User talk:Charles Matthews/Archive 34

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John Fuller

Charles. You know everything :) Is a John Fuller on your radar? He was the Bishop of Ely's chancellor in 1555 when the two 'Ely Martyr's' were condemned and burnt at the stake.^[1] Implied by the DAB page here and confirmed by the ODNB (2011) (subscription required), he was master of Jesus College in 1557. There appears to be a DNB archive page on him too. Is there an article in there somewhere?

[1] Foxe, John (1838), Seymour, Michael Hobart (ed.), The Acts and monuments of the Church; containing the history and sufferings of the martyrs. A new ed., revised, corrected, and condensed by M.H. Seymour, London: Scott, Webster and Geary, pp. 820–821

--Senra (Talk) 18:42, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yup, s:Fuller, John (d.1558) (DNB00), perfectly notable as a college head. I'd offer to make the article shortly, but I have to read newspapers before recycling them (after is harder). Charles Matthews (talk) 19:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

"After is even harder"? Apparently, even shredding them is no longer secure (source) :) --Senra (Talk) 19:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

You may find Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Walkthrough of interest. Some of the basic points about DNB adaptation are in there. (I have a second "walkthrough" lined up that I could add.) You have done an "auxiliary references" section also. I haven't written that up according to my own ideas; I discussed it not long ago, though. I'll do a pass through the article when I'm not quite so pressed. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:28, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done—John Fuller --Senra (Talk) 15:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

John Fuller is currently at DYK. This version has been negatively reviewed. I have since made some changes resulting in this version. I would welcome your view --Senra (talk) 14:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

There is an impressive amount now available online about John Foxe's work. For example here where it refers to the various editions in which it is said that Fuller went to visit William Wolsey to get him to recant. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:55, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Another thing is the effect on the services at Jesus: see this for some detail. The ODNB says he was involved in the case of John Hullier, reading out his sentence in Great St. Mary's, which verifies the comment made there about Jesus Green. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:14, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Pictures from Ramanujam's stay in England

hey! I'm a Wikipedian from India. Also, share your interests in GLAM, btw.

It was Ramanujam's 125th Birth Anniversary recently. Wondering if you could help with getting pictures of places where he lived in England, etc?

Prad2609 (talk) 14:27, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

For Trinity College, there is a Commons category: commons:Category:Trinity College, Cambridge, with an external view of Whewell's Court where he lived (if I remember correctly). His last time in England was spent at Matlock[1]. I don't see a picture of Matlock House in the Commons category, though. It would probably be in commons:Category:Matlock Bath. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia a 20 year project

I heard your comments about wikipedia being a 20 year project on BBC. I think if wikipedia is truly going to reach its potential its gonna take a lot longer than another 20 years. We are missing at least 5 million articles from other wikipedias let alone the vast amount we could potentially be covering from topics in the developing world and species. Its taken 11 years to create 3.6 million articles...More like a 50-100 year project given that we could potentially cover several hundred million articles.. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:57, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I have been saying "20 years" for a while now, and it seems to fit the original concept reasonably well, and give some perspective. Of course you're right in a sense, too. But it happens to tally with my estimate from 2004 that enWP will eventually get to about 7 million articles (back-of-envelope). After that ... well, something else can happen, and there are quite a number of scenarios. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I sometimes scare myself when I venture into German wikipedia and Polish wikipedia in particular. You discover towns which are one liners on here but have like 80 articles on buildings and landmarks within them! But there are also invisible articles one could write like Clotted cream production in Devon, Tomato production in Spain etc in which the possibilities of articles are endless. My own personal goal is for wikipedia to have detailed coverage of every part of the planet within reason in which we have an article not only on every settlement but a guide to each municipality with articles on notable landmarks etc. So to look anywhere on google maps and for wikipedia to have detailed sourced information. And that's before you even take into biographies of all time periods of all parts of the world! I just think the time scale involved to truly document what we could would be very long but you might be right than within 20 years we might have at least started the most notable content. The problem is systematic bias so it takes just weeks to get an article on a US TV episode but might take 11 years to get a notable fesitval of Ivory Coast or something onto here.. I think in another ten years there will still be a massive amount missing from the developing world, especially Africa. But our merging encyclopedias and transwiki work is at least a start.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:58, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

A Talkpage stalker buts in. I'm not convinced that time is the best way to think of our development, if we continue with our gently declining editor base for ten years then I think we will struggle to reach 5 million articles. If WYSIWYG editing or something else lures in a new generation of editors, or if we manage to get the deletionists under control then we can get much more done. But to get decent coverage in the developing world I think we are going to need to beef up WikiSource and get some reliable historical sources there digitised and online. ϢereSpielChequers 19:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Well indeed, the sister-project position is dynamic, and the whole Web position is dynamic too (Google Books has made a huge difference to how I work already, and JSTOR access would be another major increment to what I could write quickly). Wikisource is only just getting going. Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/ADB was created earlier this month, and is an example of trying to harness deWS (so that it becomes more routine to identify and fill those interwiki gaps).

I don't see the "size of community" metric as a good argument, really. Efficiency of work has to be taken into account. And I have to say that creating new articles on less popular topics is much less of a time-sink than edit wars on topics that get all too much attention. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia training

Hi Charles,

given your experience in teaching and in training new Wikimedia contributors, I'd be very interested in your feedback on [2] . Feel free to discuss and improve on the WMUK wiki or in email. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 14:09, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. "The whole thing probably needs to be completely restructured". That's an in-joke, so I hope you get it ... I did write with Phoebe and Ben quite a lot of relevant stuff in How Wikipedia Works, but the trend today is to write short pamphlets, it seems. I'm not entirely rambling here: basically the aim of training is something like getting from "see the colour-coded tags at the top of the page" to "how to do major edits"/"merging pages made possible" through loads of know-how. I thought a bit about this a while ago when I wondered about giving evening classes. It's a huge area (things like NPOV through to full template syntax, which I wouldn't claim to understand myself).

I would think your page should aim at a slower pace, i.e. develop the bullet points into something more readable, at around three times the total length. That's largely a drafting matter. But in a sense you should be setting a length and working to it, instead, in the light of the audience you're aiming at. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:18, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. My approach is to try and keep things as short and plain as possible rather than working to a particular length. Can you give an example of the sort of expansion you propose? Feel free to add references to relevant parts of your book under the Resources section. I was thinking of your book when I started the pages, but haven't mapped its sections to the relevant learning goals. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 14:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Additive synthesis

Hi Charles,

Any chance you could have a look at Talk:Additive synthesis. There's been edit warring on the article (I've fully protected it for three days), but I feel having an admin who can speak mathematics too might help resolve the content dispute rather than just me locking, blocking and waiting for socking. —Tom Morris (talk) 19:20, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

BTW, Charles, I am not socking. I am an IP, and my ISP will occasionally change (slightly) my IP address, but I am clearly identifying myself as the same person. I want to remain anonymous, but I will not represent myself as two (or more) editors. No socking. Also (one reason not to self-identify) I am an active published audio engineer in this field (ABD, not quite PhD) and an accomplished applied mathematician also. User:Clusternote simply does not understand what instantaneous frequency is nor how it relates to the argument of a sin() function. 71.169.179.65 (talk) 19:28, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't implying that you were socking. I was making a jokey reference to the fact that I'd rather have someone like Charles (or another WikiProject Mathematics person) try and mediate the content dispute than just lock and block, which would cause resentment and so on. —Tom Morris (talk) 19:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, Tom, I thought you meant someone was socking. We have a tendentious and intellectually dishonest editor, I don't see how resentment will be avoided. But I do see how further degradation of an already poor article can be avoided. 71.169.179.65 (talk) 04:40, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I've written on Talk:Additive synthesis with a schematic view of how to treat the article. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:30, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

So Charles, are you going to respond to my response to you on the talk page? Can you at least, for the time being, delete the incorrect mathematics in section 2.2 of the article until such a time that you have a better version composed? May I trust that you understand what is wrong in that section? Do you understand? 71.169.179.65 (talk) 19:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Charles, I hope you don't mind interlacing conversation (if you do, I'll revert this and put it all in a single spot)...

I did respond, and a couple of other editors have been there too?

True, and did you notice what the content of their response is and how Clusternote responds to that? And you didn't answer my question if you understand what is wrong in section 2.2. This was a change from the status quo to something that is objectively incorrect. It should at least be removed until there is consensus to what it should be.

But it doesn't quite work like that. The page additive synthesis itself is still protected; it happens that I could edit it, being an admin, but that is very much frowned on (admin rights should give no advantages in relation to content). I last tried that in 2004, and I'm not ready to repeat the experience. There is supposed to be some consensus on the Talk page there about what to do.

There won't be, Cluster has already dismissed the consensus (excluding him/her) about this content as false, incorrect, and vandalism. The (correct) comments from Electrodruid and ChrisJohnson and OlliNiemetallo notwithstanding. Clusternote has appointed him/herself as the final decider of what is accurate and what is sourced and what the sources mean. He/she doesn't accept any correction of his/her conceptions going into the article. This is evident in the editing history, did you look at it?

The problem is an ignorant and tendentious editor. You're a mathematician. You can evaluate a mathematical argument. What did you mean at Talk:Additive_synthesis#Review_of_the_article? Weren't you going to "... re-order the whole thing, starting with the theory..." ?

The latest additions seem to go the other way: consensus is seemingly quite a way off. One option would be to ask Tom to unprotect the page and let open editing continue.

Cluster will take over and seriously degrade the article if there isn't some judgment and guidelines put down. It will either be Cluster's uninformed POV or it will be an edit war. Haven't you reviewed the history?

Another would be to place a new draft elsewhere (e.g. in my userspace if I wanted to demonstrate more precisely what I mean).

Or in the talk page, that was what I was expecting. And I was expecting a mathematical evaluation from you on a specific and objective mathematical issue.

So let's give this a little longer.

What do you mean? Protect the page longer? You know what will happen if you just unprotect it without sorting out the issues.

After all, the point (as always here) is to make updates that actually make some sort of permanent improvement, not to hurry things. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

What do you do when the article has been objectively degraded by a tendentious editor that just barged in, appointed himself to change the whole thing, and doesn't understand the math? It was screwed up in a hurry. No haste in evaluating and dealing with that? 71.169.179.65 (talk) 04:40, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I must ask you once more not to indulge in personal attacks on any editor here. Please have a look at Wikipedia:No personal attacks and abide by it. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I am identifying this editor as a clear example of WP:Tendentious editing. He does three clear behaviors regarding that. He has appointed himself and taken over the article as its sole editor. He ignores and dismisses explanations (WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT). He dismisses any opposition to his content as vandalism. This is a matter of fact and a matter of record, Charles. Why are you admins treating him with "kid gloves"?

The answer to the question "why are you not being heavy-handed?" is that being heavy-handed is lousy adminship. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not a binary choice between doing nothing regarding this editor (so far that is the case) and being heavy-handed. So I dispute your characterization of my question. 70.109.183.99 (talk) 19:34, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

We each have our area of expertise, let's say. If you need it spelled out: if you were currently blocked for personal attacks, I would consider that I had done a bad job if I hadn't referred you to the policy page. That sort of thing needs to be done on a timescale of 24 hours. The future of the article is not as urgent. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Quoting Senra, "Fair enough." But I honestly rank the value of article accuracy regarding objective things over that of protecting the feelings of a tendentious editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.109.183.99 (talk) 20:59, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I was the one being repeatedly personally attacked as a vandal. I didn't see you say anything to Clusternote about that. The article protection is scheduled to expire today sometime. No, I guess it's tomorrow: 19:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC). Anyway, without some intervention by a wise admin, this article will do one of two things when the brakes are taken off. Either it will degrade rapidly, because no editor who knows and cares has the energy to stand up to Clusternote and will consign the article to one of many that were not great but at least accurate to one of the many WP articles that became useless and inaccurate and that no one can depend on for anything. Or there will be an edit war. It depends on if those of us, who know better, are willing to spend the time taking on an editor who insists on canonizing his ignorance in a WP article. At some point, my threshold of energy will be crossed and then the article becomes crap (unless someone else steps up to the plate).

Actually you don't know that. I will treat the edits of User:Clusternote or anyone else to the article on their merits. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

The evidence and revision history speaks for itself. I do know that. 70.109.183.99 (talk) 19:34, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I remember when I was at Zuccotti Park last October. I saw a cute sign that said "They only call it class warfare when we fight back." I suppose we can consign this article to the trash heap due to one single tendentious editor who truly does not know the subject at all. This is the lot of Wikipedia. 70.109.183.99 (talk) 16:36, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Lurker butting in here. Dear 71.169.179.65. I am certain that other editors have pointed this out to you before, but just in case. There is nothing at all wrong with IP editing. However, you stated above that you "want to remain anonymous". Unless you are using a proxy, do you realise that each time you are editing as an IP editor you are disclosing geolocation information to every editor on Wikipedia? Logged in editors do not expose themselves in this way. I apologise if you are fully aware of this and I should note in closing that IP editors deserve the same treatment as other editors; including both protection from "tendicious" behaviour by others and sanctions when crossing a line themselves --Senra (talk) 14:52, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I do know that, Senra, and there is no need to apologi[z]e. Logged-in editors can be checked-up on with checkuser. I don't mind geolocation. I wouldn't even mind being fully disclosed but I know it is best not to be. 70.109.183.99 (talk) 16:36, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough --Senra (talk) 16:44, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

a series of IP user restarting revert-war

Dear Charles Matthews, above a series of IP user Special:Contributions/71.169.180.195 seems to restart revert-war on article page. He/she even cause personal attacking on "edit summary field" and talk page to disturb discussion and misleads others. (he/she always do it). How to handle this problematic IP user ? I'm glad if I could get several advices. sincerely, --Clusternote (talk) 09:18, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I have commented on Talk:Additive synthesis. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Maths in Matlock

Re. your enquiry. Intriguing and hes one of my heroes so I'd remember coming across him. Look here and you'll see that it was a tourist place. However look at Matlock Bath - there were hotels there and it was an internal resort. Victuallers (talk) 21:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Peer review of Pope John Paul II

Hi Charles, I thought you may be interested in participating in this peer review. Kind Regards -- Marek.69 ^talk 22:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Palliative for your obsession

Russell Institute, new to this parish, needs input. As to the rotunda building, yes if you can find a) enough info and b) sufficient RS to demonstrate its notability. I'll put anything I come across on talk:Surrey Institution. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

There's an absurd amount of detail in the Parolin reference, on the Surrey Institution page, about the "Surrey Rotunda" aftermath. I'm a bit frustrated at having no outside view image, and no exact location. Supposedly it was behind 3 Blackfriars Road; I think that means that they built a row of houses in front of the existing buildings on the west side of what was then Albion Square. By 1830 it gets described as "ramshackle" but that could mean anything from blocked gutters downwards. Probably explains why it doesn't get engraved - a friend was pointing out John Hassell (artist) who was doing Surrey at the period, but this could be too urban by quite some way. Another frustration is that the Surrey Chapel is also a kind of rotunda, just down the road, and there are engravings of it ...

Anyway I have been busy with William Devonshire Saull, who is at least vaguely connected with Ethnological Society of London which I'm actually "supposed" to be working on. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk:William Dougal Christie

Took me a while to work out what you were after, I was trying to enWS relate it. Anyway, I have put research details there, though it would probably be digging into obits in something like N&Q or The Times if you want a secondary reference. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Day In, Day Out

Dear Charles. Is it possible to provide me with a copy of one page out of a book, please, holding in Cambridge University Library?

Meaning this: http://hooke.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/bib_seek.cgi?cat=ul&bib=92838

I need a good scan from the book frontispiece for an article in Wikipedia. This image is public domain and can be used.

For any help I will be very glad. Thank you very much indeed, Doc Taxon (talk) 11:18, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh sorry, have you read this? -- Doc Taxon (talk) 11:40, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but I'm not likely to do anything for two weeks, anyway. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:42, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, it's not so very urgent. It may last two weeks or more, so I hope for your help to get a copy of the frontispiece, and I am very grateful in advance. I'm going to send you a wikimail now to transmit my email address. All best, Doc Taxon (talk) 12:37, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Cambridge geonotice

Done. Answer to your question: if no one replies to your geonotice request and you're an admin yourself, you're welcome to WP:IAR and put up your own notice. Deryck C. 18:19, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:15, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Charles,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, were it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 02:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

My reaction is that being an admin here is easily misunderstood. It is or should be based on a number of things: the extra "buttons" or Special pages accessible to admins; the role of about 50 main policies and guidelines, and their rationales; typical duties of a "process" kind such as closures and deletions; dispute resolution at the informal level; blocking and handling complaints and angry folk; backlogs and janitorial work. So many times we get surveyed on "motivation", which may be the ultimate question for a volunteer, but is not a great question, as such. A single relevant case study could easily take an hour to explain. There may not be a great deal of reliable literature, but there is some (How Wikipedia Works is still as complete as you'll find on social matters). I'm concerned that any study of adminship within an academic context should be less superficial than most of the commentary out there, which strikes me as largely anecdotal and ill-informed. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:45, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Mill Lane lecture

Thanks for the notification. Will reply off-wiki. Deryck C. 15:25, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Volume and pages information

It was pointed out to me by another editor that the DNB short citations did not link to the general reference in Francis Fane (dramatist). It turned out that there were problems with page number and other issues, but the reason that the short citation was no longer linked to the general reference was because of an edit you made on back in February 2011. When you converted the link from title= and url= to wstitle= you also removed |volume=18|pages=180,181. Was the removal of the volume and pages information an oversight? -- PBS (talk) 23:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The way I would do it now would be to include any volume, page and author information already present, in converting a link (say from one into the Page: namespace) to the "wstitle=" field. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:43, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. -- PBS (talk) 05:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Google books

Hi. I saw your new article. Please don't leave references as "google books". All you have to do is paste the url into here and it will instantly make the citations for you.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:45, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll take this under consideration. Citing exact pages in Google Books is a great thing; but there are a number of issues. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

So the output is <ref name="Burton-by-Lincoln.)1837">{{cite book|author=Edmund Roberts Larken (M.A., Rector of Burton-by-Lincoln.)|title=Sermons on the commandments|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=onV8YgEACAAJ|accessdate=25 February 2012|year=1837}}</ref>. Which, I must say, needs work. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:55, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Still, better than citing book sources as Google books. If you click on the name part it'll put the surnames backwards for you as they should be. The time it takes to "clean up" the refs is mere seconds..♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, since I hate name inversion (why double the time it takes to search everything?) that wasn't my issue. The Google metadata is often wrong. (It would be less of an issue if GB had a feedback channel; I see so much online in this kind of thing, e.g. WorldCat, CERL, that needs to be fixed up.)

I have wanted a better way to cite GB, but have been warned that such discussions aren't worth getting into, because of purism. It's not the solution I'd want, because a GB citation can be done with a key like onV8YgEACAAJ and a page code only. A long URL makes templates less legible; which is my complaint against {{cite book}}. There are people who argue against {{cite DNB}}, you know. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:15, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I just get the book details from the "About this book" page, and add a link with the text "google books" after the ISBN - this in References, with just "Smith, 238" as the note. Johnbod (talk) 17:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm happy with something like that in general. The particular comment was about citing the book as a whole, not a given page. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:53, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Yau

Please comment at Talk:Shing-Tung_Yau#Birman if you get a chance. Tkuvho (talk) 11:05, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Henry III, Count of Leuven

Henry III, Count of Leuven, which you created, has been nominated to be moved to Henry III, Count of Louvain. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments here. Moonraker (talk) 06:10, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage engagement strategy released

Hey guys!

I'm dropping you a note because you filled out the New Page Patrol survey, and indicated you'd be interested in being contacted about follow-up work. This is to notify you that we've finally released both the initial documentation about the project and also the engagement strategy, which sets out how we plan to work with the community on this. Please give both a read, and leave any comments or suggestions you have on the talkpage, on my talkpage, or in my inbox - okeyeswikimedia.org.

It's awesome to finally get to start work on this! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Talk pages

Why do you not use "New section"/"+" feature? In any case, please, avoid making edit summaries referring to a section you actually do not contribute to. This confuses other users. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realise that any feature of the system was actually compulsory. You don't explain what you are talking about, but I assume you may mean a recent edit to WT:MATH. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Rye House, Hertfordshire

I propose translating the German, inside the SVG file, and uploading it as a new version.

• Themse → Thames
• Rye-House-Verschwörung → Rye House Plot
• Hauptverkehrsweg → Main roads
• Rekonstruierter Weg König Karl II → New road in time of King Charles II
• Grenzen der Grafschaftsbezirke → County boundaries
• engl. Meilen → Miles

Can you improve on my translation?

I'm afraid I can't help you with the position of the old road. Maproom (talk) 11:27, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

My German is not so good, but I read "Rekonstruierter Weg König Karl II" as "hypothetical reconstruction" of Charles II's route, rather than the result of massive roadworks. I suppose "hypothetical" had better be in there somewhere: the traditional route, it seems, went via Quendon and Newport, Essex, but none of this is really going to be verifiable. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:38, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, yes, make it a "hypothetical route". I think the caption can then expatiate. The king would quite likely break the journey at Theobalds House near Cheshunt anyway. And would not head for central London. But if you can make it an English version that could be both in the article in the House and the Rye House Plot article, then we could worry about the details in both places at a later point. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:06, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I have translated the German (and added more county names), and uploaded the English version to Wikimedia commons, as File:RyeHouseLocationMap.svg. I have changed the article Rye House, Hertfordshire to use the English version. Maproom (talk) 15:15, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks. I need to get on to write about the Plot, really, which is more significant. But I keep on digging up a bit more about the House, and many images. Somewhere it says that the House was at the north-west corner of Epping Forest. That is about right, but too vague, really. There was a large royal forest in Essex, and Epping Forest what is left. So it matters when was meant. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Boole

Hi Charles,

I have left you a note at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#George_Boole. Although Boole's contribution to analysis is perhaps not as important as his contribution to logic, I think it deserves to be mentioned.

Best, Sasha (talk) 19:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello Charles,

I added a short paragraph to George Boole. Please have a look (and correct it as you find sound).

Thank you very much,

Sasha (talk) 16:21, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Thomas Willis

Hi Charles Matthews, A couple of months ago I added a section to the article on Thomas Willis. I used a section heading that has now been objected to. A wrangle is under way which I wish to get out of at almost any price. I would be grateful if - since you wrote most of the article - you would go there and edit my introduced section (I would not mind if it disappeared altogether) to fit with the way you see the article should be. Please! Eddaido (talk) 02:46, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I've edited the page and left a Talk page comment. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:53, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Eddaido (talk) 08:19, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Surreal

Good to talk to you at the meet-up today!

Here's the diff that tickled me, with an algebraist finding it "surreal" when people tried to grapple with "yes, but what does it actually mean?". Jheald (talk) 23:24, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, good to see you. As you'll be aware, ambiguity about such a basic term as "vector" can bedevil constructive discussion. I would probably, in that situation, be trying to pull back and see if the "geometry of spinors" had a consistent meaning for self-styled geometers. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:53, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Category:Matrices

Category:Matrices, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. LeSnail (talk) 02:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Count Morphy

i was wondering if you could find the name of this person. I was creating an article on one of Isaac Albeniz's compositions and he dedicated one of the pieces to Morphy's wife. He seems to have been on the Parisian music scene in the late 19th century.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:20, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

es:Guillermo Morphy. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

There ya go: Guillermo Morphy.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Needs {{translated page}}? Charles Matthews (talk)#

Yes, added it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:31, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Late reply

Wanted to apologise for not replying before to the message you left me some time ago. The reply (for what it is worth) is here. The other thing I wanted to ask was (having looked again recently at the DNB work you and others are doing) is how much of that is left? I'm asking because I periodically promise myself that I must help out there, but never quite get that far. I presume there is lots left, but which page is the best one to look at to jump straight in? Carcharoth (talk) 15:15, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The DNB: about two-thirds of the articles are now created at Wikisource. More to say about that end, but assuming you're interested mostly in article work here, I started a scheme at WT:WP DNB called "volume of the month". That takes about 100 articles or 25% of a volume, and does a full checklist, from "does the article exist here?" through upgrades to "is there a portrait?" On the basis of three of these, we start to get a picture. Which is that the remaining articles to create are probably now under 10,000. What is more, from 100 titles there are probably only around 5 titles to create that have substantial numbers of redlinks wanting them. So in rough terms the most-wanted DNB articles would be a list of maybe 1500.

It would be relatively easy to identify those: let's say there are about 1000 redlinks where there is a clear need to create the article, and the text exists at Wikisource. Magnus Manske has a tool that can do the redlink counting on any given page easily, and the 63 pages of the "Epitome listings" linked from {{DNBFooter}} could be checked by an assiduous person. That's without the preliminary checks that were the real point of the "volume of the month" (dab work mostly).

So ... attempts to create a "conveyor belt" from Wikisource to here to create articles have hit the basic snag that copy editing the old text is quite hard to do. There is plenty of cleanup work to do, still. This doesn't stop the DNB being a tremendous resource to keep us moving forward with new material — it just means it goes rather slower than it might. My current strategy isn't to pursue "wanted articles" so consciously, but more to try to clean up "nests" of DNB articles (i.e. to follow up the redlinks from a given one by adding further DNB conversions until the process stops). And I'm doing more than in the past to add portraits as I go along. There seems to be an essentially endless amount of work of this kind, and it leads me into interesting and neglected areas. So I'm content enough.

Charles Matthews (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that. 1000 to 1500 sounds enough to keep going for a while, even if you and others take big chunks out of that. I'm interested in disambiguation work as well, but if that's all done (or nearly all done), that's no problem as I do like article work as well, and articles with portraits are even better. There is a tool that finds portraits as well, which I presume you are using (along with searches). I'll use the WT:WP DNB as a place to get started (eventually!). Carcharoth (talk) 16:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, no, I may have given the wrong impression. A page like Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/DNB Epitome 20 has plenty of dab work to do: a number of John Frasers for instance. The trick for that would be to go via Wikisource. s:http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fraser,_John_(d.1849)_(DNB00) for example links to John Fraser (poet), so there is no need to hunt around. There is a tool to match WS DNB articles to WP articles by the vital dates, so one would run that first: e.g. http://toolserver.org/~magnus/dnb/map2wp.php?letter=Fr where one can set one or two initial letters.

As for portraits: one of the really fun things, to me, about the old DNB is that the authors were interested in where to look up portraits. The modern ODNB basically tells you if the NPG has one, or not. But in the old version there is data about portraits in books as frontispieces, for example; and these days one can find the book quite often via Google Books or archive.org. Which is very satisfying because, well, sometimes there wasn't a portrait of the person easily to be found, and now there is (the NPG apparently aren't bothered about engravings that were not separately published). Marrying up "legacy text" and "legacy images" in this way seems to me to be a fundamental "heritage" thing to do. I like Josias Shute for that reason, and for the nine sermons on the plague of frogs, and the fact that he preached an unexpected sermon on St Helena against wage cuts.

Charles Matthews (talk) 16:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Talk!

Gordo (talk) 11:07, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

RAI Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture

That list is complete (I moved on to the main award, the Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture, from that Rivers Medal), and I'm impressed (as usual) by Wikipedia's coverage, in this case a nice selection of some of the most eminent anthropologists (broadly defined) of the last century or so. Only 11 redlinks from over 100 entries. I will probably spin that out into its own article/list at some point. One thing I did come across and was unsure what to do with, is User:Jhawkfan1/Samuel Kirkland Lothrop. That user only edited briefly to produce that draft. I was thinking of leaving a message on that user's talk page, while thinking and discussing what to do with that draft. Note that Samuel Kirkland Lothrop is currently an article on this person's ancestor (a 19th-century New England Unitarian minister). Carcharoth (talk) 20:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

You can see that it was a class assignment, though. It can be used as the basis for an article with a clear conscience, surely. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:13, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Managed to miss that completely! Will bear that in mind when/if I get round to that. Thanks. BTW, the user I was trying to contact doesn't seem to have signed up on the workshop page. I foolishly assumed everyone had signed up. I'm now a bit stuck for how to get in touch - I think he was working on the Sopwith page as well. Carcharoth (talk) 20:29, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

He was looking over the text as of then, wondering how to fix it up. He pointed out a chronological mistake, asked about family etc. But when I got to look at it, the material was fairly confused, and redoing the logical flow seemed the urgent thing. So I got busy. And I don't think he edited during the workshop - was working at it on paper. But keep an eye on User:Qmcman. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:38, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

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Salomon Schweigger

You got anything on him in old encyclopedias or anything?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:21, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The page has the link to the ADB, German equivalent to the DNB. I thought I'd try

site:de.wikisource.org "Salomon Schweigger"

and it gives a couple of hits. de:Hans Wild which corresponds to one of them might turn out to be of interest. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:30, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Dispute resolution survey

Dispute Resolution – Survey Invite Hello Charles Matthews. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released. Please click HERE to participate. Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts. You are receiving this invitation because you have had some activity in dispute resolution over the past year. For more information, please see the associated research page. Steven Zhang DR goes to Wikimania! 01:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

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Crawfurd mission

I see you've done extensive work om John Crawfurd, and I would like you to look at User:Pawyilee/Crawfurd Mission, and leave your comments on its Talk page. I've thrown in a lot of stuff I'll edit out later, but write now I don't know which tack to take on the what I've tentatively labeled the Queda affair, modern Kedah.

Crawfurd reports that the "King of Queda" (Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin Halim Shah II) had sought asylum at Prince of Wales Island (Penang Island) in flight from a punitive expedition following his refusal of a call to arms against Burmans from his liege, the raja of Ligor (Nakhon Si Thammarat,) a liege of the king of Siam which could have derailed the mission there. Siam's chief concern was obtaining arms, so set the issue aside, and later resolved in the Burney Treaty (as it's called in Malay history — otherwise Treaty of Amity and Commerce (Siam–United Kingdom).) This treaty effectively reversed Crawfurd's decision to respect the sanctity of asylum (even though Crawfurd, having met the prince during a previously stay on the island, disliked him.) American envoy Edmund Roberts scornfully mentions the reversal in the journal of his mission to Siam and Cochin-China (he also carried a copy of that of Crawford [sic].) There is no mention of this at all in any of the articles linked above. What do you recommend? Condense or dump the background material, expand on the Queda affair, publish and link it to all of the above? And add more later? Also, is this a good template for googlebooks? <ref>Anthony Webster, ''Gentlemen Capitalists: British Imperialism in South East Asia, 1770-1890'' (1998), p. 171; [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vH2ssfXKBLwC&pg=PA171 Google Books].</ref>

Mine of course would be .th. --Pawyilee (talk) 05:22, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, interesting: so much good detail around Crawfurd that deserves to be in Wikipedia. I'll get to this and leave you comments as you suggest. On Google Books referencing, I've been persuaded to use this link: http://reftag.appspot.com/. The output needs some tweaks, but it is a big time-saver for me now. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:44, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

DNB

Hi Charles. Wondering if subscription DNB can help on confirming biodata for three gentlemen who worked on Bible translations into Scottish Gaelic:

• James Kirkwood (Church of Scotland)
• Robert Kirk (Church of Scotland)
• James Stuart (Church of Scotland) - not DNB

In ictu oculi (talk) 02:54, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Certainly I can do something about the first two. James Stuart (Church of Scotland) turns up in the ODNB in the articles for his son John Stuart (1743–1821) and son-in-law James McLagan, as well as the Dugald Buchanan article as one would expect. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:15, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks. I have started stubs on John Stuart (1743–1821) and bro-in-law James McLagan too. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:46, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Charles. Many thanks for new edits. And sorry, I should/could have expanded J. S. 1743 myself. I cannot see an entry in http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900 for James McLagan (though he is least interesting of these for my own Gaelic NT purposes. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

The DNB on Wikisource is about two-thirds done now. But MacLagan didn't have an entry in the old work. The ODNB article was newly written by Derick Thomson. There is quite a long story about MacLagan/McLagan and Ossian to put together. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:14, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Ahah. I see that MacLagan is far more common. I'll move it. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:46, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

New World Tapestry

The entire collection of the Empire and Commonwealth Museum has been made over to Bristol City Museum. See: http://www.empiremuseum.co.uk Whether the handover has happened yet, I do not know. The City Museum would know. It is certainly not on display at the City Museum currently. Jezhotwells (talk) 09:22, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is obviously an unclear situation. Which is why I was suggesting elsewhere than someone on the ground might look into it: little point speculating. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:34, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I have emailed them to see if and when the tapestry will be on display. Jezhotwells (talk) 11:22, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. You'd better find out what it is they actually want. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:24, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was you that wanted " to have an image of a bit of the tapestry, to illustrate an article I'm doing"? Jezhotwells (talk) 12:06, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, yes, but there's the context that the tapestry's website links to New World Tapestry, which has no image at all of it. I just meant that, considering there's new management, it wouldn't harm to lay it out a bit more: many people will refer to that page, there is a lot more work that could be done to fill in articles on the area, which after all is of independent interest, but currently no illustration. And you'd have to go over the implications of releasing an image in some sort of detail. Taking this to be a GLAM contact, these are sort of baseline discussions to have, or to offer to have, I'd have thought. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:16, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I have received a reply from the City Museum, from which I quote: "The New World Tapestry is on loan to the BECM, and so it is not coming to the Bristol Museums. BECM staff are discussing it with the owner / creator, and it will in due course be returned to him. At something like 24 8 foot panels, it would be very difficult for us to find the room to display it, or even store it." Jezhotwells (talk) 13:37, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Obviously all still up in the air. Oddly I've just found reason to believe it's in Cambridge. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:49, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

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Replaced. The Eirdata site moved, went behind a paywall, or both. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:41, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Jewish Encyclopedia topics/A1

1-80 should be done except one which is a nephew of dubious notability. There are a lot of redirects needed though, maybe the articles don't all exist yet but either way the links should be removed I think as it makes it looks as if there are far more article missing than there really are..♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:34, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about removing anything. Current thinking is much more in favour of redirecting, and letting lists stand as a record of the work. The major lesson of the EB1911 project, the grand-daddy of all large-scale merges, is that the dab work was done too quickly (and so numerous articles were missed). The remedy is to let others second-guess identifications. That's why the DNB lists are set up the way they are, in fact. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:43, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

A lot of those linked though are empty like this. What's the point in having articles linked which don't even exist in the Jewish encyclopedia?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

That one exists here as Aharon Ibn Hayyim, doesn't it? Charles Matthews (talk) 11:03, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

And Aaron ben Abraham ben Samuel Schlettstadt? Look, I;m not suggesting we remove anything as such but I think the red links should be blue linked and its not always clear cut finding what directs to what, that's my point.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:26, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

That's harder. Schlettstadt = Sélestat. It is Samuel ben Aaron Schlettstadt who gets g-hits, and may be the son. It all could be a lot clearer if we had more on Alsatian Jews from 600 years ago. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:02, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, then I'll leave the redirects for now...♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:54, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

"It all could be a lot clearer if we had more on Alsatian Jews from 600 years ago." A very nice general slogan! :) Dsp13 (talk) 12:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Amongst other things ... Edinburgh Encyclopædia being the latest project, Scottish ministers with time on their hands, surveyors of the early 19th century, and innovators in the textile industry of the Industrial Revolution all come to mind. Dsp, hope to see you at the meetup on the 20th? Charles Matthews (talk) 12:44, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Anglican archdeacons

Charles, can I ask if you would just look at this Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Booth (priest). Having met you at Penderel’s Oak and seen the great work you do on Wikipedia, especially with categorising the Anglican archdeacons, I thought this might be a topic on which you would want to comment? With best wishes Bashereyre (talk) 06:10, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Encyclopædia Edinensis

A web search turned up on Google books, Blackwoods Magazine 1821, noting Vol 4 pt III. I suggest a trawl through Blackwoods on the HathiTrust site, working backwards from this date will eventually find Vol 1, part I. Plus reviews of course which could be instructive. Unless you can access an original set of Blackwoods somewhere. I have been locating review pages for Rees on this site and find the search engine used there does a better job than the one on the Internet Archive. The reviews I have found make very interesting reading indeed, and I aim to get them on WS, once I've got my password problem sorted. Kind regards Apwoolrich (talk) 13:58, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Just noted that the Literary panorama and national register, vol 4, 1816 (Ed by Charles Taylor) is advertising part 1 for 8s Apwoolrich (talk) 18:15, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Rees's Cyclopaedia

Thank you for tweaking the William Pearson article, and for disambiguating John Taylor (Mining engineer). Its good to know somebody reads my stuff. I have my own set of Rees, and used it for my work on John Farey, jr and manufacturing technology of the later Industrial Revolution such as the Portsmouth Block Mills. I had planned to publish an academic paper about Rees, but abandoned it due to the problems of journal publishing today, and the discovery that both editions of Rees had been recently digitised. Putting the material online seemed the way forward, and likely to gain a far wider audience. It also helped that such a high proportion of the contributors already had WP pages. I am now writing lives like Pearson where pages did not exist, and am also updating all the contributors with a note about their Rees's involvement. Quite a lot of my material I cannot publish, though, due to the No Original Research rule. Where I can reference it, though, I will. Kind regards. Apwoolrich (talk) 08:56, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for all your contributions. I did some work on John Clennell too last night, but it got too late. He and John Sadler clearly projected an "Encyclopædia of manufactures", but I think nothing came of it.

Given the volume of 19th century periodicals that are now on Google Books, or in the Internet Archive, a surprising amount of reference material can in fact be found for this period, with enough persistence. I'd be glad to help in any way. I started to look into John Weale and his Rudiments series, but that is still in the early stages.

My main project for the last three years, as you may have gathered, is to get the bulk of the old DNB material into WP in a copy-edited form. But the Rees Cyclopædia is obviously a good project: the Wikisource approach would be to have a page per author, so it all makes sense to me (we are nearly but not quite done with the DNB authors from the first edition). I only came across your articles last night by chance: Alexander Marcet, as it happened, showed up in a maintenance category.

Charles Matthews (talk) 09:09, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I have now done Richard Pearson (physician). The date of birth in the DNB contradicts what you have there; but s:Pearson, Richard (1765-1831) refers to the Cyclopædia. Clearly the right person, and provides a reference for the articles for Rees being medical. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for doing Haslam. I have just made a start on him, so now I need not. I might add that if you read the ODNB life you will see there is an account of a dispute he had with the Bethlem Hospital for which we was fired. This is not in the older version. I will add the note about his involvement with Rees.

I have a typed listing of the 500 odd long articles of 15 columns or more (22,000 words+) that I would like to do something with, and a MS list of some 300+ long biographies (5000 words+) that I must type up. Or is it Original Research, since its not been published before? It was the intention of the Rees Project to produce a concordance of every article over 1 column long. Most of the balance are very short dictionary or place-name terms. The OCRd versions would be a great aid to such a project. Putting the texts on Wikisource could be done but a vast amount of copy editing would be needed, since in the British edition the letter S looks like an F with half a crossbar. In consequence all instances of S have come out as F. The many mathematical formulae are completely scrambled and would need typesetting from scratch. Kind regards Apwoolrich (talk) 20:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

The impact of "no original research" on something like a hypothetical list of major topics in Rees's Cyclopædia ought to be negligible: because it wouldn't be "advancing a thesis". The thing to look out for in a list is explained at WP:LSC, i.e. the selection criterion shouldn't be vague. Defining "major" as "15 columns or more" avoids vagueness, so I'd say that should be fine. Similarly for list of major biographies in Rees's Cyclopædia if you are using length.

Placing material on Wikisource is indeed quite labour-intensive, but has its advantages, and has good technical support these days. It is possible that an f -> s replacement could benefit from automated tools, as a systematic error. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for editing the Bracy Clark page so promptly. I am in the middle of writing a page about Edward Coleman (veterinary surgeon). This means that all 3 of the veterinary writers in Rees Delabere Pritchett Blaine, Clark and Coleman will have been covered.Apwoolrich (talk) 16:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I know little about vets, or horses for that matter, but I'm finding out fast. It seems that Bracy Clark was a Quaker, which wouldn't be a surprise as such. He had a continental tour about 1797/8. He got hold of the skeleton of Eclipse (horse). He also dug up some old horseshoes near Silbury Hill. One of the topics that comes up and throws off all sorts of leads very quickly. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:42, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

There's something about Bracy Clark in The Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, Volumes 15-16: just a snippet view on Google Books. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I've just added a sentence about Blain and Clark to the Veterinary college page. That page will need revising, since here was another Principal (?Moorhead) between St Bel and Coleman. One of the woes (and joys) of WP, IMHO, is that is often one gets further and further away from the topic one started on, as the ramifications of links need tweaking. There is a good account of the early days of veterinary training in EB11. I will see to is later on. Apwoolrich (talk) 06:27, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

History of the Royal Veterinary College certainly needs work: I found it yesterday and cut out a big chunk of copyvio. The ODNB is useful: William Moorcroft (explorer) was joint with Coleman, but only for six weeks. William Youatt campaigned for reform (this was before the charter) partly on the grounds that the college was only interested in horses.

I know what you mean about the ramification, of course. Right now I'm centrally interested in Thomas Hodgkin. He did know Bracy Clark (and the big biography by Kass & Kass confirms that Clark was a Quaker, by the way). Clark's comparative anatomy influenced Hodgkin's lecturing, another interesting insight. This all goes back to Henry Christy and our GLAM contact with the British Museum. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:55, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

An aspect of the Clark research is puzzling. The Friends Book Catalogue you referenced has a list of the Rees articles he wrote. There are more contributors whose DNB entries note the Rees articles. The details given are often more extensive than the bald list in the Phil Mag, 1820, which makes me wonder where the information came from. Is it from published biographies, or is there another more detailed listing that the DNB editor had access to, that is now lost?

Yes, I wondered in passing about that, but some of it would count as "private information". From our point of view, we would treat something like the Joseph Smith Quaker bibliography as a "reliable source"; if you feel any particular instance is suspect, the thing to do is to make it say "According to Joseph Smith, Clark wrote the articles ...", rather than just using a footnote reference. In the absence of any contradicting source that would do. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:38, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Nothing to do with Rees, but I was interested to note in The Signpost this week a new project to make the WP help pages more useful. Since I came back to WP after a gap of several years, I had difficulty with the editing syntax, since I had forgotten it, so I bought a copy of the book you co-authored, which was most useful. IMHO what would be really useful would, be a pocket-sized tome on Wiki Syntax that could live by my keyboard. I have pages of cheat-sheets and other printouts on editing that I get in a muddle over when trying to find anything. Another thing of use would be notes on how to do online research for WP - Internet Archive, Google Books Hathi Trust, accessing library catalogues to construct lists of Works. etc. The free online access to reference sources for UK library users. etc, etc. I am quite experienced at using the web for research like this, but there must be new editors who are not. Or perhaps there are WP pages or even books I have not yet found? Apwoolrich (talk) 11:15, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

The WMF was talking about hiring someone to work over the pages in the "Help:" namespace, and I see User:The wub finally has the job (I meet him here in Cambridge). Help:Wiki markup is the starting point, I suppose.

"Online research" is a moving target, and in a sense it is better to have different people trying different approaches ... no one approach finds all that's there. I suppose I have half-a-dozen main tricks: Google searches with repeated variants and feeding back what you already have; Google Books search ditto; custom website searches; searches with archive.org included (the Internet Archive onsite search is clunky, only try when desperate); full text search in the ODNB is excellent for UK-related history topics to get started; site search via Google of Wikisource can be pretty useful at times, if unpredictable. "British History Online" now has a great deal. Some of the earlier material on JSTOR is no longer behind a paywall. The Venn database of Cambridge graduates has a huge amount of data that is not easy to get otherwise.

But in a sense the knack is in picking up the right keywords as you go along, and trying to be systematic about variant searches (e.g. inversion surname-forename). There is where you search which ought to change as more comes online, and how you search which is less subject to change. And the discussion needs to start further back, with do we navigate or do we search? To quote you back, re How Wikipedia Works, "It's good to know somebody reads my stuff", though Phoebe and I wrote and rewrote nearly all of it. The Google Scholar bit in Ch. 6 is her alone, though, and is a librarian addressing this point as of 2008. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:38, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for writing James Thomson (calico printer). I've a full list of all the Rees articles he wrote on textiles which I will add when I have a moment. Just now I am on the last lap of coding up the tables of the long articles and adding links to their authors. Bit of a pig to do, but somebody has to do it! Note sure if I will add it to the body of the Rees article or create a new WP page and link to it. What would you advise? Apwoolrich (talk) 12:12, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Table construction can be helped by find-and-replace (just to mention the obvious shortcut). The list of articles should be stand-alone, really: make it a "see also" link in the Cyclopædia article and Abraham Rees. By the way, I found the Edinburgh Encyclopædia had a handy list of contributors, and I'm now working on those. This is not meant to add to your troubles! Some overlap with Rees, and so that might be of direct interest to you. I worked on John Duncan (weaver) yesterday, who is one of the authors in common, doing enough to place him better in sewing-machine history, which seems convoluted. There are quite a number left that are straight DNB conversions: I went first for the FRS's not already here, and they include some interesting folk. Right now I'm trying to find out about the mines and methane controversy between Henry Dewar and Thomas Trotter (physician). Charles Matthews (talk) 13:02, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I forgot to ask if you are planning to do Rees author Charles Taylor? I have some info about him to be worked up. Re Edinburgh and contributors. I can sort out a list of a list of contributors to Pantologia. I guess we are getting into training for for 1000+ contributors to EB11 and 12!! Kind regards Apwoolrich (talk) 13:38, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't planned to do Taylor. There is more on him than I thought, in fact. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I've been having a look to the list of contributors to the EE on the Internet Archive. If you propose to make a tabular list of names and what they wrote, as I have done for Rees, the OCRd version of the text there could be the basis of it. Quite a bit of work, but possible. Apwoolrich (talk) 18:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I was going to take it as it comes, really. I tend to have several projects on at once, and the "butterfly flitting from flower to flower" actually helps the encyclopedia generally, I find. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

List of long Rees articles moved from my sandbox into WP and linked from the main Rees Page. I've added authors where I am certain. When I've typed the biographical list I'll add that as well - but not or some weeks, I guess! Kind regards. Apwoolrich (talk) 14:42, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Charles Taylor started. Any tweaks you can do will be gratefully received. Apwoolrich (talk) 14:28, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I've just noted on the Rees page about criticism of the work in the Anti-Jacobin Review and the British Critic, with proper refs in the references section. Alas the online scans of the A-J R stop at 1810, but the work went on into the 1820's. I expect there will be more reviews in other periodicals of the time. Just a case of ferreting them out. These reviews make very interesting reading! Apwoolrich (talk) 15:38, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Long articles in Rees's Cyclopaedia is now up for deletion. Instructive to see how WP works, though I don't understand most of the acronyms! Kind regards. Apwoolrich (talk) 07:39, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I have voted to keep, of course. A title saying "list" would have been better. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:25, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for your support. Apwoolrich (talk) 16:08, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Your contributed article, Ulysses Bagenal de Burgh

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Hello, I notice that you recently created a new page, Ulysses Bagenal de Burgh. First, thank you for your contribution; Wikipedia relies solely on the efforts of volunteers such as you. Unfortunately, the page you created covers a topic on which we already have a page - Ulysses Burgh, 2nd Baron Downes. Because of the duplication, your article has been tagged for speedy deletion. Please note that this is not a comment on you personally and we hope you will continue helping to improve Wikipedia. If the topic of the article you created is one that interests you, then perhaps you would like to help out at Ulysses Burgh, 2nd Baron Downes - you might like to discuss new information at the article's talk page.

If you think that the article you created should remain separate, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Additionally if you would like to have someone review articles you create before they go live so they are not nominated for deletion shortly after you post them, allow me to suggest the article creation process and using our search feature to find related information we already have in the encyclopedia. Try not to be discouraged. Wikipedia looks forward to your future contributions. The Theosophist (talk) 18:05, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

A request against Vandalism

Hi, Khwarazmian Dynasty is vandalised by an unknown user with the IP: 94.128.139.98. Can you protect the page please? BozokluAdam (talk) 15:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

It's an edit war: I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it's vandalism. Please state your case on Talk:Khwarazmian dynasty. You should reply politely on the disputed points in the thread "Removing Pan-Turkist Agenda" there. Then administrators will have a better chance to form a judgement on the issue. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:58, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I've already stated; in the meantime, he/she also deletes the other contributions. So I thought it's a vandalism. Thanks for your response. BozokluAdam (talk) 16:02, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'll check the page later. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:08, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. And I hope you might also check the page Hazara_people and the debate on the talk page (where I couldn't see a consensus-version though an editor "‎Lysozym, his previous name is Tajik" claims it, and attacking other ethnic groups instead of discussing the matter). BozokluAdam (talk) 18:07, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

The same answer as here: BozokluAdam, you should stop running from one admin to another and making false claims and accusations. --Lysozym (talk) 19:45, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Taxatio

Can you find anything on this?♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:43, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

This is relevant to how it went in Scotland. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:49, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

This says the nova taxatio was needed to pay for the war in Scotland, which figures. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:51, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:51, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

John Ayloffe

I noticed that you have contributed to the John Ayloffe wiki. I believe that the early life of this satirist John Ayloffe is a bit of a mystery, if I am not mistaken. He seems to come from nowhere, and have no children (although some later claim to be descended from him). I was wondering your thoughts on the possibility that he was actually a Scotsman who used Ayloffe as an alias while in England to afford him some level of anonymity. His works align himself with the scot mentality of that time, and the covenanters, yet all evidence shows him to be an athiest or agnostic person who believed more in philosophy than religion. His alignment with the Earl of Argyll, and the Rye House Plot is of the utmost interest to me. I have also noticed that the John Ayloffe entry does not mention the Rye House Plot. Gwsyfer (talk) 04:45, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello there. The article on Ayloffe does mention the Rye House plot in passing. I don't know what his role was: the "Plot" itself was remarkably murky, with several groups involved. As far as his background is concerned, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says he was from Wiltshire, son of a John Ayliffe, graduated at Oxford in 1662, and entered the Inner Temple. Possibly his time in Scotland could be researched some more. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:20, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Bithoor

Hi. Can you find me the 1911 Britannica text?♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:56, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Bithur Charles Matthews (talk) 05:18, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Go

In the article, the passage "in about the 5th and 7th centuries CE respectively, boards with a 19×19 grid had become standard" had a citation needed tag on it, until I added a source, but I'm wondering if you might know a better source for this passage. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 04:52, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I've sent you mail. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:16, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Li Yuan-chia

Not sure what you're struggling with - it looks alright! Which are the specific areas you think I can help? Deryck C. 22:56, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

In particular the simplified characters in the table. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:51, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Also the influence of Kandinsky is mentioned by his teacher in a few places I have found. But Google Translate is hard to use for art criticism! For example "Li Yuanjia music from Kandinsky theory start to absorb alienate the plain effect of the Chinese landscape painting". This is from http://lunwen.1kejian.com/jianzhukexue/72196_2.html. I don't know whether this is said at all in sources in English. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:05, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I would recommend trimming down that table. en.wp policies generally advise against giving foreign names in more than one form. Since the significant events, which the table is concerned with, happened in 1952, I would recommend keeping the traditional Chinese form only. Only one Romanization form should be kept unless there are multiple commonly used forms. Search engines such as Google can cope with the simplified-traditional divide automatically. Deryck C. 09:02, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, in fact the table probably belongs in a separate article about the group of artists anyway. That is one reason I placed {{under construction}} on the article. I can move it to the talk page any time. Obviously having the various Romanizations does help with search right now. I wasn't sure, but suspected, that Google search knew about the character forms: thanks for confirming that. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:15, 5 July 2012 (UTC)