User talk:Jheald

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Possibly of no interest, but relevant to your entry for James Burns (Scottish shipowner) (for which, thank you) and this reference: https://armorial.bibsoc.org.uk/stamp-owners/BUR005.html...

https://www.batesandhindmarch.com/product/indian-mutiny-a-historically-important-painting-of-the-73rd-bengal-native-infantry/

Shipsview (talk) 17:54, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@Shipsview: Thanks for copying this to me. Quite an uncompromising moment! I have added a note to Gen. Sherer's pages on Wikitree and FamilySearch. We seem to have an article here on Moyle Sherer, but that was the general's uncle. My current focus is more the Reid family that Burns's wife's sister Agnes married into, but there's nothing like a thing like this suddenly injecting a bit of sharp reality to what until then had been an abstract collection of names. So thank you again for this, which previously I only knew about in the vaguest terms from the Flashman book. Jheald (talk) 18:46, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Really appreciate you speaking up. I'm baffled at how the copyright issue has been misunderstood - and even more surreal to be told I don't understand. Would be a very sorry day if we can't quote legal judgments! Lawbookwriter (talk) 10:56, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@Lawbookwriter: I'm lucky I happened to see it -- it's not my normal beat. But I don't like to see us losing editors who have the potential to make some good content.

That said, I think there are probably some things to learn.

First, some of the standards and requirements here can seem odd - I remember when I was a new editor there were a couple of things I got pulled up on that I thought were unbelievable. But they're what makes this place work -- especially when some of the people reviewing your work won't have background in your subject area. Even when you're right on a point, insisting on your rightness may just make you seem uncooperative, or give you in their eyes a reputation for WP:IDHT ("I didn't hear that"). Better can be to find a forum with people that do know about your subject area (eg maybe WT:LAW); or somewhere that exists specifically to help new editors, like WP:Teahouse, and start a thread there along the lines of "I'm being told this. It seems crazy to me. Are they right? What am I not seeing?" And be prepared that the response from editors there, even the ones that know your subject matter, may well be: yes they are right. This is what you're not seeing.

In general, unless you can quickly sort out a misunderstanding, don't try and fight all your own battles yourself (indeed if it starts to feel like a battle then it's probably already gone too far); but do consider trying to take it somewhere where there are editors who do understand the kind of material you're editing, who can give you an informed second view. Above all, do take concerns people raise seriously (even if you think they are unfounded); and (especially as a new editor) a mindset of "I don't understand why you're saying that (when this would appear to be the case), can you explain?" may be a lot more likely to get you both to agreement and a shared mutual understanding than a "you're wrong".

Take any concerns people have relating to copyright very seriously indeed -- any editor perceived as consistently adding material against copyright law will get indefinitely banned, even if the perception was incorrect. So if anything like that ever comes up again, stop everything until you and they have reached a shared understanding of the issue, and either you have addressed it to the other party's satisfaction; or they have come to see and agree that they were mistaken; or a wider forum has looked at it and upheld the material as okay. When it comes to a copyright concern, never just push on, but work it out until you have reached an agreed mutual resolution.

In terms of Notability, it may initially seem crazy, but the community position is essentially that nothing should be presumed notable simply because of what it is. It is notable because there are sources that refer to it and discuss it - and the article needs to present some of them. So eg recently UK railway stations: according to a recent discussion, it doesn't matter that they are the key nodes of the system; it doesn't even matter whether there almost always are sources (given the amount that has been written about pretty much every yard of the UK railway system). What matters is that the article finds some of those relevant sources and identifies and references them. Similarly Supreme Court cases -- yes they may not often come up from the Court of Appeal (or get written up in books) unless there are some arguable points of law to be settled. But nevertheless, an article here needs to start out by explaining what the significance of the case was, and that needs to be referenced to something that actually has a discussion of it.

Also, you'll know the old saw: one source, plagiarism; two sources, research. Not quite true: close similarity to any text can put your contribution in the cross-hairs. But providing more than one source helps make manifestly clear if there are commonalities in what all sources discuss about the case; or if wording is wording that they all tend to use. (Also, as I'm sure you're aware, there can be copyright in selection, even when that selection is from underlying open-licensed or public-domain material; so beware of this: it's important that several of your contributions shouldn't mirror any one choice of selections).

It may also be a good idea to see whether you can find some established editors that have been adding articles on precedents and try to see whether you can get them to act as informal mentors. It looks as though a number of your articles may be about to be moved to the naughty step (WP:AFC). Once you have sharpened them up for Notability, added a few more references and context about their significance, added any appropriate OGL notices and generally re-checked everything for copyright, it might be worth reaching out to any editors you can spot that have an interest in precedents (or to ask at WT:LAW), and ask them to look over your revised page(s), and see if there are any suggestions they have. If you're lucky (and they're familiar with the AFC process), they may even be able to approve pages off the naughty step and back into the main encyclopedia for you. But that may need an editor, likely more of a generalist, who's more familiar with AFC.

Hope this helps! Jheald (talk) 19:06, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@Lawbookwriter: I am going to piggy-back on Jheald's excellent primer here to add some additional thoughts about notability I considered relating in the ANI thread, but could not find the room for, since it seemed more important to address the implicated copyvio concerns. In practical terms, establishing notability under this project's framework for that concept is governed by the provisions of the general notability guideline (WP:GNG). I suggest familiarizing yourself with this policy if you have not already, as it has a fair bit of nuance to it. But the general thrust is that every subject, irrespective of the intrinsic value it may have, even by the broadest agreement of editors, must also be the subject of substantial and focused coverage in at least a small handful of WP:reliable sources.

Longterm, there is no substitute test for GNG; all articles must meet this requirement to be judged notable enough to be covered by their own article. Thankfully, whether through coverage in specialist legal texts, law review, general news media, historical or sociological works, or industry/special interest coverage, I think you are going to find meeting GNG fairly straightforward for most articles on cases at the level of review you seem to be focused on. Although even if notability is established, a subject matter may be deemed as best discussed within the scope of another article of a broader.

Now, we also have a body of guidelines known as subject-specific notability standards (WP:SNGs). SNGs are peculiar animal. Basically they function to give an article author a temporary, but indeterminate, amount of time to find sources, provided the article subject meets certain criteria for subjects within a given topic area (see for example WP:NATHLETE). Now the idea behind SNGs was originally framed as a stop-gap measure meant to protect articles for which there was a reasonable presumption that sources would eventually be found. And technically that remains the distinction in policy. But in practical terms, many editors treat SNGs as essentially an alternative to GNG, and in many areas one could, if inclined "get away with" not adequately complying with GNG for functionally indefinite periods of time, depending on the number and commitment of proponents.

Personally, I have a lot of misgivings about the way SNG usage mutated, and I'm not the only one: there has been a slow claw back of the SNG remit in recent years. But there remain some problems, including stonewalling application of GNG, as well as related asymmetries for in how easily a new article can be adopted with similar levels of sourcing and support, depending on how many possible enabling criteria differing SNGS have set for their topic area. Sad to say, but it's often much easier to get an actor's article to be approved notable under the relevant SNG than a court case (or for that matter, a species, a work of fiction, or a contemporary event). Unfortunately, the standard you were working from with regard to Supreme Court precedents was never codified as a formal SNG, so that is why you got pushback in arguing for presumptive notability on that standard.

However, I would encourage you to look at the inability to rely on SNGs to the extent some other editors can with their subject matter as a massive blessing in disguise. Again, I do not think you will have trouble meeting GNG for the large majority of your articles. Supreme Court decisions, in the major anglophone countries, tend have many stakeholders among concerned citizens, advocacy groups and special interests, industries, and political parties. Thus they generate a lot of news coverage and discussion in academic and institutional publications and industry media. And learning to navigate GNG directly and organically will make you a much more competent editor for high quality content. SNG may suffice for newer and simpler articles, but in order to develop articles WP:GOODARTICLE status and beyond, if that ends up being of interest to you, requires robust sourcing. Trust me when I say being asked to jump through some extra hoops now will improve the quality of your content in the longterm.

I hope all of that is of some assistance to you while you get acclimated. If you have any questions or just want assistance or company working on some of these articles, please feel free to reach out! SnowRise ^{let's rap} 08:27, 11 April 2026 (UTC)