User talk:Prairieplant

Easy reference

WP:PLOTSUM
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Test of different way to make columns

Example from MOS:LTAB in Accessibility article. This is supposed to be easier for all devices to read, instead of using the columns template, as in Master and Commander article.

Important text

The quick

brown fox

jumps over

the lazy dog.

Additions to The Hermit of Eyton Forest by Ellis Peters

I just wrote a Plot Summary for this novel. It is so long! I hope some others who read this novel by Ellis Peters will see how to make the summary a bit shorter. The character list needs to be made, too. I included all the characters in my summary except I forgot the first name of Drogo Bosiet's son.

I was logged in while doing the summary, but somehow got logged off before I completed my summary. So it was not attributed to me in the History. Rather to 70.131.63.62 and I cannot figure how to change that to Prairieplant. Prairieplant (talk) 16:04, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I did add a sentence at the top -- all there was, with a very terse list of the elements of this novel. All except treason. That might tell the story before it is read. Prairieplant (talk) 22:59, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Now I have added a List of Characters, Themes and Setting in History, Reviews, and references, after reading the novel again, in sequence of the Cadfael Chronicles. The reviews were interesting. I cannot figure how to get the image of the cover in place -- such a good cover, too. I hope someone else knows how to do that. Surprised myself with all this writing, hope someone else reads it. Prairieplant (talk) 15:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

After the Funeral by Agatha ChristiePrairieplant (talk) 06:30, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

In the info box for After the Funeral, the Author's name does not show up. After Author in bold, we see only { {author} } where I expected Agatha Christie to show. I do not see this error in the info box, so cannot fix it. I hope someone else can fix that small error. Prairieplant (talk) 06:30, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It April 4 now, and that error is still present. Some bot went over the text, but I saw no improvements. This is the line that presumably includes the text yielding {{{author}}} instead of Agatha Christie as the author. I do not know how to fix this -- does anyone else? {{infobox book |

I made changes to the Plots Summary, Characters, Themes, but wikipedia logged me out while I was making them in January, so they are not marked as mine. What is the time limit for doing an edit? I do not mean to be skulking in my edits! Now I have logged myself in for 30 days so I will not get logged off while I write something.

The Clocks by Agatha Christie

Prairieplant (talk) 01:04, 9 March 2012 (UTC) I typed Londong instead of London in the title of one of my changes. Sorry! Cool story, I thought. Definite 1960s flavor in it, and the mood of the Cold War, added to a murder mystery, murder for greed, a frequent motive.

The Virgin in the Ice, other Ellis Peters novels

Starting the Plot Summary with the series summary is redundant, in each novel. Having the List of Characters allows Cadfael to be described, and reference made to the entry on Cadfael in wikipedia.

Plus, sometimes in looking up a story, I want to see the character names without reading the plot summary. This is especially helpful to me when I listen to an audio book and want to know the spelling of a character's name. The plot should not be told in the Character List, I agree with the person who took out my effort on that. But it was not true that everything in the Character List was found in the Plot Summary.

Most of the other Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael stories have a Character List, so this keeps them consistent for this 20 book series.Prairieplant (talk) 07:27, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Supporting change in Plot summary, that Cadfael was on foot across the frozen stream, seeing what the boy could not see, still seated on the horse. Then went back again, alone, as boy and horse waited for him. The boy crossed the same stream; it could be a secret from him only if he could not see through the ice as Cadfael did. This is the end of Chapter 3:

The second brook, still and silent like the rest, was a shallow, reed-fringed, meandering serpent of silver. The horse disliked the feel of the ice under him, and Cadfael dismounted again to lead him over. The wide, glassy surface shone opaque from every angle, except when looking directly down into it, and Cadfael was watching his own foothold as he crossed, for his boots were worn and smooth. Thus his eye caught, for a moment only, the ghostly pallor beneath the ice to his left, before the horse slithered and recovered, hoisting himself into the snowy grass on the further side.

Cadfael was slow to recognize, slower to believe, what he had seen. Half an hour later, and he would not have been able to see it at all. Fifty paces on, with a thicket of bushes between, he halted, and instead of remounting, as Yves expected, put the bridle into the boy's hands, and said with careful calm: "Wait a moment for me. No, we need not turn off yet, this is not the place where the tracks divide. Something I noticed there. Wait!"

Yves wondered, but waited obediently, as Cadfael turned back to the frozen brook. The pallor had been no illusion from some stray reflected gleam, it was there fixed and still, embedded in the ice. He went down on his knees to look more closely.

The short hairs rose on his neck. Not a yearling lamb, as he had briefly believed it might be. Longer, more shapely, slender and white. Out of the encasing, glassy stillness a pale, pearly oval stared up at him with open eyes. Small, delicate hands had floated briefly before the frost took hold, and hovered open at her sides, a little upraised as if in appeal. The white of her body and the white of her torn shift which was all she wore seemed to Cadfael to be smirched by some soiling color at the breast, but so faintly that too intent staring caused the mark to shift and fade. The face was fragile, delicate, young.

A lamb, after all. A lost ewe-lamb, a lamb of God, stripped and violated and slaughtered. Eighteen years old? It could well be so.
By this token, Ermina Hugonin was at once found and lost.

Hope this is persuasive. Prairieplant (talk) 09:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Not really. Is it truly a vital, indispensible plot element that Cadfael got off a horse? What was wrong with "As they cross a frozen stream, Cadfael sees the body of a young woman frozen into the ice. Fearing it is that of Ermina, he conceals his discovery from Yves." I'll let the present version stand, but it is important not to bloat plot summaries with unnecessary details. HLGallon (talk) 10:12, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think it is an essential plot point, given the book's title, and the line in the above text that the ice was opaque from all angles other than standing right above it. The gruesome image was seen due to the need to walk the skittish horse, while he was searching the likely area. Protecting the boy is typical of Cadfael, as is being quiet about what he learns before it can be properly digested, used, as is his combination of chance and skill in finding clues as well as missing people.

The other way of saying it left me remembering how the boy sat in front of Cadfael on the horse, and wouldn't they both see the same thing, from the same vantage point? How could he conceal what lay open to view? That is why I noticed the sentence. I appreciate you letting it stand.

I may yet be stinging from your description of my two to three sentence plot summary at the top as lurid, blurb style, or something like that. My one and only attempt to write a "blurb" for a friend was a dismal failure; too dry. Dry description is more my strong suit. Your reason to delete the very short summary did startle me. Your strong aversion to the very brief summary led me not to revise what I wrote.

Yes, of course these summaries need to be terse yet clear, and pick up the points on which the plot turns. In mystery stories, pick up the points that lead the detective to find the resolution, which is as important as the name of the character who did the crime. Prairieplant (talk) 14:58, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

To quote the original intro: "Is there safety to be found, travelling from one Benedictine monastery to another? Political chaos leads to civil chaos, catching up a brother, sister and her tutor in life and death confrontations beyond their once-sheltered lives. Treating a brother at a neighboring abbey, Brother Cadfael solves both the murder of the most innocent and the guilt of the suffering, while the civil forces restore order." This strikes me as the sort of thing which might be written by sensationalist publishers on the inside leaf or back of a dust jacket. It is inaccurate in some respects, and too vague in others. ("Brother" refers both to a monk and a brother by blood. What are "civil forces"?) By all means add a dry intro, briefly describing the book's publishing details, spin-offs and, if a reliable review can be found and cited, the book's major themes. HLGallon (talk) 16:05, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I looked for reviews but had no luck, not on web sites by book lovers, or in newspapers.

I see, two meanings for small b brother. Civil forces are the sheriff, not the army. Well, another try might distill the story. Those are contrasts and story tensions I saw. You call it sensationalist. Well, try for a middle course.

I am not much expert on publishing details. I see, only one reissue date is supplied, not the original. The television and radio programs are already mentioned. It is the short introduction that lacks -- which I can contribute. Prairieplant (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Once again, I edited the plot summary to fix problems, only to find myself reverted to your last version. I must insist that the following features must be addressed:

Dates; most of these are not mentioned anywhere in the novel, and to impose them is puahing original research, whether the calculations are correct or not. Nor are they really relevant. "As the first snowstorms of winter ..." is descriptive, and indeed an anchor point for the narrative at several points in the book. "... on 5 December" is meaningless.
"... proving to be nine days." OR again, and not relevant.
"Cadfael dismounts to lead the horse..." unnecessary detail, and glimpse of the blindingly obvious. "As Cadfael leads the horse..." saves verbiage.
"...Hugh Beringar has arrived in response to his message." What message? No message has been mentioned anywhere.
"At the hut, Elyas talks in his sleep." And says what? Nowhere is it made clear that he appears to confess to murder. "At Bromfield, Yves tells Cadfael what Elyas said." is still meaningless.
"Dinan recognises the brigand leader as Alain le Gaucher." Who or what is le Gaucher? The reader should not have to leave the summary to read the potted biographies underneath to find out.
"Boterel arrives at Bromfield to reclaim property." What property? "... a stolen horse." is a mere two extra words and far better description. Instead of property, Boterel might as will have arrived to reclaim stuff, or things.

OK, at 1301 words, the plot is longer than recommended, but it is a long and complicated plot, and it is awkward to summarise without losing important details. HLGallon (talk) 20:49, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

HLGallon, I thought we had talked this all out before. Making the plot summary longer is pointless. All good books have complex plots; our task is to trim out what we can and leave a reasonable summary. Longer novels than this have summaries that meet the Wikipedia standards. I appreciate how much you love this particular book. I like it too. But it needs a shorter Plot summary, not a longer one. WP:PLOTSUM

I am sorry to see that you put all those words back. They are not an improvement to the Plot summary, and a bit of an insult to me.

There is no original research, the dates are in the text, and you can read the book again to see that. You make that accusation rather easily, without checking the text yourself. That is how I knew the story happened in nine days, from the dates given. I went through to eliminate things said twice. Any change that makes it longer is a bad change at this point in my thinking. I hope we can agree on that. 1,300 words is close to double the guidelines. I got it down a little. The real edit it needs is not to include all the complexities but to relay the main threads of the story. Shorter Plot summaries than this one have been flagged for length by other editors. I think this one would read better if it were shorter. The book is rich with details, but there are main threads in the story. I hope we can agree on changes if they are shorter, more concise. Have a good night or good day! --Prairieplant (talk) 01:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

The Devil's NovicePrairieplant (talk) 06:30, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

The term squire in the 12th century referred to an aide or young man in training in the service of a knight.

The meaning of squire as a country landowner was not current until several hundred years later.

A man who owned a manor and lands surrounding it was called lord of the manor. Thus, it is not correct to call Leoric Aspley a country squire. His family was long in the area, from the Saxon days (that is, before Wiliam the Conqueror and his power over land ownership). Leoric Aspley was successful, as shown in his being called a generous patron of the Abbey by Abbot Radulfus. In discussing son Nigel settling in a manor further north upon his marriage, Nigel was described as seeing his lording.

Bucolic is not the opposite of prosperous. Throughout the story, Abbot Radulfus gives this family special attention because the generous donations to the Abbey made by Leoric Aspley. The finery of the wedding is marked as well above the common, suitable to a prosperous manor. All of England was bucolic in the 12th century; London had under 20,000 people.

The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters

The story takes place in a week, from after midnight the night of a Friday wedding to dawn on Saturday one week later. "The winter had been hard indeed, but was blessedly over, the sun had shone on Easter Day, and continued shining ever since, with only light, scattered showers to confirm the blessing. "

The days of the week are in turn described as matching the statement above (from the 4th paragraph of Ch.1) about the lovely weather. The boy does not enter the Abbey for a few more paragraphs. Thus it is Ellis Peters who says it was a lovely night in May when the story began.

Can someone explain the AnomieBot? I found a spot-on definition of a jongleur in 12th century England. I used the link in the plot summary, and again in the description of the character Liliwin who is a jongleur. The link works in both cases. What is the objection, why does the link "fail"? Cannot talk to a bot, I guess.Prairieplant (talk) 16:18, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters

The Raven in the Foregate by Ellis Peters

The Leper of Saint Giles

Original research

Edits to Cadfael Articles

Please refrain from using blogs for reviews. Articles require WP:NOTABLE sources, not random individuals. I've just had to remove who swaves of content from A Morbid Tate for Bones. GimliDotNet^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 07:44, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

User:GimliDotNet I cited that blog because he had the top 100 list posted there. Wikipedia has the list posted, but it is a red link, confusing to me. I can reach it from google search results but not inside an article.

There are many blogs or sites that post that UK list. What is your guideline which one I can use so people can see the list? Do I use one as a source, with no mention in the text? For the US writers list, I found it on a public library site in the US. You accepted that one. The published source (on paper) of each list was in the External References.

One reviewer you dropped, named Cecily Felber, is an author who writes in the same time period and geography (Wales and Shropshire) as Ellis Peters. She posts her reviews on Goodreads. In one such post, she remarked that the Peters book inspired her to write her own. I had a footnote for the webpage with her and her book -- link provided by another person HLGallon. Why did you delete her?

Philip Grosset has a web site where he reviews "clerical detetctives" exclusively. Why is he not Notable in the eyes of Wikipedia? Are all blogs not Notable by definition?

What is wrong with Kirkus Reviews? Full time business is reviewing books, since 1933. Sometimes favorable, sometimes not.

Once in a while I can find Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, but not for every book. I have not figured how to get reviews from newspapers (which would come out when the books was published, therefore in their archives) or major mystery magazines.

Trying to learn.

I am curious how A Morbid Taste for Bones got on both those lists (US and UK), and I cannot yet find other reviews to match the high esteem of the mystery and crime writers. Out there, not found.

PS Thanks for following up on your own suggestion, on placement of the reference to stories with adaptation for television. My time had been spent putting content in the wikipedia entry for that year in British televion. The wiki links were useless with no mention of the date the show first aired on ITV in the UK. Got those from IMDb, the dates.

Not sure how to tell you that I have questions.

Prairieplant (talk) 15:49, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Notable sources are generally published works by established organisations. Personal blogs, Goodreads etc are not reliable. It is difficult to find links for Cadfael books as they are not recent (therefore pre-dating the reviews on the website) it is better for the project to have a couple of good links than a whole section of blogs GimliDotNet^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 16:54, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Good work on the two new reviews on A Morbid Taste for Bones, the Kirkus one is especially excellent. GimliDotNet^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 16:56, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikiproject Novels

The Heretic's Apprentice by Ellis Peters

I put up a plot summary just now.

Longer than four paragraphs, but shorter than the summary of Our Mutual Friend, the last, longest and most complex novel by Charles Dickens. :-) Now even that impressive wiki entry is rated just B class (hard masters, these wiki raters).

I will re-read the novel to hear if there are errors to correct. I guess four paragraphs is beyond my scope!

Another day, it needs Setting in History to get some of those valued references added to the entry. Room to talk about heresy and heretics in 12th century England, or Europe, as I skipped all of the specific heresies and point-counterpoint dialogue in the summary. Perhaps also there is room for some discussion of seven year pilgrimages to the Holy Land by men in their 70s.

Prairieplant (talk) 22:54, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

It has one quarter the word count of the Plot Summary for The Hermit of Eyton Forest, staying with Ellis Peters and Brother Cadfael. Is that any sort of accomplishment for a wiki article hoping to be "encylopedic"?

Prairieplant (talk) 23:04, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

The plot summary is a very small part of what makes the article encyclopedic, in theory an article that is just plot can be deleted because it is not notable, what's important is the amount of reliable 3rd parties talking about the item in question. There is a guideline you may not have seen, it is called WP:INUNIVERSE, personally I still struggle to get my head around it but it basically sums up my point. GimliDotNet^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 05:16, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

I suppose not having the text immediately taken down is the only 'thanks' on wikipedia! I read the links you recommended and a few more. All the way to reading the entry for To Kill A Mockingbird as a perfect example.

Over my head, that kind of writing! I suppose I will keep trying. There is an example using Little Red Ridinghood, of how to pick the major plot and main themes, and not necessarily in the order of the plot. I do like to stick to chronology; so many challenges! I get the part about writing in the present tense and not in the world of the novel. All I do is think of extreme Star Trek fans, who live inside the show, cannot talk about it normally to understand that point. How to do that with a mystery story, still to learn.

Our Mutual Friend/Sinebot

Cleeton

Vale

Minor edits

Top Crime Novels

Olivier Charbonneau

agatha christie edits

/* Olivier Charbonneau */ well I did a bit of tidying

I did a bit of tidying up at Olivier Charbonneau, sorry je m'excuse it has taken me six months to get round to this... I thought it best to revert it as I was in the middle of the translation when life intervened and so I left it a right mess and didn't have time to revert it even. Also my comments at User:Peter Horn's talk page probably seemed a bit harsh on French Canadians but were left in a hurry and were meant a bit tongue in cheek, they were not meant to be a put-down on French Canadians (or indeed English Canadians or anyone else).

The "sewer cleaner" is really a struggle to translate, "ditch cleaner"? I am really not sure how best to translate that. I just did a bit of tidying up and I can quite understand why you left the French in but I have translated that as a first pass but usually when I do a first pass translate then it is not very good English so could probably do with some polishing.

I am very sorry if I accidentally offended you with my off-the-cuff remarks about French Canadians, my intent was to make the article better and life intervened but it is certainly not my intention ever to offend anyone. I am sure you know I actually translated La Corriveau, a famous French Canadian, and got her to Good Article status, so it is not my business to go around insulting people (although she seemed quite good at it!) Si Trew (talk) 12:33, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

SimonTrew, when I encountered the page it was mainly in French so I gave a try at translation. We decided to leave the French until others who felt strong enough in French and English gave it a review, and now you have done that. How do we add the the tag that the page is mainly translated from French Wikipedia? Seems we need to know the version number you used to start the English version. The tag might look like this, is it close? Except that version number is a complete fabrication. Back on 6 August 2013, Peter Horn marked on the French page that the English Wikipedia page had been set up. Where does one find the proper version number?

between double curly brackets translated page|fr|Olivier Charbonneau |version=45069858

I wondered also about the references that are deadlinks. Are there live links to use in their place? The links are dead from either version of Wikipedia. We have a red linked name in the English article Pierre Dagenets, but I see there is no link in French Wikipedia either, so I will just remove those brackets.

I do not feel insulted by any of the work you did. Glad you did it, mainly. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Although obviously this is not the right place to put it, I insert it here so you can kinda copy-paste it for future reference (please deleted it because obviously this is not a translated page).

{{translated page|fr|Olivier Charbonneau|version=45069858|insertversion=573975874|small=no}}, that is where I lost it when someone scraped my car so I think that is reasonable, I'lll stick that on its talk page. I'll come back to read the rest of this later but it needs that for WP:COPYVIO so I shall do that first and thank you. I can't even speak French any more since I have been learnging Hungarian all day and I knwo it sounds ridiculous but I can't remember the French for thank you, it kinda gets "blocked" but at least, Kosszonem (thank you) Si Trew (talk) 22:36, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Merci. I remembered. It is just weird it kinda gets blocked when I am speaking or learning Hungarian the French my brain kinda blocks it. Si Trew (talk) 22:40, 5 March 2014 (UTC)ha

I don't know how others do it, but I find the version number by going to the history of the page and then doing a diff between one version and another, then in the URL you have both version numbers. But I don't know how others do it, I am old fashioned and have the URL on my browser being the real URL and not some nice 'n' tidy URL. But that's how I do it. If you hover over the differences or look at the history page, it does also come up as a wossname, yellow little sticky note thing (let alone losing French it appears I am losing English) but that is the way I do it, but it is still a bit of a fiddle. Thanks, merci bien the corrections/copy edits you made, it is always rather stilted in English the first time cos I forget to reverse adjective order, and that kind of thing. Si Trew (talk) 22:56, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I checked out all the links I think, and that is why I marked a couple as dead links. THe others that are live I improved the referencing style, but I will check again in case I missed one. Si Trew (talk) 23:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

SimonTrew, thanks for showing me the easy way to find version numbers. Yes, they show nicely in the URL in the History list. You speak English and French and are learning Hungarian! It will be interesting at what point you feel comfortable with all your languages. So the translation template goes on the Talk page, not on the article page. I am learning new things all the time. I love that these articles on New France and its settlers are getting into English language Wikipedia, and then get strengthened (that is, taking the British bias out of the history type articles, which is much slower than your translation of Olivier Charbonneau). Such a grand story, I think, the settling of New France. Do you think we need to keep those dead links in the article? How long does a dead one stay there, before it is buried, I guess that is my question. I did hunt around a wee bit for some substitute reference, and found nothing, but my little search was just a toe in the waters. --Prairieplant (talk) 23:13, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I would keep the dead links since you never know, someone might find a better link for them via an archive site or something, I just didn't have too much time to do it, and being in Hungary when I Google (Or other search engine) I get a different set of targeted results than probably someone in Quebec would. What is really annoyihg with Google and Bing is that (I don't know if the Wikimedia software pushes them over or what) nowadays as soon as you type even a stub article it immediately appears as the top hit on those engines, at least for me, which actually hinders finding more research to fill in the articles.

Hungarian isn't particularly difficult it is just a bit of a language island, it is not Latinate or Slavic or Germanic etc, so that I constantly find myself either slipping into French or Arabic even rather than using Hungarian words, it is just my brain kinda trying to tie it all together on the road to fluency, I will get there. It's like people say "Chinese is difficult", well about a billion Chinese people seem to manage it wihout too much problem. Si Trew (talk) 07:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't have to go on the talk page, it can go on the article page itself, but it's a bit ugly to clutter the top of an article with all these kinds of boxes.

The {{translated page}} template was changed a few years ago and without the "small=no" it comes up as a tiny box, which to me just looks really ugly and also when there are other boxes on the talk page saying it's part of WikiProject New France or whatever then it gets rather hidden away and I think it just looks ugly, it's not that one wants to boast about the translation but other editors deserve to be able to see the information, I objected when the "small" came in to the default being changed thus the tag on lots of articles created before the change had their talk pages essentially changed by that, but I didn't win that one so that is how it stands. Si Trew (talk) 07:28, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

One of the main problems I have with translating from French Wikipedia is it has a very different style. Especially in biographies etc but any history article, it is always "unfortunately" this or "pleasingly" that etc, whereas English WP is much more kinda abrupt facts and that rather than these kinda bits of opinion. That is not criticising FR:WP I am sure that seems natural there, but in English WP it is much more kinda straight facts and none of this colouring, so all that has to be kind of taken out. Si Trew (talk) 07:32, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, we keep the dead links until we or someone finds better links. I think Talk page is the right place for the translation notice, as readers in English will not so much care how the article got its start; it is others who care about that point and they can read a Talk page. A book in the news lately mentions another search engine that does not keep a record of past searches, so it needs different search strings, and might come up with more of the results you seek. I have not tried it myself, yet, but am intrigued about the balance between convenience of google "remembering" things about me, like generally where I am and what I might ordinarily seek to learn, and a search that ignores all that. It is DuckDuckGo, of course with a link on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo . Then again, I get radically different results with google searches when I make what seem small changes to my search strings.

My issues with translation from French to English, my competency being one step below yours, is to get subject and verb straight, like who is the niece and who is the aunt. I got one of those right I think, while you corrected another, where my effort missed the point. The value of multiple editors. Well, the one other country in which I have interest now, they would say Hvala lepa for your efforts. (Slovenia) --Prairieplant (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Standard of living in the Gilded Age

Another O'Brian page

Ship templates

Dead Man's Folly

== Dead Man's Folly ==Yes, I made more than verb tense changes. Hence the "clarified" notation. No, I did not make additions that duplicated what was told at the end. I broke one paragraph into two, but that was rearranging sentences, not adding. I did not "add" anything beyond fixes for clarity and verb tense. I get the feeling you didn't really look my changes and just arbitrarily decided to undo all of them. Douvaine (talk) 19:02, 15 August 2014 (UTC)Douvaine

Douvaine Sorry to upset you. I did read your changes to Dead Man's Folly carefully. The plot summaries for Agatha Christie stories have a bad habit of getting longer, not shorter, and I saw the change in bytes for the article was an increase. Plus I saw text that was in the denouement, the end of the summary, repeated in the opening. I look to keep them shorter, as Wikipedia's rules on plot summaries favor so strongly -- they like no more than four paragraphs and some editors will want a low word count as well -- less than 800 words for sure. The summary as it is now has 881 words and is in 8 paragraphs. If I erred, I do apologize. When I work on those summaries myself, I try really hard not to say parts of the plot twice in the summary, as one way of keeping it shorter. It was easier to revert, yes. I figured whatever needed saving from your edit could be done again. It is hard for me to keep the summaries short and accurate, trying to get a main theme, and not include all the cool plot devices she uses, all interesting characters. WP:PLOTSUM has some of the guidelines for plot summaries, see note 3 about length. There are good plots summaries written for novels far longer than one by Agatha Christie, so there is hope for success on staying accurate terse and interesting. I read your piece in the Talk page for the article. I hope some of the guidance from Wikipedia helps. As to pronouns, in general they refer to the last noun mentioned, so look for the last female name mentioned before "her" and you will have that settled. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:08, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Re: Hain Celestial

Please have a look at this. Have a look at the news article I linked. Can I please ask who provided the 'organic' certification? Which government agency? If it's the food & drug administration it won't do since the judge has already ruled that the FDA is not reliable when it comes to these things (see ). Also please be mindful that the company's own claims on their own website is a primary source and is not acceptable per wp:rs and wp:npov and perhaps wp:puff. I understand you are looking for facts and not disputes, as am I--Taeyebaar (talk) 03:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Taeyebaar I do not see anything in the Wikipedia article as a puff piece. It is a bare bones descriptive article (a stub by Wikipedia standards), mainly listing the brands comprising the group. The court case is about personal care products, not about food, and only in California. I revised the Controversy section to reflect that, and put the references in cite web format. The food companies are not under challenge, at least from your sources, and they have the USDA certification on their products when the foods are organic. The article could use more about the dollar volume of the Group, if there are separate numbers for personal care vs food products, number of employees, location of companies in the group, etc. I am glad we are both aiming for facts in the article. --Prairieplant (talk) 08:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC) revised comment --Prairieplant (talk) 09:27, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Prairieplant I don't disagree with most of what you have written. It mostly is about the company and it's products; however the use of organic or anything that gives a good impression of the products without proper reliable sources does make it appear promotional. If you can find a valid source that certifies the products as organic than that's fine. Calling some of them organic because the company has named it such is a sort of promotion. It should be verified that these products are organic. That's all I'm insisting on.--Taeyebaar (talk) 03:27, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

If you do not disagree, why did you remove all the changes I made? The stock analyst blog is fine, it is evidence that someone else sees the company in the organic food market. I think you are failing to distinguish personal care from food products. The various companies in this group that produce food do have the USDA seal on their products. That is the definition of organic in the US now, and since the federal law passed. I will restore what I wrote, and expect you to find references you like, use proper format to cite them, instead of leaving that work to others. And read them too. The food products are organic, that is not in dispute. --Prairieplant (talk) 11:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

No that is not a reliable source. Blogs are not reliable to begin with. Somebody else stating their personal opinion is not a reliable source. I could open my own blog and state something with somebody else adding it as a citation on Wikipedia. That is not how it works. Please add some reliable sources. If you like you can shift the conversation to the talk page of the article and we can continue discussing it.--Taeyebaar (talk) 03:24, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

maps and WP:WATERMARK

Have a Barnstar

The Hundred Days (novel)

Hi, Prairieplant:

I am undoing your "undo" to the article "The Hundred Days (novel)". The redundant "ISBN" is necessary to produce the "magic link" to the "Book sources" page. It's a little ugly, and it's being discussed here. Knife-in-the-drawer (talk) 03:28, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your emotion-charged yet logical note on my talk page.

You seem to be the committee of one on this point.

— Prairieplant

Actually, I'm the choir, and you're the reverend. :-) I agree with everything that you wrote (with one exception noted below). Shall we make it a committee of two? The problem seems localized in Template:Infobox book. It needs to be changed so its "isbn" parameter does not require "ISBN" in the parameter value to create the "magic link" to the "Book sources" page. I don't have time because I still need to fix ~900 broken ISBNs. Do you want to handle it? You might also look at this discussion on the template's Talk page Template talk:Infobox book#Use abbr tag for ISBN?.

Where do we disagree? I think that the "magic link" to the "Book sources" page is HUGELY important. (If I didn't, I wouldn't work on these tedious, sometimes excruciating, broken ISBNs.) The "Book sources" page tells a reader where in the entire world he or she can find a copy of the publication...from Amazon online to a library in Spain. A second purpose--oftentimes the citation in a Wiki article has errors...from an incorrect title to a misspelled author's name. With a valid ISBN and its magic link, I can find the correct bibliographical information somewhere in the entire world.

In short, take a closer look at a "Book sources" page.

If you're not interested to fix Template:Infobox book, I'll kick start the discussion on the French Wiki page again eventually. Knife-in-the-drawer (talk) 06:46, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Knife-in-the-drawer My skills do not lie in the arena of how to fix a template, sorry. Learning that a template exists, and remembering how to use it, is more my speed right now on Wikipedia -- I learned in the last couple of months how to put the page numbers from three often-cited sources up in the text in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, so it was easy to see it was the same source used repeatedly, and shorten the reference list.

The OCLC number (not the letters) brings me right to a page with full information on a book, and then a list of libraries at increasing distances from the zip code where someone thinks I live that carry that title. Clicking on the digits of an isbn brings me to the same page as the letters ISBN in that Animalia book page, the title as ISBN spelled out. How is it that you reach the book itself, from isbn, when I can do that only from OCLC digits? -- ah now I found a new page (new to me) with the title Special page Book sources, reached by clicking an example string of isbn digits on the Help:ISBN page for Wikipedia. I never saw that page before, from clicking on the blue digits of isbn numbers. Now I see the page you mean. The Book sources page could use a simpler introduction for dummies like me -- a sentence that very specifically says to click on any of the links below to see a full citation for the book. Some links sell the book, some links are libraries, some are university libraries. The text being so general up top, I did not grasp right away that I would find what I wanted with one more click. I expected it on that page, like OCLC. I tried it from Blue at the Mizzen by Patrick O'Brian, which has a ten digit ISBN, and it worked, straight to the Book sources page for the book, and ISBN is written only on the left hand column of infobox book. Now, I hope you tested The Hundred Days (same series of books) first. The first editions of that series ended before ISBN 13 took over, just re-issues have the longer numbers.

So, I am more educated about the ISBN searching, that it requires another click on the long list of sources, to see what book it is, and assure it matches the one in the article (as topic or reference). I understand how much work you are doing to clean up broken ISBN in references, very slow work. Now I can test if a reference by some prior editor has a correct ISBN, matching the book title. But I still need google to use the book title and author to find the ISBN for Publication history section in an article on a fiction book, for example. Sorry, I was rather emotional, because the whole ISBN stuff has not been easy to understand without a guide, and your reverting popped up out of the blue, opposite to what I have understood about good form for infobox book terms the last few years. I am not sure what I am saying yes to doing, as to fixing broken ISBN numbers. --Prairieplant (talk) 12:07, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Prairieplant:

Some quick thoughts from your comments...

You can get to WorldCat (i.e. oclc) from the Book sources page--I think it's in the second group of links
I agree with you (yet again :-) about the wordy intro on the Book sources page. Normal editors cannot make changes to the Book sources page; we must request changes. Last week, I had to cajole to get ".es" added to the Amazon links.
You wrote: "I learned in the last couple of months how to put the page numbers from three often-cited sources up in the text" Good for you!!! Whenever I must fix the same ISBN more than once in an article, I add a template at the top of the article, telling whomever "See Wikipedia:Citing sources#Citing multiple pages of the same source"
If an ISBN is broken, the Book sources page displays a big, red error message
the infobox book template will get fixed eventually!!!! :-)

Knife-in-the-drawer (talk) 12:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The Hundred Days (novel) Part II

Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp photos

By any stretch of the imagination, the photo that I removed (Struthof.PNG) and replaced with the image (Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp Main Gates.JPG) that you placed in the body of the article, is a poor photographic image. If it was an archival photo, I could see using it in the lede, but it is an image from 2001 taken on a foggy day, with low contrast, poor resolution, unclear subject composition and does not enhance the article. The thumbnail (Struthof.PNG) snapshot probably should not be in the lede anyway - few articles have an image, especially an unclear one, in the lede. I ask you to reconsider placement and inclusion of images to enhance the article, rather than getting into an editing war. Thanks for your consideration. N0TABENE (talk) 16:46, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

N0TABENE Yes we do see that photograph very differently. I see a black and white image that shows the original gate (or rebuilt, I do not know) and the later monument to those who suffered or died there: the old horrible use and the new use. It is a sharp image, not fuzzy. I am not sure what you mean by poor resolution. The composition, unclear to you, is very clear to me. Yes, different eyes on the same photo. Your photo shows a blue sky day with the gate alone, as one might encounter it while touring Alsace in the summer. I am not sure about having photos in the lead at all, which is why I cut it down from the original three photos in the lead, to one. We might resolve this by using info box concentration camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_concentration_camp, taking the photo out of the lead and putting it in the infobox. Yes there is such an infobox, it is in the articles for Dachau concentration camp and Auschwitz concentration camp and possibly other articles too. Wikipedia is always a step ahead. In the Dachau concentration camp article, in the first section of text (History), there is a photo of the gate against a blue sky, similar to the one you took. And there are photos throughout the article. Oh, it is hard reading the concentration camp articles, though I know about them! Back to business, can you take a look at that info box, see if we can set one up for this article on Natzweiler-Struhoff. There is an article called List of Nazi concentration camps that shows different numbers for estimated prisoners and estimated deaths at Natzweiler-Struthof. How to reconcile those? I appreciate your post to my Talk page, so we can improve the article and not argue too much about photos. --Prairieplant (talk) 01:00, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The image you do not like is in use on ten Wikipedia pages, 4 in English Wikipedia, the rest in other languages, including 2 Franch pages, 1 Slovenian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Hebrew and 1 Italian page. --Prairieplant (talk) 02:57, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Google doodle

Edit warring

The Thirteen Problems

On the Blood-Stained Pavement in The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie: I wonder why you removed my statement that the disappearance of the blood stains is never explained. I did not say that this is the main mystery. All I wanted to point out is that this is a flaw in the story (which I had read very recently before making that entry). The story tells us that Joyce Lemprière first had seen the blood stains on the pavement (and we know from the ending that they were real) but it also tell us that she looked a second time later and there were no blood stains. How they had disappeared, is never explained -- just as I said (this is awkward, as it is very difficult to remove blood stains from the pavement, once they have dried in and even before, moreover the murderers would have had to expose themselves in cleaning the pavement, which would take a long time). So that is a weak point of Agatha Christie's story, one of the very few she has at all. I thought it interesting to give a hint at that.

Krenska (talk) 09:23, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Krenska Sorry I am so long in replying. Lots of things are not explained in those stories by Agatha Christie, my general remark. The plot summaries are meant to explain what is there in her stories, and be terse. This is a challenge, I find, to be terse yet still capture the essence of the plot. With the short story collections, the summaries, all in a row, often seem longer than a book! Your sentence sounded like something a reviewer might say, so then it belongs in a Review or Literary Significance section, but it would need to be said by a reviewer in a Reliable Source that could be cited in the article. Not that I think you are unreliable, but Wikipedia has a real preference for what they call a Reliable Source, printed or on line by a place with editors, etc. My shorter point, in the title of my change, was that it was the presence of the blood stain under the two bathing suits that was crucial to solving the mystery, not how the blood got cleaned up. If the woman was lost in the sea, there would be no blood dripping from her bathing suit hanging out to dry, but there was. It seems easy enough for the murdering criminals to clean the blood away once they saw it too. Does that make sense to you? --Prairieplant (talk) 07:17, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Prairieplant I do not think that the blood stains were very crucial to the solution of the mystery, as they appeared as a possible illusion in the story told by Joyce Lemprière. On the other hand, the fact that Joyce seems to check shortly after she saw the blood stains and they are gone, adds an element of confusion that is not cleared up by the solution and, in fact, is unfair to the reader. The story telling is such that the reader believes Joyce to be checking whether her impression was right not a few hours or a day later, but half an hour after she saw it. It is highly improbable that the criminals can clean the blood away so fast -- they'd have to notice first and, as I said, it is difficult to clean blood from a pavement. (And it would have to be done secretly.) Regarding terseness, I have nothing against it. But in the article on "Death in the Clouds", a mistake of Agatha Christie is explicitly mentioned (real blow pipes are about five times as long as she describes one). I thought, her mistake in this story, albeit less severe, should also be mentioned. --Krenska (talk) 16:59, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Krenska Joyce telling the story did not solve the mystery, Miss Marple did, (as did the police on other evidence of the insurance claims) and she relied on the blood stains dripping from the scarlet colored swimsuit. Christie's stories have a lot of "red herrings" in them, evident as such only when the solution is clear (at least to me). The eerie thing of Joyce putting the blood stains in her painting, without really being aware of seeing them, that is part of creating the mood. Miss Marple hits right on the criminals not realizing there was blood on the red swimsuit; Miss Marple's mind immediately went to murder and disguise as the obvious explanation to what Joyce saw, even before Joyce encountered the same couple a year later, confirming it. Agatha Christie may make mistakes of small facts, but not in her plots, in my view. And it is fiction, always important to remember that. If there were a mistake, for the Wikipedia article, it is best to find that said by a Reliable Source, not any old editor like you or me. We can still think through her plots and enjoy them more, from thinking how to do a concise summary, and finding or reading reviews. Wasn't it Christie herself who reported readers writing to her about that story on the airplane, with the blow pipe? So she told the story on herself, then invented Ariadne Oliver as a character who is a writer of mysteries, who gets all sorts of complaints from readers, and she makes a joke of it. Is that logical to you? --Prairieplant (talk) 17:36, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Prairieplant Of course, Miss Marple solved the case. And certainly the blood stains were presented in a way as to help her in solving it. However, I do not think that the blood stains are crucial to solving the case. It was very clear early on that there had been a murder, who had been murdered and who were the murderers. Miss Marple would probably have found out all this without any blood stains. What I am complaining about and that is why I made that remark is that something which would have been clear evidence (and later was declared clear evidence) became poor evidence by having the blood drop on stone and not explaining how on earth the murderers could remove it. Blood is notoriously difficult to remove from clothes and any porous material. Whoever would have wanted to remove it would have needed hours of scrubbing. Therefore, I expected an explanation, either that there had not really been blood or a brilliant alternative. Nothing came. Which moves the story from one of the better problems (a lot of atmosphere) among the thirteen to one of the worst. If Mrs. Christie could not come up with a brilliant solution of the blood-on-stone problem, it would have been easy to make the blood drop on sand. In that case, fast removal is trivial: take a shovel, remove the sand, distribute new sand over the place. Anyway, I thought it interesting to Wikipedia readers to have that flaw pointed out to them allowing them to think about the implications. But I will certainly not insist on putting my observation back on the page. (As to the blow pipe, you are right: Agatha Christie had been told about her mistake by somebody and later made Ariadne Oliver reveal this mistake as appearing in one of her stories.) --Krenska (talk) 21:23, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Krenska This line is from the summary in Wikipedia, calling it pavement not stones: "The men in the Tuesday Club feel that there is very little in the story to go on, but Miss Marple points out that they do not appreciate the point about clothes as she and Joyce do. The bloodstains were on the pavement, dripping from one of the bathing suits, which was scarlet in colour." Pavement may not absorb the blood; it is not saying porous stones, just vague, general pavement. There is a reference to the Spanish destroying the Cornish village four or five hundred years earlier and the blood of the landlord of the inn soaking in, never washed away -- but the village was rebuilt after that total destruction. I do not have a copy of the book, so I found a google books version on line, for the text on pages 52-53, where Miss Marple makes clear she has solved the mystery before Joyce tells the events of the following year. Maybe the point about the presence of the stains is clearer. I am glad you understand the odd ways of Wikipedia, what goes in the plot summary (some editors have told me there could be a satisfactory article about fiction with no plot summary, just the commentary of others; not that I agree with that, but that editor meant to emphasize the importance of those Reliable Sources) and what belongs in Reviews or Literary Significance or some other section of the article. With this collection of stories, the reviews as quoted in the article do not make comments on each story but the book as a whole, not helping much on the stories one by one.

Excerpt:

"I, too, think you are just a little unfair, Joyce dear," she said. "Of course, it is different for me. I mean, we, being women, appreciate the point about clothes. I don't think it is a fair problem to put to a man. It must have meant a lot of rapid changing. What a wicked woman! And a still more wicked man."

Joyce stared at her.

"Aunt Jane," she said. "Miss Marple, I mean, I believe—I do really believe you know the truth."

"Well, dear," said Miss Marple, "it is much easier for me sitting her so quietly than it was for you—and being an artist you are so susceptible to atmosphere, aren't you? Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts. Blood-stains dropped on the pavement from the bathing dress hanging above, and being a red bathing dress, of course, the criminals themselves did not realise it was blood-stained. Poor thing, poor young thing!" (end of excerpt)

I thought it was a very good story myself. I had not figured it out when Miss Marple did, not at all. --Prairieplant (talk) 16:34, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Prairieplant I have reread the whole story now, in order not to recollect things incorrectly. And I still think the story does not work. "Stone" was only a generic for me, I am not an English native speaker, but I do not think that it is any easier to remove blood stains from pavement (as long as it is not made from plastic, which seems to be out of the question here) than from "stone". The reference in the story to blood that cannot be wiped away for years is based on superstition, but there is of course a realistic background: it is difficult to get rid of dried-in blood stains completely.

Anyway, here is the course of events. Joyce is painting in the afternoon, with the swimming suits hanging from the balcony. She notices the fisherman and tries to paint him, before he moves. He comes over talking to her, she continues painting and suddenly notices she has painted blood stains where there should not be any. She looks over and sees the real thing. She asks the fisherman whether he sees them, too, but he does not care to look and wants to talk her out of her perception. So she is standing in a way that she can oversee the place, while he is probably turning his back to the balcony.

Dennis arrives and joins in the conversation, telling that he is missing Carol. Joyce notices the woman (Carol, in reality) to take the bathing suits off the balcony, so she still oversees the place. From what is told about the conversation, it may have lasted a quarter of an hour up to half an hour. Then Dennis leaves, he and his wife drive away. Joyce now moves over to the pavement where she saw the blood stains and does not see any. Nor does the fisherman, who still is with her.

Dennis could not have washed the blood stains away. So it must have been his "wife". But the place was in full sight of Joyce! It is highly implausible, the "wife" would have dared such an action; it would be much more likely that she postpones the removal of the blood to later (for example when she returned as Carol), hoping no one will see it in between. Even if she was daring enough, she would not have had more than a few minutes. Joyce did see her take in the bathing suits. It was very likely that she could not be detracted for very long from looking at the place. Moreover, Dennis at that point was not even aware that there were blood stains. Only Carol may have noticed them. So Dennis certainly was not trying to detract Joyce, hence Carol would not go unnoticed when scrubbing the floor.

Therefore, it seems very unlikely that there was time to remove the blood stains. In particular, there was not enough time to remove them cleanly. Now the story says that Joyce looked "closely" and could not detect any blood stains. Nor could the fisherman. But what does the floor look like when you have tried to scrub something away that takes an effort? In the case of blood, the most likely thing is that there is still some dark remnant from the blood, but that there is a bright ring about it, where you have cleaned off all the other dirt that was there. Even if you have succeeded in removing the blood, the bright spot must be there, and Joyce would have been perceptive enough in the situation to notice.

The way the story is told, there seems to be really no other explanation for the missing blood stains than that they were only an illusion. Then Miss Marple's reasoning would have started from a wrong premise, but she combined all the other facts correctly to arrive at the correct answer. In this case, the blood stains were not crucial for the solution, they did not even exist, although their imagination was crucial to trigger the train of thoughts that led to the solution.

You said that there are often unexplained features in Agatha Christie stories. That is true. Nevertheless, I can quote Hercule Poirot in saying that an explanation is only an explanation, if it covers all the known facts. I seem to have thought more about this problem than you, because I realized that there are facts not covered by the solution.

Your explaining away of the removal of the blood stains, which is the part that is missing from the solution to make it fly, reminds me a bit of the way the culprits in the Columbo films explain away details he observes. They always give plausible-seeming explanations, even manage to make him look dull, but their explanations really don't work in detail. He continues to investigate and finally everything fits.

As you say, you removed my addition to the text for reasons of terseness. But it was only a short sentence, not affecting the terseness of the whole presentation at all. Nevertheless, we are already discussing the issue for a (too) long time. I believe that the sentence was an improvement over the existing text (which I left untouched otherwise), because it opens up a whole universe of new speculations about the story and alternatives of interpretation. It also points out a possible weakness of the story that should not go unmentioned. So I think you should not have taken the liberty to remove it. It was a valuable contribution, not one to be light-heartedly dismissed. But I am not going to fight wars over this kind of Wikipedia entries :-). I might fight over a scientifice question, being a scientist, but I will not bother too much with entries on fiction books.

--Krenska (talk) 08:40, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Krenska No need to argue, we agree on that. My reasons were terseness and that you are well into plot analysis, which Wikipedia wants from those Reliable Sources, not from editors like you and me. If you found a published review of the story sharing your views of it, then you might add it to the article, but not in the plot summary. Rather, in the discussion of the plots, the reviews, or some other section of the article. I hope that point is clear. I do think the blood is real in the story, and some water-diluted blood dropping on pavement could be removed by a bucket of water, in my view. That is why I think it is not important. You have another view, and that is fine, and why Agatha Christie has such wide appeal. It is amazing to learn you are not a native speaker of English. My changes are never light-hearted. The articles on novels often have the problem of plot summaries that are too long, so I look at a change for what it adds, when the summaries already need to be shorter. Nice to talk with you. --Prairieplant (talk) 10:07, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Five minutes to help make WikiProjects better

Aubrey-Maturin series

Hi, I see you've been looking after this series for some time, and wondered if you could do with some help? I have access to the novels as well as several books of background material that might be helpful. Many of the articles, it seems to me, could do with additional external focus, rather than being simply a plot summary. Also, many of the summaries (which I know were not originally written by you) are very heavy on clunky irrelevant detail but often neglect entirely the structure of the story and the basic plot. Anyone reading them though without having read the books in advance would be none the wiser, especially as many assume knowledge of incidents or characters that are never actually mentioned in the first place. It would be good to make the articles less like contributions to a fanzine and more like an encyclopaedia. I was wondering whether a clean-up collaboration starting at the first novel and gradually working through, would be of interest? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:45, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

MichaelMaggs Yes, help is wonderful. This series of books warrants good articles, ones that allow approaching that topic that divides reviewers, are they literature or "merely" genre novels?

I do not have those books so often listed as a Bibliography in the articles. Those lists frustrate me, as I wonder why the person who sat there with all those books at hand did not make use of them with inline citations on the science, the history, the humor, the reviews. The first book is worst for that absence. If you have other sources to hand, that will be a great help. I have read the books several times, enjoying them a lot. I have edited plot summaries, but I am not sure I ever wrote one entire, in this series of books. Usually the plot summary versions I encountered were heavy on the ships, linking the named ships to real ships with Wiki links (though O'Brian paid little heed to when many of the ships in the series really sailed or where they sailed). I try to keep the plot summaries accurate, complete and within Wikipedia's length limits, but do not claim to be a great writer nor to meet those goals every time. The novels have so much going on in them, that length limit is fortunate, forcing one to trim away at less-than-essential points. If plot structure is missed, then that is not so good. Some other editors on this series are far better writers than I am and you may be part of that group.

One focus for me has been finding reviews on line, and getting the publication history straight (as there were two "waves" of reviews for the novels first published before W. W. Norton got involved in the US). I should work at my local library to get more of the British and Irish reviews, but I have not done that yet. I keep searching for reviews on line, as I have learned that small changes in my search keys suddenly bring up a review in a newspaper, one that did not come up the four or five precious searches. As to fanzines, that is hard to avoid as the reviews are so rarely the least bit negative; I remember someone asking me if I had suppressed the bad reviews for one article, when I had put all I had found from newspapers and like sources (not the books or essays). I also added a piece from this series article into the article on each book, about the books breaking from real time and not mentioning dates for enough voyages to fill several years, which O'Brian calls having 1812a, 1812b. That confused me so much first time through the series, the change from historical time to novel time. It was fine to do it, but I did not catch on right away. Another focus for me is connecting characters who appear in more than one novel, to mark that they are the same character, now older and perhaps promoted if Royal Navy characters. One thing I would like is to get all the Geoff Hunt covers in the articles, as all reissues use the Geoff Hunt cover. I was thinking of some of the Agatha Christie articles, which show a US and a UK cover; this is not by nation, but by time, as Collins had already asked Hunt for the new covers before W. W. Norton got involved, if I remember correctly. I do not know how to set up images to use in Wikipedia. I tried learning that a while back, but failed to grasp the process complete with fair use. Another editor has suggested improving the leads, as well, once there are reviews to summarize and place in one paragraph in the lead. He has examples of some exquisitely written articles on novels, which tease out the themes from the reviews and really expand the article, I think in the direction you would like as well. I have to look up his comment to me for those example articles; I cannot recall just now where we had that discussion naming very good articles to use as models for this series. --Prairieplant (talk) 18:03, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the welcome. I could certainly help with a few of those issues - images, copyright etc - but before getting started it would be very useful to be able to refer to some examples of good leads we could use as models. In contrast with some books, these novels have too many twists and turns for it to be realistic to expect the lead to summarise the plot. It would also be useful, before starting, to discuss consistency between the articles - for example I would think each ought to have a similar series of headings. To encourage others to join in we should probably do that in article space rather than here: let's continue at Talk:Master and Commander. I should mention by the way that I'm thinking of a fairly long-term project here, as I do quite often have longish periods of being busy in RL and unable to commit much time to editing. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:59, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry I haven't got to this yet. I've not forgotten, but have to deal with some RL stuff at the moment. Apologies again. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:44, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

That is fine. RL means Real Life, right? I did put a post at the Talk Page of Master and Commander, as you suggested. Somewhat wordy on re-reading, but I hope it makes the point. Whenever you have the time and the focus. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:01, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I've added some thoughts on the page now. To try to get more external perspectives I've ordered second hand copies of

Brian Lavery (2003). Jack Aubrey Commands: An Historical Companion to the Naval World of Patrick O'Brian. Conway Maritime, and
Richard O'Neill (2003). Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World. Running Press.

--MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:34, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

MichaelMaggs Your list on the talk page is good, and ambitious. To get more reviews, we need access to other databases, I think. Mainly ways to access the British and Irish newspapers that had reviews mentioned at the W. W. Norton pages for each book. Norton has lots of quick quips, but no source information beyond the name -- that is, no date, no idea if the article was a review of that book or the whole series. I have used google for what is available without subscriptions, as to Reviews. The British and Irish newspapers almost never appear in those searches. I think there is a book edited by Cunningham that has some reviews, possibly essays, but I have never read the book, and it was written before the series was finished, if I recall correctly.

Continuity with the prior novels, that is a separate heading in a few articles. I thought that was the best place to put what happened in a prior novel, affecting the current one. I like the long lists of characters myself, because characters pop up in several novels, with changing roles, and seeing them on the list of the earlier book helps recall them. What about the approach of Major Characters and Minor Characters? I guess I am not up to date on current feelings on what sort of character is worthy of note, in novels with so many characters, especially if Aubrey moves from one ship to another, with more lieutenants playing a crucial role in that part of the story. Every character list has a link to the article on Recurring Characters in the A-M series; IMHO it is not all that good, despite its long list of characters. Mainly they are described from first introduction, not followed through, and not flagged by the specific novel in which they appear. I added to some of those descriptions (trying to mention the specific novel) in that article the last time through the series, but was not sure what is wanted in that type of article. I usually listen to the audio version so I do not have the page numbers, rather the chapter numbers. I did not know that those allusions sections were so annoying. I like allusions to real events in history, for a sense of fiction and fact, but the scientific discoveries are not of so much interest, is that it? --Prairieplant (talk) 00:12, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't unfortunately have easy access to reviews in old British newspapers, many of which are behind paywalls, but I'll see what I can do. I've ordered a second-hand copy of Cunningham (1994), Patrick O'Brian: A Bibliography and Critical Appreciation which may be helpful for the earlier books.

On the long character lists, I'd be inclined to leave the names more or less as they are, simply removing information about the plot-lines that would be better in the plot summary section, if it's needed at all. While I wouldn't myself have included the names of some of the minor characters, I can see that a lot of work has gone into extracting those that it would be a shame to lose. I'm not keen on separate 'major' and 'minor' character lists as the distinction would be rather arbitrary. A minor character in one book very often becomes a major character in a later book.

I'd make a distinction between O'Brian's use of real historical events or texts as literary sources (good) and elements of the plot which, while perhaps interesting in themselves, don't add add much to an article beyond 'here are some quaint old things that the author mentions' (bad). Scientific discoveries and references to other 'real world' things should I think best be handled by wikilinks in the plot summary.

I'll wait now for comments on the talk page, and for the books I've ordered to arrive from Amazon. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 03:22, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

By the way, did you mention you know of an online source for all of the Hunt covers? If you could point me in the right direction I'll upload the missing ones and see about labelling them for fair use. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 07:19, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

MichaelMaggs Here is the link with the whole set of Geoff Hunt covers on on page. Click on image and a slightly larger image appears. http://www.hmssurprise.org/harpercollins-covers-geoff-hunt

I have found nothing on the site about copyright for their page or how they got the images. For some of the images, there is a discussion of the scene painted in the cover image. Another possible source is Amazon or other book sellers, the image they put up for selling the books.

That would be so good of you to do that. Not sure what is my mental block in learning how to get images up and properly declared for fair use. Someday maybe. For now I work on better writing for better articles, and finding those reliable sources. That is great that you are getting Cunningham's book along with the rest. I wonder if my public library in the US has any access to British and Irish newspaper archives? Next visit, I should ask. It would be nice to read an entire T Binyon article on one of these novels; he was early to recognize the novels as many now see them, from what I have read about him, rather than by him. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:42, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Great, thank you. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 07:46, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Message about A.B.C. Murders, Adaptation section

Emma

The one referenced fact in the section that I recently deleted and you reverted has now been moved to a more appropriate place. The rest was plainly OR and I've mentioned what I've now done about it and an equally suspect section without proper citations on the Talk page. I've also had long experience of copy-editing and don't particularly want to cross swords with you! Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 10:43, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Mzilikazi1939 That is good that you shortened the Plot summary, thanks. I have been learning from two editors who were working on the article on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, moving in translated text from the French article, which, odd as it seems, was way better than the article in English and well-referenced. At any rate, I learned of this bit of guidance on the layout for an article about a novel, and you will see that Development is one of the sections. Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/ArticleTemplate is where the suggested sections are outlined. Thus I would like to undo your removal of that section, and put the few sentences back there. Yes, it will be better when there are citations in that section, but I think those will come in time, or be found in one of the other articles on the Reception and Literary Significance of Austen's novels. I do not believe that quotation to be original research, and there are just a few other sentences comprising the section. An oddity about the articles about novels by Jane Austen, at this moment, is that much of the analysis I expected in this article, is rather included in one major article on all her novels combined -- Reception history of Jane Austen, which is replete with appropriate references, in addition to the Reception section of the article on Jane Austen#Reception herself. The articles on each of her novels have fewer citations than I expected to find, longer Plot summary, and although similar, not a completely consistent layout of the articles going from one novel to the next. The set of the articles being less than perfect does not mean that each one should not be improved, step by step. I just point this out as it surprised me, knowing how many people have written about her novels in a scholarly way. I am not the literary specialist with those books on my shelf, I should add. So those are my two points -- that Development of the novel is an expected section in the article, and the quote from Austen is not a comment on the main character; and two, that so much of the references for reviews of all her novels are found in two unlikely (to me) articles, looking at all her novels, one by one, in one article. I really do not know why the articles are organized this way. I know I am not scholar enough to get all the Emma references collected into the Emma article, alas. --Prairieplant (talk) 13:20, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Notice that another editor has recommended translating all or part of the French Wikipedia article on Emma to enrich this article. That article is replete with references, includes many themes, and has a Plot summary for each of the original three volumes. It also has long sections on each character, as in this article in English Wikipedia. Watching that other editor do those translations for Great Expectations has taught me that can be done, but it takes much concentration, knowledge of the referencing format (usually harv or harvnb, and not the same as what is in the article now), and some time to get the best English wording. It is a rich article in French Wikipedia! --Prairieplant (talk) 13:38, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, I'll leave it to you. Though I'm an Austen fan, I've never liked Emma. There are two things you could do now. One is to find who placed the cn tabs in the one section and put dates on them so you can check how long it has been that problem has not been addressed; the other is to locate the overall development section you found and put a redirection tab at the head of the Emma section on the subject. Good luck! Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 14:03, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Mzilikazi1939 – I put the citation needed notations in that text, not so long ago, when I decided to read the Wikipedia articles on the Jane Austen novels. I am an Austen fan, too, and I like Emma a lot, for all its humor and good dialogue, as the young lady learns better manners and her own heart, while running her funny father's household. My favorite is Persuasion. Oh, I can add a Main article link to that page, yes, that is logical. And then hope someone who knows French better than I do begins to bring translated sections over from the French article, with references. I can read the French article easily, but translating is another step up the language skills ladder. --Prairieplant (talk) 14:31, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Jewish skeleton collection documentary

Hello, Prairieplant. I hope you remember our discussion on the Jewish skeleton collection. I mentioned a great documentary I had seen, and promised to come back to you if I gain access to it again. Now I do; it was aired here again and I have access to it for a month. It's In The Name of the Race and of Science, Strasbourg 1941-1944 (Arte France). So, if you want me to work on related articles, I can provide information sourced to that documentary. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:13, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Finnusertop Of course I remember our discussion on the Jewish Skeleton Collection, most moving and informative. I have not done my rephrasing yet, but I will. As I said, my mood has to be right to take on that page, and not get myself overwhelmed in the sorrow of that place and that time. That is great you have the documentary showing, so some sourced information can be added. There seems to be a bit of it on you tube, yes, it is shown in four 15 minute segments, beginning with this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSpfXgUxqeI. Then the 2nd is "next up" in you tube lingo, and so on. These are in French, which is not marked as one of your languages on your page. Perhaps you are seeing a version with subtitles? Anyway, time to get myself disciplined to make my promised revisions. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:20, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Finnusertop I just watched all four parts of that film on you tube, in French. I am better at written French, than listening, even with such an orderly documentary. I wanted to check a point with you -- the 86 victims were selected from the prisoner population at Aushcwitz for this effort to make racism scientific, and then justify the Final Solution, as if the scientific paraphernalia offered any justification. Clearly those in the documentary do not believe this was a rational view, nor a rational project but they explain it nonetheless. The point where I was confused was when it was explained that the 86 people had to be fed well for a few weeks before being gassed to death at Natzweiler Struthof. I thought they said those special buildings, to keep the 86 separate from the general camp population, who had illness, was done at Natzweiler-Struthof, not at Auschwitz. Can you hear that point more clearly when you watch the film showing where you live (and in one of the languages in which you are fluent for listening, of course). It is totally likely that I am mistaken, and the 86 people were brought to N-S only for the very last step of being gassed, having lived in a fenced off area at Auschwitz. The image of their barracks was clear, the location is where I got lost. The third of the four films (they took a long film and broke it into four parts with arbitrary break points), there are images of more of the corpses, brief but clear. I think those images were as they were found at the Reich University, that is photos taken by the Allies and not by the Nazis. The roles of Hirt and of Kramer, those were very clear. Plus they read aloud notes by someone who watched the women die in the N-S gas chamber, took clothes off, took a few breaths and then collapsed. That hit my limit for horror. Well, enough for now. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:58, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed reply, Prairieplant. Yes, the building in which they were kept separate from the other inmates and fed for a few weeks was at Natzweiler Struthof (at around 32 minutes in the full documentary). My documentary has Finnish voice-over for the narration and subtitles in Finnish for the interviews.

It's implied that the photos that are shown (at around 40 minutes), one of which is File:Menachem taffel.jpg, were taken after the liberation by the Allies. This changes the premise of the copyright discussion we had before, because works by U.S. federal officials and military personnel are in the public domain. That being said, the photos could be taken by French officials as well, in which case copyright would apply. It's also possible that they are pictures from before the liberation, by Hirt or his colleagues (I've seen photos of Hirt examining bodies elsewhere, though I am not sure if those bodies are related to this case). Without proper details we can't say for sure. The documentary gives a list of photo archives they consulted but, regrettably, individual photos are not given credit for. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:33, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Finnusertop You are amazing with your language skills. Thank for confirming that point. I have now found an article in French media, I think it is the on line version of a piece on radio (RFI, radio France internationale??) that has quotes from the documentary, which was being shown at a film festival. The RFI article also has a summary of the film in words, and then Q and A with the maker of the documentary, who was/is part of the University of Strasbourg, and the documentary is recent, 2013. I had not noticed that before. So, I have a reliable print source, if in French, and the documentary itself for the images of the corpses. Your point about who owns those images is well-taken. How does one trace them down to being taken by the Allies or by the French once discovered in early 1945? But I feel better that we can add the facts of how long the people were kept at N-S, to feed them so they were more fit subjects to part of this bizarre collection. The Wikipedia article mentions a man who was shot and not gassed for objecting to his fate, but the article mentions a woman who rebelled, thus taking the 87 to the final 86. I am not sure how to sort that out -- did they used the man who was shot, and kill the woman another way? From the news part of the post : " Une femme ayant été abattue pour s’être rebellée, il reste 86 corps. / English, One woman having been shot for rebelling, there remained 86 bodies. http://www.rfi.fr/hebdo/20141024-au-nom-de-la-race-et-de-la-science-documentaire-crime-nazi-meconnu-prime-waterloo/

Anyway, please do read what I revise, and see if it makes sense and is properly cited. Thank you for such timely comments. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:17, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Finnusertop The two links, number 1 and number 2 in the discussion of Natzweiler-Struthof edits following this one, shows records from archives held at Harvard Library now, stating clearly that the photos of the corpses were taken by the French, not the US military. It counts the number of photos, describes them generally, and one specifically, the one where the tattooed numbers on the left arm showed plainly. So, the ownership seems clear now and copyright justifications would be needed for Wikipedia articles. I made changes to both articles, Jewish Skeleton collection, and that same section in Natzweiler-Struthof, trying to have some separation of what is said in each article. Jewish Skeleton collection might get a bit longer with that documentary film, and the continuing work of Hans-Joachim Lang. I put items of detail on the men who died en route from one concentration camp to another in the Jewish Skeleton project article, and made the role of Natzweiler-Struthof in this awful project a bit clearer. Because the article first mentioned a man who struggled against being gassed so he was shot, and then the documentary says it was a woman, neither providing a name, I changed it to a person. Hope that is a good way to handle it until the point can be settled. For further confusion, Lang does not mention this event on his web site, but I have not read all of his book yet, to know if he mentions it there. Instead he mentions three men who died en route from Auschwitz. The irony of carefully collecting your specimen people, then so carelessly letting them die in transit -- Nazis make no sense, do they? I hope you have a chance to read both articles, and make other changes if you can. --Prairieplant (talk) 04:00, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Natzweiler-Struthof edits

Hi Prairieplant, Nice edits on the N-S page. I thinks its OK to use youtube videos if that's the best source. Did you check out WP:YOUTUBE? I've never used a youtube video as an inline reference, but did link to a video on the Landsberg am Lech page on the external link section. Regards, NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 16:41, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE Thank you. I will do some more, now I have it certain from my Finnish friend with the excellent command of English that the prisoners/victims were fed well for 15 days as the French say, or two weeks in English, at Natzweiler-Struthof. I found today a good article in French all about this documentary. First it summarizes and quotes from the documentary, in French of course, then has some Q and A with the maker of the documentary, her motivation for making it in 2013 -- which was to put to rest some urban legends at the modern University of Strasbourg medical college and to bring out the facts, how the horrible project originated, the strange reasoning of the Nazis, and how it was conducted. So, I can use that as a text reference and it includes a still of the barracks for those poor souls while they ate well, use one of the four you tube videos for the images of the corpses, and include all four links for the whole documentary in the External links. WP:YOUTUBE was helpful in emphasizing it must be a valid source shown on you tube, the heaven for self made movies. This is a documentary shown in film festivals, and it quotes modern historians in France plus the man who wrote the book, The Names of the Numbers (English translation of his German title), after figuring out in this century how to get the names and biographies of the 86 who were selected for this bizarre project, of which Natzweiler-Struthof was a key location. What a timely comment, thank you. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE The web site, the extensive web site by Hans Joachim Lang is both in Further reading, with your longer description of the several languages available, and in External links, tersely named. Should we delete it from External links, as it is better described in Further reading? Or leave it in both places. I started reading some of the biographies of the 86 people. Lang did a lot of work, knowing birthplaces, names of parents and children, and the fate of others entering Auschwitz on the same transport. There is no mention of the one person shot, and thus not used in the project, but there is mention that three men died on the transport from Auschwitz to Alsace, the train station nearest the camp. Should those specifics be dropped from the article, or both included. It seems that rumor in the present university medical school, that some body parts were stored in the university, was in a small way found to be true, per that web site. From reading records of a French scientist post war, they found the few vials (small containers) of samples after autopsy of the corpses found there, possibly just samples from the first named victim. Knowing the forensic samples existed, they were found, and buried in the cemetery last September, in 2015. How long it takes to trace out the horrors of WWII. --Prairieplant (talk) 23:27, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Prairieplant Let’s keep printed books in “Further Reading” and websites in “External links”. I’ll move the longer description of Lang’s website Die Namen der Nummern down to the "External link"s for consistency since it doesn’t need to be in both places. Also, the link to the fr:WP entry for fr:Hans-Joachim Lang should properly be in the “See Also” section, not in the External Links. Maybe the details about the man who was shot and the three people who died en route should be on the Jewish skeleton collection article, instead of the Natzweiler-Struthof article about the camp itself? We should keep the article on N-S related to the camp and readers can go to the linked detailed article on the Collection for more details. I don’t think those details need to be in both places. Do you have refs? I heard about the recent burials of remains – yes it’s about time. The remains discovered this month are to be buried at the Cronenbourg Jewish cemetery. I think you should mention that. I found something about the question about the source of the images taken of the corpses, presumably including that of Menachem Taffel. The document says that the “French Office of Investigations of War Crimes” took the photos after the end of the war. Another document mentioned the identification of tattoo on the arm of one victim, which was how Taffel was ultimately identified: NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 04:31, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh, back to the original question regarding referencing of videos - I forgot that I DID use a video as an in-line reference, not for Landsberg am Lech, but for Kaufering concentration camp, ref. 1. But I like the way you referenced the video series for N-S. Cheers. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 04:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE That is a good solution, especially as those three men would have been cremated. The other story seemed to happen at N-S, but it seems like both are not true, and they are from different sources. The three men are described on one of the many pages of Hans-Joachim Lang, the one headed Scientific Murders, the last sentences of the section on that page titled Anthropologists at Auschwitz, with the three men tentatively named. There is a photo of the forensic samples being buried in the grave at the Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg in the section titled News. The man who was shot, he was in the article since I have been reading it. The article about the second documentary film, posted by RFI, says it was a woman, not a man, but does not name her. Maybe I should write a person, in the Jewish Skeleton Collection article? Good to know for certain the owner of the photographs is France. You are so good at finding these original records. Several were in that second documentary, and the three places the photo of the man identified in 1970, identified finally by the numbers on his arm, visible in that photo. Each use has its own justification. I hope the video does for now in the N-S article. There is a photo in the Commons of Hans-Joachim Lang next to the list of names placed at the concentration camp. Would that have value in the N-S article?

Some more remains were discovered this month, March 2016? Well, that must feel awful for the university, as I assume these were found there where the ones were found last year, guided by the files of someone working there post war, and buried. Such a story. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I think the image of Lang would be better in the Jewish skeleton collection article, if at all. While he did incredible work in giving the victims final identification, I don't think the article should be about him other than referencing his work. Since there is no article on Lang on the English Wikipedia, maybe we should create a new article? My translation skills are better from French than into French (I updated the en:WP article on Herrlisheim by translating the fr:Herrlisheim article), but I am willing to help (maybe Finnusertop can be enlisted?). Thanks for the nice comment on my research acumen.

Sorry, I misspoke about more remains being found - I was reading an online newspaper which only gives the current date, not the original date of publication. Mea culpa. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 14:54, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE Oh, that is a relief! One such discovery of forensic samples, 70 years later, seems enough. News sources that do not mark the date of the article are rather frustrating, in real life and for Wikipedia references. Lang seems noteworthy or is the term notable, with all the work he did to make those people visible to history, when the purpose of Night and Fog, a theme for Natzweiler-Struthof, was that people disappeared with no records at all, because they were not important. And I am sure those people selected for the skeleton project were meant to be anonymous, and now their stories, their names, are known in detail. I think it would be a good idea to have an English language article on Lang, and translating from the French article is a good start. I need to read the French one again, but I was not sure it included his most recent work. Yes, it will be quite logical then to have images of him in an article about him. Yes, Finnusertop might be interested as well. It startles me how new work keeps happening about WWII, but I suppose I should not be surprised, because the war was so huge, and so horrible in so many places, so many ways. --Prairieplant (talk) 03:38, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

New article on Hans-Joachim Lang

Hi Prairieplant. Per our earlier discussion, I took a stab at translating the fr:Hans-Joachim Lang and de:Hans-Joachim Lang to create a new English WP article. Actually, I asked my father to help with the German translation since he served as a French and German translator with the U.S. 7th Army in Alsace 1944-45. Before posting it, I wanted some feedback. It's really no more than a Start-class level but at least it's a start. Let me know what you think, and maybe Finnusertop too. Here is the link to my sandbox User:N0TABENE/sandbox/Hans-Joachim Lang - I didn't want to move it to the Draft space before getting another set of eyes on it. Thanks. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 20:53, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE That is a good article, with relevant citations and a good structure. I would include in the lead his significant accomplishment, publishing the names of 86 victims of a Nazi project, people whose names the Nazis meant to erase from history while using their bodies for a pseudo-science project. Well, that is not the best possible sentence, but something like that so his notability is immediately clear in the lead, as it is in the article. The other point is to call it Reich or Reichs University of Strasbourg in English. You use Reichsuniversität of Strasbourg in part of the article, and the English title in other parts, but without the word Reichs. I think it is important to separate the German Reich's time at those buildings from the French time before and afterward in a consistent fashion, so the readers know all this horror happened in the time of the Third Reich, and it is since then that it has slowly been unraveled and understood, and further, the nazi (reading too much French, they do not capitalize it) goal of having proof of the master race by displaying the extinct inferior race, and keeping the skeletons for display as nameless, of no history, no family, no city of birth.

Of course there are commas here and there to move, and subject-verb agreement, all small things. Is Schwäbisches Tagblatt the same as Schwäbisches Blatt? Meaning Schwabian Daily Paper perhaps? Perhaps best to use the same exact name throughout, and once translate the name to English. Or say, while working as editor of the newspaper, Dr. Lang studied the war crimes of . . .

I like to use trans-title in the citations of items written in another language, so the English speaking readers of en Wikipedia have a hint what the reference is. Would you like it if I did that feature in your references? The major journal article, title=Skelette für Straßburg Eines der grausigsten Wissenschaftsverbrechen des "Dritten Reiches" ist endlich aufgeklärt and trans-title=Skeletons for Strasbourg: One of the most gruesome crimes of science in the "Third Reich" is finally cleared, that one seems worthy of a translated title, even if it is simply the best Google translate and I can do jointly. And it would be nice to know what the Wächterpreis award means. Keeper Award of German Daily Newspapers -- Keeper of what? Can your father make sense of that? The other two awards are for his work unlocking the names and stories of the 86 in the Skeleton Project. That first award is something to do with him being a good editor of that newspaper, right? None of the google suggestions were very enlightening, except to make it clear that Wachter means keeper, literally. But I think literally is not helping make sense of the award.

You have kept a dry tone, I think. The rather encyclopedic tone that Wikipedia likes, I suppose, but a few adjectives or sentences on the horror of the original Nazi project, Hirt's grand pseudo-science idea, on the hard work of untangling the histories of the people, taking them from the skeleton project to 86 real people with histories and families, those seem appropriate to me. Horrible things need the right adjectives. That page in French by Gérard GINSBURGER that you reference really goes into depth on the horror of the nazi (in French again) project, and the diligent efforts of Lang, and his apparent goals of educating his own post war generation and the younger generations on exactly what happened. Does that provide some justification for stronger terms, perhaps by quoting in English a line or two from that link. It is a huge thing Lang has done, it seems clear to me. He could have left that trail untravelled, but he did not.

Oh, your father was there! It is wonderful that he helped you out. And amazing what he did in his young days. My father was in the Pacific, a SeaBee (CB, the new construction battalion of the US Navy) and he died over 35 years ago, leaving few stories behind. I am glad you have your father. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:02, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I'll be a bit busy in the near-future, so I can't afford spend too much time on this project. But from the looks of it, the draft in N0TABENE's sandbox looks like a great start. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:52, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Prairieplant Thanks for the detailed read and the good suggestions. I would welcome the copyediting you suggest, and adding the translated titles seems like a good idea. If you could help with that it would be appreciated. I will stick to the term Reichsuniversität Straßburg and use the English translation with the first use only. Schwäbisches Tagblatt and Schwäbisches Blatt are indeed the same - they came from 2 different sources (as does the spelling of Hirt's assistant M. Henrypierre/Henripierre. Even Hirt's name is spelled Hirth in some wartime documents. I'll change it all to Tagblatt since that is what the paper currently uses. Dad says "wachter" literally mean "watcher" as in a guard. Since its a prize from the Freedom of the Press Foundation, it seems to be a Guardian of the Free Press Prize, but that's a loose translation. I'm not sure that a literal translation is better than just giving the name in German. After all - what is the "meaning" of Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prize?

I guess I tend to have a more academic, less prosaic approach to writing, even with such despicable deeds. I think the horror of the facts speak for themselves without directly telling people how horrible they were. I do like your idea of adding a quote - it should be from Lang himself I think - about why he pursued the project. The most moving article was the one by Amy Bazelon where she had images of people who were murdered when they were alive which gave more meaning to the stories. I found Bazelon's article on the French Slate.com site, before realizing that she worked for the New York Times, and the article had been translated from English into French, then I was reading it in French and translating back ....oh well ...).

Sorry about the loss of your father and thanks for his service. 35 years ago Dad didn't talk about it at all. Now he goes down to the WW2 Memorial and gives lectures to the Park Rangers. He's giving a talk to a Military History forum next month (he learned Powerpoint at age 90). A few years ago we went with vets from his Division back to the battlefields in France and Germany with historians. He's still pretty active. Thanks for your help on this and I appreciate the collegial collaboration. Cheers. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 21:01, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Fixed the Tagblatt, Reichsuniversität and added a quote from Lang. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 21:50, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE Very strong quote from Lang, well chosen. I will try to translate the first award, or explain it. Nobel Prize always has a crucial word or two attached, Nobel Peace Prize or Nobel Prize for Chemistry or the Nobel Prize for Physics, making it clear what is recognized. And that famous award, it can be quickly learned, is named for Alfred Nobel who established the fund and the institute to make the awards each year. Pulitzer is also someone's name and the awards are mainly in journalism and literature, and each award has a similar helpful name, like Pulitzer Prize for Poetry or Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism. The same clarity is not found in that German award title, but knowing the name of the group that issued the award makes it much clearer. On to my keeping my promise to translate names. Thanks about my Dad. We will never know what stories he might have told, had he lived longer. As his post war focus was set once he met my mother soon after coming home, the only story we heard was how he and some others spent time melting nickels down to make rings, using attractive stones found on the island where they were working. He gave that ring to my Mom when he proposed. Very upbeat story for us, his children, but for certain not all he experienced while making runways on Pacific islands, I suspect. Your Dad seems to follow the pattern that Ken Burns discovered, and why he did his documentary on The War when he did, when veterans turning 80 suddenly told their family members stories never told in all the years since coming home from that war. Burns realized that was his moment to get interviews with veterans. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:57, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Check if Aufbegehren should be rebellion as I put, or revolt is better? Also the phrase "Ein Freund geblieben" which I put as :One friend remained", and added the rest of the article title in German and in English, to make sense of the terse phrase. Hope I do not drive you crazy with spaces added or deleted. In refs, I sometimes find them easier to read/check with a space before a pipe. I notice you use no spaces before the pipes. I removed spaces between text and the ref tag. That article by Bazelon is really strong, tying together important scientific issues of today, arising from the time of WWII. --Prairieplant (talk) 10:15, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your invaluable help with the sub-titles. Dad suggested the sub-title be: "The Theodor Roller revolt against Hitler". Its an interesting story (on the de:Theodor Roller page). "Ein Freund geblieben" is good as "One friend remained". The Wachterpreis reference we discussed for awhile, and its going to some kind of compromise since he says its a bit idiomatic. The closest maybe is "Guardian of the German Press, awarded by the German Freedom of the Press Foundation".

About the pipes, I totally agree that no spaces in-between makes reading very difficult and I used to put them in, but then some bot would come along and remove all of them. Now, there are few things I hate more than mindless bots, or "editors" who instead of contributing content, add or remove spaces from article pushing them into the 100,000+ edit category, which really doesn't add anything to Wikipedia IMO. Anyway, that's the reason I don't put the spaces in, but it does make it more difficult for those of us who like doing manual edits. Life is a compromise. Anyway, I think the article is good to go. Maybe we should have a DYK if it gets accepted? Thanks again. Look forward to collaborating again.NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 20:57, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes it is ready, and worth suggesting it for did you know . . . ? Can we put that Germab Wikipedia page in See also? I mean the page that lists the winners of that press freedom award by year. I had put it next to the award as a source, a bit clunky perhaps. When writing about authors who get awards, I try hard to find a source that lists the awards, either a Wikipedia page or the website of the organization giving the award. First time I have tried using my mobile phone to type for Wikipedia. A bit odd! Easier on the lap top Prairieplant (talk) 04:14, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I put the link to the :de:Wächterpreis der deutschen Tagespresse page with the list of winners as the for the Award he won last night, and also corrected the link on the Talk page noting that the :fr: and :de: Wikipedia articles were used to translate this page (I learned you have to do that when you use another language WP page to edit or create a page on :en:WP). I'll add Wächterpreis der deutschen Tagespresse it to the See Also. Thanks. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 12:20, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Lang DYK?

What do you think of this for a DYK ....

... Hans-Joachim Lang published the identities of all 86 victims murdered for the Jewish skeleton collection of the Nazi anatomist August Hirt?

I have 2 pending DYK nominations – maybe you’d like to submit this or another one? This is less than 200 characters. The submission date was 3/28/16, so there's 7 days since creation. I think it's still pending review because it's a WP:BLP. I created 2 new articles on World War 2 generals withing the last week and both were patrolled and published within hours.NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 21:54, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE} How do I request publication in DYK? Certainly I will do it. I looked at today's DYK, and counted words not characters, and 21 to 30 words seems typical. All of them begin with . . . that, so I tried turning this around as to sentence order, and adding long-lost & infamous as eye-catching words, for 29 words.

... that the long-lost names of 86 people killed for August Hirt, the Nazi anatomist infamous for the Jewish skeleton collection over 70 years ago were published by Hans-Joachim Lang?

But your sentence is good, too. So either one, if you tell me the first step as to where to send it. I never did that before. Yes, biographies of living persons are touchier, but this is good, as his work is being recognized by English speaking writers. Plus what he did is amazing. I cannot think of a way to work in Natzweiler-Struthof, but the articles are all linked, if one reaches any one of them. Yes, Wikipedia wants it noted that translations from other language Wikipedias are a start for the English article. In fact, some English articles are marked, improve this by using the French article! --Prairieplant (talk) 02:08, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I put my sentence in a character counter, which found 179 characters of finished text -- not the html. Is that the right thing to count? I hope so. Brackets and pipes seem unimportant, to me. I found the page to submit DYK so I will do it now. I am using the template page, which linked me to Creating Template: Did You Know, and will follow it. --Prairieplant (talk) 11:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

That's correct - use the Template talk:Did_you_know#To_nominate_an_article instructions. The form lets you suggest more than one "hook" so the editors that select these things can chose from between multiple entries (shown as "ALT1" and "ALT2" on the submissions page). There are a strict set of criteria including no more than 200 characters (with spaces but not ellipses or punctuation), less than 7 days old or article expanded more than 5x (I once submimited a DYK for an article I expanded by "only" 3x and got reamed by reviewers). If you've submitted more tan 5 DYK you have to review someone else's contributions before another one of yours is accepted, but the first 5 submissions are exempt. Let me know if you need help but I think you figured it out. I like both of the "hooks". NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 13:29, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE The DYK cannot be submitted until the article stops being a draft. Plus I filled the form out incorrectly, putting my name in a place that was supposed to have your name. So, to keep my promise, I will submit the DYK again once the article can be seen by all, and I will fill out the form correctly and post it to the right place. Once it was in the right place, a reviewer commented rather quickly about my errors, which you can see here: Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Hans-Joachim_Lang. Sorry for my errors. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:54, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENEThank you kindly! That was a very nice way to learn that the article was put in the main space. I read that German Wikipedia article, just the two paragraphs of biography, and I can make no sense of the first paragraph, using google translate. It seems there might be something of use, but the translator lost all track of order of the words, and my best guessing does not turn it into what editor Zanhe sees there, an extra sentence or two for the biography. This man Lang has no mother, no father, no family, no hobbies, nothing but go to college, get his degree, teach at the same college, and be the editor of a science daily, and write books of great significance from a strong intellectual vantage point. I know more about people living in 12th century England, well, the ones mentioned in the Cadfael books, at least, in the time of the Anarchy in England. (I will refrain from all jokes). So, can you pull a sentence or two that properly connects those three people named on the German page? I think Lang is now an honorary professor, and I am not sure just what that means in his university. Honored or honorary? He is on the faculty. They let him out more for all this research? But some sort of honor was given him as to his university status. Not an award, but a position. He seems too young yet to be emeritus, in the American fashion.

All this talk because Zanhe thinks an article about the man should have a few more words about the man, which is reasonable. Then there is my tiny point, Lang worked from a copy of the original list by Henri Henrypierre, as he said in the interview linked on his own web site in the News tab, just the google translation not a proper translation. Here is Q by a magazine, A by Lang: Q Why was it so important to you? Because it cannot be allowed or that the victims remain anonymous?

A Can be, yes. Given murdered six million Jews can somehow come to terms with anonymity, the number is so enormous in size. 86 - - But in this crime, the number seemed manageable, especially since I had the processes already reasonably reconstructed. When I came across the testimony of Henry Henry Pierre, who had then listed the numbers of victims, let me not rest this. These notes have yet to be somewhere, I thought inconceivable that they were thrown away! The original I have not found yet, but a copy of a copy - after two years of research. This moment was actually the first great experience. Completely inspired me when I met much later restarted nationals. Since I wanted to finish it necessarily.

In another Q and A, he mentioned that the French archives were sealed for 100 years, due to the sensitivity of the collaborators issue. No one knows what is those archives, but maybe the original is there? Small point, I realize. I went through the whole interview in case he talked about himself, which he did, but only in terms of the work, why he did it, why was he afraid when he first visited relatives of one of these 86 people. He did not know what emotions he would release. But it turned out to be good, one woman's response was that they could do their family history now, after talking with him. I did some unproductive searching for more interviews with him, or a news article, but nothing yet. How did you find the Slate article? It would be nice to have the DYK, and so far the one you wrote is winning. The other one needs the 70 years ago part to be dropped, it is both redundant and to one editor confusing. Well done, you, starting the article, and finding those sources in archives. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:01, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Prairieplant. I don't know what Zanhe is talking about on the German page, other than the fact that Lang seems to have received a Master's degree in 1976. the problem is the the citation on the German page is way off - the citation is for a book about the theoretical linguistics comparison between Noam Chomsky and BF Skinner. The weird thing is the only relationship with Lang is that the book is published by "Robert Lang Publishing", and that's the only reference to him having a Masters. So I omitted that. There's no other bio info that i haven't included on the German page. I went back and added something from the French Wikipedia entry on Lang refusing an award because the person whom the prize was named for worked for Goebbels during the war. There was a good article that I cited today in Der Zeit on his rejection of that award. I searched the university, his publisher, his website and every other source ( I think you once commented on how good my researching skills are, which are pretty thorough if I do say so), and I can't find anything else. the thing is, this is a nomination for a DYK hook, not a request to classify the article (which needs to be done also) so I'm not sure why he's commenting on the content that isn't there. Because he mentioned the length of the Jewish Skeleton Collection which I still think is just a summary I put all the sections under one header for the book, and added another section about the other works he's written, to round out the article and take the emphasis off the one book. I did find a scholarly article co-authored by a Hans-Joachim Lang in 1974 on a science-fiction work from 1820, which I added, but I'm wondering if a 23 year old would have written a piece like this.

His position I translated as Adjunct Professor, even though literally it says "Honorary Professor", we don't have a term like that in English. An adjunct professor is an unpaid member of the faculty who may teach but is not fulltime faculty. I'm actually an adjunct professor of medicine so I understand the title.

I found the slate article on the French WP ref list - so I started reading and translating it. when I got to the end, it said that someone had translated the article by Bazelon into French, and Bazelon worked for the New York Times Magazine. So I went back to slate.com and did a manual search of all articles Bazelon wrote on the English site, et voila. At this stage, unless I contact his publisher or him directly at the University, there's nothing else I can find to add. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 16:36, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Adjunct professor, that makes sense. Solves that one. I fixed spelling of Zanhe above so that editor will see the limited info available so far on that author's bio. A purely professional bio. Thanks for making sense of that paragraph, my polyglot friend. Good word, that one. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:12, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE That is a better organization for the article, and adding his other notable works puts the focus on Lang properly, even if he has total separation of personal and professional lives. I hope editor Zanhe sees that as well. Cannot report more than is on the record for his biography. This has been fun and I have learned so much. That challenging article on Natzweiler-Struthof that I once stumbled upon has made me work to understand it, try better organization for it, which you improved further, and made clear the long process of dealing with the war, its effects lasting so many decades. There have been the dark moments for me, when I must rest from editing, as I absorb the horrors of the camps & the Nazi approach, also worth learning about myself and learning about history, when I thought I knew those topics well enough, at least emotionally. Those rests are not needed when I edit an article about a historical novel or other less intense topic. Still a few details to have perfect consistency on all three articles, like the mysterious 87th who was shot. Lang does not support that story, but does support that 3 died en route to N-S. Is he the best source, given his detailed five years in those complex records and the continuing work of meeting relatives, descendants to solve the mystery of the peculiar Nazi project? Well that is for me to add back to the first two articles what was learned for the third. And I am learning how to use this mobile phone/computer for Wikipedia, but the lap top is always easier for this. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:51, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Prairieplant Understand your "burn-out" working on this. That happened to me when reading through the War Crimes transcripts a few months ago. That's why I've written or re-written a few other articles on less emotional topics, like the history of photography and various medical-related articles. As a last resort, I did send a query to Lang's publisher regarding his bio. About the other details like the 87th person, I'm wondering if contacting Lang directly might be the best way to go. I've come across his direct contact info and he might just be amenable to clarifying the details. Bazelon might also be a source, but she didn't do the primary research. Also, do you want to respond to the DYK nomination or just leave the discussion here? Have a good rest if I don't hear back from you. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 21:49, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Prairieplant What is your opinion of Zanhe's recommendation to shorted the Jewish Skeleton Collection section off the Lang article? I only put in enough to relate the story, although maybe the dates of the gassings and the fate of Hirt is too much detail? Personally, I don't most people go the the <Main article unless there's enough info to peak their interest. On the the hand, the purpose of the Lang article i to focus on his accomplishments. Thoughts? NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 17:47, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE I just added the dates into the Jewish skeleton collection text. So you could say on four days in August. The only thing I can think to eliminate is the post-war fate of the people who set up the Jewish skeleton collection. If the summary looks too long, add a sentence or two to the work by Lang? Making the summary look shorter in contrast. I have no idea if Zanhe is correct on his assessment. Your summary reads better than the main article, there is the real issue! The main article still contains the data from the second source, the French article about the documentary winning an award at a movie festival, about that person, male or female, who was shot for not wanting to be gassed. I did add in Lang's part about the three shipped from Auschwitz who died en route, but the section does not read smoothly yet, starting as it does with 87, not 89 or 86. Ah, the body measurements were taken at at Auschwitz, not Natzweiler-Struthof, but that does not decrease text, just moves it about. I feel it is essential to know the horrible collection project to comprehend the accomplishment of Lang in exposing it. So maybe I do not agree with Zanhe very well. I know you like facts to speak for themselves, but could it be added that he spent five years to search the records to learn the identities, with the list of numbers in hand? Is that unnecessary information in your view? Well, some words to convey the difficulty of searching the records. He did not happen on the list by Herny Henrypierre, then find the list at Auschwitz, match the numbers and in two weeks, he was done. That is why the interviewer asked him questions about how did he persist to the end point, of names with stories. Is a quote from that interview usable? That is my quest to add a bit to Lang's work, so the balance is different. Will Zanhe see it that way? I do not know. But your re-organization crossed some magic length criterion I did not know existed, more than worth it. By the bye, that French article about the documentary includes a photo of August Hirt. Wikipedia does not have one of him yet, not at the article about him, or in the Jewish skeleton collection article. Oh wait, the same photo is on Lang's web site, in The Perpetrators. The latter is headed by one of the other biggies in guilt, which ends up as the image of the article, being the first one, I guess, though there is no infobox for a project like the skeleton collection. I ramble. Hope some of this is helpful.

Here are two possible bits of recognition to add, taken from Lang's web site, News, 2005, Dec 11. Dr. Urban Wiesing, professor of medical ethics at the University of Tübingen. In the Newspaper for Medical Ethics (61st volume, published March 2005), he writes: "This book is unusual. . . . But the book is more than an essay on the moral catastrophe of medicine. It tells not only of a crime, but also writes history in a special way one step further: it gives the victims back their names." I think those are the best parts. Feel free to shorten it more, you are good at that. Maybe you can find the proper citation for Newspaper for Medical Ethics, too. I read from the English translation page, not the German original. His web site has a second review from Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Professor of contemporary history, in the Schwäbisches Tagblatt, "His research led him throughout Europe and finally to Jerusalem and Washington. He found relatives in Argentina, in many European lands, in Israel and in the U.S. (...)" Then there is the interview with Lang, same page and year, in June. It refers to an interview published December 14th in Die Tageszeitung. It is in German at http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/?dig=2004/12/18/a0349. Here is one source of five years of research, from the interview, the bit of it printed on the web site: Q TAZ: What motivated you the whole time – it took a whole five years, no? A Lang: What motivated me was the question: What could life have been, for the people who were murdered there? Where did they come from? At first I thought I could quickly find the names in an archive, but there were no details about them in the records. When an Auschwitz survivor told me finally, that one would probably never be able to find them, I felt I simply had to continue. end of quote from Lang. At that link, the article is all in German. I read it all, putting each Q and A in Google for slightly jumbled but understandable English. Google really has a problem getting the subject - verb - object in English from the German. These two ideas are in the vein of adding more about Lang, to make the Skeleton project text look shorter, and I hope make the point that Lang's accomplishment is clear when one knows the challenges he faced, the original horror, and new horror each time he uncovered more facts. The uncertainty of how the relatives of these people would take the news of what he learned. This is in effect the long part of the title he gave to his article in Die Zeit, "One of the most gruesome crimes of science in the "Third Reich" is finally cleared". The notions of medical ethics, of the strange phase of people believing in eugenics, science versus pseudo-science, those are all behind how Hirt had such a strange notion and others followed his orders -- but that is beyond the scope of the article on Lang. Well, I natter on. Is any of this helpful? Are these things I should just add myself? But you have set the style of this article, its clarity of writing and organization, so you get to decide. --Prairieplant (talk) 20:06, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, life got in the way. There have been a few people doing some copy editing already, and no one else has commented on the length of the Jewish skeleton collection. I *could* shorten it, but to be honest, I don't think it's necessary. It gives enough detail so people know what the book was about, and then maybe enough to drive people to read the main article. I like the two quotes you mentioned. I will try to review and incorporate them - but I did get gun-shy about quotes when someone said (incorrectly) that a quote was a copyright violation, although it was in quotation marks and cited immediately after the close of the quote. That is the problem with these automated bots that just look for similar phrases. When I pointed that out, the reviewer withdrew the comment. I found the source of the review by Weising and will add that to the section you wrote on "Recognition" along with the quote from Bazelon. I also asked that the article be reviewed for classification (it probably a C-class right now). I think the article serves the purpose we started out to do - to provide an article about the author of the book, and I think the artice is better than either the French or German wikipedia article, IMHO. cheers. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk

Incomplete DYK nomination

A Barnstar for You!

DYK for Hans-Joachim Lang

Precious

The Secret Adversary

Hi,

I do not agree with deleting the second revision of The Secret Adversary, where it is explained where the name of Jane Finn was first heard. I am sorry, but without some explanation about Jane Finn's choice of name by Tuppence, the whole plot makes no sense. I did the shortest possible explanation using the existing text, but I could have added a whole paragrapth, so I disagree that the edit was too much explanation. The rules say to keep it simple, but no so simple that someone who has not read the book cannot understand it. If you read the plot part assuming that you have not read the book, you will see that it has many holes. Some are not important, but that particular one is a crucial plot device. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheAlitxu (talk • contribs) 07:32, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

TheAlitxu Hello. That plot summary is very long per Wikipedia guide lines; it needs to be almost one third shorter. It is flagged for too much detail. I am not sure what you mean by "holes" in the summary. There is no way to capture every twist and turn of the novel as Christie wrote it; read the novel for that. Where the invented name came from is a small detail, as interesting as Jane Finn becomes in the novel. It is a challenge to do a short summary; the other Tommy and Tuppence novels are summarized briefly. The summary can be a lot shorter and still convey the plot. Editors coming upon this article have the task of making it shorter, eliminating details while still providing the flow. So the task is to find ways to remove details from this plot summary, not to add them. It takes some thinking to decide what can be dropped or said in fewer words, especially when summarizing a story that has many twists and turns. It is good that you did not add a whole paragraph! MOS:PLOT and WP:PLOTSUM shed some light on ways to shorten a plot summary and why it is important that the plot summary not dominate the article about a novel. I realize it is difficult to cut away the parts of such interesting plots. If it helps, look at some of the summaries of other novels with much detail that are summarized in a few paragraphs and 800 words or less. The Secret of Chimneys and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd meet the length guidelines yet convey the stories well, in my view. Discussions of what is most important about the novel (a particular plot twist or specific red herrings, for example) belong in the article but not in the plot summary. Those discussions need to be sourced, as Wikipedia is not the place for original research. I hope you can see ways to shorten the summary, so that someday the flag about too much detail can be removed. I hope that helps. I appreciate that you posted your concerns on my talk page; it is important to know how each of use views a change. I do encourage you to edit articles and learn the rules and guidelines as you go along. Do remember to sign your posts, using the four tilde in a row. Tilde is upper case of the left most key in the number row on my lap top, and in the the third set of characters on my phone (ABC is 1st; 123 is 2nd; #+= is 3rd set). Same symbol that is used over the n in Spanish word señor. I do not know where all computer makers put it! A bot signed for you, which helped me greatly. --Prairieplant (talk) 13:20, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

A Dobos torte for you!

Kaufering concentration camp

Hi Prairieplant The article for the Kaufering concentration camp was tagged as having a copyright violation (not written by me) and the entire section about the origin and history of the camp has been removed. Would you be interested in working together to re-write it since we've worked well together in the past? The 11 Kaufering camps were sub-camps of Dachau concentration camp and used to supply a forced labor force to build the Messerschmitt ME-262 jet fighters and other forced labor industries. It was depicted in the HBO series "Band of Brothers" but that failed to mention that it was actually discovered by the 12th Armored Division that I've written about extensively. It would be an interesting project that I would like working on, if you're interested. Thanks. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk

N0TABENE, I see why they think it was a direct copy from the Holocaust Museum page, because it is. That seems a good source, but no need to copy it word for word. I do not know much about Dachau's sub camps, but it would be interesting to learn more, so yes. I am the slow worker this week but will do what I can. --Prairieplant (talk) 14:51, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Great. Do you want to work on a draft first or just start re-editing the WP page? I have already garnered a few online secondary references that we can use as alternatively sources, and also refer to the USHMM as a source without plagiarizing it. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 18:08, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

I am used to editing the page, but I learned a bit from your draft of the Hans-Joachim Lang page as a good way to write all new text, with the references included. It was easy to do have discussion and do edits on that draft page, which might work with this, as it is the core of the article that was plagiarized. Is this the best way to use a Sandbox page? Sorry I am so slow in replying lately; real life, or RL as someone once called it, has interfered with serious Wikipedia time this month. --Prairieplant (talk) 20:18, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

N0TABENE I apologize for my non activity this past summer and spring too. I have not been so healthy in Real Life, and was limiting myself to edits that took less thinking, like fixing formats in references or checking that references are still current, mainly in articles on my watch list. Then I was asked to work on some articles tied to Jane Austen and her novels, which is a new area for me. I love those novels, but I did not get involved in the Wikipedia articles about them or the author, had my promise to you at the same time, and proceeded tentatively. Yikes, what an experience after the first calm three days. I have learned there is a segment of editors who are against reference formats and all their benefits and fight to do their version of MLA academic style referencing. They oppose Harvard system to link a long list of in line citations to the long references (with a click of the mouse). These editors seem to be part of a clique who support each other, which was really disappointing. One very skilled editor showed how the full citations could appear in their beloved style using Wikipedia formats (some feature called mode=), but they did not choose to read that editor's posts or saved edit to see how it worked. A horrible series of posts followed, where prior posts were not read by those who posted their own views. Two Good Articles have now been dismantled by two editors, because the Good Article status was not based on their writing and evaluation by their friends on the Good Article group, whoever that includes. It was not a good experience overall, except for what I learned from two editors who were very skilled with reference formats. I write you this long note as I try to digest what I learned from the unexpected experience. I am still moving at low speed, hoping to be more useful sometime soon. I hope you have had a good summer! --Prairieplant (talk) 23:47, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Prairieplant. Sorry to hear about your medical and Wiki problems. I too have been relatively inactive, having gotten into a nasty battle of my own with a newbie editor who with one week experience, began massively deleting tables and changing text that he personally disagreed with, and when I insisted he provide references and cease deleting text and reverting edits, he became less than cordial (an understatement). I reported him to the admins but it left such a bad experience that I stopped editing and went over to the new WikiUniversity Journal of Medicine where I became an editor. In the meantime, I took a new job and moved to another state which further limited my time on Wikipedia. I just starting looking at a few edits on my watchlist but didn’t spend as much time as I had. I too have found that there are cliques that insist on their own unreferenced text as being gospel, and take ownership of articles despite Wikipedia’s prohibition on such activity. On the other hand, I have had good experiences with collaborating on some photography related articles where a group of editors reached an amicable consensus on changes, so it just depends. I know we worked well together in the past and hope to renew my editing activity when you’re up to it. Hope you are doing better. NotaBene 鹰百利 ^Talk 22:20, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Please be respectful of other editors

Reverting hard work, explained in Talk, en masse, without explanation in Talk, is uncalled for. Discuss changes. No article is owned by any editor, however interested. The changes were thoughtful, careful, AND SOURCE BASED. They also standardize the article to a more biographical format. Change carefully, slowly, AND EXPLAIN. Le Prof. Leprof 7272 (talk) 17:27, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Respond here, please—I have returned the constructive content you accomplished in your reversion (which removed more than an hour of hard work). I do not know how the Doodle section was lost, but it is now, more encyclopedically, placed in a section for Awards, which can be expanded with other recognitions. (Doodles and single sentences usually are not basis for whole sections.) You expansion upon the rape sentence I take on good faith to be accurate to the source, and so I placed that source as a second appearance at that point. Hence, I have taken nothing out that you have added. Please be so kind, via comparable single element edits—rather than massive, all encompassing, disrespectful reversions—to make changes one or a few at a time, and to discuss them in Talk, and via sunbstative edit summaries. All of what I did is not garbage. The article is the world's and WP's, and not either of ours. Please. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 17:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to remove any reference to Roumanian. I did not add that. You are missing what was done. The changes to the lede and article sectioning were important and substantial, and encyclopedic. QUIT REVERTING LARGE NUMBERS OF EDITS ALL AT ONCE. Change and explain. The article is not yours. You have written NOTHING in the Talk page. Leprof 7272 (talk) 17:45, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I am finished with the article. I worked a long time while you were writing on the talk page. I had already written there more than once. You then undid what I had cleaned up -- the action that upset you, it upset me when you did it yourself. I apologize for not knowing you were working when I was. My time for Wikipédia today is done. This was frustrating, and less pleasant to have shout (all caps) descriptions put as I worked. The IP address folks made much trouble, so I found it easier to revert to an earlier version and then put the few useful additions back in systematically. You prefer to revise more and ignore cited sentences, and add back errors once fixed. You seem to want to work alone, and now you can. Perhaps some lessons are learned that might make a future encounter more pleasant & productive. --Prairieplant (talk) 18:17, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

There is no shouting from me, only emphasis. You discuss things that do not touch on what I did (Romanian), ignore contributions made (sectioning, lede revision), and threw out hours of work with massive reverting edits. How was I to get your attention, to slow you down and to make small edits, with explanations, and discussion at Talk?

As it stands, I have reviewed your edits as they came, and tried to put in anything new, that was not just a reversion (your change to the rape sentence, etc., as already noted). That is, I tried not to be guilty, too, of throwng baby out with bath. If you have more additions, why not make them to the article as it stands? (Why keep eliminating the new sections that are standard to the biography, and re-adding husband and children to the lede, which is essentially never done, unless they are notable?) If ^{[citation needed]} tags should come out, take them out. You do not have to obliterate the rest of the work to do this.

Please note that every other edit today, besides mine, and your reversions, have been incremental, and I have had no problem with them (indeed, thanking each for the attention). This, I think, is how editing us supposed to work. If you have an issue of where one of the new sections is placed, or the move of the suburb and children out of the lede—address these one at a time, with discussion. I am game for many improvements, just not having all the hard work, in keeping with guidelines, thrown out at once. If I have erred in terms of policies about the lede, or creating sections in Bios, I am very game to be told. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 19:43, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

In this vein, note, I went and looked at the sources you indicated, and removed ^{[citation needed]} tags from the "Personal life" section. As well, I removed my ^{[not verified in body]} tag, placing the number into the main body, with the two citations you recommended. (That is to say, I am responsive to all of your constructive, article improving suggestions.) Note, however, the NYT and AmerSci articles said 8400, and "nearly 85%", and so this is what the article now says.

Otherwise, I am sorry about the edit conflict, and in future, I will put up an "under construction tag," so you know when I am done. I have no grievance with you—I am very glad that the article has a dedicated editor. There just has to be room for others to make contributions as well. And it appears that your first response to change, is to change it all back. This is not the way forward. Not all changes of others (registered, or IP editors) are going to be bad.

Anything more that is about the article, will be at that Talk page, and not here. If we have "making up" to do, we can do it here, but anything further on the content is there. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 18:40, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Your nice edits at the novels of Jane Austen

You have made some nice edits at some of the novels for Jane Austen and I was wondering if this was a casual interest in her novels or if you might have a larger interest in her novels. If you might have an interest in possibly improving one or two of them to peer review status then perhaps you could let me know which of her novels you might consider being at the top of such a list. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 16:56, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Fountains-of-Paris Thank you for the kind words. I do love all of the Jane Austen novels, read them often. Re-reading them so often, I guess that is more than a casual interest in Austen's novels. I was disappointed at the articles on Austen's novels in Wikipedia, hoping to learn more from those educated and literary folks who write books and articles about her novels. That did not happen, as the focus in the English Wikipedia articles right now is on plot summary and characters, some of the publication history, but not literary significance and criticism, and the changing views since she wrote the novels. I am not and never was a lit major, just one who loves her novels, especially Persuasion and of late Emma and Mansfield Park. I do not have the literary criticism knowledge in my head or at my fingertips, which is what seems to be lacking. Some energetic person wrote one article of criticism and reviews of her as an author, all the novels tossed in, Reception history of Jane Austen. It is an interesting article, but usually that criticism goes with each novel, rather than the author, or so I think. Recently I aided some other editors when one (not I) took up the advice to translate from the French Wikipedia article on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens to improve the article in English Wikipedia. We got the reference methods consistent, as the French article used a slightly different style than the article had, and once the translated text was included, we could set up a better organization. With that included, it was a good article, where I learned more than I could by reading the book so often -- but no one pursued a better rating for that article, though it is better than C class in my view. So odd to me that the French speakers took the time to write a better article on a novel by a beloved English author, but there it is. I have been learning the layout of articles on novels, how to do references in several systems and how to follow out online links to be sure they are live and pertinent, so I am useful on those aspects. I can read text to be sure it is clear, and sometimes I am good at concise, too. I know that the lead should include the highlights of the article, and have been getting better at that. I can summarize the literary criticism and evaluation, but I cannot write it as the first draft, with proper inline citations. I hope that is not too disappointing. If you find someone who can do the criticism, or pull apart the article on Reception history of Jane Austen for the parts pertinent to one novel, I could assist in that, and enjoy doing it. Perhaps you see different needs for the articles? It seems overdue, an excellent article on the best novels by English authors, in English Wikipedia. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:08, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Its of merit to hear that those three novels you single out are at the top of your list. There is much to recommend Emma possibly as a good starting point for discussion. In terms of commentary available then Emma is likely just behind Pride and Prejudice in the amount of scholarly attention it receives. There are several short cuts available to reading the "best criticism" about the individual novels of Austen which I could make available to you should you be able to identify if Emma draws your present attention. This publicly available link is for an Austen dissertation from 30 years ago which you might enjoy reading miscellaneous chapters from (not the whole thing). Its author believes that Emma is the best character in Austen from which to begin to understand Isabel Archer in Henry James' well-known novel titled The Portrait of a Lady, and not Miss Bennet. Emma is also the top choice of Prof Susan Morgan at Stanford University who has written a book about Austen. I can get the other essay links or cites for you about the best Emma commentaries available if it sounds like this might be an interesting place to start. If you decide that its not Emma that draws you present attention, then either Persuasion or Mansfield Park are fine choices as well and I could get the best links for those novels if you prefer. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 19:39, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Emma is a fine novel with which to start, and the one I re-read most recently. Pride and Prejudice is a very fine novel, but not a good place to start, but I cannot turn my intuition on that into words. That dissertation you linked is the kind of knowledge I do not have, but enjoy reading. The mind of the literary critic, bringing in so many authors and books, evaluating the plots and characters, so impressive! But that PhD thesis may be be making it clear why there is an article bouncing from one novel to the other, rather than criticism included specifically on each novel -- if all the literary folks write like the PhD author, all Austen's novels and main characters are in play in one paragraph of the text, or at least three novels and three main characters. Focus on one novel is the challenge, to improve the article. Hmmm, I am amazed to learn that Knightley is not attractive to female readers of Emma, or so the PhD author in the 1980s wrote. I might add one of my interests, how Austen was the favorite author of Patrick O'Brian, whose novels I greatly enjoy. He wrote about the Royal Navy and the same era as Austen, and his writing is clearly influenced by her, but he wrote his series of novels in the latter part of the 20th century. Still, I cannot write like that PhD author. What are your ideas as to what is needed most to improve the article on Emma? --Prairieplant (talk) 20:03, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

That was a nice nod from you yesterday on Persuasion. For some reason I was expecting to hear from you about Emma. During the summer since June I have collected the top 7-8 essay about Emma and was thinking of using these to improve the article towards peer review level. If you might be interested in taking part then maybe some of those top essays from the last 30 thirty years might be useful for you as well. Its common for Austen scholars to compare the separate Austen novels to each other in trying to gain insight into her approach. Maybe this would sound interesting to you. If you are more focused on Persuasion then that article could also be enhanced separately. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 15:44, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, Fountains-of-Paris, I was considering your request, but also having a bad summer as to health, so my editing is at a lower level than earlier in the year. Persuasion warrants deep thinking, and my issue now is aspects of RL or Real Life as one editor put it rather humorously. You improved the article greatly by deleting the unsourced material and re-arranging text as you did. Do you see a section entitled Style or Narrative Voice being added? As to the essays you collected, a really impressive thing, are they on paper or on line? I have never done that level of writing/thinking, comparing novels by one author. Persuasion is the book of hers I read the most times, it is always the most appealing to me. I have read all of them multiple times, but read Persuasion the most often. --Prairieplant (talk) 04:53, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

That was interesting and good to hear about your interest in Austen and Narrative theory. Austen is considered a leading author in the use of free indirect discourse and such a section would be useful and notable in the Persuasion article. There is already an article on free indirect discourse at Wikipedia which I have linked in the lead section of the Persuasion article. I think a short section singling out three or four instances of Austen's use of free indirect discourse in Persuasion would make a good section if you are interested in trying it. If you have a college library or a large community library nearby to where you are then you might also enjoy getting a copy of the Norton Critical edition of Persuasion which has collected several excellent and hard to find essays about Persuasion after the end of the novel which you might enjoy reading. I hope your health issues this summer which you mention are getting better and to hear more of your thoughts on Persuasion and Narrative theory. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 16:48, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Fountains-of-Paris In checking the ISBN to be sure they were correct, I stumbled on a Goodreads review that mentioned Harold Bloom in the 1990s; chasing that down, I found that he calls Persuasion the perfect novel. Is he worth mentioning? His book was reviewed in the New York Times at https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/01/specials/bloom-canon.html and there is a Wikipedia article (stub) on the book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, and a Wikipedia article about him, not a stub Harold Bloom. The book itself is a google book at https://books.google.com/books?id=zIOuAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT254&lpg=PT254&dq=Jane+Austen%27s+Persuasion+Harold+Bloom+in+%22The+Western+Canon%22&source=bl&ots=IVufDclL-S&sig=OaBSlJQ2EpOt4GaT88Sn_4lqHZI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisutSEtbnOAhWGwiYKHWpYDcsQ6AEIVTAJ#v=onepage&q=Jane%20Austen%27s%20Persuasion%20Harold%20Bloom%20in%20%22The%20Western%20Canon%22&f=false . The novel shares Chapter 10 with Wordsworth. I do not find that exact quote, but the google book allowed looking at much of that chapter. I have no idea how Bloom is valued in the literary world, perhaps you do. I will ask my public library for the Norton Critical edition you mentioned as the library is linked to all the libraries around me including universities, and I can probably do that bit of writing, but not at the speed you are now writing! --Prairieplant (talk) 13:34, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Those reference edits you did at Persuasion were quite nice. There is currently an assessment being done for the Jane Austen article itself here with special concentration on the references and citations consistency. The formated references at the article for Jane Austen would look even better for consistency if looked at, and since you are familiar with the templates for formatted refs and formatted cites perhaps you could glance at the list of citations which were sequentially noted for attention at the link I placed above in this note. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 15:19, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Fountains-of-Paris I started on the easier ones already. This article includes something I have not yet seen: it includes multiple references in what would be one reference. Five sources in between ref and /ref, [example ref 51 Le Faye, "Chronology", 5, 7; Fergus, "Biography", 7; Sutherland, 16–18, 21; Tomalin, 120–121; Honan, 122–124., which I think is five references] {example ref 30 Sutherland, 14; Doody, "The Short Fiction", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 85–86. which mixes author names and book titles, with page numbers]. My notion is to make them separate references, which would appear as a string of five numbers in the text, not one number. It will take multiple passes to be consistent, and to make ref names for the most used authors. I am not very good at the Harvard style of references, which uses the author name and date of publication in the reference and links to the full citation in a list elsewhere in the article -- see Great Expectations for examples of that style, where author followed by date is in the ref list: click it, and you are brought to the full citation for that source in the section Specific Sources. What I like to use is the full citation once, with a ref name given, then when the page numbers change, use the rp| style, showing the page number in the text of the article. An example of this is the article on Patrick O'Brian (a British author who greatly admired Jane Austen) and also the article on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, which relied heavily on a few authoritative sources. Neither of those were put up for Featured Article or Good Article, so I do not know how the reviewing editors rate that style. One editor encouraged me to use it, but not in the context of Good Article review. The rp| method is mentioned in the Wikipedia article on citation styles. I will do the simplest improvements now, and wait for your comment. The reviewers for Jane Austen mentioned inconsistency of reference styles but did not mention specifically the habit of listing so many sources with rather inconsistent names that stuns me. I know you cannot have dialogue with the reviewers, but maybe there is a way to learn if my approach, once made consistent, is considered okay for a Featured Article or a Good Article. --Prairieplant (talk) 16:48, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Nice note from you on the Austen Talk page. It appears that Ling and Rex were quite close to coming to agreement before Rex was detained elsewhere. Its possible that if you contact Ling directly with a proposal to complete the 95% completed citation consistency edits that the two of you might get a green light to complete the 5% remaining. It might be worth a go at it, what do you think. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 14:23, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Jane Austen: strongly disagree with convert from MLA

strongly disagree with convert from MLA Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:53, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I hear you, Lingzhi. Long ago, which is to say, before Wikipedia, I used MLA style for formal references in my technical papers. Wikipedia has its own rules and tools, so why not use them? I think our first challenge is linking the in line citations to the list of Primary sources, essays, monographs and articles, accurately. We have some authors to find, as Charlotte Bronte was referenced, for example, with page numbers, but the title of her publication is not in the article, a problem. Another author was referenced as well, but with a title, so I think I found the right book. Unlike you, I find the cite book template useful, so that I do not forget crucial information for the reference. You seem to have a more organized mind to remember all the specifics, not forget to pick up the isbn or the year of publication, remember if it has an editor or an author, for example. I read the article on Template:Wikicite as the phrase was new to me. It says that using the Harvard system/sfn is just about the same thing. Some references require template wikicite. For me, the cite book cite web, cite news, cite journal are truly useful for those references that I call "loners" or one-off. This article has a mix of References from the extensive Bibliography and others from once-mentioned sources, those "loners". Cite book is used mainly for those references; the main part of the Reference list will use sfn. And sfn needs the Bibliography to link properly, which the other editor has now set up. I hope you will not dislike the whole article for using those formats, which are at least clear and consistent. I know there are strong feelings about the many formats for references, and good reasons for the strong feelings as each referencing style has plusses and minuses, and I appreciate that you have strong feelings on this. It is so kind of you to read the article with care. --Prairieplant (talk) 23:19, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not have its own rules and tools, that's why. No. Every desirable goal you mention above can be accomplished without changing away from MLA. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:25, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

You have very strong feelings! Wikipedia does have its rules and tools, that is a fait accompli. I cannot find the page in Wikipedia that shows the differences in the various reference styles that are supported, I am getting tired right now. I need that page to be clearer on just what is being altered by the system we agreed to use, or mix of systems, really, and whether the page ever had MLA style on it. Until tomorrow, then? --Prairieplant (talk) 23:37, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I am detecting that you are trying to get Wikipedia articles to suit your personal opinions.

irrelevant as he would have been drafted in 1968 the instant he graduated. The 1Y classification, however earned, made the birthday lotteries irrelevant. Richard Flahavan is correct so why is this text here? More interesting is the rich guy with the minor medical issue that did not need surgery, thus avoiding Viet Nam service

Irrelevant, interesting and minor are subjective. There are many people who agree with you. And many people who disagree with you. And many people who agree with some of your points and disagree with the rest of your points. --Turkeybutt (talk)

WP:SOAPBOX WP:ADVERT WP:PROMO WP:PUFFERY WP:EDITORIAL WP:NPOV

Turkeybutt JC Next time, sign your post. Enough with the big big big over a comment that only editors can see. Advert? What am I selling? I left a comment, not an edit. The last sentence of that paragraph is incorrect and ought to be deleted, which you could do yourself, once you step down from your soapbox. The birth date lottery applied to guys when they hit their 18th birthday and registered with the military, not after being classified 1Y, so the sentence is irrelevant. I did not read the cites because I am not that interested, but I do suspect the cites apply to the sentence prior, or to a better closing sentence that you can write yourself. I was reading the article only to see the age difference between my older brother and Trump. My brother had five years of college deferments and the day of his last class, no graduation ceremony allowed, he was called up and he served. My brother is two years younger than Trump, so the pressure on the rich boy Trump was even higher to be drafted, being two years older, and just four years of college. I hope you do not admire inaccurate and irrelevant statements in Wikipedia biography of living persons articles, as it now appears that you do. How is it that you can "detect" what is in my mind? That is a rhetorical question. I know that heel spurs not requiring surgery are minor, so that is not subjective; it is not worth my time hunting down secondary sources, however, having had my primary source experience with them. I take it you were not alive and of the age to be drafted in that era, or you would know that the 'rich guys are deferred, poor guys get drafted' topic was one large topic of great interest in the days of that unpopular war. Deal with my two statements of fact, his 1Y classification is the last word, and the birth date lottery did not apply to Trump on account of his 1Y classification. Those two things make the sentence unnecessary and subjective about the draft in those confusing times. How or why Trump got the 1Y classification is another topic altogether, one not touched upon in this article. If you need a last sentence, put the quote from Flahavan in the text in quote marks, instead of the References, and that will close the section nicely and accurately, without a speculative sentence. You would be well advised to be sparer with your sharp words, in my view and to sign your posts; only Wikiepdia's notice system let me know who you are. Have a great day! --Prairieplant (talk) 18:44, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Oops. Forgot to sign. Thanks for reminding. And I stand corrected. But you could explain to me how the sources cited are either incorrect or unreliable. I've never heard of the 1Y classification or the birthdate lottery. By 'detect' I meant that I saw one of your contributions and thought there was something wrong. I apparently misunderstood. Sorry about that. PS. What war are you calling "unpopular"? What does "unpopular" even mean? --Turkeybutt (talk) 19:41, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Turkeybutt JC World War II took the US a while to enter, but once we did, the nation supported it, the veterans were welcomed home with honor, and people were proud of their service by and large. Viet Nam was unpopular and controversial, read up on it. Veterans came home from a horrid war without honor, to see protests in the street against it, it was a terrible time. Unpopular means the young men did not want to sign up almost universally as the reasons for the war were unclear to people in the US, why was the US there, who wanted us, and worse, the US was losing the war, all part of the national dialogue when the war was in progress, not just views from afterward. The birth date lottery is explained in the wikilinked article Draft lottery (1969) in the Trump article. It was the last method of conducting the draft before the draft was ended in 1973 and never since restarted. Now you have heard of it, please go read about it. I did not say the sources in the Trump article were unreliable; what I suggested was to delete the last sentence (which is not true itself, regardless of the three citations) of the section where I placed the comment, and replace it with the sentence quoted from Flahavan, which is one of 3 sources on the present last sentence that is not precisely true. I believe Flahavan's quote to be reliable, and worth putting in the article directly. Is that clear? One A meant a man was perfectly physically fit to be a soldier, four F, physically unfit, and my guess is that 1Y was some intermediate degree of physical unfitnes for the Army, who did the physicals on the men. --Prairieplant (talk) 20:09, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

From what I was exposed to, the veterans of the Vietnam War weren't honored until 2016. (Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans!) --Turkeybutt (talk) 20:17, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Turkeybutt JC Another crucial point about the 1Y classification is that Trump would have been drafted with that label of 1Y if the war had been declared formally by Congress. World War II is the last war declared by Congress, see the list in this article, Declaration of war by the United States#Formal. All succeeding wars have been by executive action with or without some legislation acknowledging the war by Congress. The unpopularity of the war may have deterred Congress from making that formal legislation, or they were out of the habit since World War II. --Prairieplant (talk) 04:46, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Can we hold off for the full 30-days of the RFC

Lack of response

Hi Prairieplant, I thought I'd drop a personal note here instead of clogging up the Austen page even more. You're right that I've not been responding but I have been reading your comments. As it happens, for the past two or three weeks I've been extremely tied up in real life (I did post to the Austen page that I'd be mostly gone until September) and haven't been replying to every comment posted on Wikipedia (in fact have been slow to reply to comments on a FAC where I'm a co-nominator). Yesterday was the first day in ages when I got some free time. I've noticed your comments on the Reception article and think they're interesting, for what ever that's worth. I might try to work that information into one of the Murasaki Shikibu pages. As for the changes, I'm happy to have anything challenged or discussed - I think we're in a state of flux, which isn't always a bad thing. I'd be happy if everyone can work together collegially, and we should be doing that, rather than fighting. It's conflict, more than anything, that tends to drive me away. After a family emergency a few weeks ago, when I peeked into that page and read some of the edit summaries I decided it would be best not to read the comments. Anyway, I'm rambling now - what I'm trying to convey is that there's a reason I've been unresponsive that has nothing to do with you or anyone else. Victoria (tk) 12:47, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Victoriaearle I appreciate your kind post. I was aware that you were occupied in August with family issues or Real Life as some say, so I posted on Sept 1, when you were clearly back.

I do not believe you read that post, though I put your name in the edit summary to call your attention to it. The post was to indicate the link to the Permalink page set up by RexxS (not by me). RexxS set up a Permalink to show how MLA format can show on the page, while using cite formats in the text. Thus all the gains from using cite formats and Harvard system are maintained, and how the references show on the page is still the choice of the editors. He used a page when the article still had cite formats and the Harvard system for linking short cite to long reference. You were not looking at Wikipedia when he did the work to demonstrate this feature (all new to me, I might say) so I made a point of asking you to look at it, putting your name in the edit summary, on Sept 1 when you were clearly back. My post was https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jane_Austen&diff=737126586&oldid=737119633 . I do not believe you looked at the Permalink set up by RexxS or appreciated the effort RexxS put in to allow those with strong feelings on reference styles to still take advantage of the system for referencing opened up by cite formats and the Harvard system (that is not a format but a way to easily link from the Reference list to the Bibliography and commonly used in the articles with long reference lists in my small experience). I do not believe you read that post or followed the link. I appreciate that you looked at the Harold Bloom citations, where he speaks of Jane Austen with high and specific praise. I appreciate collegial discussion, but it is hard to find it among the people discussing this article, especially when so many people post but do not read what others posted. I never really encountered that sort of Talk page before. Debates yes, but people read the posts made by other editors, slowing down a bit if it was clear some point was not understood by all editors. Not understanding and not liking are different issues. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:21, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm never all the way back, and in fact didn't get a clear day until this past long weekend. Yes, I did notice you'd pinged me a few times and I did see those diffs. Again, I apologize for not responding. Victoria (tk) 15:52, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Edit warring on Austen novel articles

These reversions on Persuasion and Mansfield Park were accompanied by misleading edit summaries. You restored the novel links after it had been carefully explained why they are inappropriate instead of continuing to discuss the issue on the talk pages (but I'm not encouraging you to do this, it would be a waste of your time, the novels are very clearly not part of a series so not even the blank parameters are appropriate). This is edit warring and you really must stop doing this. --Mirokado (talk) 15:38, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Which part of "Title of prior book in series; ... (do not use to connect separate books chronologically)" (emphasis in original - see Template:Infobox book documentation) is not clear to you? By all means seek consensus to change that, but until it is changed, follow the instructions. Please take note of WP:3RR before continuing to revert on these articles. --Mirokado (talk) 15:57, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Mirokado I am not in an edit war, but I have been irritated by a larger issue. The features of the infobox book are used in many articles to point to the next book by the author, even when the author's books do not constitute a series. So this rule appears not to be well-known among the other editors on various book articles I have chanced to read. I put the topic up for discussion at Wikiproject Books and Wikiproject Novels, if other editors have views on this. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels & Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books I find it handy, myself, and yet handier when looking at articles from a mobile device, where the templates for the author do not appear for easy navigation among books. If Wikipedia means it to be a rigid rule, then the features ought not to work if the series parameter is not properly filled in, but no entry for that parameter has no effect on the other two. That other editor does not write accurate edit summaries, always changing more than the summary describes (if the summary says anything at all), so I altered my own usual policy to follow that editor's example of saying something true but not complete. Maybe that will inspire the other editor to write true and complete edit summaries. The larger issue is that this seems to be more about who is allowed to touch any article about Jane Austen, her novels, aspects of her novels, and any reason will do for a complete reversion by one not in that group. For example, the articles on the novels have had those links of preceded by/followed by for more than a year (I recall making use of them), but only now are they getting attention, after others began work on the suite of Jane Austen articles in the summer. It seems to be a very small set of people and they work very slowly, except for reverting what others may do. That is, they are not improving the articles on the novels but revert changes by others. I never ran into a situation like that before, in my time learning to edit Wikipedia articles. One editor is offended that I put references in consistent format for one article, usual Wikipedia format. There is no appreciation for the work done, just the criticism. Eventually that work will be reverted as well, or so I expect.

I do not watch those pages, but I had just finished re-reading one of the novels and looked at the page. I am sorry this takes up your time. --Prairieplant (talk) 16:21, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Your point that the previous/next parameters should somehow not be allowed unless series is filled in is a good one. To implement that it would probably be necessary to add a tracking category for current invalid usages, then correct those usages, and then we could (for example) suppress further invalid usages and emit a warning in preview mode. The place to suggest that would probably be Template talk:Infobox book.

As far as "the larger issue" is concerned, the recent discussions at Jane Austen have drawn attention to that and related articles, which is why I am now involved and why the articles may be getting much more detailed attention than in the past few years. Many of the editors who are most involved with literary and other arts-related articles have very high standards regarding sourcing and rigorous accuracy, which is why they expect editors adding or substantially changing content to use (which means actually having access to) high quality sources and will revert or modify changes which are not considered up to standard. For that reason I am very careful and restrained in what I change on these articles, since although I have read all her novels I don't have any of the sources needed to make substantial contributions myself. --Mirokado (talk) 17:07, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Maybe Mirokado . They do not believe in google books or anything on line. One of the references is at libraries only as an e-book, so I wonder how they will handle that. But that book was needed to fix a poorly written sentence from 2010 (they chased the first appearance down). I found the 2 sources for the sentence to make sense, reading from digital images of the pages. Then I found a PDF of one frequent source, very helpful, no idea who put it out there. I did not mention that. The computer was in my hands not the book on paper. They do not believe in good Wikipedia formats for citations, will not consider the notion, and that makes for many errors in their writing. This is religion to them, and it is crazy-making for those who think the formats help especially when there are so many. Many editors walked away, not bearing the insult of their posts being unread and also not understood. A student posted that they use software to format their papers to follow whatever rules their professors set, and that went unread as well. The software likes formats in Wikipedia, per that student. So I am not so sure about high standards, but I am sure there is a fence around their turf, and I do not like the fence. I am glad you are aware of that dust up. I read every single post. I learned from other editors but not from them. So I worry about their quality, and readability, too. Thanks for the conversation. --Prairieplant (talk) 18:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Re: copy edit of a quotation?

GabOrone

Your submission at Articles for creation: sandbox (August 25)

HMS Surprise (1796)

Hi Prairieplant: I saw your changes to the footnoting for this article. I am quite willing to use the "snfp" template, though I admit I am starting to face difficulties remembering all the templates I should use. In this case in particular, I can't see that it adds any functionality. What am I missing? Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 13:56, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I looked further and saw your earlier changes. I have been berated in the past for using the term "Bibliography". My understanding is that WP prefers "References", especially since often what is in the "References", as I used the term, are not books. I also don't see what additional functionality one gets from creating separate sections for Notes and Citations. When one clicks on the heading, there is nothing to edit but a template. In the meantime, creating separate sections clutters the Table of Contents with lots of meaningless headings, lengthening it, and overshadowing what are frequently a limited number of substantive headings. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 14:05, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello Acad Ronin I wanted to use one referencing method throughout the article and sfnp seemed good for this article, as not every citation used the same style. Its simplicity is that using 'citation' for the Bibliography entries means that one can use the sfnp template with no need for the ref and /ref in the text of the article, and no need to have ref=harvnb in the Bibliography entry. When the exact same source (down to page number) is used more than once, those are pegged to one entry in the Reference list with a, b, c, as superscript for each instance. A small victory for me, learning something new and getting it to work. I usually use cite book, cite newspaper or cite web for full citations, so I learned something. Plus I did not see the harv citation format until I had already fixed one using sfnp. Slow brain.

The other point about the titles for the Notes, References and Bibliography -- I guess there are multiple ideas in Wikipedia-land about those titles. The other articles I have worked on use Bibliography for the list of books to which short citations will click, and no one has come around changing them. Chance? The Wikipedia article on how to use sfn and harv for shortened references uses Notes and References, just two categories for all the examples. Notes means the shortened citation, and References means the full length citation, for that article at this page. Of course that article's purpose is to show how the sfn and harv templates work. The article on HMS Surprise 1796 has one note that is explanatory text, not a shortened reference. So there needs to be three titles. I have never used Citations as one of those three titles, nor seen it before, I think. Hmmm. Two articles where I was part of a group of editors using the titles I put on HMS Surprise 1796 are Great Expectations (the novel by Charles Dickens) and Master and Commander, the article on the first in the series by Patrick O'Brian. In both instances I was following the choices of the other editors. I am sorry you got berated for doing the work of putting in line citations in a good format. There must be at least two schools of thought on those titles. I do not want to argue about the titles used, they are just what I am used to seeing. If you want to change them back, fine. My main goal was to make it that every shortened citation linked to its matching full citation, that is all. --Prairieplant (talk) 16:02, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I see that you already did change the titles. I am not sure what the word Citations or References has has to do with books versus journals versus web pages, but the article is in good shape, that is what matters. --Prairieplant (talk) 16:12, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (November 9)

Your submission at Articles for creation: The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon has been accepted

Another self-help tutorial

I've noticed on a couple of the Hillerman books that you've added a talk page request. Here's how to do it yourself:

1) Find cover art image. You can usually find them on the publisher's home page, or on sites like www.goodreads.com. FYI, a good way to find the book at goodreads, is to click on the ISBN number in article. That takes you to a Book sources page. Scroll down to the Online databases section, and there is a selection "Find this book at Goodreads.com"

2) There is often (but not always) an option on the image to enlarge it. I usually do, but once I didn't have the option and it worked out anyway.

3) Right click on the image and save it to your computer.

4) In your Tools section (mine is on the left-hand side of the page), there is a link for "Upload file". Click it. It's rather self explanatory, with check boxes.

5) Book covers are always Non-free use rational. You can use File:Song of the Lion.jpg as a cheat sheet if you like.

6) Left-hand red stars tells you what is mandatory to click or fill out. Once you've filled it out, you should see an option at the bottom to Upload the file. If the Upload is grayed out, you missed something above.

7) Once the upload is successful, it will instantly flip you to another page. Scroll up, and you can click on the bolded File name link to see what you uploaded. Use that file name in the article's infobox.

DatBot will come along in a day or so to make a secondary copy, adapted to whatever size Wikipedia will allow. The result of that looks like (scroll to the bottom) File:Ladies of the Lights.jpg. You probably won't even be able to tell the difference between the two.

Happy uploading! — Maile (talk) 22:00, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Maile66 Thanks for the step-by-step instructions with an example, that helped so much. I just found two covers for the anthology, The Mysterious West, one was the first edition and the other was for the paperback issued the next year, totally different covers. So I used this process for both of them, now in the article. The University of New Mexico library has so much solid information on Tony Hillerman and all his works. Now I will seek some reviews for the prize winning anthology. I did see some of the PBS movies based on Leaphorn and Chee, and liked them. But once I have been deep in a book, I find I generally enjoy the book more than the movie, and re-read the book more than I watch the movie over and over. I am glad you are setting up the pages for Anne Hillerman. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning UNM. I've bookmarked the Tony Hillerman portal. — Maile (talk) 23:15, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Concern about Second stage adaptation

I understand about the reversions to my edit, but I do have a real notable concern over that second stage adaptation - I've checked the citations and I'm not sure that play actually adapted the novel much, other than the use of the murder method in the novel's plot. As far as I can tell, the first citation states "adaptation of novel" in its heading, but doesn't make much reference of the novel within the rest of it, while the second citation, a review of that play, pretty much shows that the novel wasn't adapted as such, much used as the basis to create, as it describes, a "metatheatrical polemic about the way Asian-Americans have been characterized and caricatured in popular culture". In all honesty, I think this should really be in a separate section for "References in other works" - I don't believe this play to be a complete adaptation of the novel as the citations state.GUtt01 (talk) 08:07, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

GUtt01 If the play says it takes its plot from this novel, then it is an adaption, as far as I know. Agatha Christie's novels have been adapted as anime and computer games, which I suspect are nothing like the British series of television adaptations in trying to convey the exact mood of the novel. But then, those British television adaptations sometimes changed the detective compared to the novel of the same title and changed the era in which the story was set, which seems to be what happens in an adaptation. The only complete story is in the novel. I would leave the play where it is, in the Adaptations, Stage, section. --Prairieplant (talk) 13:48, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

True, an adaptation of the work should be kept in, but I am not so certain that that second stage adaptation should be kept in. What I believe an adaptation should be, is primarily an adaptation of the full work - any changes made to who the detective is, the title of the work and any other elements, is fine enough. But if it is an adaptation of only one part of it, does it really need to be considered as a full adaptation per se? That's the critical point here, to be honest - if its not a full adaptation, that what constitutes it as being an adaptation of the work? Anyway - I gonna open up a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Novels, and see what others think. Thanks for your input; if you want to join in on the debate on that matter, feel free to. GUtt01 (talk) 15:59, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Religion in New France

ill

Please don't write direct links to other Wikipedia's. {{ill}} is much better, - you still have the direct link (when you click on the language symbol), but also a warning that you will meet a foreign language, which could be Hebrew or Russian. The ill-link turns automatically to blue when the red link is created. - If you don't like a red link there's a remedy: create the article ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:42, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt I do not see what is wrong with the direct links format using the language between two colons. I see my changes are already reverted in Kurt Masur. Your preference is one choice of several allowed in Wikipedia guidance. I am not arguing about this, but I am not happy about it. I will remove the link to Carolin Masur now that I have added that she is an opera singer in the text. This notion that someone will someday turn a red link into an English language article is silly to me, and no help when one is reading an English language article to learn something. I have watched red links stay red for 5 to 10 years, which is a long wait for an explanation that might come readily with help from google translate. Generally family members of the person who is the topic of the article (Kurt Masur in this case) who are notable in the same field (music in this case) are linked. You will not allow it, so there it is. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:01, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

A simple red link is no help, but an ill-link gives the reader the choice to go to German (or Hebrew or Russian), or not. That link can stay red for years, but will still offer that help. When you remove it you remove the option for the reader. - I thought I explained that above. Graham87 explained it to me years ago, and I understood (after having written hundreds of those :de: links myself). Perhaps he can help? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt The links put in place of the direct links were red and did not go anywhere when I clicked on them. The small print message about no such article was all that showed. I assume, having no benefit of surveys or the like, that most people figure out quickly that a red link will not lead them to more knowledge, so why even try to click on one? If you want the links in Kurt Masur to be your format, then please, you do that edit. You explained a philosophy that makes little sense to me as to its end result, so it does not seem like a Wikipedia technique to pick up. Red links mean error, stop, nothing comes of this -- unless a bunch of not immediately clear letters are surround the red link. I have not written hundreds of direct links, just a few, in articles about someone from a non-English-speaking nation. I spent a lot of time on the main article over night as Kurt Masur seems a person who led an interesting and productive life, adding text from the German article, translated, and bringing photos over as well. It is enough on this topic for me. I would rather keep learning other technical aspects of Wikipedia editing. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:48, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Can you learn the one thing that of course you don't click on the red link but on the little blue "de" in brackets following it (or "ru" or "he", or "fr" here). Please restore the ill link, - I don't edit war, so can't do it myself. It's not "my format", but simply the better format. - Thank you for adding to the article! More than 200,000 saw it, DYK? I noticed too late that he had the google doodle, or would have added from de, such as the recordings. Sorry, I was (too) tired when I noticed. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:37, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: Indeed. See the red link guideline and the links from there. It shows that red links are not just stopping points; they also let people know that Wikipedia is still a work in progress, and provide ideas of which topics are missing in the encyclopedia. Therefore, as noted in the Wikipedia Signpost, red links help Wikipedia grow. Graham87 02:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt and Graham87 I appreciate your time, but I still think that is a poor set-up, the red link with the wee live link to the article in another language. I hope someone redesigns that, or comes up with compelling data that red links lead to articles being written in less than 5 years time, and that most readers of the article figure out that the tiny de or fr will lead to an article in the other language of Wikipedia. I never did.

I had looked at the page view statistics early in my work on the article, when there were 200 viewers, a huge increase over the average day for that article. It was still July 17 when I looked. I had not known that July 18 would attract 192,000 viewers. That is the only time it was helpful to use the logarithmic scale on the page view chart, for me. It is quite impressive, the effect of a Google doodle. I saw it at about 11 pm Central Time, and that is when I got intrigued about the article and the man. I was surprised that such an impressive man was not better described.

I think more could be done still, just from the existing references, to convey his power in music, and make it clear that he conducted more than music by old German composers, which is the impression left by the article, I think. No piece of music is named, though Gershwin is named somewhere. His long experience in New York focuses on the ending, not what he did, why he was chosen. I added a bit on that, but it could be said better. His long European experience is said in about 3 sentences, with no mention that he conducted for opera. That is hinted in the word répétiteur as the job that pulled him out of school, but I only learned what that meant today, finding, of course, a Wikipedia article explaining that position in opera or in dance. So Gerda Arendt, you might add a lot to this article under less pressure of time. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Work in progress, that is true for all we do. If you think template ill is a poor design, make something better, or suggest at the village pump perhaps, to think about something better. It's the best we have. - I'd love to do something about Masur's discography, but have a few tasks with a time limit. Stay tuned and open ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:34, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Barnstar for you

Book Article

Hello! I was looking around on Wikipedia for someone to help out with an article I'm currently trying to make about a notable series book. You seemed to be an expert on the field, and I was curious if you could help point me in the right direction to writing an article about a book? (As this is not usually what I write about) This is my work in progress. Thank you so much for any advice you may give! Horsegeek^(talk) 00:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)Horsegeek

Horsegeek Such kind words! Writing about books is my favorite topic, that is true. Wikipedia gives some guidance at these places

WP:PLOTSUM
Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/ArticleTemplate
MOS:WAF where WAF means writing about fiction.

Use the infobox book or infobox novel for a starter, write a concise yet terse plot summary (not always easy to do), do not worry about that concept of of spoilers, write about the entirety of the book. I like to include a Character list. In some books, the characters get so big, they in turn have articles about them (Uriah Heep from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens is an example). For notability of the series or any book within the series, reviews in newspapers or from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal are a good place to start. Of course if anyone has written magazine articles about the series or any book in it, or more impressive, a book, those are sure to help establish notability. For me, it is a good exercise to write the plot summary and character list; it is an exercise to reinforce my own knowledge of the topic. Then look for the reviews that establish Literary significance. When others have written about the series, that provides a basis to add other sections to the article, like Themes, or naming the theme and writing a section on that. But you want to get started, so I start with the infobox (one is used for Series and another for Book), a short lead, the plot summary and the character list. Then add what you can from Reviews. Reviews and awards are two ways to establish notability for Wikipedia. I think the process is similar for fiction and nonfiction books, although the summary of the nonfiction would not be called plot. As the article grows, if others adapt the book to other forms, like stage productions, films or television programs, or anime, those can be mentioned in a separate section. The lead can grow with the article; once you have reviews, a paragraph highlighting them is fitting for the lead. An article about a series is usually different than the articles about each book in the series. The Cadfael Chronicles versus A Morbid Taste for Bones, Aubrey–Maturin series versus Master and Commander, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency versus The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (novel) are a few contrasts for the series and the first book in the series. Some books that seem to be part of a series, like Agatha Christie's novels featuring her detective Hercule Poirot or those featuring Miss Marple, never get a series article, rather each novel has an article. Bernard Cornwell is a prolific author of historical fiction, who has written several series of books. This is a good series but you will notice there are no reviews in these articles, no indication of notability other than the television programs made from some of the books. The Saxon Stories and The Last Kingdom. Cornwell has a lot of fans, a lot of readers, but they do not seem to hunt for reviews of his books. I always wonder if some editor will flag all the articles not only for lack of citations, but also for lack of reviews.

That is bold to write a different sort of article than you usually do. I wish you success in it, and a good time in the writing. --Prairieplant (talk) 01:33, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I should add that the series article will list the books in the series, with links to the articles on each book, if there is an article. The focus of the series article is not the summary of each novel, but a look at the series overall. There have developed some very long arguments when the series article is short summary of each book in the series. I am not sure how the arguments arose, but the articles did not read well, jumping from summary to summary and the consensus was to start an article for each book if that sort of detail was wanted, and there were editors to write them. You have a variety of authors to consider in the series. In the case of Sue Grafton, there is no series article for her main series. Rather her Alphabet series of detective mysteries are described in the article about her, with a link to each novel in the series, which gained reviews and articles about the novels as her writing gained fame and fans. The first novel is "A" Is for Alibi, one article that has more substance is "U" Is for Undertow. Several of her novels won mystery awards along the way, which is notability, and many were best sellers, usually noted in the articles. When she died, there was interest in getting the articles on her and her novels more organized, but I see that initial energy has not yielded equal articles for each novel. You are starting with the article on the series, and will have enough to write about, with more than one author as well as the themes underlying the series. You may notice the templates that go along with series articles, which show on laptop and desk top computers at the bottom of the article, but not on mobile phones. Those templates organize all the works (books, adaptations, etc.) and have links to all the articles written on the works in one handy place. The template goes on the series article and on any other article on a book in the series or an author in the series. Shifting to the book articles, the template is an addition to the feature for articles about books in a series, where the infobox has a link to article on previous book and article on following book. I have not read much fantasy fiction. The articles I find in Wikipedia about it seem to be strong articles, as the themes are often complex. E.g., Harry Potter and the first book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Hefty articles. --Prairieplant (talk) 02:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you so much Prairieplant! This was very helpful! I'm a little lost as how to organize everything overall, but I will definitely take a look at the links you've provided me with! The individual books of the series don't have their own article yet, which I also plan to make if I have the time. Again, many thanks! Horsegeek^(talk) 02:06, 17 February 2019 (UTC)Horsegeek

'ex-patriots'

Hamelin

The picture is a portrait of his brother the admiral Ferdinand-Alphonse Hamelin and not the rear admiral Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin. Pyb (talk) 14:18, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Pyb That is not what it says at Wikimedia Commons. In the Comments for the image here, the person who added the image said it is Jacques and not his nephew, citing this link here, which is an article in French about Jacques Hamelin of Mauritius Campaign fame, a biography for him as a famous person buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. For now, I put the image in both the article on Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin and the Mauritius Campaign of 1809-1811 articles. Rama added the image to Wikimedia Commons in 2008 and can perhaps settle this.

There is a different image, a full length photograph, in the article for the nephew, Ferdinand-Alphonse Hamelin, in the English Wkipedia article about him. The nephew Ferdinand was 28 years younger than his uncle. The name Ferdinand Hamelin is on the Wikimedia Commons page, just to keep the confusion going. I hope we can resolve this easily! --Prairieplant (talk) 14:52, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

The website appl-lachaise.net contains a lot of errors.

Someone left a message on the French talk page about the mistake. And he found a portrait of Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin. Pyb (talk) 14:59, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Pyb The French Wikipedia article about Jacques, the uncle who fought in Napoleon's Navy, uses a photo of a bust in plaster of Jacques. Both the English and French Wikipedia articles about Ferdinand, the nephew, use a full-length photograph as the image. Where is the other portrait of Jacques? I did not see that on the French talk page. --Prairieplant (talk) 15:08, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I see it now, at this link here. The face on the cover of the book does not look the same! I hope Rama can take a look. Is it possible to make a Wikimedia Commons image file from that book cover?? --Prairieplant (talk) 15:14, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello,

the images File:Hamelin_portrait.jpg and File:Ferdinand_Hamelin-Léon_Cremière.jpg look very much like they are of the same person. From what I see the uniform is that of a general officer of the early to mid-late 19th century, I can't determine whether this person is from 1860 or the 1820s. The Commons file might very easily be in error, or have repeated an error from elsewhere.

Now, the book cover looks very much like the bust File:Buste d'Emmanuel Hamelin.jpg. By the style, I think it is a safe bet to say it is by Antoine Maurin and thus in the Public Domain. You can thus safely import it on Commons.

Well done Pyb and Prairieplant! Rama (talk) 15:29, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Pyb I am not skilled in making image files from free images. Do you know how to do it? It seems like the best image to use, from the book cover. I removed the images I added to Jacques Hamelin and Mauritius Campaign 1809-1811 articles. Thank you Rama for reviewing the situation. I will see if I can change the name on the image of the painting of the nephew Ferdinand. --Prairieplant (talk) 16:50, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

The National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia has the 1837 lithograph of Jacques Hamelin in its collection, showing a black and white version here. Does that make it easier to bring the image into the article? It was done by Antoine Maurin, as Rama suggested. What do you think, Pyb? --Prairieplant (talk) 17:49, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Nice catch! The version from Canberra is of good quality, and now available at File:Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin-Antoine Maurin.jpg. Well done everybody, I hope we get more cases like this one! Rama (talk) 18:24, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Gadsen Purchase edit (grammar)

Reversion about "And Then There Were None"

A barnstar for you!

Date format

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Country

Use of semicolons for headings

Hi there, I noticed you reverted a few of my edits inserting section headings into articles instead of using a single semicolon. I am not sure if you are aware that the use of a single semicolon to create headings is an incorrect use of the Wikipedia "definition lists" feature. See H:DL and I quote: Do not use a semicolon (;) simply to bold a line without defining a value using a colon (:). This usage renders invalid HTML5 and creates issues with screen readers. I am going to assume good faith that you were not aware of this and so posting a message on your talk page to let you know. Happy to discuss further if there are other options to consider, or your concerns at using subheadings. Kidburla (talk) 14:11, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Kidburla, those fourth level headings are too much. I am unaware of any problem with using the semicolon to bold the type. You seemed to want bold type in many of the articles, as you used low level subheadings to achieve it. I think it is not necessary to use bold in those Adaptation sections for novels made into television shows, plays or radio shows, not beyond three equal signs to mark the subsection. In several of the Agatha Christie novel articles, you added text without any bold type, which I think is the best way to do it. The sense you put in bold above conveys no meaning to me as it is written. Are you trying to say that smart phone screens do not know how to deal with the semicolon? Anyway, my preferred resolution is no bold, no subsection with four equal signs around the title. Simple text suffices. I was looking for a way to keep the bold you seemed to want, in the first articles that appeared on my Watch list. Does that resolve the matter? --Prairieplant (talk) 14:36, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Prairieplant, as noted above, the sentence in bold is not written by me, but is a quote from H:DL. Please read that section for more information. It has nothing to do with smartphones, it is about screen readers (which are used primarily by blind or partially sighted people). It is a standard guide on Wikipedia to the use of "definition lists" (which you have inadvertently created by your use of the single semicolon). I generally added text without bold type if there was just a single paragraph for each adaptation, or bullet points. If there are several paragraphs on a single adaptation then it makes sense to separate that into a separate section for readability. Otherwise it is not clear to the reader where the text about one ends and another begins. In the case of Appointment with Death, the section on the British adaptation is significantly longer than the other two adaptations, hence why I put it in a separate subsection. Kidburla (talk) 14:45, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

PS: Just wondering, as a compromise, how do you feel about having the specific adaptation (rather than the medium) as the third-level. i.e. "Adaptations" (second-level), "Stage" (third-level), "US television adaptation" (also third-level), so we remove the need for a fourth-level. That seems to be your concern that we don't go down to four levels? Just a thought. Kidburla (talk) 15:01, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Kidburla I think paragraphs are an excellent way to introduce a new topic. If one topic has two paragraphs, and another has one paragraph, so what? Consider starting the paragraph with key information, like the year of the adaptation, for example, or where it was broadcast, if something simple like BBC or CBS. I know we are moving into the world of streaming and Netflix, and that is no use for finding a program. Anyway, get something clearly different at the start of the first sentence, not at the end of it, so the reader knows it is another adaptation. It is not worth all that detail in the Table of Contents, to have one television adaptation called out with its own formal subhead.

Thanks for explaining what a screen reader is, I had not known that. --Prairieplant (talk) 15:17, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Prairieplant I am happy with paragraphs if that is all there is. But on Appointment with Death for example, the British section has two introductory paragraphs, and then a massive long bulleted list of differences between that particular adaptation and the novel. If the Japanese adaptation were to be part of the same section, it would be just one sentence after the massive bulleted list. As someone skim reading, I would naturally assume this is just part of the same adaptation. The point of subheadings is to draw the reader's attention to where each section starts and ends, so they don't have to read every line to get to the basic information like how many adaptations there have been. If your main concern is with the table of contents, would you be happy if we just include the "limit" parameter to the TOC, to restrict the displayed table of contents to not display that level of detail? I have made this change on Appointment with Death already, to show what I mean. Kidburla (talk) 20:05, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I think there is not enough being said to warrant such detail in the adaptation sections. Shortening TOC works but is beside the point to me. What about asterisks, if you think words are insufficient? Asterisk in the edit page shows as a bulleted list. Does that mess up screen readers? I think people can read paragraphs, even after a cast list for a tv program. The articles with so many levels of headings are longer articles covering more topics, like The Gilded Age, or the novels by Charles Dickens like Great Expectations or David Copperfield. These are short by contrast. I will look at your revision tomorrow. - - Prairieplant (talk) 05:15, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say that "words are insufficient"... The main principle here is that - style things the way they are meant to be styled. If it's a heading, style it as a heading. If you don't want to style it as a heading because of the TOC, then exclude it from the TOC.

Bullets are fine too (there is absolutely no problem with screen readers as long as you follow that basic principle), but they have their own problems. You can't put two paragraphs within a bullet, they will end up becoming sub-bullets and then you face issues if you want to combine lists with paragraphs (imagine a list of actors and a list of differences within a bulleted list). If the information on each adaptation is fairly simple, there's no problem at all with bullets, but in that case they also don't add a great deal of value.

I get what you say about there being a lack of detail at present, my goal is initially just to add all of the missing adaptations; detail can be added later. However this would end up with a number of extremely short subsections which I can see would be undesirable from your point of view. How about we have a subsection for each adaptation having lots of detail, and then a single subsection called "Other adaptations" for the rest (if more than one)? We can still exclude those sections from the TOC in the way described above. The only issue will be they will no longer be in chronological order. Kidburla (talk) 14:49, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I know, Kidburla, I said words are insufficient. A good layout is always nice, yes. Some articles do put the paragraphs of difference from television show to the novel as a bulleted list, depending on the editor who writes that text. If the adaptation section gets very long, it gets made into a separate article. Pride and Prejudice has a short section on adaptations with a link to a long article about all the adaptations to film or television with a section for each novel, Jane Austen in popular culture#Pride and Prejudice (1813). Some of the films, in their turn, have a whole article on each one. So, there are many approaches to novels and their adaptations. The articles on the novels Great Expectations and David Copperfield list the movies, all of which have their own articles on Wikipedia. The best selling novel by Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, has another approach to Adaptations in that article. Jane Eyre has a very short article on adaptations and a link to Adaptations of Jane Eyre.

My own issue with most of the text on adaptations and the differences between novel and adaptation in many articles is that all of it is original copy, or nearly all of it. Very rarely are references cited, either because no one looks, or no one writes up the differences between most novels and most adaptations, I do not know. Of course, editors disagree on what differs between television or movie and original novel, and then there are the editors who change the Plot summary for the novel to match the television show they just watched, unaware of the differences. -- Prairieplant (talk) 05:15, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

By the way I wrote most of the adaptations layout for And Then There Were None and that was quite recently. That still heavily uses bullets as I'm sure you will see. As I mentioned before, I am not against bullets at all, it's just complicated when things get more difficult (adding cast lists, lists of differences between novel and adaptation etc). None of the adaptations on And Then There Were None have extensive information included within that article such as cast lists and story differences. I agree that when an adaptation section gets too long it should be split into a separate article. The problem is when it is too short to be its own article, but still long enough to create readability issues when put inline with text on other adaptations. I feel that the examples mentioned above (such as Appointment with Death) are of this type.

I absolutely agree with you that whenever a difference between the written text and the adaptation is a matter of opinion, it should not be mentioned in the article unless reliable sources are cited which share this opinion. However a very prominent difference, such as the omission of an entire character and their story arc for example, should not be controversial and should not require any more sourcing than just the adaptation in question. These need to be taken on a case-by-case basis and discussed on the talk page for the individual article. Kidburla (talk) 17:07, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Citation needed on Japanese anime references

Hi, I noticed you added "citation needed" on quite a few of the Japanese anime adaptations I noted on individual novel/collection pages. I would like to know the reason for your doubt - as the article itself has a full list of episodes which should back up these claims. The only change I did was to add references to the individual novel/collection articles. If you dispute the episode list contained within the article for the show, maybe it would be worthwhile to mark citation needed on that article as well? Thanks. Kidburla (talk) 14:29, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Kidburla The main issue is that it appears we are using the link to the Wikipedia article on the French series or the Japanese series, and that is not a citation. Adaptations generally need a reference to show that the adaptation is real, and found in a reliable source. These articles on novels by Agatha Christie have fairly short lists of adaptations compared to an article about a Jane Austen novel or other authors slipping my mind, but still there needs to be a citation for the adaptation, even for a stage play. An article about the series or the specific episode and its link to the novel is what is needed. I have sometimes done the looking for those citations, but it takes time, and my greater interest is always in the novel, not the adaptations. So the citation needed flag is valid, if only to avoid the appearance of using the other Wikipedia article as a reliable source. --Prairieplant (talk) 14:47, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Prairieplant Okay I see the logic, and I will respect these flags. If I get time, I will look for the citations myself, but personally I take the episode list on the article as pretty sound information. Kidburla (talk) 14:55, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Kidburla Think how easy it could be to invent an episode list! That is why a citation is needed. If the series article has citations, it is perfectly fine to copy one of them to make the point. A review of the series, an article saying, hey this is on television tonight, watch it, a book of Japanese anime, anything like that. If the titles are in Japanese, please do English Wikipedia the favor of a trans-title, the Japanese translated to English. --Prairieplant (talk)

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My edits on Agatha Christie's list of characters

In British English grammar, there should be no capital letters after a colon or dash, except for proper names. Since Agatha Christie's bibliography pages are written in British English, that grammar rule applies here. Thank you for not reverting again without a proper reason. --Stelmaris (talk) 07:26, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Stelmaris I did not know there was a British English rule for how to format a Character list in Wikipedia. Where is it written? I work on lots of articles about novels by British authors. If you are the keeper of the flame on this, you have a lot of work to do. Personally, I think you are wasting time, as this is a topic of format, not how to write a sentence. Before you revert all my changes, why not take this up with a higher level in Wikipedia, as to how editors should write Character lists. Some use a comma, some use the colon, some use the dash. I personally like the colon and having sentences in the descriptions, and I do hope you let sentences begin with an upper case letter and a full stop / period at the end. -- Prairieplant (talk) 07:49, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not a keeper of any flame (what a weird thing to say...), this rule is in any British English grammar, dictionary and style guide: see Oxford University style guide https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/Style%20Guide%20HT2016.pdf), this University of Sussex article http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/colonandsemi/colon, and Wikipedia's own entry (see 2.5 here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colon_(punctuation)#Use_of_capitals). You're welcome to keep capital letters in articles written in American English but Agatha Christie is a British author, who wrote in British English and any article about her an her works should adhere to British English grammar rules. I will revert your changes but feel free to take this issue up with Wikipedia admin if you still want to argue Wikipedia own rules on this. --Stelmaris (talk) 09:08, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Stelmaris Your sources are about text, not a way to lay out the Character list in an article about novels in Wikipedia. There is no full sentence before to colon or the dash / hyphen in these Character sections; there is a name and then a description. So I see no clear guidance on laying out the Character section in Wikipedia articles, to the level of detail of upper case or lower case to start the description.

I see that you are not grasping the difference I see, and try to describe clearly. Those are lists of names of characters, not ordinary text with a proper sentence before a colon, and then a rule for how to start what is on the right side of the colon or dash. I say Keeper of the flame, because you have so very many articles about novels with characters to fix to match your standard, and perhaps other editors like me who will not like your changes. Then there are articles about nonfiction books, some of which have Character list sections. Lots of articles to fix. You are the first editor I have encountered who is making these changes to Character lists, insisting on this rule of no upper case to start a description of a character in a book by a British author. Possibly the only one? Others discuss the content of the description, how long it should be, and if characters in a mystery novel should have terse descriptions compared to characters in a novel by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. The “spoiler” notion lives long after it was settled for Wikipedia. - - Prairieplant (talk) 11:28, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Stelmaris I have seen a few editors with fixed ideas about how lists of characters should be formatted, but there is no universally agreed approach and, as Prairieplant suggests, you are likely to annoy editors if you make a habit of repeatedly changing lists to your personally-preferred layout. The lists are of names, not sentences, with each name being followed by some sort of separator such as a colon or dash, then a short descriptive phrase. As they are generally not intended to be sentences, they very often do not have a closing full stop. Whoever wrote those particular phrases simply preferred to start with an initial capital; it's nothing to do with British vs American English. MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:42, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

I would completely disagree with your last statement: it's all to do with the differences between British and American English. Whether it's text or a list, British usage is not to use a capital letter after a colon or dash, as stated in all (British) style guides, dictionaries, grammars. I've worked as an editor for many years and I should know. However, I don't intend to enter into a protracted edit war so I'll leave you to your American usage.--Stelmaris (talk) 09:42, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

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