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It's new! It's exciting! It's an idea whose time came months ago: The Tags and Boxes Player's Guide Continuation: The Demotion Idea. If RFA is "broken," let's not make it FUBAR: The RFA Derby It's newer! It's not exciting! Essay on Wiki Cults of Personality My attempt at impersonating Marshal MacLuhan: IRC considered Blocklogz, A Wikiwebi Comix: My first attempt at hip artwerkx. Oh, more IRC bashing from an IRC hater, etc. You know -- just whining from a luzer.: People are still getting blocked by "unanimous" IRC consent. So You Wanna Be An Edit Warrior? An essay on how to tell if you may already have the qualifications to be an edit warrior and not even know it!

New: User:Kosebamse/IRC explains pretty well why Misplaced Pages lost three of its most serious content contributors to salve the egos of some few people and save the playtime of those same few people. The "IRC RfAr": An explanation of "What happened" during the IRC arbitration case, and why it cost Misplaced Pages far, far more than it gave. The long winded analysis of "civility," with a short and succinct page to follow

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All I'll say about that.

Three people in agreement talking to each other without regard for the evidence or reason, who are afflicted with the common disease of afflatolalia, whose goals are to inflict silence, are not part of Misplaced Pages. Geogre (talk) 11:18, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The Cantos

A very sad day , inevitable I suppose, can one be bothered to explain it is probably one of the greatest indepth analysis on the subject anywhere. No doubt it'll soon be cut down to size and squeezed into the bog standard mold, to match the mediocrity elsewhere. Very sad. I won't comment myself, it will only drag in the hoards, gapers and crowds. Giano (talk) 15:40, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. Pardon me for butting in; it's one of those things that happens when I watchlist people's talk pages. Something no one seems to notice about our Assume Good Faith policy (don't you love it when people DON'T wikilink it?) is that it also applies to expert contributors writing in their areas of expertise. While I haven't read through the Cantos since I was in my twenties, and understood precious little of them then, that page is, to my eye, a superb writeup of the topic. Doesn't AGF also suggest that the person isn't just making stuff up? This mania for citation, and its associated tagging plague, is rapidly giving us an unreadable encyclopedia, and I'm increasingly thinking that riddling articles with and and is a form of vandalism. Yeah, choir, preaching, I know. I'll crawl back to my corner now where I scribble unread pages on obscure composers. Antandrus (talk) 16:04, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, very true, I was just checking what I only thought was the correct spelling when you beat me to it No doubt by the time they have finished the whole page will be able to be crammed into its own hideously ugly info box. Giano (talk) 16:10, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

You know, folks, only two or three of us know the truth of just how expert that writing was. Let's just say that people have to pay a lot of money to get that, ordinarily, and here it was donated. I can't say any more, except that, if they had any sense, they'd wet their pants before they threw a line at that article. Fortunately, they haven't any sense and thus remain only incontinent in mind. Geogre (talk) 20:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Geogre, you never said a truer word. I hope Misplaced Pages puts a copy of the original version in its vaults. Giano (talk) 20:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, did anyone note the conspicuous lack of an "in popular culture" section in that article? It looks so... how should I put it, so... incomplete without a dozen references to The Simpsons Cantos, Canto MMORPGs, and Hentai Cantos. No FA stuff, sorry. Kosebamse (talk) 20:43, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

"This mania for citation, and its associated tagging plague, is rapidly giving us an unreadable encyclopedia, and I'm increasingly thinking that riddling articles with and and is a form of vandalism". Yep. Mass citation requests are supposed to be for genuinely controversial articles, not pages like The Cantos. From what I've seen there was once a golden age for writing articles about literature on Misplaced Pages before the unfortunate reign of the policy pedants began. Now it would be like wading through treacle to produce something of the quality of that page. Grrrrr. --Folantin (talk) 21:14, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I suppose though, comments like this are merly confirming what some of us have known for a while, perhaps we cannot keep our heads in the sand any longer, and it is time to bale out, I'm not going to comment as I will be too rude or give somthing away. A great pity. Giano (talk) 21:23, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, maybe it's time to say Basta! --Folantin (talk) 09:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

What I see is a mob of officious teenagers with pitchforks and rubber stamps. I don't know what to do about it; it seems quite hopeless: they're here, and they wield their weapons with the certainty and pride of evangelists. There's something in Sun Tzu about not attacking walled cities, and this seems to be such a case. This is why I never, ever any longer attempt to write "good" or "featured" articles -- I personally prefer to write good articles which anonymous readers, not Misplaced Pages taggers and boxers, read; and this is what I suggest to anyone else feeling this same frustration. Think of those people, out there someplace, interested in architecture, opera, Roman towns, Renaissance poetry, Restoration drama -- if you have written what appears as the number one hit on Google, people will come -- and who cares what the taggers and boxers think? Who cares? But maybe I'm just another one building sand castles, ignorant of the incoming tide. It was fun while it lasted. But can we at least have a year or two more of a Silver Age before all turns to dross? Antandrus (talk) 22:04, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

No, you can't, you filthy intellectuals! 'Tis the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution coming to get you! Red Guard, 22:19, 19 July 2008 (UTC).

Yep, It seems a golden age has passes. Someone called Ottava Rima, seems to think such a page, is not good for her students. I find that very odd, and not a little unamusing Giano (talk) 09:38, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Ottava Rima has students? Heaven help them. I cannot believe that he has students, honestly. If he does, then they may be entitled to a refund for any tuition they paid. More, though, I simply do not believe that that user is a professor, find the idea of his being a high school teacher depressing, and do not worry that kindergarten students are not aided by reading a great explanation of The Cantos. Geogre (talk) 12:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been trying to improve the standard of verifiablity at ANI, to no avail and no mirth it seems - humourless bunch over there.. --Joopercoopers (talk) 22:55, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

"This is why I never, ever any longer attempt to write 'good' or 'featured' articles -- I personally prefer to write good articles which anonymous readers, not Misplaced Pages taggers and boxers, read..." Exactly. I get a buzz if one of my articles is translated into a foreign language and achieves FA status over there, but the English GA and FA processes are now hopelessly bureaucratised and fixated on minor rules. GA, in particular, has entered a bizarre fantasy world in which an article with 30+ inline citations is dismissed as "completely unreferenced" and our BLP policy now apparently applies to 18th century assassins. Life's too short. --Folantin (talk) 09:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm very dissapointed to read all of this. I was dissapointed too so see the FAR nom, but now that its there the wHole point is to help (a massive presumption, granted). Talk of adding "see also"s, infoboxes by officious teenagers with pitchforks and rubber stamps is amusing but trite as over my dead body... Some good faith, please. Ceoil 11:39, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

"Good faith?" I'm shocked.

A man who is an actual expert spent weeks writing the article. He was writing on one of the most complex, least understood poems in English, and certainly the most complex, least understood poem in Modernism.

Voters who were no dummies promoted that article. The article stood out even among expert-written articles as being extraordinary.

At the time of the promotion, the author had used citations, despite my arguing with him not to give in to such tatty imaginations.

There was massive good faith, good intent, and great execution in that article, and now a few people who assume that all "old FA's" are bad or must be changed comes to put a stamp on it? I don't know how to assume good faith among those who wish to grab all articles by form and never read any article for content, because they demonstrate bad faith, bad practice, and bad aim. I'm sorry, but FAR on The Cantos? There is not a chance that anyone who read the article could have made such a nomination. Geogre (talk) 12:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh I agree with all of that, don't get me wrong. But pragmatically my openion is that it's better to cite and keep featured than to let it slip. My openion is that articles like this, that are so stong, should be preserved at any cost, as an example for others as to how to get it right. I also agree that voters during that period were more content focused than these days, but I'm thinking we are where we are, lets try and save it. This all very emotive, and I no less guilty than anybody else of overreacting, so I take back the "good faith" thing; silly thing to say. I already indicated to Giano that one of the reasons I stuck with wikipedia is through reading Filiocht's articles; his work on Yeats in particular. Ceoil 12:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

De nada, man. I know you were just trying to still the waters, and you just chose a less than perfectly felicitous term. It's just that I had a suspicion, way back, that people using the {{notes}} or whatever it was called format were going to end up with something messing up one field and causing everything to disappear. Sure enough, whatever form it was got replaced by another, and I saw an article I worked on lose its notes by a single edit. All it took was a single stray mark, and all the citation disappeared. Fil had provided references throughout Cantos, and I can't imagine what these people are doing. I try to have empathy, but I can't put myself in the ballet slippers necessary for looking at that article and saying, "Well, this obviously shouldn't be an FA." It's inconceivable to me. Oh, someone can say, "This isn't my ideal explanation of the poems," but that's not what FA is.

It's like my argument about the "citation needed" jackassery: Because a person can invent a question does not mean that a statement actually is likely to be questioned or disputed. Because someone could read Fil's greatest article and say, "Hmm, I preferred the book I read as a freshman in college," that's nothing to do with whether or not this is an FA.

Anyway, as I say, I know it's not you on the other side. Sorry for exploding. Geogre (talk) 17:07, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

He, while I take the substance of your agrument; I cant help but have a totally new openion of you knowing now you wrote "Red Man"! Its a new shiny and imporved openion; but a new openion none the less ;) Anyway, yeah I was trying to still the waters, maybe some what obviuosly, but who wants a punch up at a wedding, still less at a divorce. ( Ceoil 23:14, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Just got back from watching South Park, and 'exploding' I didnt see at all; Giano said it well on his talk to me: "we don't take offense easily on this page, as in some other places". Chalk it up. ( Ceoil 00:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I see yet another image has just been deleted from the poor old Cantos, once Misplaced Pages's finest page, probably still is, should we lift a hand to save it, or merely a hand to salute it - as the mausoleum doors close upon it? Just salute it I think, and smile at the memories. Giano (talk) 20:00, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Historical pederastic couples

I made a valiant attempt to strip out the unsourced/poorly sourced/speculative relationships, but was blindly reverted twice. So I just deleted it. FCYTravis (talk) 20:20, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

If that's the case, you have cause. If you were trying to make the thing conform to our standards, and if it got reverted to a form that doesn't fit, then, essentially, you have proof that the article will always violate our guidelines. I wasn't going to argue in the vote, but the "OED says it's just a desire" was a lie/deception. The purpose, name, and contents are POV forking. It's one that should stay gone. If it's at DRV, I'll put in my two cents. Geogre (talk) 12:16, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

• It is. Guy (Help!) 21:38, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

And, of course, it will be right back to "no consensus" on DRV, too, but then someone will have to decide whether that means to go back to FCYTRavis's act (hope so) or the closing as keep. To me, it's really a clear case of a fork, and I see more people with experience saying so than disagreeing. The guy is trying to say, on the talk page of the article, that pederasty is normal homosexuality, and that is crazy. It all hinges on this terrifically licensed definition: the desire for a young partner equals "pederast." Do heterosexual, non-pedophiliac males find Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears when she came out "hot?" Yes. Do they have sex with minors? No. There is a whole world of difference between "find attractive" and "desire exclusively or predominately," and then there is yet another gulf between that, which is mental illness, and the act, which is a crime. It seems to me that the community of gay editors ought to be as outraged as anyone, as this definition seeks to make Mark Foley characteristic of homosexuality. Geogre (talk) 14:01, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem with this article's problem is that it's not a binary sound-bite. I can see in five seconds that it's got references (with in line citation, even! Huzzah!) so it must be good. God forbid we should click on any, or make any effort to understand the problem. In retrospect deletion fora are not well suited to a debates like this, and rolling up sleeves and editting away the issues is probably the only hope for a decent outcome. I believe that there will be nothing left after that process, but I could be wrong. - brenneman 00:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

You're correct. The problem with the contents of the page is that tons of the "references" are, like defining pederasty as "desire" for any given young boy, deceptive, licensed, and spurious. A person can find a book or an article written by a crusader for destroying words. For example, we haven't dealt with it at Misplaced Pages, but there is a major redefinition of "lesbian" operating among some feminists. It's not a majority view, but it's sensational and gets your article printed. This says that any female friendship is lesbian, because phallocentric power structures demand that female affection be directed only at men. By this definition, every woman who has ever lived is a lesbian. Hooray! Let's put every woman, from Xaviera Hollander to Amy Winehouse in the lesbian article! Whee! There are also feminist and "queer studies" professors who will say that every male-male friendship is active homosexuality. Cite them!

These definitions come out of theory of sexuality, and not from clinical observation, identification, or activity.

My problem isn't with the content alone. That title. That word. That word involves power, not love. It involves failure to have informed consent, not merely sex. This is the bit that I think has been spackled over by people not wanting to be accused of being illiberal, and that is weak mindedness. Geogre (talk) 11:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

The fun thing about this game is that you can pick any "couple" in the article seemingly at random and find out that the academic sources don't actually support the claim: Talk:Historical_pederastic_couples#Removed_Ailred_of_Rievaulx_from_the_list. Nandesuka (talk) 12:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I have little doubt of that. I've long said that the citation mania doesn't make articles more reliable unless people check every reference. This much I know from actual life, where I have had to deal with papers that were liberally peppered with citations that got the page numbers wrong, editions wrong, or simply didn't support the claim at all, and this is with honest people who aren't trying to pull a fast one. For people who do want to lie, cheat, and steal, it's fantastically easy to put notes in that aren't true or to fab their sources.

The thing is, the field of "queer studies" has such quacks in it that I doubt people even have to fab. There are sources that may be "reliable" in one sense but which are by no means actually reliable. Citing Derrida writing that Molly Bloom's "Yes" means "no" would be a legitimate citation but entirely false as a claim (you'd have to have paid for the ticket and gone for the ride to see how Derrida said that). Well, Derrida looks like a humorless archeologist compared to some of the people scribbling on homosexuality in literature (and therefore for Plato, Marc Antoni (what, you thought that just because he boffed every thing without a Y-chromosome that he wasn't Caesar's catamite?), and anyone else you want.

I heard one pinhead give a talk (that did not get published) that Wordsworth's late poems are all about pedophilia because there is no mention of pedophilia in them. You see, that proves that he was trying to suppress it. By such logic Wordsworth was also a nuclear physicist, a carpenter, and a pyromaniac. Geogre (talk) 17:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

This edit is awesome because of the implication that the only reason one man might be devastated at the death of a friend is if there is erotic desire. The mind reels. Nandesuka (talk) 00:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, not only that, but any person you wish you had sex with is part of a "couple" with you. The review says that Cocteau wished that he had been with the boy, and when the boy died, he turned to look for others. That, of course, is crass, mean spirited, and reductive, and the reviewer should be slapped, but it isn't even saying that the two were a couple. It only says that Cocteau wanted him. By this standard, I am a polygamist, because I'm married to My wife... Morgan Fairchild, Julia Jentsch, and Morena Baccarin, and that's just this week. Unfortunately, such things fail the test of reality, fail that critical injustice of the universe, whereby the beloved may not know about the lover and certainly may not return the affection. Geogre (talk) 12:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been watching this from a distance and we seem to have a group of editors deciding "this is the desirable outcome so we can ignore all those annoying core policies on WP:RS, WP:V and WP:UNDUE". I've seen it so many times before elsewhere on WP, almost always concerning the national/ethnic/religious/sexual/Masonic/vegetarian identity of some historical figure(s). Incidentally, my copy of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1980s) rather concisely defines "pederasty" as "sodomy with a boy". Anyone foolhardy enough to add Gilles de Retz to that list? --Folantin (talk) 13:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

And they fab

<red faced outburst> What in the world is wrong with people? </red faced outburst> I'm clearly even further on the outlier than I had suspected with respect to what I consider important. One problem with a bad citation is forgivable: tired, lazy, who knows. Three times and it's a problem that needs dealing with: pile-on, rfc, something. But literally every source cited is either misleading, nonexistant, or simply wrong? To me that's block now, clean up the mess, work out the problem with the editor later.

I mean, why are we even here? I thought it was about writing an encyclopedia, a general guide that serves to illuminate. Seems like that would have at least something to do with having correct information. The corrosivly slack scholarship, the knee-jerk defence (and, to be fair, the hostile and overly personal NAMBLA attacks from the other side) it's all starting to get me down.

But I am ranting on your page, aren't I? Please forgive this interupprtion, you may now return to your regularly schedualed programming.

brenneman 04:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh but Geogre's page is a fantastic place to rant, Aaron, really it is. I wrote a lovely rant a while back about article assessment and, much to my surprise, received some fine compliments! It seems to me that popping in here every once in a while inspires us all to higher scholarship. Perhaps the other editor involved might find the same thing.  ;-) Risker (talk) 05:55, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

"Pub Geogre." A lot of us come here for our occasional rants. Can't speak for him, but I doubt he minds. I watch this page because literate and intelligent people hang out here; last summer I was here a lot swinging my axe-handle at the "assessment" taggers. Did little good but it felt good, and I got a surprising amount of agreement and encouragement.

While the decor may not include clever userboxes or thousand-character signatures, the conversation is good, and the wine is plentiful. It's a good place. Antandrus (talk) 06:04, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Dang, I missed all this! Scribere non possus est, as Juvenal said. (I wonder if Juvenal was a pederast for writing about how seeing a man simpering and prancing in a bridal gown made him sick? Perhaps he was only offended because he thought it should be a boy?) Legitimate scholarship is a far cry from legitimate criticism, and this gulf has been widening for decades. I think we have slowed, somewhat, in the drift between the two, but possibly only because I've turned a deaf ear to the critics.

I read a book on irony, and the author had to beg forgiveness for not treating post-colonialism and queer studies. I read that, and I knew we had gone quite a bit too far. It's not enough, in the professional world, to do a good book: you have to do everyone's book, or else you need a damned good reason why not. A fellow was going to the international medievalism conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and to get travel funds he had to fill out a form explaining how many sessions would be about non-European experience, queer experience, and women's literature... in medieval studies.

The reason this is important for us on our islands, though, is that it is possible to get a citation from a critical source. Criticism is based on the interpretation of a work of literature. It can be based in a theory of reading and writing that has not been proven nor widely accepted. It can be based in a theory that is accepted but superseded. It can be based on an accepted theory but be a strained or willful interpretation. The point is that anything that comes from a critical source is going to be secondary, speculative, and never sufficient for reporting as fact. The critic is not trying to get facts. The critic is trying to get a viable insight into a work. For every arrow shot (published) at that target, most of the quiver miss. This is normal. One critical article a year on a given work will be remembered.

Now, I've known this all along, and that's why I thought the citation mania was misguided. You can't just cite. You have to cite a scholarly work -- a work devoted to the archeology of the past, a work devoted to derive an acceptable truth rather than an acceptable insight. (Damn, but I haven't written this much on this subject in years.)

So, the people are fabbing and fudging their cites. Ok. My Cassandra-like warning to anyone interested in managing or scouring or scourging that article is this: "And in those days they shall cite, truly, from those who speak not truth but speculation, and yea, they shall stink and raise clouds of chaff and dust over the matter, and it shall prove to be impossible to dislodge these egoist bullets from the flesh of the articles."

Cassandra act over. Geogre (talk) 11:44, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL disputed

Is it to weigh in? . Btw, User:Chillum is the latest new account name for User:Until 1 == 2. (More manageable, for sure) Bishonen | talk 16:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC).

...aaaand archived. It stood for a whole hour before someone decided that it wasn't going properly and must go. Geogre (talk) 11:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't really know how to fix this never-ending festival of Stupid, if indeed it is fixable, but I do sense that people are missing something pretty fundamental here. In a workplace, justified criticism is not seen as a problem. To call someone an idiot is, if they have been an idiot, reasonable. Much of the problem here appears to be of the nature: A behaves like an idiot, B tells A that A has behaved like an idiot, A runs to mummy and complains about the nasty man, C, D, E, F and G all pile on to B to tell him not to be nasty to A, meanwhile A goes away believing that being an idiot is fine (which it is not), that calling people on idiocy is unacceptable (which it certainly should not be) and that he, A, is in the end Right, even though he isn't. We appear to be reinforcing bad behaviour, pushing people into corners and making things actively worse for all concerned without even looking at the underlying issues at the content level and working out how the original problem, which is often related to the thing we are actually here for, should be resolved. But maybe that's just my jaundiced perspective. Guy (Help!) 13:27, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The reason that I reject the entirety is that people use "CIVIL" as if it were a law, when it's a description. I'm sure you've seen my comments on that. The point is that there is no way to create a set of guidelines, because each speech act is in context. Simply put, every thing that a person says is in response.

I don't like diff citing, and some people have noticed how little I do it. There is a reason beyond native laziness for that: when people cite diffs, they highlight half, at best, of a given speech act. They're clipping a comment from its environment. It's very much like the fundamentalist Christians do, when they find a verse that says "and spilled his seed upon the dusty plain and was cursed for it" and then argue from that, by itself, that it is a clear, unambiguous, and totally universal statement. (For those who don't know their Bible and weird theology, I'm referring to Onan, who didn't want to give his father-in-law grandchildren, resented him, and disobeyed him by coitus interruptus. He was cursed for standing in the way of the development of the House of Israel, for defying God's order to multiply, not for the particularized act.) The point is that "And you're a turd" is obviously part of something.

Those diffs are supposed to get people to read and investigate. What they actually do is get a black file together. When Snowspinner presented evidence that I had been incivil some time back, I was amused and annoyed. There was a collection of Sayings, all without context, all without situation, all supposed evidence that the words, inherently, have some value and that this value is instantly translatable into social value. It was amusing that people are collecting Geogre's Greatest Twits, but it was annoying that this was to pass muster.

All I say is that most of the contributors (as opposed to the vandals and crusaders) who say a nasty thing are provoked, and therefore there is no game to be played to see who says "shit" first. It's a bad situation, not a bad person. Geogre (talk) 13:54, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:CIVILITY is the admin equivalent of alcohol: it makes all the nasty problems go away. This is why it has become so immensely popular. A lot of admins can't cope when faced by complicated issues so they desperately try to turn everything into a question of civility. Once they've done that, bingo, problem solved (or conveniently brushed under the carpet). You've got to wonder whether the emergence of the "civility police" hasn't got something to do with the rise in the number of teen admins. Deprived of legal access to alcohol, they have to resort to the magic power of civility to make everything look rosy. --Folantin (talk) 09:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I absolutely love that analogy. Alcohol, as those of us who have experience with it know, makes the lugubrious comatose, the sanguine feisty, the stupid obnoxious, and it silences that little voice that says, "This might not be a good idea," for all. It makes one's aim worse, one's reactions gross, and one's apprehension magnified. It is, in fact, very like WP:CIVIL.

I think it's also a Cause, and, if we are suspecting the rise of the nerds, so to speak, then one important thing to remember is that younger people, and especially boys, like causes, need causes, and throw themselves into causes. Kurt Vonnegut said that adolescent males are the perfect soldiers, that someone using children for a Crusade would be right, because young men are ready for any war. Older men don't shy from such us/them dichotomies because they're cautious or tired, but because they've already seen us and them. Young people haven't, yet. They haven't yet realized that they are capable of being everything they despise (although actual alcohol can help show them that), and so they still have Purity versus Evil.

Still, I don't actually think it is the youngsters primarily. This "X is 'incivil'" nonsense started before the civility patrollers began their death march. I think it's just that there are people who won't "get with the program" and recognize "governance" at Misplaced Pages and won't be deferential toward those who have won exalted places by mysterious means. Geogre (talk) 11:28, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this is largely right but also slightly wrong: some of the problem is the adolescent reaction to perceived age, experience and authority (i.e. instinctive rejection). In academia, this instinctive rejection is channelled into research which seeks to break new ground, whereas here we have no such outlet, and anyone who is perceived as having any kind of authority is resisted on principle by the adolescents and the permanent adolescents. I think that eventually Misplaced Pages will need an editorial board to settle, authoritatively, content disputes. I don't see any other way to resist the two big problems in article space, "have my say" bloat and the ratchet effect of obsessive agenda-driven editors who constantly seek a new "consensus" between the article and their extreme POV; they are getting extremely good at this, not just the LaRouchies but all kinds of POV-pushers have realised that as long as they are endlessly polite in their demands to rewrite reality they will eventually get traction just because everyone else will lose patience and, as you suggest, the onlookers will not look deeper than the cherry-picked moments of exasperation. There does not appear to be any article so good that someone won't edit it to make it a bit longer and usually not quite so good. A bunch of agenda-driven editors took the featured cold fusion and turned it into a trailblazer for "Low Energy uclear Research" - a very very fringe field, but you'd never know it from the article. The problem is that the endlessly polite POV warriors bait the good guys until they snap, and then the good guys get driven off and the warriors are left to their own devices. It is more important to them to get their POV across than it is for the average Wikipedian to have a neutral treatment of the subject, unless is it something really incredibly important like junior amateur league ice hockey or Pokemon. Guy (Help!) 19:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Guy, you should look at the thing Raul's developing now. He's gone a nice thing going precisely about the polite POV crowds. He's right, but I think, even if none of those people were here, even if there were nothing like the Polish-German-Russian etc. articles, the magnets to immortality articles, etc., CIVIL would be a problem. It was before. It is. For one thing, it's tied in with people who wanted to get authority, and authority, I maintain, comes from what you write, here, and only from what you write. Geogre (talk) 11:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

• Well, Geogre, so you don't like to cite diffs, that's fine. But don't you think it could be useful sometimes to cite links, i. e. whole threads, in permanent versions? Please see Simple diff and link guide, which I wrote for you, with all my love. Hmm, what? Yeah, I know it looks like Moreschi wrote it, but actually he pasted it from my userspace. And I don't mind, either. The only credit I want is yours! Bishonen | talk 21:48, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I know. That's where, I'm afraid, native laziness comes in. I am lazy about these things. I feel somehow sullied if I even look at people. I will, though, reform myself and repent me my lassitude. Geogre (talk) 11:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls...

Unhowled

The James Ralph page has been "made hideous" by combining the lives of a modern cricketer and the Grub Street hack. You're the in-house expert on Pope's dunces so I thought you might be the man to look into this muddle if you have the time. --Folantin (talk) 10:48, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's get out Fama's scale. In one pan, we will put a cricket who played one match at the "A" level, and in the other pan we will put someone who was mentioned in Dunciad, who was associated with Franklin, and who was a poison pen artist. If there are only two figures by a name, we're supposed to chunk one and dab the lead, so which gets chunked?

Oh, oh! Fama says that the cricket needs to be chunked. (That line in Dunciad is absolutely perfect. Look at its prosody, and listen to its consonants. Rrrrrralph calls, answer owls.... It's funny all by itself.) Lemme go read up on Ralph in nDNB, and I'll make it look pretty, and we can chuck the chucker. Geogre (talk) 12:21, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I really need to read up. There are suspicious facts in there, and it's written pretty poorly. Came over in '57 and made it into Dunciad? Ahem. Further, there needs investigation into whether or not it's another James Ralph. I'll hie to a library shelf. Geogre (talk) 12:29, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

He turns up in a couplet of The Dunciad (III.165-166): "Silence, ye Wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls/ And makes Night hideous — Answer him, ye Owls!" The joke is that Ralph had written a poem called Night. According to Pope's (or Scriblerus's) note, Ralph had first come to his attention by abusing Pope, Swift and Gay in a work called Sawney. --Folantin (talk) 13:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I know that. It's just this "coming over in 57" that falls down. Something is very much wrong with that. You see, I still haven't researched him, but I seem to recall Martin Batestin saying that he was a great friend of Henry Fielding's in his early years and that he was an unmovable Whig, and so, QED, Fielding was an unmovable Whig when he wrote Tom Thumb. I admire the hell out of Batestin, and I feel nervous every time I feel the urge to disagree with him, but Tom Thumb is a tory play, or at least an anti-Walpolean play, and Haymarket Theatre was an opposition playhouse, and painting Henry Fielding as a true blew whig is wrong. The point I'm making is that this is 1735 and thereabouts. Ralph simply can't have not come to London until 57. Geogre (talk) 16:38, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

"No, I know that". Ah, yes, sorry about that - should have read more before I posted. I don't have much to hand but there is a brief mention of him in Mack's life of Pope (p.493) where his dates are given as 1705-1762. I agree, the "coming over in 57" makes no sense. --Folantin (talk) 16:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

This looks a more promising source of information ("James Ralph traveled to England with Benjamin Franklin in 1724..."). --Folantin (talk) 16:50, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

There you go! Furthermore, I'm betting that I remembered correctly, and it's Fielding's buddy. 5 to 2... not quite a typo range. Franklin's connection is also somehow tenuous. Franklin coming over in 24 would mean Franklin coming over as a young man, which is probably why the present article is all about Poor Richard and Franklin and not about Ralph. I meant to dig it up yesterday, and I got this close to researching, but then I went to kill Sith again. I've killed all of them several times, now, but I still like doing it. Geogre (talk) 11:33, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

According to this Ralph is the "only American immortalized in The Dunciad" (check the scare quotes around "poem" when the author refers to Ralph's Zeuma - I didn't reallise this device went back to the Victorians). "I've killed all of them several times". Well, modern-day Sith take priority over minor 18th-century literary trolls. Pope killed this guy stone-dead 270 years ago so he can wait another few days for his Misplaced Pages article to be fixed. --Folantin (talk) 19:39, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

We have but to wait for tomorrow, Monday. The funny thing, here, is that he probably needs a better article than nDNB will have for him, but I'm going to start there, then go to Battestin's biography of Fielding, then grab all the online references. I rather think that Ralph was, like a number of Dunces, a bigger wheel when alive than we now believe. There were a bunch of things that actually stank that got praise because of politics. See James Moore Smythe for a good example. The guy's play was horrible, but, because he attacked Pope, it was a semi-cause.

It's hard for me to come up with an adequate analogy, but Pope sort of owns poetry, and poetry was the primary vehicle for satire and, let's face it, political conversation. It would be, if you know the US market, like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and all the network late night hosts were a single person, with all of their ratings. He was excellent, and everyone knew it. He was better, and everyone knew it. His enemies, therefore, end up praising the humor of their own Rush Limbaugh, then -- not because it's there, but because they want there to be someone on their side.

I gather that Ralph's ... The Town, I think is the name of the poem... was this highly political thing. Anyway, I want to give him his due. (My own motives are always to make Pope justified in his clobbering. I never could understand why he would attack nobodies.) Geogre (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It was Touchstone I was trying to remember. Geogre (talk) 11:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Howled

• Research done. All I can say is "wow." That present article will be deleted to erase the IP's contrib. It's too insulting. James Ralph gets 3 pp in nDNB, and with cause. He might be the first American with a play produced in England. He was a Defoe-status political fighter, and he set the "received wisdom" version of history. He's way big. The Franklin connection is the least interesting element of his life. The man is a cad sometimes, a zealot sometimes, a cynic sometimes, and a sage sometimes. His most significant connection is with Fielding, but he's tied to practically everyone. Geogre (talk) 20:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I look forward to seeing the results. It's funny, I remembered those lines of Pope for some unknown reason, went to have a look at the page and found it was a right dog's dinner. Incidentally, on a lighter (?) note, there's a brief discussion "Was Pope a Wikipedian?" at Antandrus's talk page here . --Folantin (talk) 20:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll have to have a look at that. Certainly, knowing the vicious backstabbing, side switching, and ridicule that was English politics 1698-1742 helps one take Misplaced Pages in stride. One critical problem with the two august sources I used for Ralph is that one, the DAB, says that he was born in Elizabethtown, NJ, and the other, the nDNB, says that he may have been born in Philadelphia. Both agree that he moved there, but the distance between these two points, as the crow flies, is 70 miles. In the days of horse and irregular roads, that was two to three days' journey, and no river to link them. Wait. No. Anyhow, that's a big difference. For us today, Elizabethtown to Philadelphia is nothing, but it was big then. Geogre (talk) 00:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

le pant... le pant... le phew! as my friend Pepe Le Pew says. Half done, at best, but enough done to show how much there is to be done. He's still a kid, where I leave off, and he's not even busy yet. He would get very busy. Geogre (talk) 12:07, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow! I would never have guessed there was so much to write about the guy. Nice work! Just don't go and ruin it by nominating it for GA or FA ;). --Folantin (talk) 13:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

No photo of him! No infobox! No indication of whether he has natural breasts or implants, nor how high his singles went on the Eurovision voting! No footnotes. Oh, citation, but that doesn't matter: they're not footnotes to websites! (Fashion-addled weeds in the Parnassan garden.)

Yeah, that was actually a bit of work, synthesizing those three sources and trying not to follow the excesses of any. Geogre (talk) 13:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

(PS: I've just seen Ralph's Night: a Poem in Four Books is available in full view at Google books ). --Folantin (talk) 13:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

It's actually not bad. I don't mean to be too hasty, but it's not so wretched, except that it's derivative, and it's kind of weak. Pope could easily swat at it, but people rightly swatted Thomson, too. Geogre (talk) 13:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

From the little I've read of it, it's very, very Thomsonian. --Folantin (talk) 14:14, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

(Weeping) It seemed so good when I hit "save," and now I'm finding typos and "researcho's" all over the place. Long since are the days when I could do an article from start to finish in one edit! (Well, last week is long since.) All who want to better me, please feel free to look at James Ralph, and I'll try not to be quarrelsome (unless you want to put in a box). Geogre (talk) 14:04, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

My editing is a lot, lot worse, I can assure you. Plus, you have to leave the wikignomes something to do otherwise they tutn into infobox-loving goblins.--Folantin (talk) 14:14, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Good work! I didn't know anything about this guy before. Never heard of him, in fact, but he's a curious character and deserves coverage. It shows that there are still things to be written here; I for one find that encouraging. Of course you still need to be hauled before the High Court for daring to write an article without widgets, and for using a prohibited word in your discussion above. Danger, danger! (A thousand apologies for not revealing it! There are spies everywhere!)

The days are also gone when I could bang out an article in a single sitting myself. One I put up yesterday took me a week, and until I get my hands on a certain doctoral dissertation in New York, I can't be sure I've sorted it all out: the best source was almost sixty years old, and I can't be certain how much of that is superseded. So it goes. Antandrus (talk) 14:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. You know, I did ... some work... on Robert Gould, and I found that a 1940 dissertation is still the only study of the life, the only work of merit, and I further found that contemporary "experts" on the fellow had this uncanny ability to quote exactly the lines the 1940 dissertation did, to highlight only the facts that the 1940 dissertation did. It was amazing. As I've explained before: two people getting the same right answer can't be proven plagiarism, but when two get the same wrong answer in the same way....

Anyway, a 60 yo diss is unlikely to be substantially overwritten, although it may need tweaking. For example, when I was just synthesizing the 1935 DAB and 2004 DNB, I was finding that 1935 mainly had a different emphasis and interpretation, and 2004 had some new facts. Since I wasn't going to rely on the interpretations of either, and I was going to have to ignore a good many facts, I got off easy. This is one of the nice things about Misplaced Pages. Despite what some unenlightened maintain, we are neither a clipping service for websites, nor a reiteration of other, subscription, services. (Oh, and this is my second foray into the bewildering maze of post-Walpole ministries. I simply can't keep all the players straight, as it seems like governments fell every two years.) Geogre (talk) 17:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

"the bewildering maze of post-Walpole ministries". Heh heh. Walpole's a bit like the 18th-century equivalent of Silvio Berlusconi: he may be a corrupt so-and-so but his long spell in power does simplify matters quite nicely for anyone trying to get a handle on British or Italian politics. --Folantin (talk) 18:15, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Walpole not only lasts from 1715 - 1742 as minister, but he's working his evil magic prior to that and drawing attacks even earlier. You will find him as early as John Tutchin and as late as Ralph. Shoot, you can find his sons messing about and being wealthy beyond any cause even after Robert's dead.

Who decided to trade the national debt for South Sea Company stock? Bob!

Who kept the directors of the South Sea Company from facing charges? Bob!

Who got rich in the stock crash? Bob!

Who corresponded with the Pretender in 1713 and then prosecuted Oxford and Bolingbroke for writing letters to the Pretender? Bob!

Who "leaked" the Investigations of the White Staffe? Nobody knows. Most folks think it was Bob.

Furthermore, he was ruthless, greedy, and something like Karl Rove in his manipulation of fears rather than promises of positive good. How did he get to be at the top? He told the Hannoverians that the other guys wanted the Pretender. When a new George came along, he would think Walpole disgusting and mean to axe him, but then Bob would show up to explain how, if he did that, the Young Pretender would invade and chop all German heads. No matter what the opposition believed, said, or seemed, Bob would use fear to be on top.

He had on his side all the businessmen who were getting rich, and these were in a coalition with the poor dissenters (read "fundamentalists"). The latter because, fear again, the opposition would bring in the Pope. (The anti-Catholic riots are insane. Porteus Riots, Gordon riots, etc., and they usually happened in places where there weren't any actual Catholics.) He turned England into "Warehouse UK," making the docks a vast middle man who could charge the people with the resources and the people with the productive capacity for just stopping at the UK before or after crossing the Atlantic. An early version of the "service economy."

So he does remind me of the people I don't like, I must say. Berlusconi would be a fair comparison, too, because Bob is behind gin shops turning up everystinkinwhere and relaxation on some statutes. He was minister for long enough that he even created third parties. I can't say that I'm likely to give him a fair shake, because he reminds me far too much of the present. He had Thatcher's connivance, Rove's use of negatives and fear, and Bush's contempt for the opposition. This is why I won't edit his article. Geogre (talk) 11:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'm busy in RL at the moment so I don't have the time for a full reply. --Folantin (talk) 18:14, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

De nada. I was rambling. See, there's something about reading 18th c. lit. for fun, spending one's money getting obscure books by minor authors, and investigating every footnote that is immersive, but it'll never get me a B-rated article with comma splices and non-English usage in it. I don't do footnotes to page ranges that go backwards, so my articles need "fact" tags littered throughout them. Geogre (talk) 03:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It's the "Litter on articles in the name of Good Article Review" mini-game!

Insert foaming-at-the-mouth rant here, because of this, this, and this. I would have loved to see this guy the in Boy Scouts, clawing someone's eyes out in pursuit of merit badges. Nandesuka (talk) 13:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been so busy Ralphing that I haven't had a chance to look, yet. As Siesta approaches, I am trying to take time to lower my pulse and dilate my pupils, but I'll get there. As a completely innocent aside that in no way refers to GACing, you know, what rats lack in intelligence, they make up for in fecundity. Geogre (talk) 17:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Plurals of dates

I noticed your edit in James Ralph, and more particularly your edit summary. Am I to understand from that comment that American English generally requires the apostrophe? If so, that's an interesting difference between British and American styles, and one which I will bear in mind, since the form without an apostrophe is much more common in British writing. For example, the Guardian style guide and the Times style guide both prescribe the form without the apostrophe, and that is what I would expect to see in British publications. Loganberry (Talk) 23:10, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the New York Times style sheet demands them, and yet Time magazine demands them not. Traditional grammars will insist upon them, while those that are reflecting the business communications model will drop them. Some grammars will mark them as optional.

For me, I prefer the old guide and style because, although no one is likely to get very confused by "1970s," the rule in question is "apostrophe after ordinals." The reason is simple: in many sciences, there will be compound and process names that will combine letters and numbers. If I say "IGFBPs," am I talking about something called IGFBPs or the plural of IGFBP? If I say "753s," am I referring to model 753s or saying many 753? I used to be indifferent about the rule until I worked in a biochem lab, and it drove me nuts with Son of Sevenless S (SOSs) and multiple Son of Sevenless rings (SOS's).

Misplaced Pages's manual of style has been a place I do not go for as long as it has existed. Once, someone tried to quote a grammar book on how there should not be apostrophes, so I decided to look, at that time, for how many in the US said one and how many said the other. I went to a nearby writing center, went through the pile, and found that it was about 8:2 "yes." The point is that I feel like people should allow either, exactly as the author prefers, because neither is wrong. Geogre (talk) 02:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and the companion apostrophe rule that gets dropped by some and enforced by others, is apostrophe marking the plural of acronyms. Some of my examples, above, are of that. The point involved in all of these, together, is the apostrophe being used as a demarcation from the ordinal or acronym and the plural. Again, some "All the time!", some "Never!", and most "optional." I always feel that we should be as free to our authors as possible: fewer mistakes happen that way. Geogre (talk) 12:36, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

The whole apostrophe business always bugs me. As you know, a Registered Nurse is abbreviated RN. Many people show the plural of RN as "RN's". While reading articles I often see RN's and I go looking for what the RN possesses in the sentence. While most spellcheckers do not like "RNs", I tend to use that when referring to mutiple registered nurses. I'll only use "RN's" when referring to a single registered nurse who possesses something. I mean, if you're not using the acronym, you would not say "There continues to be a shortage of the number of registered nurse's in the United States." I guess I follow the rule that you use an acronym the same way you would use the words it is replacing. However, that doesn't seem to follow when I use "an RN" instead of "a RN". I guess I'm just a study in contridictions. Tex (talk) 16:00, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I had hoped we wouldn't get into this, but one of the "answers" is to use the apostrophe when it's an acronym, but to regard some common acronyms as so common that they have become regular nouns. Scuba, laser, so why not MD and RN? Well, I prefer to use the apostrophe with even the "common" acronyms, because I never want to be telling people that an acronym is so common that it doesn't actually stand for any words anymore. To the biochemists, SoS was a really common compound, so they thought it was obvious, just like prothrobin.

As for the "an," you're using it properly, believe it or not. Because it's an acronym, it is said "ar en," so the sound is a vowel, and the real rule of an/a is vowel sound. I shouldn't say "an history," but I do that just to be fussy and absolutist (h is not a consonant; qv hour, herb). Geogre (talk) 18:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Hollywood Undead

Hi, you commented on Deletion Review on this article at Misplaced Pages:Deletion review/Log/2008 August 4#Hollywood Undead and requested a userspace version of the article. I have created one and linked it from the Deletion Review and would appreciate if you could have another look and comment again now based on that version. Thanks. Davewild (talk) 07:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course. Thank you for the notice. Geogre (talk) 11:28, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

"Longtime contributor"

Just to be sure... You realize, I'm assuming, that Chillum is Until(1==2) renamed? His first edits were in June 2007, I think, not 2008 (which is what I think you believed, based on your comments). Avruch 21:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think everyone knows exactly who he is. George even said so in this diff. He's been stirring the pot for years. Tex (talk) 01:48, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Geogre didn't say it straight out, and his edits questioning Chillum's background (implying he has been editing for 2 months) seem to indicate he wasn't aware. If he was, I apologize for unnecessarily intruding on his talkpage ;-) Avruch 01:51, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

My point was neither to stir the pot nor to feign ignorance, but it was to point out the somewhat odd way that someone changes account name twice and retains the bit in both instances, and the fact that everyone is supposed to already know who the person is, and yet a newcomer could have no way of doing so. Imagine a newcomer enduring tutelage, undesired, and then going to find out who the heck this person is. Good luck to that one on finding the RFA, finding the history, or understanding that his points of view might represent a faction. I do not like the "everyone knows" way that people go about things, relying upon IRC and other off-wiki media to build a portfolio. We used to have policies about account changes. I simply wanted someone, somewhere, to have to spell it out and not act like Misplaced Pages is an insider's game. Geogre (talk) 12:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Skaga stave church

Hi Geogre! I saw that you were concerned about whether there were still pagans in 18th century Sweden. In this case it was the church that simply considered certain practices to be "pagan" and that was a very wide category in the eyes of the church of Sweden in those days. The people who conducted the sacrifices probably thought of themselves as Christians and nothing else, but practices may be pagan in origin, such as the celebration of Christmas/Yule, Midsummer eve, etc.--Berig (talk) 17:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

That satisfies me entirely. user:Bishonen also tells me that the area was a bit of a scary wilderness at the time, so that satisfies the other criterion for the usual circumstances of lingering folk practice. Additionally, we never know when "Satanists" are Satanists (per the hysteria in the court of Louis XIV or the myriad "Satanists" supposedly on the rampage in the US in the 1970's), so we never know when "pagans" are pagans, and when they're just locals with a beef against the city folk. After all, it's still a "given" that the US south is riven with Voodoo and Santaria, except that no one seems to be able to find any. Geogre (talk) 21:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes Bishonen is right. The forest was notorious and people avoided going through it, not only because of the rugged terrain but also because of wolves and hiding outlaws. I grew up near it and I can tell you that there is an incredible amount of folklore and legends surrounding it. There's also a great deal of literature on it and I have often considered making it the subject of a GA or an FA, but unfortunately, virtually all the literature is in Swedish so the interesting stuff will look spurious to those who cannot read Swedish and verify for themselves.--Berig (talk) 21:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, no! Don't do that! Have you seen Bishonen's S. A. Andree balloon expedition? It's a neat article, and she had no choice but to rely upon Swedish sources and even Polish sources (which she had to hammer at a bit to get, even though she has many languages). I think that sort of material is exactly what we need. If you've got a legendary bandit who may or may not be real, some kind of Rob Roy or worse, then it would be a nice read and an important expansion in Anglophone knowledge. Geogre (talk) 12:06, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Grandison

Please see this. The formatting that I propose is this:

Sir Walter Scott, in his "Prefatory Memoir to Richardson" in ''The Novels of Samuel Richardson'' (1824) wrote: <blockquote>In his two first novels, also, he shewed much attention to the plot; and though diffuse and prolix in narration, can never be said to be rambling or desultory. No characters are introduced, but for the purpose of advancing the plot; and there are but few of those digressive dialogues and dissertations with which Sir Charles Grandison abounds. The story keeps the direct road, though it moves slowly. But in his last work, the author is much more excursive. There is indeed little in the plot to require attention; the various events, which are successively narrated, being no otherwise connected together, than as they place the character of the hero in some new and peculiar point of view. The same may be said of the numerous and long conversations upon religious and moral topics, which compose so great a part of the work, that a venerable old lady, whom we well knew, when in advanced age, she became subject to drowsy fits, chose to hear Sir Charles Grandison read to her as she sat in her elbow-chair, in preference to any other work, 'because,' said she, 'should I drop asleep in course of the reading, I am sure, when I awake, I shall have lost none of the story, but shall find the party, where I left them, conversing in the cedar-parlour.' - It is probable, after all, that the prolixity of Richardson, which, to our giddy-paced times, is the greatest fault of his writing, was not such an objective to his contemporaries.<ref>Scott 1824 pp. xlv-xlvi</ref></blockquote>

With an addition to the reference section: * Scott, Walter. "Prefatory Memoir to Richardson" in ''The Novels of Samuel Richardson'' Vol 1, London: Hurst, Robinson and Co., 1824.

With appropriate corrections to additions if necessary. I hope this is satisfactory, as it addresses my concern about the Flynn quotation by removing it completely. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

It satisfies my concern, because it shows pretty plainly that Scott is taking a swipe at Sir Charles Grandison. Scott did immense amounts of literary criticism after he became famous, but he remained antithetical to Richardson. The quote as it initially stood suggested that somehow Scott thought Sir Charles Grandison a great thing. This fuller quote makes it clear that he thinks Richardson's plot all but non-existent. Given Scott's own plotting, we can fill in the gaps ourselves. Geogre (talk) 21:05, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

In fact, the tone is much better, and my concerns are addressed in other ways, too. We all make mistakes, and I sometimes leave some on purpose (just clunker sentences) for other people to try their hands at (bad segue in James Ralph, and I can't get the flow to smooth out). It's nice to relax a bit about such things, distinguish substantive and accidental changes, and just drift on down the river. Geogre (talk) 12:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Samuel Johnson

At the risk of sparking world war 3, can you review the above before it is taken to its second PR. Not wanting to sound like Nevil Chamberland, but Ottava is looking for insight. ( Ceoil 20:16, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, can you look for important events that may be missing, or certain times that may have been given too much discourse. Also, I use Bate heavily, but I have five other biographies, so if you see any sections that are too heavy on Bate, please point them out and I will swap him out. Thanks. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I will look, but I have avoided Johnsonia because my training, a long time ago, was by two different Johnsonians who came from the opposing camps. (If you don't know about the camps, yet, it's an important paradigm in US Johnson studies, but at this point it seems to have petered out at long last. Suffice to say that there is a "Johnson is always serious, truthful, and wise" group of scholars, and there is a "Johnson is lively, wrong, and a working author, and Boswell is a groupie with talent who tells lies" group. These groups trained Ph.D.'s, and we can see the war of the "Boswell lies" and the "Johnson is pure" scholars for three generations of scholars.) Bate and Wain are both limited, with Bate, at the time, seeming to sweep the field. However, we went into it in a study of biography, and he relies on some of the tricks, the "must have felt" and "must have seemed" and other tell tale signs of the biographer who is trying to reconstruct the mind of the subject. Anyone who does that is operating under his own contemporary theory of the mind, and Bate's was psychoanalytic.

Since then, major studies have chipped away at the portrait, and so we find refutations and corrections in a dozen articles. Few go out to be unBate, but they make their own point and, embedded in them, there will be "Bate would have us see" and then an article demonstrating that we should see something else.

Johnson studies moves fast, for things in the 18th c., and only Pope has more attention on a regular basis. Although articles of the past five years or so are not very interested in major authors (why do that, when you can write about Stephen Duck?), new studies of Johnson are still regular. Keeping up is too much for me.

I will, however, look for obvious jars and rough spots. The classic fault in Johnson chronology, taken from Boswell, is corrected by Hester Thrale and by Falkener (and Johnson believed Percy was going to try to do a biography, too). I see that Thrale is online. I'm no fan of online sources, but if you can't get your hands on Thraliana (and I always found it hard to get), glance at this. Geogre (talk) 12:31, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I assume that Brady, Damrosch, Dowling, Greene, Lustig, Osgood, Stevenson, and Ward would sound familiar to you, then :). And I have both volumes of the Thraliana (essential for understanding Christopher Smart's "madness"), both volumes of the JM, and a copy of Hawkins Life (the only parts of Fawkner I have are from the JM). I included Boswell as "image quotes" on the side because many people were expecting to see "more Boswell" and it was an easy way to satisfy this. I perform most of my research at the LoC so I have some nice connections for finding books. :) If you need any passages, I can find them (its just the matter of deciding who, what, where and when). Also, you might find this interesting: a few of the modern biographies have been focusing on his Medical condition, which I think is based on post-Foucault theory (thankfully we got beyond Freud for the most part). Ottava Rima (talk) 13:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, what you might not know, then.... Donald Greene is more sui generis than the others, but he's also highly trained, pugilistic, and right most of the time. He is one of the big names in the "Boswell lies" crew. Look at Vance, Johnson and History -- it's ancient now, but it's good for the "Boswell lies" view, a collaborator of Greene's. Dowling.... I don't mean to be mean, as I mean him no harm, but I didn't find any use to his work at all. He was trying to employ deconstruction. While that's... interesting... it's also decidedly counter-scholarly, and so, while there are critical insights there, I felt like his work was a bit of a flicker. Leo Damrosch.... I used his Pope book recently, and he had good readings of things, but his thesis was nebulous, and he ended up wandering around the subject most of the time. I had to wring the book to get the information away from the speculation. He is a very decent critic, and he started as a Johnson-is-grand scholar, but he doesn't occupy so much a position on the map. One of the well known boo-boos of Bate was that he relied on Boswell too much for chronology, and that's why I recommend Thraliana or Hawkins for getting the bare facts of life. An anecdotes history is going to be a whole lot better than Boswell's biography for relying upon, because Boswell brought with him his age's understanding of biography (e.g. the child is like the grown up in miniature, so young Sam is on a haystack discoursing).

An antidote to Bate per se is in the two books by James L. Clifford, Young Sam Johnson and Dictionary Johnson. They're from the opposite camp (Columbia) and help anyone with Bate in hand. Geogre (talk) 13:50, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

"but he's also highly trained, pugilistic, and right most of the time." :) There was originally an opening section to the page in which I discussed the biographies and gave Donald Greene a few lines to point out some of the major problems. However, it was a little out of place and I'm going to find some way to move it. "I used his Pope book recently," which one? Although my focus is on poetry, it was either religious/Anglican or post-Wesley religious poetry (especially how it is transformed after the beginning of the Romantic period). So, yeah, my background on Pope needs expansion and its hard to find someone who focuses on Pope enough to have read anything post 1960. "he relied on Boswell too much for chronology," yes. I tended to check his sources and opted for Lane, Wain, et al, when there seemed to be too much Boswell. I'll have to find the Clifford works. Recently I've been hunting down post 1980 works for an understanding of the Tourette Syndrome diagnosis and how it impacts the biographers (two recent biographies, Demaria and Wiltshire, take it up). Ottava Rima (talk) 14:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Tourette's? Oof! This sounds like the "body" stuff that's coming back after a detour through psychoanalysis and ecrit feminin. There is something really reductive about using a person's complaints as a prism. They can be interesting, no doubt, but Pope himself is an illustration of how hard and how far wrong people can get that way. For a century, people have been wanting Pope's tubercular spine to explain him, but the guy simply refuses to speak of it. Then, "He must have died a virgin, poor guy, and so his view of woman has to be entirely about his height," and, well, that's a bizarre assumption (had they no houses of prostitution? had he not a stalker? didn't Cibber get in trouble by talking about Mr. Pope in a whorehouse?) and another chance of using our frame of reference on a dead man. We think our diseases are extremely important, but Johnson hated have anyone even notice, although, of course, they did, and he talked about it. I'll buy the enlightening observations gathered that way, but only if the authors are very modest and do not claim to have explained the guy. (Biography is doomed to failure by its form. The biographer's job is to explain how a baby like every other becomes a person unlike any other, and to do so in a way that satisfies readers who want to know 1) how they can be great 2) why they aren't great 3) what it would be like to be around such a great person. Well, it's that "why" that gets everyone into trouble, IMO.)

Hmmm, Alexander Pope: a Study of his Poetry, I believe. It was one of those books that come from spending too long at the process. I have a friend who has been working on Fable of the Bees for 30 years. I got to look at it, and it had everything in it, from tennis balls to space shuttles, and so it ended up losing its thesis. Damrosch suffered from that, I thought. Better in its index than its reading. Geogre (talk) 15:01, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll have to look into that work and others. Pope will have to come after I get to Byron to help Nandesuka with some of the "relationship" problems that are starting to develop. :) The Tourette syndrome studies on Johnson seemed to have been started in response to Lord Brain and his psychoanalytical diagnosis of many 18th century figures. A lot of the information comes from the Thrales et al who wrote about his jerks and ticks. I don't believe they explain Johnson, but might explain some of the people's initial reaction to him. And yeah, Pope is always Pope, and the only thing that makes him that way is what was unique to him. The sad commentary about Pope and sexuality seemed to also spill over to Swift and sexuality (and Smart too, who some try to blame his "madness" on syphilis). Personally, I tend to focus on close reading with perspective (i.e. what the hell did the author know and what context did his knowledge come to him in). Ottava Rima (talk) 15:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Quick note here - I think the Dictionary of National Biography was dropped from the page in one of the edit. Do you have the info to fix this? If not, I can add it in a reference section. Also, I think a title page image for Shakespeare Restored or for a printing of Double Falshood would be nice. Can you get a copy? He is too far out of my subject area so I don't have any copies of his work. Otherwise, I would be happy to upload one to the internet. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 21:55, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, for goodness sake! I'll get the vol., au., and pg. This is one more reason why the "footnote" mania bothers me. If a whole reference can disappear, imagine how easily /notes can go away, get screwed by an edit, etc. Worst system of all, and it doesn't even insure "reliability" the way people want it to. Lord knows people fab and screw up notes.

Anyway, on Double Falsehood, it may be possible. I doubt Shakespear Restored will be available. I will look. The Early Text service subscription I used to have access to (facsimiles) is in the past, but Theobald really isn't so important in himself. His book is important and his role as Dunce is important, but the man really has one book to contribute, and that only one that Shakespeareans deal with. I realize that Double Falsehood is probably a lost Shakespeare, but since he buried the original to spite the world and promote his own fame, he doesn't deserve plaudits. Geogre (talk) 12:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Any famous images of Dulness that could be used? Awadewit also has access to an online service. Unfortunately, I don't. I can only get hard copies (but I can check the LoC if needed). Ottava Rima (talk) 13:20, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

In the Johnsonian Miscellanies, Arthur Murphy's Essay on Johnson's Life and Genius says: "Every thing that fell from him has been caught with eagerness by his admirers, who, as he says in one of his letters, have acted with diligence of spies upon his conduct. To some of them, the following lines, in Mallet's Poem on Verbal Criticism, are not inapplicable:

Such that grave bird in Northern seas is found,

Whose name a Dutchman only knows to sound,

Where-e'er the king of fish moves on before,

This humble friend attens from shore to shorel

With eye still earnest, and with bill inclin'd ,

He picks up what his patron drops behind,

With those choice cates his palate to regale,

And is the careful TIBBALD of A WHALE"

This is followed by footnote four which says: "Poems on Several Occasions, by David Mallet. London, 1743, p. 184. Lewis Theobald, or Tibbald as his name was pronounced, was the ingenious editor of Shakespeare, most unjustly libelled by a far inferior editor Pope"

I state this only because it is another use of Tibbald (which could be mentioned on the page), and Hill seems to defend (or mock, depending on the way you read it) Tibbald. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:08, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I just found it interesting that Murphy would quote the poem, that there would be a poem, and that Hill would respond in the way he did. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 03:24, 14 August 2008 (UTC) Also, have you happened to have read Murphy's work in the Johnsonian Miscellanies? It has a large section devoted to defenses of various works by Johnson, including Johnson's take in the Lives (a few pages defending Johnson's view of Milton, for example). I think it would interest you. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Pray tell

Heimlich maneuver on rodents! Look at the startled expression. "I was eating, and then this gigantic rubbery pipe slapped me up side the head. I nearly dropped my peanut!" Geogre (talk) 12:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I know, look how happy it is to have ear folded! El_C 12:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

By the way, have I told you about Teenage Squirrel? Teenage Squirrel is sorta the best as he has yet to be corrupted by cynicism as adult squirrels have, and as soon as he sees me he immediately jumps on my lap for a peanut (which gives him an edge over voer the rest of the squirrels, who, unlike the chippies, are rather afraidy and rarely come closer than a few meters, and even then, crawling so low so as to become one with the earth, with tail springy-y, and so on). I love you, Teenage Squirrel! El_C 12:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Finally, a teenager of some species finds love and appreciation. Mirabilis dictu! Most teenagers only get self image problems and acne from being the first at the table. Oh, to be a teenage squirrel? Geogre (talk) 12:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, to be a teenager again, and also a squirrel... El_C 13:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Here, for your consideration: Censored, Uncensored, and Wanting. El_C 12:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, the "Austen Powers" (or Warner Brothers censor's "Eyes Wide Shut") version, the "Feel Good about yr ManHood 4gain" version, and "Gloat of the toady/chippy." Squirrels is mean, man. That's why you got to boil 'em in a stew. Geogre (talk) 12:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

That sorta went over my head; perhaps I could better grasp it in the from a lyrical ballad. El_C 13:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Ooooooh, let me!

"A squirrel perched on its hinder legs,

No shame he feels, nor lust he knows,

And man, who blushes hot, reminded of sins,

Desires, and pornographic shows,

A screen puts up to hide the parts

That only man obscures from all.

And thus the squirrel's naughty bit

Is veiled, for shame, but by a ball.

While scammers fill the inbox full

With intimations of a manhood's loss,

How Nature's pantomime displays

We long to show, but hide. And thus our cost.

The monkey of the wood chip hoards,

His plenty 'round him rang'd in herds

Of dromedary nuts and husks,

But feels less rich than gazing birds.

They fly and nothing possessing scan,

While he with fear stockade must man.

The loss of one, a single shell,

Is worse to him than hunger felled. Utgard Loki (talk) 16:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

As a fan of WikiPoetry, my only response is - :) Ottava Rima (talk) 18:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

You're all lovely - I think you've been on the funny bread - but you're lovely. --Joopercoopers (talk) 20:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The ballad form is clearly mid- to late Romantics. I can't see Wordsworth mixing the 5'/4' with a 4'/5' line, but it's just the sort of thing that smarty pants Shelley would do. As for the rhymes...well, they rhyme, but they fit as smoothly into the line as a watermelon in a button hole. No doubt the hammer has fallen a few times, though whether on the poet's head or the poet's verse, we must not speculate. (Whatever happened to the bad review? They used to be much better than just insulting people.) The contrast of Nature's lack of shame with man's hiding seems somehow too moralistic for the form's demands. ("I put my hat upon my head/ And went into the strand/ And there I met another man/ Whose hat was in his hand" as one wag put it.) However, the poet clearly put in a great deal of effort. In fact, I can practically hear the wheezing from here. I recommend albuterol and a cold compress to the head. Perhaps the fever will break. Geogre (talk) 12:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The poison penis mightier than the sword. The model was Keats, from his before-great-with-disease period. Utgard Loki (talk) 16:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

El C, if you don't mind, where are you from? All the squirrels in my neighborhood are too scared of my doggie to stick around much, but they seem to be much smaller than yours. Donde esta? Tex (talk) 02:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Never mind. I didn't notice your finger in the pics above, those squirrels are about the same size as they are in West Texas. I guess they're pretty much the same size all over the world! Tex (talk) 02:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey now! They'll kick you out, if they see you say that. Everything's bigger in Texas! I had a friend who even taught me that a 270 degree left turn on the highway is just a "Texas turn." Geogre (talk) 12:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Texas just has to suffice with being the Yorkshire of the Americas. --Joopercoopers (talk) 12:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Those squirrels do look like they're not gray squirrels, but I don't think chipmunks are any place really hot, and certainly not in such profusion. It's the coloration of the squirrel that looks a little different from the things decorating highway medians. Utgard Loki (talk) 16:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Eastern Gray Squirrel would be introduced in Jutenheim. Western Gray Squirrel looks more like the guy above. Tex, though, should file a complaint with the namers, because West Texas is obviously the west, and yet the Western Squirrel waits for California to show up. They should call it the "Left Margin Squirrel (provided your map is rightside up)." Geogre (talk) 12:08, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

At Swim-Two-Birds

Hi - you disapproved very strongly of what you seemed to think I was going to do the article on At Swim-Two-Birds, but since you created the page in the first place, I would be very interested to know whether or not you think I have managed to improve it. (I have great admiration for your article on A Tale of a Tub, btw, a book I wouldn't dare write anything about.) Cheers. Lexo (talk) 23:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Replied on your talk. Thanks for the compliment. Geogre (talk) 12:36, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks for a most gracious apology, which I accept with pleasure. I have to admit that I was having a fit of anti-unsourced-remark intolerance when I made my original comment, and the result is that the article is now somewhat bespattered with an excess of footnotes; also, my dogged insistence on saying nothing that couldn't be sourced has not been good for the style. (A case of "I didn't look up all these damn references so as not to mention them!") Right now the article needs more work than I can give it. I've used up most of my sources, and I have little else to say about a book I don't even like all that much; not only is it not my favourite novel, it's not even my favourite Flann O'Brien novel. In any case, would love to know what you think of it. Lexo (talk) 14:06, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

kosebamse link has changed

User talk:Kosebamse#Current affairs has been moved to User:Kosebamse/IRC —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.150.255.75 (talk) 16:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Johnson image

Hi Geogre, do you happen to recall from what book/website/etc. you obtained Image:Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds 2.png? ЭLСОВВОLД _talk 01:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Oof. That was ages ago. I think I scanned it from the Pat Rogers Illustrated Guide to English Literature (OUP, I think, or CUP). The same image is at the National Portrait Gallery, and I wouldn't be surprised if Jack Lynch's bibliography of 18th century literature on the web doesn't have it. It's one of the most commonly available "squinting Johnson" portraits by Reynolds. SJ himself hated it. Geogre (talk) 01:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Pat Rogers: Amazon link

Jack Lynch here. Geogre (talk) 01:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! Google Books even has it - page 241. Thanks for your help. ЭLСОВВОLД _talk 02:05, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

A revival for Deor

Would you be interested in working on this article with me? I noticed your comment on it at Risker's talk, and it piqued my curiosity. I've spent a good portion of the day researching a bit about the poem. It's a fascinating piece, and worthy of a far better article. However, my expertise on this time period of literature is extremely limited. I am, however, a bit facile with language, and would love to assist you in working the article up to a far more acceptable standard. Do you have the time and the inclination for such a project? _D.D.J.Jameson 04:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I would enjoy it, but I haven't done any research on the poem in particular. What I think would help a great deal is for us to explain to readers just how Germanic the legends are and how this, as well as the cultural factors, such as "scop" and the like, point to a poem that had to come to England from mainland Europe, and therefore it could date back to 400 - 200 AD. In particular, "Deor" is our only testimony to some forms of some of the legends.

The Anglo-Saxon... It needs better than me. I translated the poem in a class in Old English (the class did), and I barely remember how utterly dense the literary features are. It's a whale of a poem, and I'd be happy to help. (In truth, the article improved, thanks to our Old Norse editors, since I had seen it last, and so my insult to the article didn't quite apply anymore. It still needs more and better, though.) Geogre (talk) 10:34, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Truthfully, on this type of article I'm rather useless, save as a copyeditor and/or prose stylist. My area of fondness in literature is modern American classics, and I dabble a bit in some of the higher-profile Russians like Tolstoy, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. Your post to Risker yesterday simply opened my eyes to this particular poem. If you know of anyone who specializes in this type of work, though, I'd love to assist on it. _D.D.J.Jameson 11:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

user:Haeleth worked with me on Ormulum, and user:Hauker is one of the group to do the Old Norse stuff. Deor's Anglo-Saxon sets it apart from other OE poems. With the exception of Caedmon's Hymn or Dream of the Rood, there are few that use such heavily inflected, compressed, nearly gnomic structure. It points us to a type of poetry that we won't see elsewhere until Snorri Sturlusson tries to explain the eddas. This is one of the coolest bits of the poem: it gives us a (representative?) picture of what the real Anglo-Saxon poetry was like before their invasion of England.

Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to start digging. I've got a day or two before I have to report to spring training, so I'll hit my library sources hard. The best stuff will probably lie in Speculum from the 1950's and before. It's a groovy poem that deserves a groovier article. Geogre (talk) 11:46, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I certainly agree. As my teaching schedule starts full force on Monday (the pre-term meetings start in 40 minutes or so), I will be spotty on helping with research, but I can certainly copyedit a bit as you (and perhaps your willing friends) work out the main details, and craft a wikimasterpiece for this deserving poem. It's definitely on my watchlist! Regards, _D.D.J.Jameson 12:24, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

So, who wants Gwang-Yoon, Goh. "Genitive in Deor: morphosyntax and beyond." Reivew of English Studies 52:208, 2001. 485-99? Utgard Loki (talk) 17:15, 21 August 2008 (UTC) (Oh, sure, it's always someone's, isn't it?)

Hush, you. I got a really good 1977 Studies in Philology that has me convinced I understand what "mæð hild" means. I'm happy. I don't want to get confused again. I also found an old Explicator that had me hooting and wanting to phone the author in Kobe, Japan, to shout, a la Nelson Muntz, "Ha-ha!" Geogre (talk) 19:27, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Geogre-William M. Connolley

This arbitration case has closed and the full decision can be viewed by clicking the above link. Both William M. Connolley (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) & yourself are indefinitely prohibited from taking any administrative action with respect to Giano II (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), or edit wars in which Giano II is an involved party.

Furthermore, please note that the temporary injunction in the case now ceases to be in effect.

Regards, Daniel (talk) 03:50, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Poorly worded, unconsidered, and without standing in policy: sounds like this ArbCom. A person is an administrator or not. I hope that William feels as free to pay no attention to this as I do, even though, unlike him, I actually had no "involvement" in the case. Geogre (talk) 10:31, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Agenda accounts

Per User talk:Raul654/Civil POV pushing, I have started Misplaced Pages:Agenda account. Guy (Help!) 08:13, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

And on a related note: I know your views on civility blocks; Calton has been blocked for two weeks per this discussion here: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#So, did we figure out what to do about Calton?. Guy (Help!) 21:20, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

On the recondite nature of "highway"

Hello Geogre, with reference to this thread, perhaps you could provide some input. It is my contention that the "King's highway" denoted a route for travel through England which was elevated to the extent that water would drain from it (i.e. carriages would not get stuck in the mud) and the land was cleared of trees and other hiding places for one bowshot on either side. Thus, the nobility could travel along a "highway" safely, without fear of ambush. My understanding of this term is based on various (and long-past) reading and at this time is reference-free.

As I understand, you are a denizen of the sceptr'd isle - can you shed some light on the derivation of "highway"? Note that the response "Franamax is full of crap" is perfectly valid! Thanks for your help. Franamax (talk) 05:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I assume people have gone to the usual OED? "Highway" is a curious thing indeed. I have to admit that the phrase seems, oddly, to be later than my usual period, even though it sounds as if it should be earlier. However, I can hit the usual references (Brewer's Phrase & Fable springs to mind), but it's a curious thing indeed. Into the 18th c., roads were horrible. As the industrial revolution was underway, the English developed their canal system partially to avoid the problems with roads. However, in the marches and the border area, that is where there seems to be a high way. ("You take the high road, and I'll take the low road" is a reference to the uprising of 1715 and a widow going back to Scotland and waiting for the corpse of her lover.) My hypothesis is going to be that this is a military/political term.

I am not, I confess, a subject of the crown (not even Royal Crown), but I spend my days living in its literature and history. Geogre (talk) 10:52, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmmf. You're supposed to have the answer right off the top of your head. I traced "King's Highway" back to 1130 AD or so, and then I found something about Moses and a Hebrew word for highway, so I scampered off. Thanks anyway :) Franamax (talk) 22:25, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

There are various things on the top of my head, but the answer to that question wasn't there. I still suspect that there is a pretty interesting legal distinction going on in there somewhere. Geogre (talk) 10:12, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Augustan literature

I'd like to have a discussion about the fact that this article has {{nofootnotes}}. I tagged some other articles as well, in what I consider to be an appropriate application of the tag. I do want to talk about this, and I noticed you rolled back a post of mine from the article's talk page. Can we discuss? Cirt (talk) 02:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The tag is inappropriate in all cases. It goes across the top of an article, and it says that an article lacks an optional element. You also attempted to put it across Ormulum. Both Ormulum and every other article that I have done, as well as every other article I will ever do, will lack footnotes and yet have thorough citations. Citations are a requirement for statements that are likely to be challenged, which means not common knowledge, and citations by no means need to be footnotes. I regard footnotes as far less "reliable" than parenthetical citation, and so does the Modern Language Association, as well as the society for biological sciences, as well as the professional bodies for psychology and chemistry. Therefore, you were placing a big banner announcing that the Venus de Milo didn't have wings on her. That amounts to vandalism -- plastering paint on an article for no actual purpose. That's what rollback is for.

While we're at it, even "noreferences" is not a universally proper tag. There are any number of our articles that cover common knowledge (any information that can be found in three or more general reference works) and therefore do not need citation on an academic basis, and there are many more that contain information that is entirely non-controversial, and no one will challenge its facts. Neither of those requires citations. Both might benefit from a "references" section that will show people some good sources that concur with our article, but it is extremely unlikely that someone is making up the biography of Anthony Tuckney, for example.

I know that you feel that an end note is confusing, but it is used exactly as a footnote is. Footnotes require a reader to stop reading the sentence, go to a foreign section, get the information, and then come back. 99% of readers don't check the footnotes, because they're reading the article. A parenthetical citation indicates, at the end of the line, during the reading, the source, and readers who have had their eyebrows raised by the sentence know immediately (without making a note of it and going to check later) the attribution. Additionally, "notes" formats are easily broken. It takes one vandal less than a minute to make all the notes disappear. It takes, more importantly, an inexpert editor a single mistake to make all the notes disappear. I have seen this happen more than once. A parenthetical citation isn't going to go away in an "oops" moment. Therefore, parenthetical citations are more reliable because they invite instant checking. They are more reliable because the citations won't disappear.

This is why I loathe the notes system, will not use it, and will leave Misplaced Pages before I see it become required. Until it is required, slapping paint across a well cited article is very destructive. Geogre (talk) 10:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Geogre, I pointed to the reasoned reply which you wrote at Talk:Augustan literature (and above) in a similar conversation of my own (here). I think that this text ought to be embossed as a standard-bearer for the counter-meme that we desperately need. The whole text should naturally be dumped into a template; the alternatives are human-speed, case-specific dialogs which just don't "scale". I'm not sure what ever happened to the premise that Misplaced Pages articles can all be improved—now, the common editor seems compelled to add boilerplate about how articles could be improved, instead of improving them. For every object, there are an infinity of attributes that it does not possess. This obvious point seems to have escaped those who template articles with dire warnings that something is missing. The reductio ad absurdum of this and the referencing trends is not so much an encyclopedia with prose entries as a clearing-house of paraphrased facts, each of which is wrapped in computer markup to establish its "authenticity" as a "fact". I have never understood why such a preponderance of Misplaced Pages editors display an epistemology in which a global understanding of a subject cannot exist except as a simple summation of paraphrased factoids. Certainly, it utterly fails to recognize how readers read. Whiskeydog (talk) 02:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

George or Geogre?

Dare I suggest that this guy in the lead sounds a bit like you? 86.44.29.244 (talk) 02:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, yes. I can really feel for him: "the correcters are unlearned." I keep getting "corrections" that might not spell out a-r-s-e but which, nevertheless, show a great arse altogether. More -bots than humans seem to be interested in articles these days, and, if they have alimentary systems or instead are alimentary systems is an even bet. Geogre (talk) 21:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Cool article, by the way. I also feel for the Star Chamber, there. Too much sloppy, too much intention. One supposes a compositor boy doing the equivalent of "Shes so hot" vandalism and getting even with his master, who probably clouted him once too often. It's on the verge of the "bugger all this for a lark," but in typeset. Geogre (talk) 21:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's easy to imagine a puerile sort of class war sabotage at work there. And I'm glad you enjoy the parallels, though I notice you're overly scrupulous in avoiding any between your good self and the "good compositors", not to mention "faire every way of the beste". But not mentioning any ownership of a "great arse" is surely when modesty is proved false beyond doubt! 86.44.16.146 (talk) 04:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Recognise this sculpture

Dear Sir or Madam, Do you recognise this sculpture from Gulbenkian? Neither Wetman nor Antandrus recognised who made it or whom it depicts...and I didn't see it in an old 1982 arts catalogue from the museum. (But the catalogue didn't have another image of a bust of Victor Hugo either) Antandrus suggested that you might know something here: If you don't know who it is, please feel free to say so. Would be a great addition to Commons...if only one knew what it was. Thank You, --Leoboudv (talk) 18:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeesh. I don't know it, but I know when it has to be. It is post-Rodin, definitely. The execution of the face and the overly dramatic bursting forth is very Romantic, but then the narrowness of the pediment/neck says that it's later. The fact that it captures a strum und drang for the subject again shouts "Romantic," but the fact that it is such a drastic offset between bust and neck says "later." Got me, though. Geogre (talk) 21:46, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Thank you for your reply. I'll drop the issue then and forget about placing this final 'free' image on Commons. I had asked Wetman and Antandrus here (you might like to read my edit to him here) on this and another image--which was later identified as that of V. Hugo--and told him you were my last contact on the matter. I'm sorry it didn't turn out right but at least you tried to help. Regards, from Canada --Leoboudv (talk) 23:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
  • There's writing on the rhs of the plinth, if you choose 'all sizes' and then 'original' - someone with a better command of languages might be able to read it - it's dated 18xx. --Joopercoopers (talk) 09:32, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
    • Definitely Roman script, and I was thinking French (for multiple reasons), but I didn't do the download. You're right, though, JC: an identification is on the side in etching. The face is ... I feel like I've seen him before, but he looks a bit like an English actor, so I may be imagining things. The sculptor's pose -- looking down, serious look -- really suggests that era after Rodin, so "18xx" is probably more like > 1870. (I am terrible about faces, though. No kidding. I could see a portrait of Swift or Pope that's new to me, and I doubt I'd identify the sitter.) Geogre (talk) 10:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Enlarging the image, I feel that I'm reading "Carpeaux" above the 18-- date. But googling brings up nothing, save that Carpeaux is represented in the Museu Gulbenkian. --Wetman (talk) 12:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Surely the sculptor is Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux? I'm looking for images of his sculptures trying to find this one. KillerChihuahua 13:59, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• I looked at this and was instantly certain it was Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 - 1921) complete with mole, all though he is having a bad hair day, now I'm not so sure, but I do know who it is, I just can't quite remember, it will come to me.Giano (talk) 12:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't suppose that anyone has thought of emailing Shadowgate? S/he might recall. Failing that, email the museum. KillerChihuahua 13:56, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• I believe I may have found it - Bruno CHERIER. Yes? KillerChihuahua 14:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Well done, although the capture in flicker photograph is far more attractive. Ceoil 14:15, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It appears plaster casts have been made of the original sculpture, see here - you have to scroll, scroll, scroll - darnit, past Ugolino and His Sons which is captivating, and the Captive Negress which is hard to get by also - anyway, you'll see a cast which is in Princeton. The image I linked to above is in Notre-Dame, yes? So at least 2. Unless my quick scan mis-read, which is entirely possible, I was focusing on the images. KillerChihuahua 14:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Damn - I was almost certain it was Donald Sutherland in Kelly's Heroes. --Joopercoopers (talk) 14:56, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

"Its a beautiful bridge, and its gonna be there!" Good movie. Eyes on sculpture aren't sleepy enough though. KillerChihuahua 15:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Complete rubbish! This is what happens when Chihuahuas and other such nasty yappy creatures are permitted a voice. Mind you, it does not surprise me that JC person was wrong - all that preoccupation with the Taj - the times my husbands have offered to build a tomb for me, but I've declined, I hate ostentation, what on earth would the world look like if every man were to build such a thing every time his wife died? - every cemetery would look like an Indian restaurant. One must look at the bigger picture - I'm digressing, the bust in question is quite clearly, and without shadow of doubt, the husband of my second cousin The Hon. Petronella Bonkbuster, none other than Morbus Gallicus, 7th Margrave of Heineken Pilsener. It does not surprise me, in the least, that most of the assembled company here don't know their Libro d'Oro from their Almanach de Gotha, but I would have thought that nice Mr. Wetman would have recognised such an illustrious personae - obviously a gap in in his education, that I will be happy to cross the pond to fill, are you spoken for Mr Wetman? Catherine de Burgh (Lady) (talk) 19:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Such hubris. Madam, know that your are but new money and known to correct people only in the context of the new world. And, oh dear; I notice connected to the French-Gauls-as I remember them. When my family ruled Gaul we had little interest in the long haired furtive creatures that lived within; and although they did well in England for a while (long, long ago), it does not do to eat from the meat of frogs. I'm sure you admit that is a most unplesant way to pass one's day. You have a certain standing and some worth in our heirarchy, but don't overestimate it. You may, if I wish, kiss my sacred beads, but you'll never embrase them. Ceoil 19:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Eating frogs? Ah Ceoil dear, what am amusing name, sounds like some obscure cajun dessert. The last time I was at the White House they served some revolting ice cream flavoured with chili - Creme de Ceoil a la Tex (or something similar - I do wish the Americans would not attempt French), quite disgusting, let's hope that all changes soon - when, no doubt we shall all be treated to freshly shot moose with blueberries and Big Macs, no wonder America is not famed for its cuisine - poor Mr Wetman, he needs a woman like myself to feed him up and whisk him away. I doubt your family ever ruled Gaul, dear, or they would not have named you after a desert. You are quite wrong nothing French about me, if one discounts the Normans, and you are entirely deluded, I have no wish to touch your beads, sacred or otherwise - my own beads were dived for, by naked young men, in the south seas, and are all perfectly matched, as I recall were the young men - Oh such happy days. Catherine de Burgh (Lady) (talk) 21:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Did I say 'rule'? Oops. Sorry, what I mean of course was 'took the ferry to'. I hope Madam will forgive that I, nor my minions, henchman nor slaves, have not yet gotten fully to grips with this new computing machine, and we, although we do our best, are inclined to make silly errors. You might not judge us too harshly though, as I have read and heard in song that you are kind and magnamious when you want to be, lady, please. In return, I have despatched on this morning's coffin ship some of Corks finest nettle soup and rabbit meat, and a selection of amusingly shaped, yet perfectly healthy, potatoes. xxx. Ceoil 03:29, 14 September 2008 (UTC

O, and back up with Wetman; the boy is spoken for and mine. I have claws, understand; xxx your lovelyness. Ceoil 05:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

• Comment So a plaster cast was made of an original statue of Carpeaux's work and placed in the Gulbenkian museum....am I reading this right? Secondly, what title would one assign to this bust if it is placed on Commons? Would 'Copy of Carpeaux's bust of Bruno Cherier' be acceptable...or would a different title name be better. I haven't placed it on Commons and am just waiting for someone to make a comment here. (PS: Yes, the flickr image is indeed attractive.) Thank You, --Leoboudv (talk) 02:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

  So far as I can determine, the Gulbenkian is the original. KillerChihuahua 04:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

• Thank You Chihuahua. I did not know this at all. I'll upload it then on Commons today. --Leoboudv (talk) 20:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Article assessment script deletion and rant

I thought you might be interested in Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Script deletion (I've added some comments there) and User talk:Outriggr/metadatatest.js. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 09:20, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I have made a statement there, and one of the more radical ones, but I think Outriggr is right, but not far enough. I don't see how an assing -bot is better than any other -bot that comes along and inserts nonsense at the top of an article. Bots can't assess, and scripts can't reason, and bytes are not content. Geogre (talk) 15:07, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I was rather surprised not to have been informed of this discussion, given that I was the deleting administrator in this case. Lucky I happened to notice this here. Sheesh. Risker (talk) 16:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I wondered about that, too. Given that you seem to be very informed in general, I supposed that you had to be informed, even though you had not been informed. (I have decided that the passive voice is the only thing to use from now on, in honor of the B.A.D. and other autoassassments.) I was surprised that you had gone back and "gloated" over your deletion. That was very naughty of you, except, of course, that the person who reported that showed the general reading comprehension of a assesment driver. Geogre (talk) 20:15, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Outriggr's script became a frankenstein, to the extent that before he gave up he was one of the most vocal opponents of tagging, complaining, assesments and rating; all that annonying stuff. Its the eternal battle between article writers vs. html people. But, eh, there you go, life is a bit shit. Ceoil 20:32, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't have asked for anything other than that people would start talking about this assessment business (again?). Regarding "not far enough", I'd happily see the bottom-end assessment system deleted for a start, but only the script was within my purview! There are of course many philosophical/logical and systematic probems with the current system, and to the extent that I don't go far enough in noting them, it's because I've rarely seen people be moved by broad, conceptual arguments. (Then I undershoot with "Article assessment SUCKS!" ;) For example, Geogre's point that these assessments are "not edits", with respect to a wiki environment, is of course true, but how many kids understand that? Where Carcaroth points, I'm being accused of abandonment, even though I offered a tool in good faith, maintained it in good faith, answered users' questions and did one update even after the grave misgivings had set in, which I communicated on the talk page. For this contribution they accuse me of being rash, yet I am arguably in the best position to judge the merits of both sides. I owe them nothing.

So, the enabling device is gone for now (and I hope it's clear that this script was simply a user interface change that made an edit simpler—it did not "suggest" a rating!!). Perhaps I'm not far enough in that I like the idea of being able to "find" Misplaced Pages's better articles, which implies some sort of rating, but I'm now convinced that the input must come from readers, not editors, not least because the wikipedia machinery has produced some very Kafkaesque ideas about what constitutes a good article. You can press random article 200 times and find nothing but trash, and the taggers still want to put "start" on everything with any merit. –Outriggr § 22:16, 14 September 2008 (UTC)