User talk:Charles Matthews/Archive 36

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Article Feedback deployment

Hey Charles Matthews; I'm dropping you this note because you've used the article feedback tool in the last month or so. On Thursday and Friday the tool will be down for a major deployment; it should be up by Saturday, failing anything going wrong, and by Monday if something does :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Joseph Booth and textiles / Hebert

Hullo, Thank you for your message, and compliments for my work on Rees. I was very interested to see the note in Rees about Booth. The news that a mill in Taunton, near to where I live, had the process is interesting. I must see if I can follow it up. I have checked my library and can find very little about felt manufacture for this period apart from felt hats. There is an exhaustive illustrated account of felt cloth manufacture in vol 2, pp 111-132 of William Murphy, The Textile Industries, 1910, which is a bit late for our purposes. Robert Bakewell wrote the Rees articles on Wool and Worsted, tho' I suspect the technical material in them of the machinery might be by Farey jr.. One of the Woolen plates is signed J Herbert and another J D Herbert. L Hebert drew the 4 plates of the Constellations in Astronomy. When the link might be between these artists and Luke Hebert the technical writer I have yet to discover. When I get a minute I will revise the Contributors:artists in the Rees list to correct the mistake. Apwoolrich (talk) 15:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Comma_Johanneum

Thank you for trying to improve this article. I reverted your edit for purely technical reasons. Wikipedia cannot handle nested <ref> <ref> </ref> </ref> markup. I'll see if there is another way of solving the problem. Jpacobb (talk) 17:15, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, my mistake. I'd like to take a more serious look at the article, when I have some time. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:58, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

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DYK for Francis William Topham

Casliber (talk · contribs) 16:02, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Clive Mantle

Hi Charles, I've given this a full expansion. I was wondering if you could help find the years for the following stage productions featuring Clive Mantle.

"Robin Hood" at the Young Vic Theatre

• Tim Albery’s "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.
• "The Relapse"
• "Red Devil Battery Sign"
• "King John"
• "Johnny Johnson"
• "Ideal Gnome Exhibition"
• "East"
• "Blood on the Neck of the Cat"
• Bedroom Farce".
• "The Play What I Wrote" at the Wyndhams Theatre and Theatre Royal Bath♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:01, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm actually not seeing much. He did Hello Mum on BBC2, about which we have no article. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:46, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I was surprised Bloomin' Marvellous was missing too. I've managed to find the years of the other plays and disperse through the article but couldn't find those. That portrait I managed to get a flickr user to change is a gem of him.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:54, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, do you think that the University Theatre (Edinburgh) is the Edinburgh Festival Theatre or the Bedlam Theatre?♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 11:53, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

John June

I'm going to check my sources to see if any mention of John June is made. If it turns out he was a regular contributor to Harris's, I'll add what I can to the article (and, of course, his biog). For now, I've moved the wikilink you added to the image's file description, as I don't think it warrants a mention without further detail.

I'm away for the next couple of days but I'll check it out when I get home. Parrot of Doom 21:56, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, OK, but as far as I'm concerned I think adding such a link is quite reasonable. The caption is to describe the image. "If the artist or photographer is independently notable, though, then a wikilink to the artist's biography may be appropriate", per WP:CREDITS. June is in the ODNB. So I think you don't have such a strong case here. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:02, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

If the image were just of the frontispiece then I'd agree, however, it isn't. If June illustrated other editions, I'll find out. Parrot of Doom 23:53, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

From the ODNB: "During a period when Hogarth's prints had popularized the satire of fashionable life, June exploited his skill to produce cheap and often bawdy satiric compositions which ridiculed fops and harlots on the streets of London." Charles Matthews (talk) 08:41, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, this is completely unacceptable to me. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:18, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Moodle!

Re Charles,

I've mentioned your role in the WM.UK chapter role the Moodle project to the WM.IL chapter and this has created quite a stir in our mailing list. It seems some of our board members have negotiated cooperation with the ministry of education and we are in the early days of this cooperation, which involves both teacher and pupil training about editing Wikipedia at different levels. I've suggested looking into using Moodle as well and it turns out that there are a number of Moodlers in the chapter and that they are quite excited, and we'll be setting up a working group this week.

I've been trying to make multilingual units per my old proposal on meta the Simone projects.... I was able to hack Moodle and fix it's currently broken multilingual support so it can to handle content in both Hebrew and english. (HTML content is required for this). What this suggests is that if a good course is developed it would be possible to translate the units fairly quickly.

Also as I mentioned I've been converting a couple of my lessons into Moodle format. It is lots of work but I have created units on The five pillars and about edit summaries. I have used my quizzes to drive the lesson plan, inserting short instruction nodes as required. I've also used some images and sound in a couple of places, although there is still more work to be done in this area.

Finally I'm writing a short paper on gamification in Wikipedia drives in particularly defect in the AfC backlog elimination drive's gamification design and prject's wikification's improvements. I'm researching incorporating the main insights to try to gamify the Moodle based course-ware since the Q&A format I've come up with while a possible improvement is not up to speed with what I've been seeing elsewhere. Also by correctly gamifying the experience the course owner should be able to get real world stats on the user's on wiki progress which I think would help get funding. ;-)

Anyhow I'd like to

1. . thank you for letting me use your Moodle
2. . ask if it ok to demo the Moodle course you've set up to my chapter members
3. . get any updates about your chapters discussion on this project!? BO | Talk 09:57, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, it seems to me that thinking about Moodle is overdue for all of us, anyway.

We had a good meeting on Thursday. The first major theme was presentation - thank you for sending your ideas for that. We want to set up a standard visual style that we will use, and then introduce it particularly in the A modules first. Moodle will be demonstrated at the WMUK Annual General Meeting (June). We hope to have a complete system online for Wikimania (August), and to produce some documentation (a flyer on getting an account through the auxiliary wiki, replacing the manual system of account creation, and also a booklet on translation, as you suggested). There is some free SSO software for MediaWiki -> Moodle that we have had written professionally, which is on Github.

At the meeting we also discussed skins ("Moodle themes", these are called). RexxS has professional experience of CSS and HTML, and he said these skins are easy to understand for the "blocks", i.e. the right-hand sidebar sections that can be clicked over to the left (the "dock"). We will experiment on getting a much better skin, but in the WMUK's own hosting, where we will set up a new Moodle installation. Time scale for that should be about two weeks.

Also we are very interested in transclusion into Moodle, via a software solution. Since there are no page histories in Moodle, there are fundamental issues to solve (attribution, version control). There is something quite simple that could be done, with wiki permalinks cached in Moodle. This would allow a form of transclusion+flagged revisions, which would mean that collaboration on a wiki page could be reflected into Moodle.

So quite a lot is happening. We also may submit a grant application (see http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_Global_Impact_Challenge#Online_collaborative_college) for a much more ambitious system; there is not much time to do that, though.

I'm sure WMUK would be happy to work with your chapter. You can assume any content on the VLE is licensed CC-by-SA 3.0, but obviously it is not "finished" yet. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:20, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

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Philip Taylor

Hullo Charles

You've done an excellent job on this. There is not a lot more I can add since you've covered all the most obvious sources. I mentioned him and his firm briefly in the chapter I wrote, 'The London Engineering Industry at the time of Maudslay' in Cantrell and Cookson, eds Henry Maudslay and the Pioneers of the Machine Age, Tempus, 2002, p 48. There are a number of minor references in R Burt, John Taylor: Mining entrepreneur and engineer Moorland Publishing Co, 1977.

His patents were

• No 4032 of 25 May 1816 (Applying heat to liquors used in the processes of brewing, distilling and sugar refining)

• No 4197 of 15 Jan 1818 (Applying heat in certain processes; refrigeration)

• No 4975 of 15 Jun 1824 (Apparatus for producing gas from various substances)

• No 4883 of 3 July 1824 (Steam engines)

• No 5244 of 18 Aug 1824 (Making iron)

Kind regards Apwoolrich (talk) 13:30, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I've just been re-reading the article. I take it that his son Philip Meadows, can't be the same at Philip Meadows Taylor (1808-1876) the writer on Indian topics. In view of the names being the same I wonder if there is a familial link, however. Apwoolrich (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Not the same Philip Meadows Taylor, though they are related.

I have been over to the library now, and have a fair bit to add. The Burt book is not on the open stacks, but there is a really good write-up of the gas-oil story that uses it, as a chapter in Engineers and Engineering: papers of the Rolt Fellows edited by R. Angus Buchanan (1996). There is something useful in J. C. Fischer and his diary, and a French thesis Marseille, ville des métaux et de la vapeur by Olivier Raveux has a great deal of the overseas stuff.

It would be good to know more about John Martineau. There are actually two of them, father and son, it seems, from the Fischer diary, and both worked at the City Road foundry. This clarifies things a bit (John Martineau "the younger" is mentioned) and I think I have them on the basic Martineau family tree. Philip Taylor apparently had a Martineau uncle on his mother's side - don't know which. There would be more to find out about the Martineau ownership of the copper mine. Charles Matthews (talk)

Rather frustrating: the Philosophical Magazine had a fine engraving of one of his steam engines in 1827; but the scan I can find [1] isn't usable. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:59, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I've just checked the HathiTrust version of this volume and find that the plate is missing from the volume scanned. Somewhere I've see another engraving of one of their horizontal rotary engines - probably Phil Mag. Do you have access in the University library of Schubarth's Repertorium der Technischen Literature 1823-1853? Rotary steam engines are listed at p 161, and I see that several articles are authored by 'Taylor', tho how many are relevant will remain to be seen. If you can't see it, let me know and I'll copy the details for you. Apwoolrich (talk) 11:46, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Seems not; thanks anyway. I'm actually onto something else now: or rather two things. User:Charles Matthews/Drafting area/John Martineau is going OK, but it has become clear to me that it would benefit from more about the connection with George Birkbeck. User:Charles Matthews/Drafting area/Low Wood Gunpowder Works is today's project. and it is growing by accretion adequately. My biggest problem there concerns whether Gerrard Preston was Thomas Parke's brother-in-law, but I may never find out. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:06, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

The thought occurs to me that maybe T&M made engines and plant for M. I. Brunel in the early years of his work on the Thames Tunnel. This is confirmed by p 217 by Beamish's Life of MI Brunel1862, where it is said that T&M made the pumps driven by engines built by Maudslays, who also made the tunnelling shield. Brunel also patented a twin cylinder diagonal engine but I don't know who built it. Apwoolrich (talk) 18:14, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I haven't really been systematic about Marc Brunel. I saw that the tunnel used "portable gas" units for lighting, which was interesting. Also T&M made him some printing equipment. There is probably more to discover there, certainly.

John Martineau is now created. Alexander Galloway (engineer) is clearly worth doing: he is in the ODNB. I'm doing something about Joseph Clinton Robertson right now. Oddly one good source says he was the J. C. Robertson who founded the Railway Times, but others don't make the connection. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:58, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

There is material about Galloway at p49 of my 'London Engineering' chapter cited at the head of this correspondence. Just had a look at the ODNB article. I wish I had known about it them I wrote my piece in 2001. Apwoolrich (talk) 19:41, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Robertson - See A. P. Woolrich, [JCR 1788-1852] in BDCE, Vol 2, 2008, p 669. Apwoolrich (talk) 19:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, not on the open shelves again though. I have found plenty to interest me on Robertson in other ways. Perhaps you could look some time. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

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London Mechanics Institution

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I get it

Oh, you're a member of WMUK. That explains the attitude. Cost of doing business. Tony (talk) 23:24, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Nice to hear from you. On a point of fact, I'm not a member of Wikimedia UK; I am a contractor for them, a member of their Education Committee, and the volunteer project leader for their VLE. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:05, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I rest my case. It would be nice to communicate with you in a collegial manner, but your ignorant demeaning of me on a public mailing list makes that difficult. Tony (talk) 08:04, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Let's backtrack. We were communicating by email yesterday, and I offered you a chance to discuss matters there; but you closed the channel. If you are more comfortable with communicating here, that's fine. I don't understand quite what you thought WMUK had to do with anything; their well-publicised troubles of 2012 are nothing to do with me.

Wikipedia is a very public place, and so is Commons. If you choose to swear at people in these places, you can expect to be held accountable. You seem surprised at the very existence of an offsite forum in which discussions are held under different conventions from those here. I went over with you my view of those conventions.

I think you might find "ignorant" fairly hard to make stand up in my case. It appears to be "common abuse", as in the lawyers' dictum "common abuse is not libel".

Let me set out my stall once more. I am fundamentally opposed to incivility onsite on the projects. It is destructive of the social fabric. I think those who employ it demean the whole community. That includes demeaning me.

I give workshops, and it is a major potential problem that incivility may be brought up as a reason not to participate in Wikipedia. I don't care that such bringing up may not be a well-informed opinion. We have to tackle the major issue of care and maintenance of the community. In particular the "gender gap", which renders our systemic bias harder to fix. The basic analysis is that women find overt conflict on Wikipedia very discouraging, the only other comparable factor being technical barriers to entry.

So, we can continue this thread here, if you wish. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:21, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I think I've done rather more than you have done or ever will to publicise the gender gap. If I've demeaned you here, that is a really good outcome; it repays your treatment of me on a public mailing list. I do not currently believe you are worth communicating with, but you might eventually convince me otherwise. Tony (talk) 08:27, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Right, you are still communicating in an angry tone. And I think you have my position. I could expand on it. Let me be more irenic, though. As part of my WMUK work with Moodle I am looking for exercise material, and have looked at your copyediting tests as a source. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Irenic ... from the Greek; you sent me scurrying to the dictionary. You do write uncommonly well, I'd already noticed. But whereas you might see anger, I might very well see sneering and a holier-than-thou attitude. Methinks your knee-jerk reactions to incivility/swearing may be a little inflexible. You might consider penetrating beneath the end-point to determine the deeper context. And you might ask yourself whether the superficial addition of interpersonal tags such as "please" and "thank you" in user–user discourse isn't often simply a device to hide incivility. Your binary, end-point diagnostics might ultimately be counterproductive, since they appear to pre-empt the question of why, and to frame the gender-gap problem far too simply. Tony (talk) 08:49, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The gender-gap analysis: not my own, taken from discussions by women with women of the issue, which I have been following via Twitter. Sue Gardner's analysis at Imperial College, which I went to hear a little while ago, put the absence of a visual editor at #1 of a list of about ten factors she had researched; but lumping the others doesn't really obscure her message. Which is that the WMF can set up a project to write a visual editor. The rest is about the community policing itself better.

Irenicism: an important aspect of the 17th century religious literature in Europe (which is something I work on here). An approach different to constant polemics.

Brits get used to the idea that "civil incivility" may be raised against them. Frankly it exists, but is just a mark of articulacy, anyway.

I first put my head above the parapet on the civility issue as an arbitrator in 2007. And have been seriously abused for so doing, subsequently. The consequences being that (a) I have no reason to believe I was wrong to put down that marker; (b) I'm not impressed with pleas in mitigation; (c) I look for signs that the community is catching up; and (d) I consider myself fairly well informed on the rhetorical uses of genuinely uncivil language, in terms of author's intention. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:07, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The question is why you've been seriously abused for doing that. Is it because the zero-tolerance binary judgemental frame produces significant injustice in its disregard of social and psychological context? A pure semantic boundary—which words or phrases constitute swearing or abuse and which do not—would appear to disregard the huge range of contexts in which editors find themselves. On the one hand, I have sworn or used language tendentiously onwiki seldom, and in those cases the distinction between fear and anger is fuzzy (think caged animal). It has occurred typically when there's a sense of gross injustice or severe and unwarranted attack, and has a certain spiralling pattern, and is not possible to circumvent: there is an inescapable quality to the semiotic choices. On the other hand, swearing/tendentious language is used on wikis to bully (Brian McNeil on Wikinews is a serial offender), and less often in conscious revenge. As used by Malleus, it's rather difficult to analyse, since it has become so habitual that among regulars the language itself has been bleached of much of its conventional power.

I'm not saying that raised tempers and the language that sometimes accompanies them should be condoned; but I'm surprised to hear you say that reasons for mitigation should not play into our judgement, and more importantly our strategies for resolution (I suspect that the community would have solved the problem if it had been so black and white). And experienced editors take strong exception to being treated like children, even if they know they're in the wrong; this should be a critical factor in addressing the editor retention crisis, which sits alongside the gender-gap problem as major challenges for the movement.

On the turn-off factors for women, I'm not at all convinced that swear words are the deal-breaker, even if you receive feedback from women to that effect. The maleness of the wiki environment goes far deeper than that, and I'm not optimistic that in a decade's time we'll have moved female participation even to 20%. Even the most feminised societies, in Scandinavia, fail to muster much more WP participation than anglophone societies do. Tony (talk) 10:52, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

So I believe I disagree with you, on a number of points.

• I think it is well known why I was abused, which is that as an arbitrator I was present as player in a highly-factionalised period of enWP history (2006–8) during which "anything went". My own analysis of that period of onsite politics has been made public; things are not as they were, so I don't see much point of rehearsing it again. Historical interest mainly, though I find people who came in later at times underestimate these things. I see you arrived in 2005.
• The context was Jimmy Wales announcing (perceptively) that the community needed to be less tolerant of incivility. And the community (though not perhaps the silent majority) not in fact agreeing. He was right, they were wrong, as the editor retention graph arguably demonstrates, though surely that is a multi-factor discussion too.
• I don't find it fruitful to discuss Malleus, or with Malleus.
• I said I'm not impressed. As an arbitrator my thankless job was to take into account anything that could be supported by a diff. It is still the case that fighting fire with fire is a wrong approach, and frankly plain stupid at times.
• If "experienced editors take strong exception to being treated like children, even if they know they're in the wrong", we seem to be using incivility as a test of adolescence, rather than adulthood. A perfectly rational explanation (I'm a parent). I don't really see its force here. I'm reminded of Matt Groening's comments on the formative impressions left by adult males he saw as a young person.
• I can't see actually see where you are going with "addressing the editor retention crisis" here. We know there are people who kick up a fuss about leaving; and we also know as a general phenomenon of online communities that leaving typically is just walking away and shaking the dust off the feet. The latter is surely the dominant factor. The former is what grabs the attention. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:16, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I wondered whether your "gr" edit-summary expressed annoyance with me. I didn't link your name with arbitration until you told me here; now I remember having seen your name on the chart. It seems rather complicated. Tony (talk) 13:30, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Not that - the edit summary "gr" abbreviates "grammar". Charles Matthews (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

It was very good to talk with you. We'll have to agree to disagree on some issues; but that probably doesn't matter in the larger scheme. No wonder WMUK employs you in an education role. Tony (talk) 08:32, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Flattery will get you ... remarkably far. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:06, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Æthelgeard

Hi can you evaluate this and leave some comments on the talk page.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 14:40, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I've expanded Æthelgeard with what I could find. The bishop which also often has that spelling is actually Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury in Kent from 797-805, our one is 950s and a landowner as you say. ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld

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More about incivility as a tactic

I have been following the "incivility consciously as a tactic" discussion from a (hopefully safe) distance, my 2¢-worth observation is that while provocation might account for some of the most egregious examples, there is also a sub-set of responses that involve "speaking sharply" to someone who is perceived to be disruptive as a first-line strategy for getting back to the business of editing. What are the other options? At ANI the person who brings a request is likely to be scrutinized with some prejudice; at AE, there is probably a 100% chance of sanctions being applied, with an attendant risk of about 80% of receiving sanctions yourself, even if you only make a comment defending someone else. There have been various other mediation options, medcab and so forth, that seem to come and go, but all of them are very high maintenance, as far as being a time sink. So how to get Randy to stop wasting valuable editor time by talking about those skeletons. You can flood them with bluelinks, WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:CIVIL, in an attempt to educate them, but they will probably find it annoying and just ignore it. Many of them have a hard time spelling in the first place. So here comes the strategy of "speaking sharply" to them. If it works, you have just saved yourself the equivalent of a year of editing in peace, that you would otherwise have spent at arbcom and all the actions leading up to it. And if your problem is with an admin, or heaven forbid, a whole pack of civility-ignoring admins, your ability to speak sharply in a crunch will be crucial to your wiki-survival. Not the most ideal of responses, but perhaps that is the political reality. And it will lead, in the long run, to more entrenchment of positions, more polemics. And to novice editors being counseled behind the scenes in how to become vicious, as a political necessity.

If you read the arbitration request comments for any length of time, you will find editors asking arbs for just such an "arrow" to "shoot" at individuals who annoy them. It is true that Wikipedia:Competence is required, but what is the standard solution to a competence problem? The current way of thinking about such problems involves the language of violence: arrows, hitting, electric shocks, as well as references the Milgram experiment in describing a typical and ineffectual system of escalating sanctions. As someone involved with educational issues at WP, you must have given some thought to the question of why education is not included in this equation.

In a work environment, all of this would be solved by having line managers with technical expertise, and by treating disruptive individuals as needing training, along with the caveat that it is the responsibility of the manager to see to it that the person receives appropriate training. And in the U.S. at least, the problem of harassment of women in the workplace has been addressed with a philosophy of "hostile work environment", hence the expression not safe for work. Do we merely expect women not to leave, as a retention criteria, or can they edit in an environment that does not require them to become unpleasantly aggressive, as you see with so many female admins, in order to survive the WP milieu? And when you ask such a question about women who edit, then you must turn around and ask it about male editors as well.

Okay, more like 3¢. —Neotarf (talk) 10:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

My approach has always been to treat this place as a "working environment". The first line is to see whether a problematic editor accepts this description. I know from experience that there are some who simply will not moderate the language they use, in line with the sort of expectation that "working environment" implies. I could give a diff. Some are not really prepared to fit in, and treat others here as colleagues.

The issue therefore breaks down a bit. For example:

• Those who are going to be adversarial rather than collegiate towards others, even though those others are well-established contributors in good standing in the project;
• Those who are uncivil in a way that makes the whole project look bad;
• Aposematism – I can be as rude and provocative as I like, and if you think you can stop me you are wrong.

The third of those is really what I meant by "incivility consciously as a tactic".

The first is related to factionalism (see above) but is perhaps not the major problem it was. It is not necessarily related to incivility as such, because there are more ways of being adversarial than bellowing at people. We still have wheel-warring, and we shouldn't have to put up with it. If we didn't have this issue "incivility consciously as a tactic" just wouldn't work.

The second is where the community should move. Basically saying "zero tolerance" is shorthand for the attitude that we have a policy and it shouldn't be gamed. Incivility is bad for business. When you see people who are good writers use it, you have to wonder about their motivation, in the big picture. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:28, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I suspect there's quite a bit of overlap between your three groups. As for guessing at peoples' motivations - meh. The only way you can tell what someone is thinking is by what they say and what they do. And "zero tolerance"? The English wiki has tried before to come to terms with defining civility, and failed.

That is actually a poor argument. We don't have a sensible definition of "disruption" either. And the insistence on black-and-white definitions is not in our best traditions. It's an old point. See User:Raul654/Raul's laws at #18. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

There are always differences in interpretation based on differences in the varieties of English, differences in age, differences in social status. And even if you can define it, there is still the problem of enforcement. If this was a true work environment, people would stay for the money, and also be more likely to want to work through the issues when they do encounter incivility, but since it is a volunteer organization, they may find it easier to just leave. I have encountered this attitude over and over with academics on other social networking sites. They may come once, but they don't come back. Or they listen to others who have had a bad experience and decide it's not worth it to go through the learning curve. Your aposematism example is interesting though, in that it proposes a system in which incivility produces a desirable outcome, that is, escape from predators.

We are never going to have a high proportion of all academics as regular contributors. My reasoning: I tried to get a figure for US PhDs in every year, and the order of magnitude is something like 50,000. It gives you an idea. We know, anyway, that fewer than 1% of those will contribute seriously to WP subsequently. The core group here is about 3500, I think. WP editing is a typical "minority interest"; which is not what the WMF wishes to be the case.

The business of taking anecdotal evidence as representative is, for me (I spent much time on go before being here) the basic narrative of "minority interest" recruitment. People say they were put off by something relatively superficial. An outsider view is always going to be that the off-putting stuff should cease. The insider view is predictable. We don't seem to have got further forward on this, which to me says that WP is still too insiderish as a community. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

But that's not really why I came here; I'm more interested in the education angle. If you have a system in which dozens of Randies are annoying a handful of productive volunteers, what do you do, keep tossing the Randies back at them after a series of progressively harsher punishments? If 100 volts doesn't teach them a lesson, then what about 200 volts. After a year of that, the Randies have not learned a lesson, but the productive people have. They leave. But what other tools are there? Even Arbcom is only set up to deal out electrical shocks.

A typical traffic court has an educational system: someone who wants to escape a moving violation on their driving record can watch a movie and they tear up the ticket. WP already has working educational systems in place. For example, look at Worm's adoption system. The annoying individual is plucked up from the midst of productive editors and someone shows them the ropes. This one is somewhat labor intensive, but I have also seen work-related training programs that do not require human intervention. For example, when a certain state government required employees to participate in an ethics training, everyone simply logged on to a remote test site, took the course, and printed out the diploma in less than 45 minutes. Wouldn't it be nice to hand WP a tool like this? Instead of expecting other editors to train the newcomers by angrily bluelinking to WP:NPOV over and over, you could have POV warriors take a test that would show them how to edit neutrally and test their comprehension.

—Neotarf (talk) 02:02, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

As someone involved directly in a VLE for WP training, I'd have to agree with the general concept. As a sometime arbitrator, I also take the wonkish line that what may be generally lacking is the joined-up thinking behind the policy pages. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

If you want a connecting philosophy, you've got IAR. If you want to define disruption, you've got RFC/U. Not sure where you're going with the minority thing--where I come from, minority means blacks and Hispanics. And if you think adding 3500 knowledgeable editors to the Project is not worth bothering with, you should read this. —Neotarf (talk) 15:27, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm aware of Aaron Swartz's views from six or seven years ago, to start at that end. I was in that poll too; and my name turned up in discussion of that post[2]. Wikipedia was on a cusp around then, and we now can be rather clearer about what that meant.

Where I come from is not where you come from. My use of language is not exactly your use of language. A great deal of work has been done on the English Wikipedia by non-native speakers of the language. These are all good reasons for discouraging, at the very least, colloquialisms that are not clear in meaning or intention in discussions here. I once got into trouble here by assuming "two men and a dog" was a commonly understood phrase for poor attendance. For me "minority interest" is typically synonymous with "specialist interest"; but the usage comes from minority interest I guess.

What I meant by "joined-up" is almost the opposite of IAR. It is the view that most policies have one main point that makes sense and is generally acceptable. So if you take the nutshell summaries of 50 policy pages you should get a view of policy that is still consistent. That is not guaranteed if you look at the details, because policy pages are often overly concerned with constraining others. The nutshell on WP:CIVIL says

• Participate in a respectful and considerate way, and avoid directing offensive language at other users.
• Do not ignore the positions and conclusions of others.
• Try to make coherent and concise arguments rather than simply attacking others, and encourage others to do the same.

I wonder if anyone here really thinks any of that is unreasonable.

Policy's main task is to explain to editors here what the community's expectations are of them. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:38, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Pretty hard to enforce, unless you want to take the "seven words", throw in the word "bloody" for the Brits, and whatever it is they're not supposed to say in Oz, and write a subroutine to delete the account of anyone who types those words. But now you've got me thinking...I wonder if someone could actually get blocked for ignoring my conclusions. :) —10:43, 26 April 2013 (UTC)Neotarf (talk)

About Charles Henry Hartshorne - "as a pensioner"

G'day Charles Matthews mate, hows it going, orright?
To my unlettered convict ear, "and in 1821 entered St John's College, Cambridge, as a pensioner" sounds like he was an "Old Age Pensioner" at the age of 19. I've linked Pensioner#Other uses. It would appear from the context that Hartshorne went up to Cambridge on a scholarship of some sort. Is this correct?
Peter "that Ball and chain really chafes" in Australia aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:18, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks, that was appropriate. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

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Factory visits

Hullo Charles, First off, I think the Babbage page is magnificent. Re factory visits, its been there since 2008 untouched, and really wants a complete re-write and expansion. Its quite a complex topic, in fact, since it can cover Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer to Public Relations, which is where the original author came from I think. In 1984 I published a little book Mechanical Arts and Merchandise: Industrial Espionage and Travellers Accounts as a source for Technical Historians pub in Eindhoven. In this I surveyed the literature from the late C17, covering Europe and America as well as Britain. Since then, the late Prof J. R. Harris published about technology transfer in France in the C18, and the illustrated travel diary of the Swede R. R. Angerstien has been published. The APS published a survey of American travel diaries. In the C19 a number of books, such as Dodd's Days in the Factories and many articles in Tomlinson's Cyclopaedia of Useful arts and Manufactures described industry and manufacturing in some depth. I must get some decks cleared here and will have a go at revising it.

While I am writing, I noted on Wikisource that the DNB project there is now finished. I'm mighty impressed by the editing software that been developed for doing the work. Since 2019 will be the bicentenary of the publication of the final volume, do you think there is any mileage is trying to get a digital version of Rees's Cyclopaedia there?. Kind regards. Apwoolrich (talk) 19:53, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Obviously enough, any encyclopedic work digitised via Wikisource is a big commitment, and it is worth thinking it all over. It is flattering the DNB project to say it is finished: there is text up now for all the first edition and first supplement. The second supplement, another 5% say, is still to do. The "main objective" was perhaps to index the old DNB in a way that has never been done before: and to a first approximation that has been done. Google now sees that text reasonably clearly. There are still plenty of errors to find in the proofed text; and despite some sterling work by colleagues over there, the scans used can still be improved. I'm in the middle of a pass to match the DNB biographies there with the articles here (I do keep getting distracted). I'm up to Sh now: when it's done, there will at last be a list of around 9000 missing articles to create here. In a sense I don't think we'll ever be done with the project.

As you say, the Proofreadpage extension is good. In fact it is really a necessary condition for putting a reference work on Wikisource. People need to be able to check things easily.

The founder of the DNB project, User:Arch dude, said it would take 30 years. If the ODNB site hadn't had a version (later edition), that would have been a better guess. So I think my opening question about Rees would be, how much digitisation of good quality has already been done? Wikisource adds value, but actually for short articles the overheads are quite high, and I had to "industrialise" a batch process to get anywhere. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:45, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

What I said (or at least what I meant to say) was that at the rate at which we were progressing, measured in articles completed from the beginning fo the project up to that date, it would take 30 years. But this just re-enforces your point: we needed a better method of working than the one we were using back then. Very fortunately for the project, you developed that better method. I have been making minor cleanups to our old style manual with a view towards making it a worthwhile "lessons learned" during the DNB project taht other projects can adapt, but I have not added this most important lesson. -Arch dude (talk) 20:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The "adding value" goes on in the way of: author pages on WS; listing of articles on author pages; links of those pages to articles on WP about authors; links from article headers to topics on WP; "extra notes" in the headers; errata (where they were published) accessible with the articles. Also "previous" and "next" links and volume tables of contents; qv and other wikification of articles. There is not much to do to make that all easy. We do have the "DNB match" tool by User:Magnus Manske that helps find the WP articles for a given DNB biography.

What I did was to create (a) strips of DNB text, about 30 pages at a time, which could be pasted into pagespace on WS; and (b) strips of 36 header templates that could be filled in by find-and-replace, cutting down the overhead. The point was to beat 10 minutes per article. Which you can do sometimes. The DNB is a bit special, perhaps, because there is much format work to do. I think that gives an idea, though.

Back on factory visits: I was inspired last night to create from the DNB George Dodd (19th century writer), author of Days at the Factories (1843). As a bonus I found another Rudimentary Series book for John Weale, a project I like to keep ticking over. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:58, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

On Rees, I fully appreciate the potential problems in digitising the texts. The original made extensive use of the S that looks like an F, which of course won't OCR to text properly, so all instances come out as an F: editors would be faced with a mass of work to get it right. There are also numerous pages of tables of figures, particularly in scientific topics, as well as mathematical formulae. In contrast, of course the DNB was pure text. I've had a look at the OCR text from the Internet Archive, and see its not as good as the version on the Hathi Trust site. Alas, the latter only has the American edition.

Rees had nearly 4000 biographies of more than half a column in length (about 350 words) and many shorter ones. I have a list of those 3 or 4 columns or more and aim to add a section to the main WP article discussing his writings on biography.

Another problem which could arise is the mass of dictionary articles of 2 or 3 lines in the original as compared with the longer encyclopaedic ones. Should all these be included in the interests of completeness? Also the sheer bulk of the work. Volume 1 has over 100,000 words, though the subsequent ones tended to have fewer.

Nevertheless, the work is an outstanding resource for researching the latter half of the Industrial Revolution. The lack of an index makes it very hard to use: I suggest a digitised version would solve this since it would be searchable. Kind regards. Apwoolrich (talk) 09:36, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm at your disposal as someone who has been through all of this once. You'll appreciate that having a complete version posted is much more attractive than picking and choosing. I was just looking at "Water" in vol. 38, at random. It would be a big job in itself. The long s would be picked up by a spellchecker, in my browser at least. The "see articles", as we call them on the DNB project, add some value but are not a priority. All round a big job. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:08, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

That is most generous of you, Charles. Thank you. I'll consult Wikisource's DNB pages to assess what is involved. Its been quite a long time since I did any editing there, so I'll need an intensive refresher course!! Apwoolrich (talk) 10:52, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Best then to start a thread at s:User talk:Charles Matthews, when you have time. I have a few things on my plate at the moment. Some places to begin would be author pages, and a proper header. Sample articles could be placed in the main article space there, rather than transcluded, as a temporary measure. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:03, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Charles Babbage

Rather late in the day I have peer reviewed the article here. I knew nothing of the Core Content business, and am so sorry to have run you up against what I see is a deadline of the day after tomorrow. Tim riley (talk) 11:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts. I see I disagree on various points, such as where the "Family" section should be. I work on biographies constantly, and feel family information generally should be right at the end. I also disagree about subsections, given that the article is 80K long: there is a limit to the amount of prose people can digest all at once, and Babbage's prolific throwing out of ideas and multiple themes makes some efforts to chop things up inevitable, I'd say.

I'll try to catch inconsistencies, based on what you say. I don't actually aim to produce FA or GA work, since diminishing returns seems to me to set in. Babbage and Christiaan Huygens were my ideas to see if my thinking on this had changed since 2007, which is the last time I bothered with a writing contest. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:30, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Points all taken. My suggestions are of course to be acted on or dismissed as you think best. And as I have said, topping and tailing my comments, it's a fine article which I am very glad to have read. Good luck. Tim riley (talk) 11:50, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

潘長耀

Correct. Those are the characters you were staring at on [3]. I've done a search on the name and the results seem to be the correct person. Deryck C. 18:23, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The wisteria story is interesting, especially as I was once at Christ's. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:10, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Christiaan Huygens

You are doing a very nice job there. My compliments. By the way, do you intend to propose it for FA? I don't know how it works, but I saw that the Dutch version is featured but contains much less informations about him. Pedro Listel (talk) 10:30, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. It's an entry for the Core Contest. I don't usually (i.e. never) try to create FA. For the contest I am also entering Charles Babbage. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:40, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Talk:John Le Mesurier

Hi, I wondered if you could provide some input into the discussion at the bottom of the page involving a dispute over a fact in this FA article.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Why is no one applying policy here, and just saying that what they think should go? Charles Matthews (talk) 07:12, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean, but it has been subject of a dispute with an editor who claims to be John Clark (actor) and he's bad-mouthed us at http://www.johnclarkprose.com/. Our policy is "verifiability means that people reading and editing the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source. Wikipedia does not publish original research. Its content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors". I just wanted to finally put an end to the dispute and propose that he might actually be telling the truth. If he is, then what? I think it's more likely he is right and the biographer wrong, but our policy on the matter would place more truth on a written source right? He just doesn't understand this and thinks we're lying and purposefully misrepresenting the truth because we don't accept the hounding of a "famous" man like himself as he puts it. Schrodinger has contacted the biographer of the source who says he used Mesurier's personal files and BBC sources to write his book and remembered the Just William radio credit. Yet Clark claims he was a friend of this actor.Your comments would be very welcome on that page. Clark is convinced Jimbo Wales would be sympathetic to him and the cause of "anybody can edit" but he can't seem to accept that we have policies and sources which are considered reliable. He is a most odious fellow, don't bother reasoning with him, he'll blow you away, but your perspective on the talk page would be most welcome. Can you state if you agree with Tim and Brian? As you've authored or co-authored books on wikipedia and have a high profile here I think he'd be more likely to acknowledge what you say.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 17:31, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you really want me to intervene, I'll do that. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Removed your comments with my section

Feel free to restore. I'm done with it. I can't get my mind around why people are protecting this guy and his obvious POV edits and his blatant legal threats. It's all yours. --Onorem♠Dil 19:31, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't defend legal threats at all. The business (as I understand it) is the sort of factual matter that could be subject to a good-faith error by a biographer. So I think the vilification is not according to our best practice. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:35, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Whatever you say. I'm done. Blocked or not, I'm not sure why you're defending his soapbox...but more power to you. Have a great day. --Onorem♠Dil 19:38, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

See above. Dr Blofeld asked me to intervene. There is a point to being even-handed. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:44, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

We apparently have different definitions. Good luck with him. --Onorem♠Dil 19:48, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Clark is quite impossible to reason with on his talk page, quite agreed Onorem. But I don't think anybody is protecting him. While it would be wrong to remove the McCann source entirely based on the whim of COI editor I believe that there is a glimmer of possibility that he appeared in the theatre production of Just William but not the radio play and I'm concerned that only one source claims this. I'm not assuming John Clark is correct, but I'm showing that just one person claims this. I think its the sensible thing to do in the meantime but I suspect I'll be reverted.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 19:57, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

This sort of gatekeeping of FA generally seems problematic to me: more heat than light. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:02, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is quite incredulous the amount of time that has been wasted discussing such a minor issue, especially when you consider how much work needs doing on here. But its not very often somebody who was the main star of a play which was broadcast 67 years ago turns up to claim something isn't true... ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:18, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to add to Newcome's School! Charles Matthews (talk) 20:20, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

That's an excellent start, especially the alumni. Emailed.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:48, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it seems most hits in google books are from biography articles rather than about it, you already added the alumni of the ones I found like Cavendish and Hoadly. I wonder if the British history website has anything from an old county book or something..♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:20, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there is a page like "Hackney education" there. The place was basically on Lower Clapton Street, and we have a good idea where. There is a History of Hackney by a William Robinson (in DNB, we don't yet have an article) but without much that's really new.

But there is much more in the book by Nicholas Hans in the references; I have borrowed it from the library. Appendix A has about 150 names, which means I'm adding selectively, obviously: DNB people, FRSs, MPs. The author regarded it as "astonishing" so little is known about Newcome's - that was back in 1951 originally. There is a fair bit more in the Jones reference, which I need to put in fully - I took notes on that in the library. So a bit more can be added. I filled in a couple of the pupils earlier today (Chubbe and Ord), and am now off on a side-track. But I'll return when I have a bit more momentum. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:32, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

That book sounds promising. I've added rough coordinates of the road, but you might have some info on location like "on the corner with xx road in which you can work it out exactly. Use this and click bing maps for label and hover around and note the precise coordinates on the left.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:39, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

At the corner of Lower Clapton Road and Urswick Road were the so-called "Five Houses" in Hackney, and it was next to those. Probably it can be found on an old map site. In fact there is a girl's school there now.[4] which is about Clapton Girls' Academy. But I haven't checked which piece of the school is on that site. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:46, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Urswick Road seems to be a continuation of Lower Clapton Road. The girl's academy is actually a little further to the northeast than Urswick Road today, but it is possible Urswick used to being a little further north.. Coordinates should be very close now, try this, but it would be good if you have any other reference like Laura Place or anything which is a side street framing it. But the fact there is a girl's school on the site now it seems to be about right.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:55, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

This has enough detail, probably. I think Upper Clapton Road isn't where it used to be, since it talks about a "corner" in LCT. Obviously a lot of rebuilding went on. I don't really have time to sort it all out right now. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:03, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep, Powerscroft Road and Laura Place framing it, that's right, coordinates are accurate.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 17:06, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

You have anything on José Gumilla? There;'s an entry on the Venezuelan Jesuit website here. ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 12:05, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

There seems to be a certain amount on JSTOR, in Spanish and some German ... try "Fr. Gumilla" on Google Books. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:11, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

WMUK's Lua on Wikimedia event

Hi, this is just a reminder that you have previously signed up for the Lua on Wikimedia event taking place at Wikimedia UK office this Sunday. The plan is to start at 10am, but I should be around to let you in from 9-ish. See you then! -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 10:39, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

UK Wikimedian of the Year 2013/Nominations

The Wikimedia UK AGM will be held in June, and nominations for the UK Wikimedian of the Year are currently open. If there is someone who you feel has made an important contribution to the UK Wikimedia movement in the last year please go ahead and nominate them here by 09:00 (BST) on Monday 20th May at the latest. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 13:13, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

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Help needed with templates

Hi Charles,

I have been persuaded to create an English language version of the French Wikipedia article Dimension (graph theory). My version is here.

I can more or less manage the French, and the maths, but I have a problem with the templates used in the French article, Modèle:Théorème and Modèle:Démonstration. I started by looking for English-language equivalents, and failed to find any; but I have almost certainly not looked in the right place. I asked on the help desk, and received some useful advice, but not about templates. So I converted Modèle:Théorème to Template:math_theorem myself, by copying the French versions and translating the words into English as far as seemed appropriate. The result works. However the way I have done it is probably not the approved way (and if it is the approved way, I ought to make the template available somehow). But my conversion of Modèle:Démonstration to Template:Math_proof does not work at all, as you can see here.

So I would appreciate your advice. Maproom (talk) 13:34, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I did actually look at this after the SEEG workshop. It can probably be pushed through somehow. The first question always in migrating templates is "does it call another template?" If so, you are going to have to migrate that too.

Trying {{math theorem}} out:

{{math theorem|Fermat}} does nothing

{{math theorem|énoncé=Fermat}} renders as a box then an error message:

so probably something is being called that isn't yet there.

{{math theorem|nom=Fermat|Sum of nth powers}} seems to function:

Theorem — Sum of nth powers

But the text is for some reason below the box. There is hope yet. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:21, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

May 2013

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Richard Keble

Some time ago I wrote an article on Richard Keble, originally I did not use the DNB article but latter came back and added details from that source. The trouble was that the sources did not quite agree, so I simply left details from several version in the text.

Recently another editor altered a detail using the ONDB article. If you have time please could you look the article over and copy edit it so that it is consistent and uses the ONDB as an arbitrator between the older sources already cited? -- PBS (talk) 14:52, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I've done a first pass. Quite pleased to find the image – took a bit of persistence. There are a few more details in the ODNB that could sensibly be added. I had to take a crash course in the referencing style. Maybe we could talk about harv and {{cite DNB}} some time. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:03, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the contributions. The article is looking much better. I have made some minor changes to your changes, and made some comments on the talk page which you might like to review. I am willing to talk about the {{harv}} templates, but it seems to me that you worked out how they work. The only got-yers are

1. that ref=harv is set in {{citation}} by default, but needs to be explicitly set templates like {{cite book}} ({{cite DNB}} follows {{cite encyclopedia}} and needs to have rev=harv set for {{sfn}} to work while {{DNB}} has ref=harv set by default).
2. if there are two articles by the same author with the same date/year of publication then the year= parameter needs a letter attached to the end (eg year=2012 and for the second year=2012a)

-- PBS (talk) 11:13, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

OK. I have added some more today - there is actually plenty of comment on the Lilburne and Love trials if one looks for it, so there is room for expansion. Some is significant (e.g. precursor of the "fifth amendment" in the Lilburne trial). Bear with me on the referencing, and I'll get back to it later on to apply consistency.

The thing about {{cite DNB}} is this: I have a project to replace links here to random online copies of the old DNB, pointing them to the Wikisource versions. When articles use Harvard referencing, I do need to understand it. So thanks for the tips. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:41, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

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Ambrose church

Looks interesting, I'll try to get around to sorting it out tomorrow. I'm currently gradually sorting out the Pacific Ocean article, had barely more than 10 sources when I first looked at it. Recently created Gian Carlo Passeroni and Scipione Cobelluzzi, the first had an entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, the second has an entry in an Italian biographical dictionary. I wonder how many such articles are still missing from books like those! Dr. ☠ Blofeld 21:05, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Will get onto looking at the church shortly, sorry for the delay! Can you find anything on the history of Ellenborough Park Hotel?♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 12:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

This is Southam House [5]? Seems to be plenty, e.g. old engraving one page up from [6]. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:48, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Lovely, thanks. I've sourced the tower article BTW.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 13:43, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

You have anything on Peter Wickens Fry?♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:15, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Cliché verre (first was of him by his friend George Cruikshank). This [7] index. Ambrotype (see [8] and next page). This [9] index. Calotype Club membership[10]. Fair amount more on Google Books, in other words. Charles Matthews (talk) 04:13, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Family background here. Fry. Loxley and Fry, and some more family, here on p. 147. Charles Matthews (talk) 04:23, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Ramanujan tau function

Hi Charles Matthews, I was going through the requested mathematics articles in German wiki, where Tau-function was requested but it give the title as Ramanujan tau function. Since you are the article creator want to know what is the most commonly used name? Tau-function or Ramanujan tau function. Thanks. The Legend of Zorro 19:27, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I would say "Ramanujan tau function" - Greek letters are overloaded. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:55, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks filed for a G6 citing this discussion. The Legend of Zorro 20:41, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I moved it - Nabla (talk) 21:08, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

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TemplateData is here

Hey Charles Matthews

I'm sending you this because you've made quite a few edits to the template namespace in the past couple of months. If I've got this wrong, or if I haven't but you're not interested in my request, don't worry; this is the only notice I'm sending out on the subject :).

So, as you know (or should know - we sent out a centralnotice and several watchlist notices) we're planning to deploy the VisualEditor on Monday, 1 July, as the default editor. For those of us who prefer markup editing, fear not; we'll still be able to use the markup editor, which isn't going anywhere.

What's important here, though, is that the VisualEditor features an interactive template inspector; you click an icon on a template and it shows you the parameters, the contents of those fields, and human-readable parameter names, along with descriptions of what each parameter does. Personally, I find this pretty awesome, and from Monday it's going to be heavily used, since, as said, the VisualEditor will become the default.

The thing that generates the human-readable names and descriptions is a small JSON data structure, loaded through an extension called TemplateData. I'm reaching out to you in the hopes that you'd be willing and able to put some time into adding TemplateData to high-profile templates. It's pretty easy to understand (heck, if I can write it, anyone can) and you can find a guide here, along with a list of prominent templates, although I suspect we can all hazard a guess as to high-profile templates that would benefit from this. Hopefully you're willing to give it a try; the more TemplateData sections get added, the better the interface can be. If you run into any problems, drop a note on the Feedback page.

Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:01, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

June 2013

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• observations might be freely made and judgments formed. When doubts were raised concerning Wallace]], Wylie stated that "Wallace must be a proficient in Greek, as he had studied under the great [http:

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• healthy cells. When a plant or animal died, the microzymas lived on.{clarify|date=April 2013}}

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• which he disappears. His principal parts were Douglas, Count Romaldi in the ''Tale of Mystery'' (melodrama by [[Thomas Holcroft]]}, ''George Barnwell'', Anhalt, Alonzo in ''Pizarro'', Merton in ''Marriage Promise'', and the Count

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Disambiguation links

Hey there, I noticed from your talk page you often link to disambiguation links. Assuming these are inadvertent, I highly recommend Anomie's link classifier. It highlights disambiguation links, along with other styles based on what type of link it is. I personally find it indispensable. The CSS is at User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css and JS at User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js. Hope this is of help, cheers! — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:04, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - partially inadvertent in that I was going to get back to John Beard once I had searched for an image (a picture of Harris by John Opie is supposedly at the Garrick Club, but their website doesn't have it). Charles Matthews (talk) 17:09, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

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Paris

Paris has been on hold for GA, I've been trying to whip it into shape, still a lot of work to be done. I've overhauled the entire sourcing and am steadily improving it. Can you think of any missing aspects aside from Fashion, media, religion which are yet to be written? The Parisian art community and actual artwork could be explored more too I think. Also can you find anything substantial on Bulgarian wedding music? Steve Vai cited it as an influence with bizarre time signatures (Dave Brubeck was also influenced by Bulgarian and Turkish music and I think he made it his goal to compose something in every time signature!) Seems an interesting topic anyway...♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

No explicit mention of haute couture? It was, possibly is, a traditional industry in Paris, with the fashion houses being there for that reason, not just retail outlets. The mention of the interwar period is similarly a bit dangling, because the 19th century section is a bit light on the cultural side.

Don't know about the Bulgarian music, but ruchenitsa+wedding (also rachenitsa, Ръченица, rutchenitsa, râčenica, rǔchenitsa) starts to bring stuff up. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that would fall under fashion which is yet to be written. To produce an article which does such a complex city justice is rather difficult. It needs a lot of work and was prematurely nominated for GA. I prefer to write them from scratch like the Marrakesh article which is also a GA candidate rather than a frantic cleanup job. Of course, I doubt there's anybody on here who is an expert in Bulgarian music but the potential article looks interesting!♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:45, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Ahah, literature. I knew I missed something. Just added sections on fashion and music, a pleasure to write being a jazz fan. Writing about Paris's role in art and literature might be trickier though. Any help is warmly welcome.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:28, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Purdy Islands, look out for it on the main page in due course!♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:01, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Great, you did find more. Just shows what happens when you stir up that old DNB material: things swim up to the surface. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:52, 5 July 2013 (UTC)