Talk:Frank Matcham: Difference between revisions

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			==Unclear bits==
			1. In the final para of the lead, "His biographer Brian Walker notes from the architect's personal archives that ..." means what, exactly? What is the connection between the architect's personal archives and Mr. Walker's judgement?

			2. Second sentence: "He was best known for ...". Is he no longer best known for this?

			3. End of lead para 2: "the Revill family who owned many of the theatres throughout the UK at that time." Not sure what "of the" means. Are we saying that they owned the majority of the UK's theatres? If so, we should say so. If not, can we drop those two words?

			4. Lead P3 - Worth noting that "in the provinces" will probably grate on a great many people in the provinces, who ''hate'' that phrase. -> "around the country"?

			5. Lead P3 - Can we lose the superfluous "when compared" part of "describes Matcham's theatre interiors to be superior when compared to the building's external designs" -> "describes Matcham's theatre interiors to be superior to the building's external designs"

			6. Lead P3 - discontinue -> avoid, remove "otherwise: "Matcham's use of cantilevers for the galleries allowed him to discontinue the use of columns, which would otherwise obstruct the audience's view" -> "Matcham's use of cantilevers for the galleries allowed him to avoid the use of columns, which would obstruct the audience's view"

			--] (]) 12:06, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

			==Wrong Gaiety Theatre picture==
⚫	{{WikiProject Architecture\|~~class~~=~~Stub\|auto=yes~~}}
			The picture of the Gaiety Theatre shows it located on the corner of Strand (right) and Aldwych (left) with ] in the background. This is the replacement theatre built after Phipps' was demolished in 1903. The Gaiety Theatre designed by Phipps, occupied a site on the Corner of Essex Street and Catherine Street and was on the left of the view in the postcard. The map below from 1900 shows the theatre's location before Aldwych and Kingsway were constructed.
			]
			Larger scale OS maps are and .--] (]) 13:26, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
			<br>
			:Thanks {{u\|DavidCane}}. Are there any images we can use out there? I have to say, the image is used more for the plot in which the theatre stands rather than the building itself. What if that were made clear in the caption? '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px Black;">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 19:27, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
			::{{u\|Cassianto}}, how about . It says it can be reused without permission.--] (]) 19:41, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
		⚫	:::Looks great! I see no reason not to use it, although does it illustrate the point about the awkward plot? '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px Black;">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 20:33, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
			::::If you want to specifically illustrate that, I suggest that a section of the 1895 OS map is uploaded, perhaps with the outline highlighted in red. They are out of copyright after 50 years.--] (]) 20:41, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

			== Citation 16: "Tenders", The Builder, 1 March 1873, p. 176. ==
	== Infobox ==

			This section of The Builder contains information about tenders already awarded, and records that the building contractor James Matcham of Plymouth had been awarded the construction contract, together with the amount of his tender <Dartmouth and South Hams Chronicle 28 February 1873, p2.>. Tenders had been invited the previous January <Western Morning News 25 January 1873 p1>, with no mention of Frank Matcham. It would have been highly unusual for a professional architect to cite one of his subordinates in such a context.] (]) 17:47, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
	: "The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. '''Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article."''' Seek consensus first please. -- '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px Black;">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 11:00, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
			:Thanks, now fixed. ] (]) 08:08, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
	:The section you cite does not not require ''prior'' consensus. ] applies. The use of infoboxes provides a convenient summary of salient points for the benefit of our readers; and allows their software tools to extract such data, also to their benefit. The use of over a million infoboxes on Misplaced Pages shows widespread community support for their inclusion. You give no reason for the recent removal of the infobox I added, which should be restored. <span class="vcard"><span class="fn">]</span> (<span class="nickname">Pigsonthewing</span>); ]; ]</span> 13:32, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
	::To reduce the life of an individual to a handful of bullet points is not distilling, it is dumbing down. Nothing more. There is no requirement to have an infobox on any page, but they do serve a very good purpose from time to time: summarising 65 years of a full and interesting life is not one of those times. - ] (]) 13:38, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
	:::Your comments appear to be arguing a case against against biographical infoboxes per se, rather than of the subject of this particular article. I suggest that you raise an RfC prohibiting them at that level, of you believe that the current common practice of using them for biographies is unacceptable. <span class="vcard"><span class="fn">]</span> (<span class="nickname">Pigsonthewing</span>); ]; ]</span> 15:02, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
	::::Why? The situation is covered by the MOS, "The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article", as you well know. Either way, it is not about the use of infoboxes on biographies: in some cases they are extremely useful in biographies. Please do not try to misrepresent what others have said. - ] (]) 15:09, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
⚫	:::~~::Pigsonthewing~~, ~~where~~ does ~~MoS~~ ~~say~~ ~~''prior''?~~ ~~Your~~ ~~arguement~~ ~~here~~ is ~~nonsensical. --~~ '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px Black;">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 18:13, 10 May ~~2013~~ (UTC)
	::::::Its not me whose posting nonsensical comments. I didn't say that the MoS says ''prior''; I said that it doesn't. I note that you, too, make no arguments against the infobox I added to this article. <span class="vcard"><span class="fn">]</span> (<span class="nickname">Pigsonthewing</span>); ]; ]</span> 18:46, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
	:::::::For the record, I am not completely opposed to them. I think they work well in sports, science and film articles. However, I am totally opposed to them in biographies. The info box in a biography is a redundent rehash of information that can easily be found in the lede and the first few lines of the body. IMO, it is ugly, forces the lede image to an awkward size and is repetition at its worst; "Frank Matcham" alone appeared four times at the beginning of the article. His name appeared once at the article title, next in the lede, above the infobox, and below the image. A biographical infobox is designed to give the lazy, uninterested reader quick, disposable information and does nothing to entice them in to reading the article. As editors, we ''want'' people to read the articles which we have invested so much time and research in. Otherwise, we may aswell just put an infobox in an article and do away with the text altogether. We would need consensus to remove an infobox, so you should require consensus to add one. --'''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px Black;">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 19:30, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

			== Please add this plaque if appropriate ==
	It is not in the best interests of the project to require consensus before editing an article. Our encyclopedia has grown because we allow anyone to edit and bold editing is the commonest way of establishing consensus, so I would always counsel against bringing forward arguments that relied on an appeal that a consensus has to be sought before editing. The value of infoboxes in any article includes that they ''do'' provide the "lazy" overview - they are a condensation of the key points of the lead in just the same way that the lead is a condensation of the key points of the whole article. I would urge everyone not to dismiss lightly the argument that we should not be prejudging how our readers consume articles. If a visitor to our site only wants a brief, "dumbed-down" overview, who are we to deny them that facility? We must always remember we are writing Misplaced Pages for all of our readers (including re-users), not for our editors. Of course the teacher in me wants the reader to read the whole article, but I must recognise that it is not my place to ''insist'' on that.

			] ] (]) 16:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
	Infoboxes not only supply a very short summary, though. They provide a means of marking up some of the data in standardised format (this is called a ]) so that the resulting HTML can be read by automated tools and aggregated for easy re-use by third parties. Additionally, for at least the last five years, Google has been using our infoboxes as one of the primary means of improving the natural language capabilities of its page reading tools. For example Google will correctly identify a birth date in the lead perhaps about 70% of the time; if it reads a "birth date" parameter in an infobox then it accurately identifies the correct birth date more like 95% of the time. There's a Google tech talk that describes how they can use common structures like {{tl\|infobox person}} (which is used on a massive number of articles) for artificial intelligence research at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqOHbihYbhE for anyone who has the time to watch it. Now I agree that not every editor will put value on writing articles so that they are more usable by Goggle and other third parties, but I submit that it has great value. Our mission is to create a world where every single human being has free access to the total sum of human knowledge. We won't do that on our own, and we are going to have to accept that the Googles of this world and the other re-users are some of the most valuable partners we have in getting closer to our goal.

			:What a nice plaque. it could match the other one in Legacy. ] (]) 16:49, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
	Just as those three advantages of infoboxes need to be considered, there are many reasons why infoboxes may disadvantage an article: the extra effort of creating and keeping an infobox updated and synchronised with other data in the article; the aesthetic considerations associated with the article's images or a large infobox swamping a stub-sized article; and other perfectly respectable reasons that vary from one article to another. Nevertheless, I would respectfully suggest that we editors are not able to predict with any accuracy which factors are most important in a generic class of article. A very short chemistry article with a huge infobox looks awful, while consensus has agreed that a large, well-crafted biography such as ] (a featured article) is able to sustain a large infobox. I would therefore ask that Cassianto and SchroCat (both editors I respect) should consider carefully the arguments I make here and try to explain to Andy (another editor I respect) the specific and concrete arguments they are bringing here against the proposed infobox in ''this'' article, and listen to Andy's case with respect - I would equally expect Andy to respect the reasoning of you both even if he does not agree with it and wants to debate point-by-point. Without that dialogue, and a willingness to listen carefully to each other, you won't be seeing where common ground lies and where compromise is possible. We need to be able to do that if we want to avoid the scenario where two distinct sides are polarised and simply edit-war to see who can force their preferred version into an article. That would indeed be a failure of the processes that have created the project we all so passionately believe in. --] (]) 02:22, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

			::{{u\|Krok6kola}}, {{u\|KJP1}}, done. {{tick}} '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px Black;">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 08:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
	:Thanks for your polite comments Rexx, which are much appreciated. You are right about the Bold editing, of course, except that on such a contentious issue, which I certainly think this is, a degree of circumspection around the boldness is preferable to avoid the inevitable decline into argument and rancour. I'll also add that I've seen people being accused of being vandals for ''removing'' infoboxes, which seems a little one-sided, given that it is an equally valid edit to adding one.
	:Personally, if I feel a box is unnecessary, I prefer to ask the question on the talk page and be guided by the consensus that follows, rather than try and stamp my own personal preferences onto an article from the off. I find that the process is received much better by other editors if the discussion precedes any action (or lack of it), as well as having the advantage of listening to others, rather the barracking tones that sometimes accompany these discussions.
	:I appreciate your points about needing to find a balance between the desire to provide the data for engines such as Google, against other editor concerns, and as such I drew up the following ] which will address the data issues you raised. I'll put to one side the POV issues in the "Notable works" list (ie, who decided on these, as opposed to his other works) in the interest of coming to a clean consensus over this. All the best - ] (]) 15:31, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
	::Hi RexxS, likewise thank you for your polite and respectful post, I really wouldn't expect anything less from you. As I said to Andy, I am not opposed to infoboxes on certain articles and can see the use of them on those articles which require a lot of information about that particular subject. However, I do oppose them on biographies as I don't really see the encyclopaedic value in explaining to a reader who so and so's non notable siblings were and what their religion was, who they supported in politics, where they got married, etc... They are also bloody ugly to boot, especially on short stubs such as this. They interfere with the first image (if there is one), often sandwiching the preceding text as a result.
	::I really don't have a clue about the technical side of them, so I trust you implicitly in what you say here. I think SchroCat has fixed the problem perfectly with his capped version and I fully support this. In fact, quite why this hasn't been implemented accross WP, I don't know! I think adding an infobox is a big edit to make and it would only be polite to post the intension on the talk page prior to adding it. It is a bit like adding a <nowiki>{{wait}}</nowiki> tag before doing a big edit, as I think it is proper to warn people that I am in the process of structuring a large edit. Likewise, If I start a big project which I plan on taking to FAC, I build it in my sandbox and then post a message on the talk page asking if anyone agrees or opposes me moving what I have done accross to the mainspace. If I don't hear anything within a week I go ahead with the move. Anyway, great to hear from you and I await your thoughts on SchroCat's idea. --'''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px Black;">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 18:55, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
	:::Rexx and I have both asked that you enumerate "the specific and concrete arguments are bringing here against the proposed infobox in ''this'' article"; yet all the points that you make, are about infoboxes ''in general''. Your objections include "siblings" (the infobox in this article listed none, let alone non-notable examples), "religion" (not mentioned), "politics" (none again), and "where they got married" (again, no such detail was included). Your reference to "short stubs such as this" suggest you may even have been thinking of the wrong article. Similarly, the infobox in this article did not "" nor "" (though of course that's on my system; it's futile to try to achieve a perfect layout on any one system, since there are so many variables between what each of us uses). Similarly, your claim that "Frank Matcham " occurred four times is demonstrably false. I repeat my suggestion that such generic objections should be made in a centralised RfC. Likewise, the collapsed infobox, with hidden content, hasn't been implemented across WP because it finds no favour, unlike the million-plus uncollapsed infoboxes we have (I'm aware of only a handful of examples; each ] by vehement opponents of infoboxes who have similarly been unable to make a case against having one). Collapsing the infobox not only defeats its primary purpose, of providing a ''quick'' and ''convenient'' fact-list for those readers who desire or find useful such a thing (and there is evidence that readers they do), but also hampers the usefulness of providing accurate machine readable metadata, since hidden content is more likely to be overlooked when pages are updated. However, if you still think we should adopt that model despite such shortcomings, then - again - a centralised RfC should be the way forward.
	::: The information in the infobox ''on this article'' includes birth and death dates and locations, resting place, and nationality, which I trust we can all agree are fundamental and unequivocal. The occupation was given as "Theatrical architect". Do you wish to challenge that? I agree that the "Notable work(s)", Schrocat's only objection to the specific infobox instance in question, were relatively arbitrary; I gave the four that are deemed (equally arbitrarily?) important enough to go in the lede, plus what I considered to be his most well-known example outside London. That choice is open to challenge, but, with this being a wiki, that ls possible without removing the entire infobox. That just leaves "Influenced", which is often a more nebulous matter, but the two names I included were both people who, the article says, were trained by Matcham - and by definition, a trainer influences. Are you perhaps concerned that some other, important detail was omitted? <span class="vcard"><span class="fn">]</span> (<span class="nickname">Pigsonthewing</span>); ]; ]</span> 20:21, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 00:03, 23 November 2024

Frank Matcham is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Misplaced Pages community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 17, 2020.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 12, 2019	Peer review	Reviewed
July 19, 2019	Featured article candidate	Promoted

A fact from this article was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on November 22, 2024.

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Archive 1

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Unclear bits

1. In the final para of the lead, "His biographer Brian Walker notes from the architect's personal archives that ..." means what, exactly? What is the connection between the architect's personal archives and Mr. Walker's judgement?

2. Second sentence: "He was best known for ...". Is he no longer best known for this?

3. End of lead para 2: "the Revill family who owned many of the theatres throughout the UK at that time." Not sure what "of the" means. Are we saying that they owned the majority of the UK's theatres? If so, we should say so. If not, can we drop those two words?

4. Lead P3 - Worth noting that "in the provinces" will probably grate on a great many people in the provinces, who hate that phrase. -> "around the country"?

5. Lead P3 - Can we lose the superfluous "when compared" part of "describes Matcham's theatre interiors to be superior when compared to the building's external designs" -> "describes Matcham's theatre interiors to be superior to the building's external designs"

6. Lead P3 - discontinue -> avoid, remove "otherwise: "Matcham's use of cantilevers for the galleries allowed him to discontinue the use of columns, which would otherwise obstruct the audience's view" -> "Matcham's use of cantilevers for the galleries allowed him to avoid the use of columns, which would obstruct the audience's view"

--Tagishsimon (talk) 12:06, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Wrong Gaiety Theatre picture

The picture of the Gaiety Theatre shows it located on the corner of Strand (right) and Aldwych (left) with St Mary le Strand in the background. This is the replacement theatre built after Phipps' was demolished in 1903. The Gaiety Theatre designed by Phipps, occupied a site on the Corner of Essex Street and Catherine Street and was on the left of the view in the postcard. The map below from 1900 shows the theatre's location before Aldwych and Kingsway were constructed.

Larger scale OS maps are here (1893-95) and here (1914) showing the new theatre as the first building constructed on the newly clear semi-circle of land.--DavidCane (talk) 13:26, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks DavidCane. Are there any images we can use out there? I have to say, the image is used more for the plot in which the theatre stands rather than the building itself. What if that were made clear in the caption? Cassianto 19:27, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Cassianto, how about this one. It says it can be reused without permission.--DavidCane (talk) 19:41, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Looks great! I see no reason not to use it, although does it illustrate the point about the awkward plot? Cassianto 20:33, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

If you want to specifically illustrate that, I suggest that a section of the 1895 OS map is uploaded, perhaps with the outline highlighted in red. They are out of copyright after 50 years.--DavidCane (talk) 20:41, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Citation 16: "Tenders", The Builder, 1 March 1873, p. 176.

This section of The Builder contains information about tenders already awarded, and records that the building contractor James Matcham of Plymouth had been awarded the construction contract, together with the amount of his tender <Dartmouth and South Hams Chronicle 28 February 1873, p2.>. Tenders had been invited the previous January <Western Morning News 25 January 1873 p1>, with no mention of Frank Matcham. It would have been highly unusual for a professional architect to cite one of his subordinates in such a context.Lapford (talk) 17:47, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, now fixed. FGMC1870 (talk) 08:08, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Please add this plaque if appropriate

Krok6kola (talk) 16:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

What a nice plaque. it could match the other one in Legacy. KJP1 (talk) 16:49, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Krok6kola, KJP1, done.

Y Cassianto 08:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

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