Talk:Sir Alexander MacRobert, 1st Baronet

Recent revert

Rrostrom shuffled the text around without adding any actual content on 16 April, which I reverted before I then carried out a couple of tweaks like removing unsourced content. Rrostrum has again reverted without any talk page discussion as required per WP:BRD. I have therefore reverted and started the discussion here. The change once again added no additional content but included removing almost all of the lead, re-introducing unsourced content and typos as well as making very short choppy sections, hence it is not an improvement. The claimed refs added were already used in the article elsewhere yet the consistent established ref format used throughout the article was not adhered to (per WP:CITEVAR). SagaciousPhil - Chat 08:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

????

The text was very disorganized. Most of the narrative was in the summary para (with no refs). The Career section only mentioned his honours, and mostly repeated text from the summary para. The Family section was mostly about his medical charities.

The original criticism referred to "swathes of unref'd sections". The only "unref'd section" was the Career section, which was a rewrite of content taken from the former summary para, where it was unref'd.

"The claimed refs added were already used in the article elsewhere"...

Partly true. I don't have access to the Miller book or the British Newspaper Archive, and could not turn up any additional refs by Web search. I re-used the Glasgow Herald ref which I could read, and which supports the stated text - content which had previously appeared without any ref. I borrowed the "Miller p 109" reference from the "British India Corporation" article, where it footnotes a sentence stating the same thing - a cheat, but a safe one, I think.

"yet the consistent established ref format used throughout the article was not adhered to".

What does this mean? The refs look exactly the same to me.

I will admit that on further review, the summary para is too short.

Rich Rostrom (Talk) 23:50, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Rrostrom: I do not disagree that the article was a little disorganised; it was a fairly brief/basic start I created to simply ensure MacRobert was not a red link in another article I was working on at the time as was clearly indicated in my first edit summary. I had hoped that others with sufficient interest in the topic might have helped but it would mean doing more than simply searching on Google ...

The lead section (is that what you refer to as the "summary section"?) does not require citations but must establish the subjects notability as per WP:LEAD so I wrote a very brief lead paragraph to do that; the lead is not fully summarised until the rest of the article is fleshed out - I believe this is a fairly standard practise used by most experienced editors.

The ref format established uses {{r|xxxx}} and {{sfnp}} templates, so does not have {{cite web}} etc templates at the end of sentences/paragraphs. I see it was not followed in an edit made in June, which I will duly correct. The edits made that I recently reverted also introduced factual errors: Georgina did not accompany MacRobert to India in January 1884 as she did not travel to India until almost two years later at the end of 1885; MacRobert made several trips back to Scotland (he was also at Georgina's bedside when she died at Douneside) so it was incorrect to infer that only one trip was made - ie: by stating "the voyage" as it was one of many. These are typical of the kind of errors that can be introduced when someone changes text without checking the refs.

I will shortly begin attempting to expand the article but it is a very long, involved and indeed tragic story; the MacRobert name is well known mainly because of the benevolent work of the Trust and the donations made, yet very few know anything of Mac, without whom none of it would have been possible. SagaciousPhil - Chat 12:59, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@Sagaciousphil:

IOW, the problems you blamed me for were already present when I edited the article. It's your pet; I leave it to you. I just hope that if you do expand or otherwise upgrade the article, you will put the material in some kind of order. The MacRoberts do deserve an article.

BTW, I suggest learning the correct usage of "infer" and "imply". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rrostrom (talk • contribs)