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sfd

Hi, Xover. I recently came across your nifty template, {{sfd}}. I certainly have not studied up on its use, or any discussion thereof, but I wonder if it doesn't have a piece missing: In analogous situations (e.g. {{sfn}}) the short footnote leads to a full citation of the text in question within the article. That is, without going off-wiki, I can see all the bibliographic details of the citation right there in the article. This is not the case with {{sfd}}, which goes external without any bibliographic detail (e.g. "at Folger Digital Texts") occurring in the article. It seems to me that at least a minimal acknowledgement of the source (such as is afforded by {{Internet Archive}} and {{Librivox book}}) would be, not only useful, but necessary to comply with WP:CITE.

In related news, I've recently begun fixing something that's been bugging me for a long time: on Wikipedia, it is virtually the rule that quotations from poems do NOT have a citation (or if they do, merely line numbers, nothing bibliographical). I mean, they have to, but they don't. So I'm plugging away (and doing a little formatting while I'm at it). It's a project for a lifetime, and I'm confident that my interest -- or I -- will give out before it's done, but I'm hoping that one day I'll at least reach a critical mass, where if someone is using an existing article as a model, there's some reasonable chance that they see a properly formatted and cited verse quote! Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 22:12, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Phil wink: Hey Phil. Good to hear from you!

{{sfd}} is intended to be used essentially like {{sfn}}, which doesn't generate a full citation either (the s in both cases stands for "short"). You therefore need to provide a full citation separately, as I have done on e.g. Falstaff. This approach was chosen based on what we landed on for the main Shakespeare play articles in the FAC process (cf. Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet): where we cite a critical edition we cite it as a book by the editors of that edition, and where we cite the actual text of the play we cite the play as such, in the short citation, and explain the edition of the play we used in prose in the "Notes and references" section. The Folger Digital editions are just one among a gazillion freely available online editions, but it has the advantage of being professionally edited by a recognized expert in the field (Barbara Mowat, now sadly passed away).

Our poem and play quotation templates are—or were last I checked—pretty poorly adapted to the use, and none of them encourage any sane form of citation. I've toyed with the idea of making dedicated templates for quoting the plays and poems of Shakespeare, where proper citation would be a first-class design goal, but never got around to it (and I'm currently spending most of my wikitime over on Wikisource due to an acute case of being fed up with enwp). At least for the use cases I have in mind, making a proper citation mandatory (as in, "will spit out huge honkin' red error messages if missing") would be emminently appropriate: both WP:V/WP:CITE and WP:MOS essentially make citation and attribution mandatory for all quotes. I see no reason play and poem quotes should be exempt from that. --Xover (talk) 08:52, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

RE:sfd: I buy that. But a lot hangs on the editor inserting an adequate note, and I guess what I happened upon were articles like William de Ros, 6th Baron Ros in which no such note appears -- here, the situation is just as I described, not as your proper use case indicates. Some documentation on the template page might go a long way here... better yet, a simple template (e.g. "{{sfd note}}") that contains boilerplate with the correct formatting, which could just be placed above a reflist. Never underestimate the ability of humans to do the right thing when the right thing is made unbelievably easy for them to do. Having said that, I'm well aware of just how much I'm paying you to fulfill my wishes. On a side note, I feel like over the decades Folger has gained the reputation of being a cheap edition for high school. But I've had occasion to look into the Mowat/Werstein editions a bit (and the editors themselves), and I think they are proper high-quality texts. I've only scratched the surface of their website, but it too appears high-quality, and more open than we should probably expect from an organization that is, in fact, trying to sell books. So I'm very pleased that you're encouraging the use of this resource.

RE:quotes: Huh, I never thought of a programmatically required citation, possibly because the main "template" used to indicate quotes is just one " and then another ", which will never require anything. But while I doubt it would fly in the community, it is a beautiful dream. My approach is not absolutely consistent (nor, I think, should it be) but in case you have any advice, A Little Boy Lost is a pretty typical example of me adding a full citation, and Religious Musings of short+full citations. I'm sorry to hear that Wikipedia is pissing you off, but very pleased that you've made a lateral move, rather than just walking away. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 17:12, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@Phil wink: On de Ros I believe that was a deliberate choice on the part of that article's main author, and I think that's generally fine under various guidelines. WP:V can in theory be satisfied with just an URL, even though I would argue strongly in favour of including as much bibliographic detail as possible in any actual article (in fact, that position is what dragged me into my most recent mire of frustration). In any case, yes, I do owe the project better (or, in fact, any) docs for {{sfd}}. A companion template to spit out the boilerplate is a good idea too, but will have to think on how that would work.

The Folger editions are, textually, at the very least "good enough", and (IIRC) contain just enough critical apparatus (i.e. "not too much") and are accessible enough for all general readers; which is who we are supposed to be writing for. For anyone just getting into Shakespeare I highly recommend them. And since the Folger very much has their head on straight on openness (they even tried to get a collaboration going with Wikipedia a few years back, but sadly it was during my wilderness years when I was burned out by the SAQ conflicts, and nobody else stepped up to take them up on it), and the digital editions have excellent linkability, I feel this is something we could reasonably standardise on (unlike the other gazillion online versions).

On A Little Boy Lost/Religious Musings I don't have any particular sage advice. I expanded the other full ref on "A Little Boy Lost" just to illustrate how I would do it (lots and lots of data, essentially). And on articles like "Religious Musings" I would have definitely have gone for {{sfn}} (or one of the {{harv}} variants) even if the existing short cites didn't use it, unless someone actively objected to it (I suspect that particular article's original author might, but it was ten years ago so I quite possibly would try anyway). But, yeah, I think we generally agree on this topic.

For short inline quotes the issue needs to be handled by MoS and similar: and, indeed, there the pendulum has swung recently, such that there is now religious fervor for in-prose attribution of quotes in addition to requiring a cite for every quote (as has been the case for yonks years). This leads to horribly awkward prose, but then "brilliant prose" was dropped from the FA criteria so we can't really expect much in that department in any case. We do, though, have quite a lot of block quotes—and particularly, of course, in the area you and I tend to do most of our work—where I have never been satisfied with the available technical plumbing. The <poem>…</poem> mediawiki tag is just a horribly overengineered <pre>…</pre> with extra problems added, and all the {{quote}} etc. are designed for a different use case and subsequently diluted down to be able to cover the general case. My thought is that it should be possible to design something specifically for quotes from plays and poems, that encourages both proper attribution and citation. And that good such will lead to adoption organically and making the citation required there will dramatically increase coverage. But I haven't actually dug into the tecnical details there, and play and (especially) poem formatting is notoriously hard to do well in a dynamic and fluid medium like HTML.

PS. Appreciate the sentiment in re the lateral move; and, no worries, I'll get over myself eventually and get back to the sisyphusean task of improving Wikipedia's coverage of Shakespeare.

PPS. If you're interested in making poetry like Coleridge's more accessible, and giving Wikipedia a better place to link for the texts, you might want to consider taking on a transcription project for it over on Wikisource. WS has some half-decent plumbing (MediaWiki extensions) to make the task of transcribing scanned books somewhat saner, and facilities for hosting multiple editions of the same work. It is also a task that can actually be completed, unlike trying to prevent Wikipedia's articles from slow atrophy into grey goo. I'd obviously be happy to help with the technicalities. --Xover (talk) 08:06, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Cheers

Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true. No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well Xover. MarnetteD|Talk 17:13, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Hi MarnetteD, and Gråbergs Gråa Sång who posted just below you. Below, Alan brought to my mind holliday greetings and inadvertently reminded me of the fact that I had not properly thanked you for, nor even acknowledged, your holliday greetings here. I did, of course, see them at the time, but my head was elsewhere entirely, as per typical for that time of year. So despite the criminal lateness, please accept my apolgies, my thanks for your kindness and care, and the same well wishes for you both!

PS. Mine's a Gløgg! :) --Xover (talk) 09:41, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

You might like this book

Hello X. Thanks for your message in the thread above. One set of friends threw a Yule party and served glogg. Very yummy!

I have been reading Tim Pigott-Smith's memoir Do You Know Who I Am? and I think it is well done. Within the first 30 pages he gives a nice tribute to the kind of repertory theatre that doesn't exist anymore. He also writes about being a young set and prop painter at the RSC in the early 60's when things like The War of the Roses and Marat/Sade were being staged for the first time. Page after page mentions actors whose names I recognize that he worked with when they were all early in their careers. Cheers and have a nice weekend. MarnetteD|Talk 17:05, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

I assume both of you have seen Cunk on Shakespeare? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Xover, MarnetteD: have emailed you both. Gråbergs Gråa Sång: could not. ——SN54129 18:09, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Serial Number 54129 and Gråbergs Gråa Sång! MarnetteD|Talk 18:34, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Hi, Xover. Just ambling around the Wiki pages, and I noticed that you have, to put it mildly, expressed disappointment in the English Wikipedia. No wonder I haven't seen you here much. You should know I think of you every time some issue arises about Shakespeare, and I reflect how valuable your input would be. I need only to remind you of the conversation we had last year about my own feelings of discouragement. I do hope you will find ways to glide back into the role you once played in the Shakespeare arena, which is sorely impoverished without you. In short, I miss you! Best wishes for the New Year, too, a bit belatedly. Regards, Alan W (talk) 03:45, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Alan. So good to hear from you!

You've made it your hobby to cheer me up and provide encouragement when I need it most it seems. :) It is most appreciated in any case.

I am still active on Wikimedia projects, I just spend most of my time over at Wikisource (sneaky subliminal advertisment) while my state of fed-uppedness with Wikipedia prevails (I'll get over it eventually, no worries). If you want my input on anything you should never hesitate to give me a ping or drop me a note. I'll make no representations regarding what value I might contribute, but what I can I most happily will!

A much belated Happy New Year to you as well Alan! --Xover (talk) 09:26, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks, Xover. You know it works both ways. You cheered me up and encouraged me when I was feeling pretty discouraged myself with some of the ways this project has worked out. Let's stay in touch! Best, Alan W (talk) 03:20, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello

I hope things are tolerable, at least personally. Also wanted to say that I got a DYK approval on my new article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 23:31, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Thanks for the ping on the article, and what an awsome article it is! I've only skimmed it as yet but its mere existence warms my heart. :)

I hope everything is well with you and yours? I sincerely hope your grand experiment will be successful, but I fear history will not be kind to Löfven and Tegnell, nor the other public health agencies that were influenced by Giesecke's wishful thinking on herd immunity and acted too late. In any case, locking the doors and staying inside to edit Wikipedia is actually good health advice these days, which may just be a sign of the apocalypse… :) --Xover (talk) 08:29, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

We are doing fairly well. I haven't seen my father (70+) in weeks because Corona (he's fine though), and I have managed to get an unrelated medical issue but hopefully that will be dealt with in the coming month or so. Interestingly, this has given me a personal glimpse into our healthcare system in these times, and I've seen some of the gradual changes that popped up in the recent months, normally I don't go to the doctor. According to WP, our countries seem to be about even in reported cases, but we have 4x your deaths. Time will tell.

Speaking of solitary indoor-pursuits, my brother mentioned that Pornhub offered a free premium-month, so humanity is pulling together. This [1] is a decent WP spectator-sport. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:16, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Glad to hear you're doing well! Sorry to hear that you've had opportunity to observe how hospitals work at close range: that's always an interesting experience, in the full Chinese proverb ambivalence sense of "interesting".

But in terms of numbers, don't look at the confirmed case numbers: those are almost entirely a product of who you test. Right now you're only testing those strongly suspected to be infected and health workers, and those groups are not at all representative of the general population. The two datum that can tell you something are hospital admissions and deaths. Deaths are stronger than admissions because admission guidelines and how admissions are counted can affect the numbers drastically. People in nursing homes, for example, are usually not counted in hospital admissions; and at what point in the disease hospitals admit patients varies (people will most likely soon start to be admitted earlier because data from Germany suggests this improves outcomes). Deaths, on the other hand, are definite, and the only big variable is usually the lethality (which you need in order to calculate backwards the number of infected from the deaths). But even here you need to pay attention to how they're counting: in some countries they don't include deaths when the Covid-19 diagnosis was made post-mortem. All in all, what we're seeing is how woefully unprepared the world and almost all countries are for a pandemic: we don't even have consistent counting or efficient reporting.

But let's hope the last few days decline in deaths is the start of a downward trend and a sign that the measures are working, and not just a statistical blip caused by quirks of the (variably delayed) reporting. Between Spain, Italy, France, the UK, and the US, there's horror enough in the next few weeks; it would be nice to see a couple of examples of the opposite happening.

In any case, stay safe and best of wishes to you and yours (and the same to all the TPS)! --Xover (talk) 11:40, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Backatya! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:51, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Another kind of Shakespearean English

"a whole cultural establishment that insists on defending the cause of Shakespearean hegemony while simultaneously commodifying it."[2]. I think I only partially understand what the professor is saying here, care to comment? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:02, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: I'm not entirely sure Smith herself understands what she's saying here. The immediate takeaway of that clause is that the dominant cultural institutions (mainstream culture, popular culture; as opposed to counterculture or narrower forms of culture) implicitly hold up Shakespeare as the epitome of high culture worthy of reverence and to be strived for but impossible to reach, while at the same time they cheapen and commodify (i.e. turn him into a mass-produced and easily available good) him by excessive, almost manic, sampling, reference, allusion, and appropriation. The central point of the article is that it's really hard to make a good modern movie when you mine Hamlet for it: you will either sink yourself by looking badly in contrast with Hamlet, or you will fail to reach its refined heights and therefore be pointless (just go see Hamlet instead). In essence she is doing a film review of all the mentioned films that "sample" Hamlet and slightly snobbishly—but couched in academic language—putting them down.

She's not wrong, per se, but she's also here only taking one very narrow perspective on the issue. Case in point: she several times falls into the trap of treating The Last Action Hero as if it had tried some kind of high-cultural fancy literary allusion and subversion of Hamlet. It doesn't. The Last Action Hero is a completely braindead popcorn-muncher feel-good movie created only to entertain (at which task it succeeds admirably: it's one of my favorites). To the degree it tries anything "artsy" it's its point about movie logic and movie violence versus real life. When they use Hamlet in various ways it's not with any greater subtlety than someone in the writer's room going "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we made Arnie do an action-Hamlet here?". Recall that this was in production just after Mel Gibson's Hamlet came out, and Scwarzenegger and Gibson were both huge action stars at the time. It wasn't a particularly original idea, to use Hamlet in an action movie; it was directly suggested by Gibson's movie and already in the popular conciousness. --Xover (talk) 09:17, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

You never (well, hardly ever) disappoint. Many thanks. I don't remember if I ever saw TLA (in that genre one of my favorites is Starship Troopers, best fascist state ever), but I remember playing the pin-ball game. Well, it needs to be added to Cultural references to Hamlet, obviously.

One thing you can look at if you feel like it. I've now dubbed 3 people (including Smith) in Shakespeare and Star Trek "Shakespearean scholar" with a "meh, close enough" reasoning. If you think that needs editing, please do. In other news, spectator sport of the day at [3]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:45, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: I can do naught but disappoint, I merely strive to avoid excess. :)

The nomeclature is "meh, close enough". I find the fanatical addition of rubrics to people's names, and ditto insistence that we must attribute such statements to a specific source, to be misguided and harmful. Unless there is genuinely controversy about a point, writing it in Wikipedia's voice is not a problem and the current fad leads to horrible writing (nowhere else do you find that construction with any frequency). I fear the exodus of the English majors over the last decade or so has irrevocably damaged any chance of ever valuing decent writing here.

Incidentally, how're things? Everyone still healthy and have their jobs? --Xover (talk) 10:44, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I find myself adding and asking for "Whoing" at times, for example regarding religion and other opinion-y topics, especially if "Smith says" or "Mrs. Henry Pott says" is in the text already. Then I want to know, in text, who are these people WP is letting talk to me. It may make the text clunkier, but I still want it, and I think our readers should have it. Of course, context matters, but if I see "Josephus says" I'll add "1st century historian" pdq (the first time). I can resist anything but temptation.

They are and they do. Same with you and yours I hope? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:25, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: That's part of the problem: by this seemingly reasonable practice of attributing every statement to a specific person, we also introduce a new topic (the person attributed) that we need to elucidate for the reader. This is just religius fervor. Most of the time there is absolutely no need to attribute the statement to someone specific because we're citing it to a reliable source (part of the assessment of a source is whether they have relevant expertise to be able to make such statements with authority; and if they do we can use Wikipedia's voice for it).

The exception is if we're specifically discussing the various sources, for example if our topic is historiography or critical history. See AMND#Critical history for example. The point of the section is specifically to highlight what various notable people have said about the play, with focus on their differences in approach, emphasis, or even outright disagreement. And most the time they're not particularly described in the text, because that would just repeat the first sentence of the lead of the article their name is linked to (and article previews are on by default now iirc, so you just hover the link). Insisting on such descriptions inline becomes a de facto abnegation of the very point of a wiki and hypertext.

Not that the issue is by any means black—white, nor that there aren't lots of exceptions. The topic area of the article and what sources are available for affects the right balance to a large degree. For example, even within the broad topic of Shakespeare, popcultural aspects will need far more "whoing" than biography or most of the play articles. What I'm saying is that there's a plague of knee-jerk insertions of such stuff right now that completey fails to deal with it with any nuance or discrimination. And we need some of that back!

All is well (just busy) here, at least for a few more weeks until the numbers start to rise sharply again (as they most likely will, unless the planned testing and contact tracing regime here turns out to be far more efficient than I think it is realistic to hope for). Ask me again towards the end of May. ☹️ --Xover (talk) 09:36, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Lagom är bäst. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:13, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

The Churkendoose. It's not Shakespeare, but it'll do. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:47, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Now that's a bard. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:11, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Template:Cite Grove

You might be interested in reading and possibly contributing to this discussion:

• Template talk:Cite Grove#Editors of the 2001 print edition

-- PBS (talk) 11:42, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Email sent

With my planned approach ... thanks for the help! Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:42, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

My pleasure. And best of luck in this endeavour! --Xover (talk) 16:39, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

COVID taskforce collabs

Are you working on any data-update efforts around the pandemic? How could we make WP and WD better sources of overviews and ground truth here? – SJ + 16:16, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sj: Was this misaddressed? I happen to be involved in Covid response IRL, but apart from the PSA on my user page I haven't been active in that topic area on-wiki. Happy to help where I can, of course, but… :) --Xover (talk) 17:22, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I was responding only to your PSA :) happened across your page and wondered if you had requests for the wiki efforts. – SJ + 21:44, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Another viewing pleasure from my past

Hello X. Back in the late 80's these 1986 productions of the Theban Plays aired on A&E here. I have recently discovered that they are available on YouTube and Amazon Prime which is a good thing as my VHS has faded away. Now this info is for the US version of both streaming services and I don't know if it applies for you. They also might not be of interest but I thought I'd make you aware of them anyway. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 02:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: Sadly not available here. But I appreciate the tip and will keep an eye out for them if they should ever pop up. --Xover (talk) 10:31, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Ah rats. Fingers crossed that they show up one day. Stay safe X. MarnetteD|Talk 14:35, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi again. Looks like Bertaut found them User talk:Bertaut#Possible viewing news. Take care and stay safe. MarnetteD|Talk 02:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)