Talk:Frederick G. Clausen

List of works

Again, database dump that may or may not have anything to do with Fritz Clausen -- and in at least one case, provably doesn't.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Can you please indicate which item you disagree with, and why. You have pulled this kind of stunt before, and shouldn't have to behave this way. I will return the list to the article shortly. --doncram 20:04, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Just guessing, you suspect the one in Illinois is not associated? It is. --doncram 20:07, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

negative tag removed

An editor has added a negative tag, which i removed. The quote that was tagged is clearly covered in the citation given. --doncram 22:38, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

development

The article is being edited by a couple editors now. I just added some more support for the fact that Clausen & Burrows is one name of the firm in an edit conflict edit, and to indicate the firm names which are associated and which redirect to here, and then in next edit tried to add back lede editing added by editor Elen of the Roads which was temporarily removed by my ec edit. Please proceed, i won't edit here for a while.

There's been some discussion elsewhere about the proper name for this article (at ANI, not the proper forum, which is here). The article was started by me originally at "Fritz G. Clausen" and has been moved to "Frederick G. Clausen" and then to "Frederick G. Clausen and associated architects" and then back to "Frederick G. Clausen". It is currently the only wikipedia article about Clausen and the associated partnerships. Usual wikipedia policies should apply for when it is appropriate to split out separate articles (including considerations about whether the individual partnerships are notable and whether the size of combined article is too large). I currently think just one article about F.G. Clausen, his son, and the several associated partnerships is needed. It would be fine and nice if others would discuss, civilly, here, their views if they differ. --doncram 15:53, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

• Frederick G. Clausen was a notable architect. The cleanest and sanest way to document his biography and his work is with a stand-alone article about his. The fact that his son was also an architect who also may be notable, that he sometimes worked with other architects, and (most particularly) that NRIS data dumps for "Clausen" return some records for buildings that he didn't design (or didn't design by himself) does not mean that it is sensible to create an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink article that covers his life and work, his son's life and work, and 140 years of miscellaneous architectural and business history in Davenport. --Orlady (talk) 16:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

In particular, this edit by me is the one adding hatnote about redirects and providing more support about the associated firms. It quoted from this longer passage in an Iowa historic site document:

The Andresen Apartment building was constructed in 1900, by the locally prominent architectural firm of Clausen & Burrows. Frederick Clausen, a German immigrant who came to Davenport in 1869, founded the architectural firm of F.G. Clausen in 1871. Known by various names over the course of its one hundred thirty-four year history, including Clausen & Burrows from 1897 to 1904, the firm is responsible for some of Davenport’s landmark buildings including the Democrat Building, the Scott County Savings Bank, the Davenport Municipal Stadium (aka John O’Donnell Stadium), and the Petersen Memorial Music Pavilion. Today it is known as Scholtz-Gowey-Gere-Marolf Architects & Interior Designers and is one of the oldest architectural firms in Iowa. (from here

I do think that this, plus other easily accessible sources, some already cited in the article, should lay to rest one or more editors' concerns about the association of "Clausen & Burrows" and other firm names. Again as another editor is working (and reverted this), I'll not edit now, but I do hope that my fully formed citation for this source and other material in my edit can be worked back in. --doncram 16:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

• Surrounding a paragraph of copyright content with quotation marks does not avoid copyright violation. Fundamentally, it is plagiarism. This has been pointed out to you before. See Wikipedia:Plagiarism, Wikipedia:Quotations, and Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. --Orlady (talk) 16:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I asked for civil discussion, not incivil accusations of plagiarism. There is NO FUCKING WAY that I have plagiarized in this article or in this Talk page, and it is incivil to make such an accusation. Orlady has previously accidentally or deliberately confounded the distinct concepts of copyright and of plagiarism. I think the edit that I put in (not sure that Orlady actually looked at it or not) is within fair use for copyright purposes, and it is just inflammatory and obnoxious, in my view, that Orlady asserts plagiarism. --doncram 16:33, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

No personal attacks, please. Describing a type of content as plagiarism is not personal. "Inflammatory and obnoxious" is making it personal. No comment on the F word. Please don't give me reason to add to this list (or, for that matter, this one). --Orlady (talk) 16:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Who is making anything personal? The wikipedia wp:PLAGIARISM guideline, with its explicit statement "Please use care to frame concerns in an appropriate way, as an accusation of plagiarism is a serious charge." has been pointed out by me to Orlady, before, and also the distinction of what is plagiarism. It seems deliberately reckless to make unfounded accusations of plagiarism here, and that is what seems to be the salient personal attack on this page. --doncram 16:55, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe I've been spending too much time at WP:DYK, where "plagiarism", WP:Plagiarism, and related guidelines and essays are being invoked frequently in connection with content. Whatever the reason, I see plagiarism and copyvio as content issues, not personality issues. --Orlady (talk) 17:08, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Finished editing

Apologies for undoing two of your edits Doncram, but we were kinda going in different directions at that point. Hopefully you can see that I have got in all the content that you wanted in reasonable order and reasonably proper English. Frustratingly, the only source I can find for his dob/dod is [1] - I can't see the journal or trace an online copy of the Davenport Democrat & Leader, which must have had his obit in 1940.

I think Frederick G. Clausen is probably the right title for the article. I have added some info about the firm after old Fred retired, but he seems to have been what made it notable. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:51, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for improving the article, specifically to this version and I don't disagree about having "Frederick G. Clausen" being the name for the article. I do think your editing did improve the article and that it is pretty good now.

At the ANI discussion (now archived here), you contended that this earlier version "was not suitable to be released into mainspace". I don't want to have a whole big argument, but I disagree. I think that version established notability, included 5 citations, and included a good list of the person's works with properly sorted out links to all the wikipedia-notable, NRHP-listed ones. It's nice that you improved the article in certain ways to your own satisfaction. But there is no way you could have or would have gotten to your version, without the previous version having been developed mostly by me (plus a whole host of related edits to linked pages and disambiguation pages and more behind-the-scenes work done by me), and there are arguable deficiencies in your version that other editors could point out (and could harp angrily about, if your version exactly had been left by me).

My heart is not in criticizing the current version, but I don't want for your opinion to be solidified that one version was awful while the current version is wonderful, and that it only took an hour or two or whatever to get it there. Specific points:

1. you edited from the previous version, you did not start completely fresh. It is a huge advantage.
2. the current article has nice groupings of the list of works into four sections, but the last section title is not great, does not capture what the contents are exactly. I don't have a great suggestion for what it should be, but some could seize upon it as being inaccurate and be violently angry about it.
3. the current section lists are "unsorted", have no clear order (while previous version's one list was in alphabetical order). It would be natural to add dates of design or construction and sort by that.
4. the current article includes works by Clausen & Burrows and other firm names and even works not by F.G. Clausen at all. Although SarekOV never clearly identified which items he objected to in his first interventions into this article, before opening the ANI, this is exactly as it was before. I did and do continue to think that it is fine and best to have these works included here, but I see no difference, why SarekOV should not angrily be ringing you up at ANI.
5. the current article is "not sorted" in that it is not presented properly for arriving readers who click on Clausen & Burrows or other firm name redirects to here. Technically there should be either hatnotes explaining that "Clausen & Burrows redirects to here", etc., or bolded names in the lede text. Your perspective may be that you are neatening up a single, standalone article, but it has also to work as a proper treatment for the firm names too. (There is no current taste for splitting out separate articles about Clausen & Burrows and the son and so on, and the works are listed here, so it is proper for the redirects to come to here.) The previous version had them in bold and I once edited in hatnotes as the alternative; neither appears now.
6. the current title is better i think, and I believe I myself would have left it located it at "Frederick G. Clausen", but I was trying to head off wholesale removal of all the Clausen & Burrows and other works, by heavy-handed titling to clarify that the article was indeed about them all.
7. the current article is better than the previous article in several ways, including that it does not have the heavy-handed, self-referencing statement "This article is about all of these firms and their works." But that was only added as an attempt to head off extension of edit warring about what the article was about. I wouldn't want that in; i would have preferred to have left the firm names in bold convey that adequately.
8. your version includes sentence "Clausen has been termed the "premier 19th century architect" of Davenport, Iowa" with citation, just as mine did. I think you agree that writing is fine, while it is a different, subjective opinion of Orlady's that such is "weasel wording" and he/she inserts a weasel word tag that displays "says whom". Orlady is not jumping to dispute this wording in your version however.
9. there's some possible criticism about overlinking of Davenport, IA etc. in the current and previous list, yet to be fixed up.

Again, I really don't want to argue about these points, but I do want to assert that it is highly subjective to argue that the recent version is wonderful while the previous was horrible. And that some defects in the previous version were artifacts of argumentative editing not for building the wikipedia, and were not entirely my fault. Thanks again for your editing. --doncram 20:05, 5 December 2011 (UTC)