, so you'll find details of that in Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs , and of the baronetcy in Leigh Rayment's list of baronets . If you can get the bones of it in place, I can check further in Stooks-Smiths' The Parliaments of England, which is the only printed source I have. It's also well worthwhile having a trawl in the London Gazette, to verify elections and the creation of the baronetcy and so on, and well as his official appointments. I have found that 19th-century DNB entries are not always of quite so high a standard as their current work, so I think that a check is a good idea to avoid the sort of error detected here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:41, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Yeah its easy to assume DNB is 100% correct but like most encyclopedias has some errors. I think we can assume though that the vast majority of the info is correct but certiin things like this do need verifying. It said he represented that close borough in Somerset but it is nothing but a village, probably part of a larger constituency of a different name. If I knew the constiuency I could find him.. Dr. Blofeld 11:52, 12 August 2010 (UTC) Ah Milborne Port (UK Parliament constituency) did exist. Must have been very small!! Dr. Blofeld 12:03, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
- (ec)(Ah, I see.
- It was indeed a wee village: the rotten borough of Milborne Port (UK Parliament constituency). Now linked, and refd to rayment, whose pages are very good -- on about 2 dozen occasions I have thought I have found an error, but AFAICR every glitch turned out to be a misunderstanding by me. (Just look at Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs under M)
- Will add categs etc in a mo. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:04, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
- OK, I have added categs and succession box. More refs would be good, but I'll leave that in your capable hands :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:18, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, if you can find a few sources I'll nominate it for a joint DYK. Dr. Blofeld 13:31, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
- Great! I'll have another go later today, but have to go out soon, and before I do anything else on WP I want to finish expanding Sir Arthur Black, since The Times has a lot on him. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:54, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
No worries. I'm sorting out Nunavut maps at the moment (hoping I will not be reverted to the stinky former maps). He has an entry on ONDB which I'll check later for additional info and will include in the references. Dr. Blofeld 16:53, 12 August 2010 (UTC) LOL, was the article really that bad that you didn't want any credit for it!! Dr. Blofeld 14:08, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, DR. B, I got side-tracked onto other stuff, and then side-tracked off that and so on. Never thought I'd spend a whole day on two St Albans by-elections, but they turned out to be rather absorbing ,and then other stuff came up.
- I'm afraid I probably won't have tine to do Ainslie afore I go away, but will try to remember to take a look in september. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:19, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Maybe Sir Christopher Sykes, 2nd Baronet then... Dr. Blofeld 14:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
- I've given Sykes a pair of succession boxes, clarified his electoral history (from Stooks Smith), and done a few other tweaks (like puuting the dates in UK fmt rather than merkin-style) ... but that's the limit of my sources. Hope it helps a bit.
- BTW, I dabbed the various Christopher Sykeses yesterday. Hope the links are correct. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
That's fine, thanks. Dr. Blofeld 17:53, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
DYK for Archibald Church
The DYK project (nominate) 12:02, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
CFD nomination of Category:Second Life residents
As a contributor to the previous CFD for this category back in 2006, you may be interested to know it has been renominated for deletion. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 August 13#Category:Second Life residents. Robofish (talk) 16:19, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the pointer. I have added my tuppenceworth at CFD ... though it look a lot of typing for a mere tuppence! ;) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
Assume good faith.
Avoid bad faiths. 65.88.88.75 (talk) 15:24, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
- I am not required to assume good faith in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, such as this nonsense edit with a misleading edit summary, when you had already been warned and had subsequently done another bit of vandalism.
- Start editing constructively, or before long you will be blocked. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:31, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
- Threats. And more threats. 65.88.88.75 (talk) 16:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
- No. A friendly welcome, accompanied by a gentle reminder to be constructive, followed by a slightly sharper request to desist from silliness ... and now a set of complaints from you.
- There's no threat involved, just a reminder that you are very welcome to edit Wikipedia constructively ... and a clear warning that if you choose to continue editing unconstructively, you will no longer be welcome. I'd much prefer that you stay and make constructive contributions, but the choice is yours. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:14, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
- Threats. And more threats. 65.88.88.75 (talk) 16:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Flattery ...
... as in "Imitation is the sincerest...": see User_talk:PamD#recycling. PamD (talk) 17:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
- Nice to see that it's spreading. :)
- BTW, my shiny new Lancs Library card arrived across in the post t'other day across the Pennines, having apparently escaped scrutiny at the border. Hand-written envelope, pretty little holder for the card, so it seems that they really don't mind allowing their library to be used by ppl outside of Lancs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:51, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm outta here
... for about a month.
Back in mid-September, if all goes according to plan. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:55, 15 August 2010 (UTC)