Talk:Frances Darlington

Excessive detail

The article at present contains excessive detail regarding the subject's relatives, including identifying distant relations and detailing a banquet given for the subject's grandfather. The rationale provided for restoring this material was to identify that the subject had a privileged start - there's more than enough there to indicate this already, and these additions do not contribute to that understanding. If anything further streamlining of this section would be warranted. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:50, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree with your tag and with your rationale for it. This is a British historical article, which has to take into consideration the social conditions of 19th-century Britain. Distant relatives then were not so distant at they might be today, in our era of the nuclear family. Extended families were the norm, and they were influential.

Family history was influential, in that a history of professionals meant that descendants were expected to be professionals too, and were expected to be given assistance in that course. There was a weighty influence of law, finance and respect in Darlington's background. Being honoured by Titus Salt was important in that society. Salt still has pictures and carvings of him everywhere in West Yorkshire (where Harrogate was situated in those days), and his name is still well known by local people.

When creating a biography, it matters if you can show whether the biographical subject was likely to have been assisted in their career, or whether they had to struggle atainst the odds, e.g. due to poverty and poor education. In that way, Darlington was privileged, and with that background, her extraordinary amount of art education for a woman makes sense.

We cannot remove background detail without removing the explanation of how she was able to have the career that she had. When we write about achievers, we should always be asking how and why the subject achieved what they did. In C19 England, family background is an important part of the answer to that question. It is no doubt difficult for many modern Americans and Canadians to comprehend that fact, but that is how it was here, historically. Of course personality, talent and hard work are an important part of achievement, but 19th-century women were socially held back in many ways. Their background could make all the difference.

Darlington was extraordinarily fortunate in her opportunities to achieve, and we should take notice of all of that. Therefore I shall remove the tag, because it is directly asking other editors (who may not know about UK history and class) to prune just for the sake of pruning. That tag is therefore a short-sighted and unhelpful mechanism in this case. Storye book (talk) 17:48, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

It's not a matter of "prune just for the sake of pruning", but rather to bring this article in line with the provisions of WP:NOT. We're not meant to present every possible detail related to a topic, but rather a summary of secondary sources. In particular, details of family history should be limited to what's needed to support reader understanding of the subject - a branch of the family emigrating to the US a century before the subject was born and details of a relative's banquet decades before her birth don't meet that bar. There doesn't appear to be any sourcing supporting a link between these factoids and the subject's achievements. I appreciate that you want to demonstrate that the subject had a privileged background, but as noted, this is already indicated, extensively and in great detail - in fact even with this content omitted there is still more detail than is needed for that purpose. But re-removing that would be a starting point to better focus on what is relevant to an encyclopedic summary of this subject. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

3O Response: The Background section needs to comply with WP:NOTGENEALOGY, i.e., presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic. We do not have a reliable secondary source that explicitly states Storye book's conclusion that the details of a family branch emigrating to the US and details of a relative's banquet support the implied conclusion, "Darlington was extraordinarily fortunate in her opportunities to achieve". It verges on original research. There are other excessively detailed sections, such as the initial statement in the background that the subject's father and grandfather believed themselves to be descended from Rollo, etc. Deleting these tangential details improves the readability and strengthens the article. The best strategy is to evaluate each detail in relation to the artist's life and works, and simplify by not including extraneous diversions. — Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 05:03, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Firstly, original research and opinion are permitted on discussion pages where they are used as an explanation, e.g. in this case where historical cultures of different countries require explanation. There is no OR in the article.

Secondly, the historical English middle class originally came into being because it was aspirational classwise, and it continued to exist for the same reason (until Tony Blair changed the definition to a financial one), and that is why the story mentioning Rollo is there.

The stuff about Rollo is rubbish to us today, because we now understand that following the male line many generations back is laughable, because (without the assistance of DNA tests) we cannot confirm that no mothers ever had affairs. The would-be-grandiose Rollo story is wishful thinking in that family, and it would be silly for us to take it seriously today. However, culture can be handed down, and that family had had educated, professional people for some time, truly blood-related or not. Even the ones who emigrated were serious professionals. That was the culture of that family - aspiration (sometimes to silly lengths) and education. Regular attendance at church was also part of that culture. Darlington fits into that picture.

Of course we cannot write our own opinions and conclusions into the article, but what we can do is show enough facts to allow the reader to ponder on the matter. Without all those facts, we are depriving the reader. Yes, that many facts would be absurd, maybe, for an article about today's generations of nuclear families in the Americas, with their very different traditional values, e.g. the American Dream and individually independent responsibility for achievement. But the Darlington article is not about that. It is about English cultural history. Trying to limit or delete that element of the article smacks of discrimination against historical British culture. Yes, the large number of facts looks overwhelming, but that is because it would have been overwhelming to the biographical subject. The reason why all those facts appeared in the newspapers is that people kept on banging on about it. It would have been overwhelming to the younger generations of the family. You don't have to like it, but to conceal it and pretend we are writing about the US culture would be wrong.

Representing other cultures through the eyes of one's own culture is one of the greatest potential pitfalls for any historian. Gibbon knowingly did that for laughs when he satirised the Romans through the eyes of the Enlightenment in his Decline and Fall. It was downhill from there. The Victorians in their colonial histories diminished and othered the countries that they colonised, and they did that for real. Said identified Orientalism in his historiographical works. In the UK, we often hear UK culture criticised by US people, Vance's description of the UK as "Islamist" (as a pejorative term meaning supporting terror) being perhaps the most ill-informed. You don't have to understand our cultural history, my friends, but you do need to respect the truth of it.

And lastly: the phrase "excessive detail" is a relative term, which relites ultimately on opinion. No laws are being broken in the article. There is no copyvio, no libel, nothing to attract big-ass lawyers trying to make big money or to shut down WP. This is just about your opinion, based on your own culture, that there are too many words in the article. Storye book (talk) 09:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

For disputes that are not resolved through talk page discussion after a 3O response, editors should follow the other steps in the dispute resolution process such as the dispute resolution noticeboard or RfC process. — Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 19:08, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

You do not need to take it that far. I have now removed the disputed material to Refn notes, in order to end this discussion. I had given you a full explanation of the situation, and instead of conceding any points, you have attempted to escalate it further. The problem with these discussions with the above editor is that they continue every single day, and it is endless, which, as she knows, causes me considerable distress. So I have removed the quoted material from immediate sight because I want the discussion to stop. Now. Also, this article is on the verge of appearing on DYK, and this situation was threatening to disrupt that process, which would disrupt in turn the main page of WP. So now that you have what you want, please stop this. Storye book (talk) 21:26, 20 July 2024 (UTC)