Talk:Stanley Green/Archive 1

Archive 1

What made him do it?

Does anyone know what inspired him to do what he did in the first place?Julia Rossi (talk) 23:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

No idea, Julia. He was apparently interviewed by the Sunday Times a few years ago, so I'm going to look for that. Perhaps he explained. :-) SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 23:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Eight = eat ?

What the "Eight Passion Proteins With Care" really meant? Is "Eight" a garbled "Eat" here? CopperKettle (talk) 14:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems to make more sense to eat the fiery proteins with care, but I take it he's saying be careful of these eight: "Fish Meat Bird Cheese Egg; Peas Beans; Nuts", as in handle with care. You think? Cheers Julia Rossi (talk) 00:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think he meant those eight. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 00:49, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

What was Green?

Slim, you dismiss the description I added of "dietary reformer and author", which is fine and dandy, but you may be interested to know that it is the description used in the Oxford Biography entry on him. But, you seem fairly certain of your facts. Are you a relative? hjuk (talk) 23:06, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Gallery

• Per WP:IG "the images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery should be appropriately titled (unless the theme of the gallery is clear from the context of the article). Images in a gallery should be carefully selected, avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made."

The current gallery does not meet this standard as it lacks caps, titles, and rationale for it's encyclopedic value. Aren't they just pics of Green which could be used elsewhere in the article? — GabeMc (talk) 20:22, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Template

As he is not in the History of London template at the foot of the page, should it be there? Ericoides (talk) 07:53, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

And Sitting?

At some point in the 1970s he added the "And Sitting" part to the bottom of his banner. Does anyone know what this meant? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.11.3.97 (talk) 15:45, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

In other words, sitting down and not exercising enough. As stated in the Dictionary of National Biography: "To the original eight ‘passion proteins’ Green later added sitting to warn of the link between sedentary living, enhanced protein build-up, and lust. But ‘and sitting’ was the only significant revision of the banner which he carried for twenty-five years..." Muzilon (talk) 22:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Any visible means of support?

Even if we imagine the 12p price projected back through the whole period, Stanley Green only raised £10,440 in the 20 years of promoting the pamphlet. (I gather it was actually 25 years, 1968 to 1993, which only makes my point stronger here.) Glancing at the British CPI for 1988 A.D. to 2010 A.D., the total loss of purchasing power in that time is less than 300%, so that face £522 per year is not more than say £1,566 or £2,610 per year.

If we take a wild stab at a sailor's pay (from unreliable commentaries about WWII) being £50 per month for seven years, that's not more than £4,200 (maybe £21,000 today).

So...is any more information available on what this bloke used to pay living expenses?

AltiusBimm (talk) 20:03, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

As stated in the DNB bio, "In early 1962 he worked briefly for the General Post Office, after which he appears to have earned his living as a self-employed gardener." Muzilon (talk) 22:37, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, he wouldn't have had many expenses. He lived in a council flat, used a bicycle then the bus (with a free bus pass), baked his own bread, and seemed mostly to wear the same clothes. Plus, he probably had some welfare payments and a state pension. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:20, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Secret Policeman's Ball

Perhaps this is too "popular culture" to mention, but - no doubt inspired by Stanley - there was a placard with the legend "Protein Causes Vice" in the finale to the 1979 Secret Policeman's Ball, on the theme of the end of the world, featuring Peter Cook and a young Rowan Atkinson. The sketch was originally from Beyond the Fringe, I believe.

The version from the Secret Policeman's Ball is currently on YouTube here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hJQ18S6aag - see the banner on the right (wielded by Michael Palin, I think) at about 3:50, and then a few seconds later behind Cook. - "Now is the end - Perish The World! ... Well, it's not quite the conflagration we'd been banking on. Never mind, lads, same time tomorrow... we must get a winner one day." -- Ferma (talk) 19:23, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Copy edit

Hi BarrelProof, this is an FA, so I'd like to try to keep it neat. The phrase "protein wisdom" is in the sentence next to the one you're adding it to, so there's no need for that repetition. As for punctuation, I don't use LQ, and LQ isn't just a matter of placing punctuation outside. It's copying the original, which is often hard to track down (and there is no "original" when it's speech, obviously). So I use internal punctuation, which is both British and American. The MoS allows alternative styles when all are acceptable: "Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a substantial reason. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:22, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

MOS:LQ is a Wikipedia guideline. It does not say that "internal punctuation" is an acceptable style of quotation on Wikipedia. Instead, it says to use logical quotation on Wikipedia. It says "On Wikipedia, place all punctuation marks inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not. It says that the logical quotation style has been chosen by Wikipedia consensus. The cases that I changed were clearly not using logical quotation. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:30, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:STYLEVAR doesn't say acceptable by the MoS. If an editor chooses to use a style that is generally acceptable and does it consistently, that's fine, even if it's not in the MoS, and editors aren't supposed to arrive to change that style to another preferred one. It's the same with WP:CITEVAR, for example. The whole point of these is to stop editors arriving at an article to change it to their preferred style, because these are guidelines, not policies.

Anyway, as I said, the original punctuation is often hard to track down, or doesn't exist because it's reported speech from an interview, so in using LQ (copying the original), all you're doing is copying whatever publisher's style you've taken the interview from; and actually that is always the case, even if the material was submitted in writing. That has never made any sense to me, which is in part why I avoid it (also, in my view, it looks ugly). SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:35, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

You're quoting a general guideline about what to do when multiple styles are acceptable on Wikipedia. But when it comes to quotations, there is only one style that it preferred on Wikipedia. There is no indication that other styles are acceptable on Wikipedia for quotations. One style has been chosen by consensus. It does not seem to be the style that you personally like, but it is in the Wikipedia guidelines. This is not something like WP:ENGVAR, where multiple styles are acceptable. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

The MoS is a guideline, so all it does is advise. It is the same as CITE. CITE lists a number of acceptable styles, but if someone uses another style, so long as it's acceptable (as in "used by other publishers and not too weird"), it's fine on WP if used consistently. That is the point of CITEVAR and STYLEVAR.

Internal punctuation is widely used on WP and elsewhere, because it's easier to follow. It makes more sense to use it on WP, where most people don't have access to the original publication, or don't know what it was (most people who try to use LQ end up not using it properly). I can't see what difference it would make to you. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:13, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

As stated, "The Manual of Style documents Wikipedia's house style. It helps editors write articles with consistent, clear, and precise language, layout, and formatting." My goal here is simply to try to help apply the house style, and I'm surprised to see that effort being blocked by a single editor who dislikes this aspect of the house style. As far as I know, the quote "used by other publishers and not too weird" is simply a made up phrase, or at least is found in some different context. A clear preference for a particular style of quotation formatting is expressed in the guidelines, and it appears to me that the CITEVAR and STYLEVAR discussions are simply distractions, as they are off-topic. If someone proposed for that part of the guidelines to be changed to say that people can punctuate quotations in whichever way they wish, I would probably not express a strong opinion against changing it. But that's not what the guideline says currently. Considering that the guideline says what it says, I think we should follow it. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:18, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

After several months, it seems that only one editor has a strong belief that the article should be formatted contrary to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style in regard to MOS:LQ. —BarrelProof (talk) 11:04, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

It seems that the same editor quietly (i.e., without remark here on the article's Talk page and without mentioning it in the relevant edit summaries) changed several places the article back to being contrary to the guideline again in November. I have changed the article back to being in accord with the Wikipedia MOS:LQ guideline again. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Recent edits

To the anon, would you mind discussing your edits rather than reverting? There's no need to link titles (see WP:OVERLINK); "the" is omitted in newspaper titles of more than one word; and there's no need to link more than once. Also, the punctuation is correct as it is; the article uses LQ (see MOS:LQ). Happy to discuss in more detail. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:19, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin:

There's no need to link titles (see WP:OVERLINK);

I'm familiar with MOS:OVERLINK. MOS:UNDERLINK says that we should link "Proper names that are likely to be unfamiliar to readers". To what are you referring in MOS:UNDERLINK that would contradict that?

"the" is omitted in newspaper titles of more than one word;

Where is this provided for in the MOS? MOS:CAPS would seem to suggest otherwise.

and there's no need to link more than once.

MOS:DUPLINK would beg to differ.

Also, the punctuation is correct as it is; the article uses LQ (see MOS:LQ).

In each of the relevant cases, is the comma in that particular position in the original publication (e.g., "The injustice of it upsets me, because I'm doing such a good job.")?

Additionally, if you're going to use an edit summary, please do not choose to omit particular changes from the summary. And why would you be setting up a bot to archive a 10 kb talk page monthly such that it would leave the talk page blank and then revert me without explanation when I try to bring back the most recent discussion, a discussion that would appear to pertain to the present?

Finally, on my talk page, you noted that "Stanley Green is a featured article." Of what relevance is that? 142.160.131.202 (talk) 22:39, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello 142.160.131.202, some replies:

Re: "The injustice of it upsets me," he said, "because I'm doing such a good job." That's where the comma would be placed (after "upsets me") in the original.

For titles and the definite article, see Hart's Rules, p. 143. It recommends lower case for newspaper titles (unlike book titles) unless the title consists of the definite article and just one other word. Also see the Guardian style guide: "lc for newspapers (the Guardian), magazines (the New Statesman), pubs (the Coach and Horses), bands (the Black Eyed Peas, the Not Sensibles, the The), nicknames (the Hulk, the Red Baron), and sports grounds (the Oval)." MOS:THECAPS doesn't cover newspaper titles.

Re: OVERLINK, there's no need to link common titles, especially when the links won't help the reader to understand the article, and no need to repeat links in such a short article.

Re: archiving, the discussion you restored was 3–4 years old, except for one post that was 17 months old.

Re: that it's an FA, I mentioned that because we're expected to keep them tidy. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:35, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

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LQ

BarrelProof, LQ involves respecting the punctuation of the original source. So if you're quoting a whole sentence, the punctuation goes inside. The sentence here was:

I was astonished when things were said quite openly—what a husband would say to his wife when home on leave.

We have used that to create a new sentence:

I was astonished when things were said quite openly—what a husband would say to his wife when home on leave," he told the Sunday Times' "A Life in the Day" column in 1985.

Quoting New Hart's Rules (p. 163), describing "traditional British style" (i.e. LQ): "When quoted speech is broken off and then resumed after words such as he said, a comma is used within the quotation marks to represent any punctuation that would naturally have been found in the original passage ... The example they give: "It cannot be done," he concluded. "We must give up the task."

SarahSV ^(talk) 20:16, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

This may be a bit of a borderline case. The excerpt from New Hart's Rules doesn't explicitly discuss changing a full stop to a comma, and Wikipedia MOS:LQ is also not necessarily the same thing as what New Hart's Rules calls "traditional British style". MOS:LQ is not supposed to be a matter "of the variety of English". We can look to relevant examples at MOS:LQ:

If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause that should be preceded by a comma, omit the full stop—but other terminal punctuation, ...
Dory said, "Yes, I can read", which gave Marlin an idea.

I think the case discussed by New Hart's Rules is more like these:

Do not follow quoted words or fragments with commas inside the quotation marks, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation [emphasis added] ...
"Fish are friends," said Bruce, "not food."
"Why", asked Darla, "are you sleeping?"

In the quote from Bruce, the comma is part of the original. It wasn't a full stop. The quote from Green is not a case where "the comma is part of the full quotation", so I believe it belongs outside according to MOS:LQ.

—BarrelProof (talk) 20:57, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Re: "The excerpt from New Hart's Rules doesn't explicitly discuss changing a full stop to a comma." Yes, it does, and it's discussing LQ. It says: "When a grammatically complete sentence is quoted, the full point is placed within the closing quotation mark." Then it talks about replacing that with a comma, and gives the "It cannot be done" example. This isn't a borderline case. This is a perfectly standard case. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:02, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps. But I fall back on the idea that Wikipedia does not necessarily look to New Hart's Rules. As I understand it, Wikipedia quotation style is trying to be "logical", not British. If that is intended to be the practice on Wikipedia, it would be nice if it was clarified explicitly at MOS:LQ. This is all a matter of very fine tuning, of course, but I am also interested in learning whether this is really intended to be applied on Wikipedia or not. I've seen various cases on Wikipedia where it seems that a full stop has been replaced by a comma, and have wondered whether that is appropriate.

Also, are you relying on the concept of "When quoted speech is broken off and then resumed" or on the concept of "if you're quoting a whole sentence, the punctuation goes inside" [even when that involves replacing a full stop by a comma]? In this instance, both of those apply, because the sentence we're discussing is followed by "I've always been a moral sort of person."

—BarrelProof (talk) 21:11, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

(ec) LQ is a system of punctuation that involves learning the rules, which is why I think it's inappropriate for Wikipedia. It used to be described clearly on the MoS, but others edited it and it has deteriorated. I wrote this article (an FA) with aesthetic punctuation because it's much easier for editors to understand—always inside. But from 2013 you kept changing it to LQ, so eventually I gave up and went along with the change. (I also started using LQ elsewhere on WP as part of a neuroplasticity effort to make it less annoying to my brain!) But if you want LQ, it has to be LQ, not some made-up hybrid. New Hart's Rules is a good place to read the rules, and that is indeed LQ that they're describing (they discuss "traditional British" versus the American style of always inside). You may be able to see p. 163 on Google or Amazon. Sorry, I don't understand your final question. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:27, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot that was you. Sorry for further "pushing your buttons". —BarrelProof (talk) 21:33, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

That's okay. I find it much less annoying now. My homemade neuroplasticity therapy seems to have worked. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:42, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Here is the New Hart's Rules example (this might answer your question):

• It cannot be done. We must give up the task.

That becomes:

• "It cannot be done," he concluded. "We must give up the task."

SarahSV ^(talk) 21:30, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that does help (somewhat). —BarrelProof (talk) 21:33, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

That's because "It cannot be done" is a complete sentence in the original. If it were not a complete sentence, the comma would go outside when writing it as reported speech. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:42, 16 February 2018 (UTC)