Um, hello. I am writing this to inform you that I have requested After the Deluge for TFA next year. Feel free to leave a comment on the request page. Regards, Vida0007 (talk) 16:00, 13 December 2022 (UTC).
- Iri, if you reply here, please ping me too, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:50, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi, Iri. I am writing again to you to let you know that I have renominated the Pig-faced women article to be run as TFA, this time on a nonspecific date between February 1 and March 3, 2023. Please leave a comment in the request template to let me and the coordinators (especially Jimfbleak) know if you support this nomination this time around, or if you still have any concerns about this.
Regards, Vida0007 (talk) 16:13, 17 December 2022 (UTC).
- Unsurprisingly, I've opposed this. As I said there, this is an article about misogyny and ableism rather than an article endorsing misogyny and ableism, but that's not a nuance that's easy to convey in a 975 character blurb. I can't see how you possibly thought running this as TFA would be a good idea. ‑ Iridescent 07:54, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Merry Christmas!
A very happy Christmas and New Year to you! | |
|
- Same to you! Good to see you still around, I though the crank fringe had mobbed you off the site. ‑ Iridescent 03:28, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
- A couple of years wandering in the wilderness as an IP was informative and instructional, but there’s too much hassle having to continually justify your edits as an IP to do it for too long! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 08:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
- Tell me about it… When I was still vaguely active as an admin I used to try to periodically edit as an IP to get a feel for how new users were treated, and even back then it wasn't what you'd call welcoming. I can only imagine what it's like since the moral panic about sockpuppetry reached its recent levels of hysteria. ‑ Iridescent 14:54, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
- A couple of years wandering in the wilderness as an IP was informative and instructional, but there’s too much hassle having to continually justify your edits as an IP to do it for too long! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 08:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
Another year closer to the grave
Best wishes for the holidays | ||
Wishing you and yours the best over the holiday season, and here's hoping 2023 won't bring as much global trauma as 2020, the worse 2021[1] & bloody 2022 Ceoil (talk) 04:53, 23 December 2022 (UTC) |
- Likewise to you… There seem to have been far too many years recently where "hope next year isn't as bad as this one" is the only appropriate comment, hopefully things are going to start being good again. ‑ Iridescent 03:25, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Season's Greetings | ||
Wishing everybody a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Adoration of the Magi by Luca Signorelli is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 18:34, 22 December 2022 (UTC) |
- And the same. (If you take suggestions, I nominate Bermejo's St Michael Triumphs Over the Devil for next year, although bizarrely Commons doesn't have a decent-quality copy of it.) ‑ Iridescent 03:25, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
- Well, that might be an issue, and the new catalogue sries hasn't reached it. Also very vertical and not very Christmasy; that tends to be the only thing I do individual paintings for these days. It should have an article though. Johnbod (talk) 03:49, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
- I could probably find enough to write at least a stub on it; it must have had quite substantive entries in assorted exhibition catalogues. That said, I suspect this is one of those cases where Wikipedia's not having an article is actually a net positive, since it means people searching for it get this page on the National Gallery website as their first hit which is likely a better introduction to the topic than anything we could do. (The NG isn't bound by NPOV, so is allowed to say "this is what makes it interesting" explicitly.) ‑ Iridescent 04:02, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
- He's the cover boy for the catalogue for the 2019 Prado+++ exhibition, which I happened on in Madrid. Johnbod (talk) 02:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
- I could probably find enough to write at least a stub on it; it must have had quite substantive entries in assorted exhibition catalogues. That said, I suspect this is one of those cases where Wikipedia's not having an article is actually a net positive, since it means people searching for it get this page on the National Gallery website as their first hit which is likely a better introduction to the topic than anything we could do. (The NG isn't bound by NPOV, so is allowed to say "this is what makes it interesting" explicitly.) ‑ Iridescent 04:02, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
- Well, that might be an issue, and the new catalogue sries hasn't reached it. Also very vertical and not very Christmasy; that tends to be the only thing I do individual paintings for these days. It should have an article though. Johnbod (talk) 03:49, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Happy Holidays!
- Thanks, and the same to you ‑ Iridescent 03:18, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Merry Merry!
Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2023! | |
Hello, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2023. |
- Many thanks, and the same to you… ‑ Iridescent 03:17, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
- Likewise; hoping next year is less dramatic than the last few! ‑ Iridescent 03:17, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
The Chord
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/arts/music/o-come-all-ye-faithful-christmas-chord.html says there is a single notable (and possibly WP:Notable) chord in British choral circles, called "The Chord" or the "Word of the Father Chord", after its use in the Willcocks setting of O Come, All Ye Faithful.
I post this here in the hope that a talk-page stalker will take be interested and give me something new to read about choirs singing Christmas carols next Christmas. Wishing you all four calling birds, or whatever else your hearts desire, on (what I think is) the fourth day of Christmas, WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
- Not that I ever heard of (and the British choral tradition fits squarely into a broader European tradition, it seems unlikely a choir in Lincoln is musically substantially different to one in Leipzig), but This Is Not My Field. You might want to ask around among the opera and musical theatre projects; we may not have a specific choral group of editors, but I'd imagine there's huge crossover between the fans of musicals/operas and choristers.
- I wouldn't consider the NYT after c. 2010–15 ever to be a reliable source for anything to do with Britain. The inaccuracy of their reporting on the UK in recent years is legendary (there's a slew of Reliable Sources for their UK bureau just making shit up and hoping their editors on the other side of the Atlantic won't fact-check). ‑ Iridescent 06:07, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
- The chord—which is iii7ø (a b-minor half-diminished seventh chord)—doesn't have much distinguishable about it like say the Tristan chord or the Farben chord. That is, it's largely analyzable and explainable in traditional Western analysis, so there is probably no scholarship on it. I do like the chord sequence right after on "of the father. Now in the flesh appear...", which is a lovely backwards deconstruction of that moment (with tonicization) so that leaving the chord is much more gradual than its sudden arrival.
- If you're looking for an explanation: the long held chord during "giv'n" (3:32) is setting up a return to the main chord of the piece (a perfect cadence) but instead ends on an unexpected chord (a deceptive cadence). Unlike typical deceptive cadences though, the "Word of the Father Chord" (on the "Word", specifically) is the combination of the "unexpected chord" and the "expected chord" (modal mixture-ish), which is part of its appeal, I'm guessing. Some of its awe might just be the sudden departure from the straight forward chorale harmonies preceding that moment.
- The English choral tradition developed pretty independently after inspiration from Italian music (probably via the spy-composer (!) for Elizabeth I, Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder) in the 16th century and has always had its own special flare. Aza24 (talk) 07:45, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
- Well, #TIL about deceptive cadences. Thank you for this lovely explanation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
Random thoughts
Well, not completely random thoughts - they were prompted partly by the realisation that I had not posted on your talk page for a very long time (for good reasons, not bad, been very busy)!
Anyway, the random article-related vignette, which I thought you and your talk page watchers might appreciate, is that Patrick Barrington, 11th Viscount Barrington, the great-great-great-great-grandson (I think I counted right) of Robert Adair (surgeon) (the article I wrote yesterday and today) presented the portrait of his 18th-century ancestor to the Hunterian Museum (the one in London) in 1969. It got me wondering why he did this, after the portrait had been in the family for nearly 200 years. And then I read that he died childless and all his titles became extinct (he sensibly disposed of the portrait well before he died). That might seem a bit of a morbid comment, but I was struck by both the large-ish family tree at Viscount Barrington and the reason in his early career he did not find favour as a diplomat at the British Embassy in Berlin: "his unstoppable flow of conversation and untidy appearance" (it got me wondering if there might have been a medical or psychological reason behind the constant talking, one also associated with untidy appearance?).
The final thought was related to the family tree. I know this sort of thing is (rightly) discouraged on Wikipedia in article space (less so in project space), but I was wondering if (probably on Wikidata) there have been efforts to map all the family linkages between articles about people (and, more tricky, between people with articles and relations without articles)? It would be a Sisiphyean task, but probably quite doable with various computational approaches. Would produce some nice mappings of big data (some 'family trees' would be completely populated, many would not). One reason I am curious about this, is that it might help with a big project that I never managed to properly work out how to do. The other thing it might do is see how closely related you were to someone with a Wikipedia article. I am guessing nearly everyone would be only a few 'steps' away in their family tree, but maybe that is being optimistic, as most people don't have 'famous' relatives (either now or in the past). Carcharoth (talk) 22:51, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
- I'd guess that the data set would be so fuzzy, the approach would break down within a couple of generations. All it takes is someone whose father is potentially one of two different people, someone who changed their name at Ellis Island, or someone whose family records were bombed out in a war, and the whole spiderweb unravels. (There are still real-world legal disputes over hereditary titles, and those are people whose lives are literally defined by tracking their ancestry and who live in countries with robust record-keeping systems.)
- I can also see all kinds of legal and ethical issues with a de facto ancestry database which anyone can edit. There's the obvious issue of people trying to create spurious links between celebrities and of malicious editors trying to slip in (e.g.) a family relationship between the Trumps and the Putins. There would also be broader issues regarding profiling people who don't necessarily want to be profiled—remember the crazies a few years ago who were going through every BLP trying to flag every person they thought had Jewish blood? Wikidata doesn't have the administrative numbers nor the collective competence to monitor its own data on any kind of medium to large scale, and I presume the WMF doesn't have any particular desire to be implicated in a future pogrom or genocide. ‑ Iridescent 14:13, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
- (adding) Another thought: even if our dataset were based on the best possible data—which is decidedly not currently the case with Wikidata—we'd still be causing serious issues. Every time we refuted an article subject's claim to be one-eighth Cherokee, or a direct descendant of Louis XI, we'd be implicitly calling them a liar in Wikipedia's voice. I wouldn't want to be on the OTRS queue for that particular wave of complaints. ‑ Iridescent 14:39, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for the thoughts. It probably works better the other way round, using reliably sourced and curated databases to check where Wikipedia is (sometimes) getting it wrong. I'm still a bit taken by the contrast between the professional life of Robert Adair (surgeon) (including the rather severe portrait) and the romantic context depicted at Robin Adair (bettter described here). Maybe Georgian times really were like that. :-) A (slightly) early Happy New Year to everyone. Carcharoth (talk) 23:07, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
- @Carcharoth: The crowd-sourced genealogical database you are looking for already exists -- on Ancestry.com. It was there I discovered some determined soul's work allowed me to trace my paternal ancestors back to a Midlands community in 1635, which is not bad considering they comprised generations of "farm laborers". (My earlier attempts to trace my British ancestors failed due to some immigration clerk on the East Coast misunderstanding his British accent & adding letters to his last name that did not exist.) Then again, there are a number of warnings that some shared research is not as reliable as other -- as evidenced by contradictory significant dates for these individuals. -- llywrch (talk) 22:54, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
- There's also FamilySearch - here which has the same issues as the trees on Ancestry.com - they are just about as reliable as wikipedia (perhaps less so, actually). Much like Wikipedia, ALWAYS check against the sources listed. Ealdgyth (talk) 23:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
- All very true (and thanks for those thoughts). I do think there is a place for using Wikimedia linkage and data to cross-check and cross-reference. I might as well mention the 'project' I have been pondering for a while, as it is a subset of all this. It essentially involves matching known casualty details in the database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (from both World Wars) to relevant Wikipedia articles. I have several excellent examples, some of which I shouldn't really mention as I may publish something elsewhere on that in the next few months, and some I can dredge out of my editing history (I think I used a standard edit summary enabling me to find them again later). Wikidata is actually set-up so it is possible to use it to generate suitable lists from properly referenced Wikipedia articles. The missing bit is the work to add the data to Wikipedia in a careful manner so it is actually correct (this often needs careful checks). The ultimate goal would be to be able to see how many people with Wikipedia articles could be considered to have been directly affected by the two World Wars in terms of either dying directly or by close family bereavement. The main problem is that the outcome is 'obvious' in the sense of "lots" (well, duh!), but there are nuances which are interesting. The main motivation for me is to link relatively unknown names in the CWGC database with the often more well-known relatives. Here is one example (and there you see the epitaphs that are sometimes heartbreaking in their poignancy) and another and another. Some pages, such as Pen Tennyson, give the CWGC reference for a relative (here, his brother, Julian Tennyson) but fail to give the CWGC reference for the article subject. I will give one final example that I came across more recently, the son of Labour politician Stephen Walsh, whose CWGC details are here. That is an example where the name is relatively common and the connection is not immediately obvious "Son of Stephen and Annie Walsh, of 8, Swinley Rd., Wigan.". When you look at the Wikipedia article, you only get the minimal information that one of his sons died. It took a bit of digging for me to uncover the name (rough-and-ready source, better ones available) and then the right CWGC entry. I have no idea what the numbers would be if all the possible links could be established. Lots of sons and brothers and fathers and so on (and some daughters and sisters and mothers as well). Carcharoth (talk) 03:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
- My main issue here is with
so it is actually correct
, which is a huge issue when it comes to wikis in general and Wikidata in particular. As Ealdgyth says, any kind of ancestry database is only as good as the data that's fed into it; "anyone can edit" and "ancestry" aren't really a good fit IMO. - Creating correlations between military casualties and an ancestry database is probably more or less workable for the British and French officer classes, because we're dealing with people in a culture of good record-keeping (and who were generally wealthy enough to have wills). It gets a lot less straightforward with the lower ranks—there are people with similar names, people lying about their identities, people who got their date of birth wrong or whose name is spelled differently on their enlistment papers and their birth certificate… And those are the straightforward cases; once you start trying to disentangle colonial units, refugees etc it gets very messy. Because of mass migration in the immediate aftermath of both wars and in the 2004–2020 window, a huge proportion of the UK population has at least some family members whose history is literally untraceable because the records were destroyed in WWII.
- (
Directly affected by the two World Wars in terms of … close family bereavement
would be problematic as well. We can establish that Alice had a brother named Bob who died at Gallipoli; without digging into a lot more detail we can't establish whether Alice and Bob were inseperable and Bob's death had a lifelong impact on Alice, or whether Alice had emigrated to Tasmania before Bob was even born and she'd never met him and was barely aware he even existed.) - I know this all sounds like I'm being negative-for-the-sake-of-negativity, and I'm not trying to be; if it can be made workable I can completely see how such a thing would be a valuable tool and one that could be rolled out to a lot more applications. (A tool that could take a name and generate-to-order a list of family members who'd benefited from slavery; who'd migrated from overseas; who'd perished at Auschwitz; etc etc etc would be a valuable teaching aid.) My issue is that in an "anyone can edit" environment the whole thing would be incredibly vulnerable to malicious misinformation and to good-faith errors, since the whole interlocking nature of family trees would mean any given error would propagate outwards through multiple families; and because of the incomplete nature of the dataset, it would be really difficult to stop errors creeping in. (And unless we're going to DNA-test the entire human race, the dataset is always going to be incomplete. The British royal family is literally the most-researched genealogy of all time, but all it would take would be for William and his kids to be involved in a car crash and about 75% of the family tree would have asterixes next to their names.) ‑ Iridescent 07:07, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
- My main issue here is with
- All very true (and thanks for those thoughts). I do think there is a place for using Wikimedia linkage and data to cross-check and cross-reference. I might as well mention the 'project' I have been pondering for a while, as it is a subset of all this. It essentially involves matching known casualty details in the database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (from both World Wars) to relevant Wikipedia articles. I have several excellent examples, some of which I shouldn't really mention as I may publish something elsewhere on that in the next few months, and some I can dredge out of my editing history (I think I used a standard edit summary enabling me to find them again later). Wikidata is actually set-up so it is possible to use it to generate suitable lists from properly referenced Wikipedia articles. The missing bit is the work to add the data to Wikipedia in a careful manner so it is actually correct (this often needs careful checks). The ultimate goal would be to be able to see how many people with Wikipedia articles could be considered to have been directly affected by the two World Wars in terms of either dying directly or by close family bereavement. The main problem is that the outcome is 'obvious' in the sense of "lots" (well, duh!), but there are nuances which are interesting. The main motivation for me is to link relatively unknown names in the CWGC database with the often more well-known relatives. Here is one example (and there you see the epitaphs that are sometimes heartbreaking in their poignancy) and another and another. Some pages, such as Pen Tennyson, give the CWGC reference for a relative (here, his brother, Julian Tennyson) but fail to give the CWGC reference for the article subject. I will give one final example that I came across more recently, the son of Labour politician Stephen Walsh, whose CWGC details are here. That is an example where the name is relatively common and the connection is not immediately obvious "Son of Stephen and Annie Walsh, of 8, Swinley Rd., Wigan.". When you look at the Wikipedia article, you only get the minimal information that one of his sons died. It took a bit of digging for me to uncover the name (rough-and-ready source, better ones available) and then the right CWGC entry. I have no idea what the numbers would be if all the possible links could be established. Lots of sons and brothers and fathers and so on (and some daughters and sisters and mothers as well). Carcharoth (talk) 03:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
- There's also FamilySearch - here which has the same issues as the trees on Ancestry.com - they are just about as reliable as wikipedia (perhaps less so, actually). Much like Wikipedia, ALWAYS check against the sources listed. Ealdgyth (talk) 23:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Happy New Year, Iridescent!
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.
Happy Kalends of January
Happy New Year! | ||
Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free and may Janus light your way. Ealdgyth (talk) 13:51, 1 January 2023 (UTC) |