User talk:Peter Entwisle: Difference between revisions

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I would like my last reply to Giano to be recorded.
I would like my last reply to Giano to be recorded.


My reply to yours has been edited out.


Oh well.

Revision as of 14:01, 4 May 2009

Welcome to Wikipedia

Welcome!

Hello, Peter Entwisle, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! 

You may also be interested in the Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board.

Are you by any chance the person who has been adding information to the Dunedin article from an anonymous IP address prior to getting a user name? Whether you are or not, welcome. If you need anything of the working of Wikipedia explained, feel free to contact me on my user talk page. It's good to see someone here whom I know to be knowledgeable about Otago history and art! Grutness...wha? 12:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC) (you know me by my real name - James Dignan)[reply]

The message came through fine. I understand about being hesitant to give any contact details - if you want to keep a low profile on Wikipedia that's perfectly OK. I look forward to see your additions to articles and, as I said before, if you need any help then drop me a note on my talk page. Grutness...wha? 00:15, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Linking articles

One minor but important point - if you include mention of something in an article that either has or should have a Wikipedia article of its own, please put it in double square brackets [[like this]]. That will give a blue link to the article on that subject (if it exists) or a red link to indicate that an article is needed. I've added quite a few links to the information you've added to the Oamaru article, which should give you some idea of what I mean. Grutness...wha? 08:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New articles that are written appear within minutes of them being saved - do you mean the article on William Tucker (settler)? If so it's already on Wikipedia, but it needs a few things like adding categories and links to it (I'll see what I can do to make it a more "Wikipedia-like" article). By the way, please send any messages to my User talk page, not my User page (click on the green "wha?" link in my signature) - that way I'm more likely to see them. Also, you can sign your posts with four tildes ~~~~, rather than writing out your name - that will provide an automatic link back to your page for any reply. Grutness...wha? 14:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
click the links in the "wikify" box! --Dweller 00:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Peter - the main problem is that you indented the paragraphs. Doing that renders text in long lines within a pale blue box. I've removed the indentations and it looks ar more like a "real" Wikiepedia article now. You're right, the instructions aren't easily navigable - it's one of the problems with Wikipedia having been built up over time rather than being a planned work from the start. I've also added a few more links to the article and removed the title header (which isn't normall added to Wikipedia articles). Have a look here at the changes I made. Grutness...wha? 01:42, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi

Your first contribution to Wikipedia was of such high quality, at first I assumed it must have been a copyvio!

Congratulations - you're clearly going to be a fantastic asset to the project.

I'm making some careful edits to the article and wanted to flag up that one or two of them are clearing up slight ambiguities. It could be that in doing so I misrepresent what was actually intended. When I'm done, it would be useful if you'd compare the changes I've made with the previous version of the article (go to the article, click "history" and then click the circles next to my version and the previous one). If I've fouled up at all, I apologise and please do revert any incorrect changes.

Once again, welcome. --Dweller 08:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Dweller,

Thank you for your kind remarks. I've read your revised version (I think) and it seems fine to me. Clearer, less ambiguous.

Yours,


Peter Entwisle

Great. Hope you're enjoying your introduction to the 'pedia. I found it hard getting my head round formatting issues when I started (quite recently) so I blatantly copied what others had done on pages I admired. Alternatively, you can follow the tips in some of the links in the Welcome message above.
Re this particular article. I know nothing about the subject matter, but it seems to me there's some material in the article that's less about the Weller brothers than it is about, say, the development of Otago or New Zealand etc. Some ham-fisted editor will come along at some point and hack it out for you and do a bad job... can I respectfully suggest you pre-empt this? Again, if I'm wrong, I'm always happy to stand corrected.
I assume you're a professional historian. I was a keen but pretty mediocre historian at Uni. Hats off to you. --Dweller 09:28, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear dweller. You're right some of the material is about the Weller brothers' role in the development of Otago and New Zealand. I'll give some thought to what you say but the reason people are interested in the Wellers, why they're 'notable', is because of their significance in that regard. One could write a life of Captain Scott concentrating on his upbringing, marriage etc. but it would be odd not to mention his role in Antarctic exploration and widely publicised death there.

You're right I'm a professional historian. I wrote the article on the Weller brothers in the New Zealand Dictionary of Biography. My Wikipedia article on them isn't the same. It's an update based on discoveries since then. I've had some enquiries about them from people who are probably related or interested in people who are, but also from people interested in their roles in things like the development of New Zealand's fishing industry, the evolution of tax regimes affecting this country etc.

It seemed to me that to be suitable for inclusion in the Wikipedia an article about people needed to be about notable people, whether they are socially elevated or good or bad characters being immaterial. The lives of notable people will always have a public as well as a private aspect, which it seemed to me should at least be indicated if not elaborated. But I will keep thinking about what you've said.

Writing history it's often difficult to precisely state the significance of an event. It's where things are most likely to prove contentious. I've worked to try to achieve reliable, useful assessments based securely on the ascertainable facts, which is what I was attempting with the Wellers. I appreciate your remarks of commendation.

Yours

Peter Entwisle

Dear Peter and Dweller - it may be worth creating a separate article such as History of Otago, which can take this information and much more. This should probably be raised as a suggestion on Talk:Otago and Talk:Dunedin before it's done, however, since it will have quite an impact on those two articles, but I think there is more than enough information for a separate article. You might be interested to note that the (currently very small) article on the Otago Gold Rush is a candidate for group effort and improvement as Wikipedia:New Zealand Collaboration of the Fortnight. Grutness...wha? 03:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Grutness,

There's merit in the suggestion. However I at least quail a bit at the thought of writing a short history of Otago.

Peter Entwisle

You're right that it would be a big task. Some of it probably should be broken out of the Weller brothers article into its own article though... the question is, exactly what the subject of that new article should be. Perhaps moving some of it to the Otakou article would be a reasonable compromise for the time being, and using it for a history section in much the way that you have added a good history section to the Mosgiel article. Grutness...wha? 04:15, 23 June 2006

(UTC)


Mmm. Unless one wants to embark on an elaborate re-writing of the history of Otago and New Zealand it would be simpler to just stay with things as they are. Somebody else might like to do that work but I'm trying to stay within the boundaries of what's known now. It's not worth 'breaking things out' etc. unless you have an army of people willing to do the implied work.

Peter Entwisle

Also, moving the Weller material to the 'Otakou' section would be a travesty for reasons traversed in my note on the name 'otakou'.

Peter Entwisle

Dear Peter -

As I suggested when I saw you yesterday, I've separated out the history section from the main Dunedin page and made it into its own article (History of Dunedin), leaving a summarised version on the Dunedin page. Grutness...wha? 06:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, thank you for your kind words about my review of Diana Smillie's exhibition. I regard it as high praise, as you are almost certainly far better able to assess and critique an art review than 99% of the people who read that column! Grutness...wha? 08:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Dear Grutness,


I just added a whole lot of references and bibliographic material to the first part of the Dunedin History article. But when I pressed the button it showed it in there, but with a message saying it hadn't been processed or something or other. Anyway. It isn't in and I can't find it again.

I put the stuff in because somebody complained the article wasn't referenced. It takes time to do this and it's frustrating when the system doesn't work. Or doesn't seem to. Perhaps you can find what happened to that last edit and retrieve it.

Peter Entwisle

It sounds as though you pressed the "Show preview" button, not the "Save page" button. It's also possible that you got an edit conflict as someone else made changes to the same section of the article but saved it just before you did. Sorry, but there's nothing anyone can do to retrieve the material now. I know the frustration of losing work like this; sometimes I make several small edits rather than waiting until I've made all the changes I want to in an article just to make sure that I get the first part of my work saved.-gadfium 22:38, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No one seems to have edited History of Dunedin for a few days, so it was probably that you used "Show preview".-gadfium 22:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Hmmm. Is that Grutness?

I don't think I did press 'show preview'. It certainly took a long time to put in the stuff before I pressed the button so perhaps the system just ran out of time, steam, patience, whatever. Still, I take your point about doing it in little bits to be safe. I'll try again that way. By the way somebody put in a statement that the first cemeteries were made in dunedin in the 1860s. They're thinking of the Northern and Southern cemeteries but there was an older European one on what is now the reserve at Arthur Street. Of course Maori had been buried here earlier - notably Te Rakiihia c.1785. I may modify that statement later accordingly. I hope no-one is offended.

Peter Entwisle —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.154.155.121 (talk) 22:50, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Actually it wasn't "unsigned comment" as you can see. Furthermore when I did the edit it was saying I was signed in. This is all baffling.

(Signed) Peter Entwisle

The reason you get the "unsigned" message is because you are typing your name rather than using the signing mechanism of typing four tilde characters (~~~~) at the end of your messages. In the collection of buttons just above the edit window, there's one that looks like a signature which will insert it for you - it's beside the symbol of a W with a red bar through it. Since you add your name, whether you use a signature or not is no big deal.
By the way, I haven't introduced myself. I'm an Auckland editor, and I know Grutness quite well through Wikipedia although I've never met him. I make most of my substantial edits on history of small towns in Northland, although I have no qualifications related to history. Just at the moment, I'm busy at University so am not doing much article writing.-gadfium 23:33, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seacliff Lunatic Asylum

Hello Peter - Thanks for editing Wikipedia, but can I please ask you to be a bit more careful on some of your edits?

On the above article, you deleted or rephrased (and thus removed) a number of important passages which were taken straight from the references such as the (intended) use of the tower as an observation point or the fact that the last buildings WAS demolished because of further earth movement.

You also edited the second image's caption so that it was not linked anymore (you forgot to close the brackets), added a number of unsourced claims (such as the the tower being a central part of revivalist architecture, or your speculation that Lawson was made a scapegoat). You also deleted a reference (the Hawkes Bay newspaper one).

I have kept a few of your edits where they were useful, tagged a few others (such as on the tower as a central style element and the "Lawson as a scapegoat" section) as needing a reference, and restored the image and reference.

Don't be too put out by my comments - but a well-sourced article like this needs some extra care being taken when being edited. Cheers. Ingolfson 06:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. Another user, Grutness, noted that you were quite knowledgable on the matter, and I apologize if the above sounded a bit patronising - I was simply basing the tone of my comment on your (apparently recent) start with Wikipedia, not on your knowledge of the matter. As Grutness noted, you may well know more about the matter than I do. That said (and I hope I don't come across as patronising *now*), it is of little relevance - as neither you or I are acceptable references for claims made in the article (unless you wrote published books or articles about this, when it would be another matter Looks like you have. Please cite them where applicable when you add or change information in the article, and please explain (in the article text) if some of that should contradict other referenced information Ingolfson 11:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)).[reply]
Therefore, unless we are debating style questions, all content and all claims should be referenced, and my edits only reflected that aim - to keep the content of the article reflecting what the references say. If you feel that the references misstate something, or leave out important bits, feel more than free to add data from other referenced sources accordingly. Happy editing. Ingolfson 08:04, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Responded to you on my page. Cheers. Ingolfson 05:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Ingolfson,

I appreciate your thoughts. There's quite a literature on Lawson and Seacliff and a few old quotes don't really do justice to the whole story. The New Zealand Encyclopaedia 1966 and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography have summary accounts of his career and this matter. There's unpublished material (theses held at Canterbury University and the Hocken Collections, Dunedin) and a new biography is planned. If you want to reference the discussion I'd suggest trying those sources.

Regards,

Peter Entwisle

Could you have a look at an article for me?

Hello Peter - good to see you back on Wikipedia again - could I please ask you to have a look at a short article I wrote on Hardwicke Knight, to check to make sure that i haven't made any silly mistakes? Thanks, James - Grutness...wha? 07:03, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might also be surprised to see this new article! I don't know who created it (it was an anonymous editor) but I've tidied it up a little. Technically you're not allowed to edit it very much, but if there's anything factually correct you can amend it a little (this section says what you can and cannot do to it). Grutness...wha? 21:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Grutness,

A few things which caught my eye: Hardwicke actually died in Dunedin proper - at Glamis Home in Montpellier Street, not Broad Bay. I think his history of photography in New Zealand - the first book on this subject - is worth a mention. It's less typical but more significant than "Dunedin Then". The National Museum only bought his Burton brothers collection and Hardwicke's collection of Cameras, not all his collections. A great deal still remains at Broad Bay.

Peter Entwisle

Good heavens.

I just saw the other article. It produced... some curious feelings.

I don't see any glaring factual errors. There are some things it says I would phrase slightly differently. I imagine it's drawing on my website as a source.

It would probably be wrong for me to comment on its balance and angle. In any case I don't really know exactly what sort of profile the writer is attempting.


It felt a bit like reading an obituary. Of course, I'd just been looking at your note on Hardwicke. But it still feels strange.

Hmmm.

Thank you for drawing it to my attention.

Peter Entwisle

Just thought you should know that it was there! Thanks for the comments on the Hardwicke Knight article - I've amended it according to your suggestions. Grutness...wha? 22:47, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Noted and thank you.

Peter Entwisle

Photo

Hi, please could you supply a photo to go on Peter Entwisle? Most biographical articles have a picture. If you could upload one I would be happy to add it to the article to avoid you editing it yourself. Thanks! Martin 17:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I've just been trying to update my article on William Tucker by inserting references. Perhaps the protocols have changed. This site has always been very user unfriendly - it seems to be getting worse.

Cheers,

Peter Entwisle

I'm not aware of any recent changes. I agree that the interface is confusing, but see MediaWiki interface to get a facelift. There may be hope yet. In the meantime, I've made some changes on William Tucker (settler). If this isn't what you wanted, reply to me here and I'll see what I can do.-gadfium 08:36, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Gadfium,

Thanks for tidying up my attempts to add citations etc where someone had asked for them. I've added a couple more. Really most of the citations needed are given in the body of the article. But at some stage I'll add some more.

Regards,


Peter Entwisle

Ben Webb

Dear Peter - I notice you added a comment about Ben Webb on the disambiguation page for people with that name. I've just made a small start on an article about him at Ben Webb (artist) - you may like to expand it a little (I suspect you have more informationa bout him than i do). Grutness...wha? 08:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC) (James)[reply]


Thanks Grutness. I do have some information on him. I'll look at your article with interest.

Peter Entwisle

That's a good start. I published the 1977 birthdate myself a while ago. However he recently told me he was actually born in 1976. As I mentioned, I do have some more information and will put some in at some stage.

Peter Entwisle

William Mason

I've moved the article for you. It's now at William Mason (architect), but William Mason (mayor) will still work. The way you rename an article is by using the "move" tab at the top of the page.

To create subheadings, type the text you want and highlight it, just as you would with a word processor, then click the large letter "A" on the toolbar just above the edit window. Alternatively, type the markup directly by typing two equal signs on either side of the heading text (and with nothing else on the line). Looking at the markup for any existing article or talk page with sections may make this easier to understand.

Copyright on photos is one of those legal matters which can be difficult to understand, and the law changes from country to country. Wikipedia is governed by the laws of Florida. I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. If you take a photo yourself of something which is not itself copyrighted, then you can release it under a suitable licence, such as CC-BY, and we can use it on Wikipedia. If you take a photo of a person, then you may need to have their permission to release it, especially if they are not a public figure and are being portrayed in an unflattering or private context. A photo (or scan) of a painting, existing photo etc which is already under copyright comes under the same copyright as the original. If the original is out of copyright, then the photo you take of it is okay, but a work does not go out of copyright until 70 years after the death of its author in Florida. In New Zealand, copyright ends 50 years after the death of its author, and it seems to be acceptable on Wikipedia to upload such pictures with the {{PD-old-50}} tag. If the author is not known, then copyright ends 50 years from the time the photo was first published. There are exceptions for government photos. There are also "fair use" arguments which can be made for photos covered by copyright, but these should not be needed for photos of someone who died so long ago. If you need help on how to upload a photo, or how to place it in an article, let me know. A general overview of Wikipedia policy on images is at Wikipedia:Image use policy.-gadfium 21:35, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Gadfium,

Thank you for putting a new heading on the William Mason article. Also thank you for your kind words of advice. I may attempt to create subheadings following your advice.

On copyright law I do have some expertise. (I worked as a curator in a public art gallery and had to administer requests to reproduce under New Zealand copyright law.) I don't know much about Florida copyright law in particular but as a signatory to various international conventions US law is committed to the same principles as NZ copyright law. With respect, some of your observaions above are mistaken.

1. You say: "If you take a photo of a person, then you may need to have their permission to release it, especially if they are not a public figure and are being portrayed in an unflattering or private context." This is not a matter of copyright. People don't own copyright in their own external appearances. If I take a picture of you I own the picture's copyright - or the person who commissioned me to do so does. However there are privacy laws under which I may be liable to prosecution for taking that photograph. That's another matter.

2.You say "A photo (or scan) of a painting, existing photo etc which is already under copyright comes under the same copyright as the original." This is a widely believed misapprehension. If you make a copy of something which is under another person's copyright, copyright in the copy belongs to you - or whoever commissioned you to make that copy - not the owner of the copyright in the thing you copied. This is why people who own copyrights have to guard them and control other people making copies. Of course, if you do make a copy of something which has existing copyrights belonging to someone else you may be liable to some sort of action from them and penalties. But the copyright in the offending copy still belongs to you.

3. You say "In New Zealand, copyright ends 50 years after the death of its author..." Again, this is not strictly true. In New Zealand copyright in something lasts for 50 years after the copyright owner's death - except in the case of something never published - in which case it lasts for 70 years.

4. You say "If the author is not known, then copyright ends 50 years from the time the photo was first published." Again, no, this is just a rule of thumb, not the law. The law says copyright always exists for 50 years after the copyright holder's death, except in the case of unpublished material in which case it lasts for 70 years. It's just that it can be very difficult to establish who the copyright owner is, especially after an artist's death e.g. and so people just use the rule of thumb above and hope for the best. They are frequently in breach of copyright.

Crown copyright is a different thing and the "fair use" principles are mostly nonsense based on wide misunderstandings of now non-existent copyright law.

I have never been able to upload a digital image from a computer onto anything. I might indeed need some help. I have read Wikipedia's rules about using images and found them confused/and/or confusing.

As I said before, many thanks for helping me with the heading.

Peter Entwisle

Clearly you understand New Zealand copyright law much better than I do. I thought from your statement on Grutness' talk page "if one photographs a photograph or picture copyright in that belongs to the photographer too" that you might believe you could simply release such a photo into the public domain, but you obviously understand the limits of that copyright. The "fair use" principles I mentioned are those of US law, and any New Zealand concepts of fair use do not apply to Wikipedia.
If you have a digital photo on your hard drive, you can upload it by clicking on the "Upload file" link on the left side of the screen. For a photo which is out of copyright, choose "Other" from the following screen. In the form that follows, it's best to click on the little icon to the right of the "source filename" prompt, which will allow you to browse your hard disk to find the photo. The "destination filename" will be filled in automatically, but if the name is not a intuitive one you should replace it with for example "William_Mason_architect.jpg". Fill out the summary as best you can. For the drop-down "Licensing" box, I suggest you choose "Author died more than 100 years ago" for a photo out of copyright, even if the author actually died more recently, and explain the actual situation in the summary box. Finally click the "Upload" button. When the upload is complete, add the image to the article by adding this markup to the article:[[File:William_Mason_architect.jpg|thumb|William Mason in his mayoral robe, c. 18xx (your caption here)]]
If you get stuck following these instructions, please let me know with as much detail as possible exactly what the sticking point was.
Any photo you upload to Wikipedia which is determined by the experts as being suitably free may be moved to the image repository at Wikimedia Commons at a later point. This allows the image to be used in other language editions of Wikipedia (eg if the article on Mason is translated) or in other Wikimedia Foundation projects, such as Wikibooks. If you prefer, you can upload directly to the commons, which requires getting an account on that project and following a slightly different upload procedure.-gadfium 23:06, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Dear Gadfium,

Thank you for your careful advice about images. At a time when I'm feeling strong and have plenty of time at my disposal I may try to follow it.

Regards,


Peter Entwisle

Dear Peter - I see that Gadfium beat me to it with moving the article. If anything, he knows more about the procedures than I do, so I can't think of anything to add to what he's already said. If you need any help with any of it, either he or I would be glad to help. Grutness...wha? 23:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Dear Grutness,

Thank you for your ready rush to my rescue. Gadfium acting with incredible speed had already helped over the heading. You can see his other sage advice above. (I'm assuming Gadfium is male for I know not what reason.) I read somewhere - I think in the labyrinth of Wikipedia behind-the-scenes stuff that you are not well Grutness and will be indisposed for a little while. I'm sorry to hear that and hope you are soon on the mend.

Regards,


Peter Entwisle

Thanks for that, Peter - I'm having minor knee surgery at the beginning of February, so may be on crutches for a few weeks. Nothing serious, thankfully. Grutness...wha? 05:40, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Gadfium,

I followed your instructions and succeeded in putting in some headings. Thank you. I also followed your instructions and sort of succeeded in putting in an image. The trouble is, I thought it would be a thumbnail with access to a larger version. Instead I've got the larger version in the middle of the text. It looks a bit oversize to me. Any suggestions as to how to realise the original intention?


Peter Entwisle

I fixed it - you'd accidentally typed "thumbl" instead of "thumb". Grutness...wha? 00:21, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Great. I'll start passing on some new users needing advice to you!-gadfium 00:47, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks gentlemen. I'm all thumbs when it comes to typing on this too small keyboard, thumbs instead of thumbnails, clearly.


Peter Entwisle


As you are a native, I am allowing you pretty much free rein, but when you start changing extravaganza to "tour de force" [1] I begin to think you are starting to be a little pedantic and opinionated. The same goes for colonial, one could in certain innstances argue that provincial would be a better word; I understand you are a champion of NZ architecture, and I admire you for it, but don't start to let a little bias and POV creep in. Please? Giano (talk) 21:40, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Ummm. I'm not a native but let that pass. Have a look at the buildings: "extravaganza" is wrong for this one whose success depends as much on its restraint as its exuberance - unlike the Railway Station. Also, there is nothing particularly colonial or provincial about using a hammer beam roof for a church reviving the Gothic style - remember Westminster Hall from which this borrows. The clear evidence of New Zealand's colonialism in its buildings are the wholly timber structures - sometimes imitating stone - with their verandahs and corrugated iron roofs. Larnach Castle is the classic case of a "serious" building colonialised, or provincialised, by the addition of absurd (and slightly wonderful) verandahs. No wonder Lawson didn't want to know about it.

Having said that I recognise you are another, grumpy, opinionated old man and respect the effort you put in to communicating what makes these structures successful as works of art. Someone here should have done this before you.

What does POV mean? And why do all the people here use noms-de-plume?

Peter Entwisle Peter Entwisle (talk) 08:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, your more native than I am. Yes, I'm very grumpy, but not so old, my wife and several children will agree with you there. POV means point of view, you are not allowed to have one here, unless you can find forty authors of varying competence to support that view. I disagree with completely about extravaganza, but am not that bothered. Regarding provincialism, that catalogue rather depends on the skill of execution and interpretaion rather than faithful reproduction - if you follow. Yes, Larnach Castle is rather wierd and wonderful. I would still like to scramble on the roof of Otago Boy's School and investigate the turrets of the tower, if at least some of them are not chimneys, I would be amazed. However, that is not likely to ghappen in the near future and has been rightly removed from the page because that was my "POV." Many of us use nom de plumes to hide from our wives, employers, clients or publishers the hours we spend on our computers not doing what we are supposed to be doing. There is also the other important factor of hiding from internet nutters and the various other strange people who inhabit the darker recesses of the internet. You would be surprised how many of those who edit here, using their own names have been stalked or threatened as a consequence in real life. You live in a nice warm, safe part of the world. Be glad. Just think, because you use your real name, I could turn up on your doorstep with inumerable children, demaning a food and bed while I investigate chimneys on Otago. That threat ought to convince you of the wisdom of a nom de plume. Giano (talk) 09:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]


I wouldn't be surprised at all. I have the courage of my convictions and the scars to show it. With respect, intellectual honesty starts with saying clearly who you are and what you believe. Yes there's a price to pay. In modern parlance - get over it.

Seriously, to work out the value of opinions it helps to know whose they are. For that reason one should acknowledge one's expressions.

As you haven't said who you are how am I to test your claim that you're younger than I am? No matter. I'm only pressing a point. I can tell you aren't quite so ancient as me.

One isn't allowed to have a point of view on Wikipedia? What a laugh. One can't avoid having one if one says anything. If you say "2+2=4" you have a point of view, never mind that what you say is incontestable. Such are the confusions of subjectivism, a baleful but popular epistemology.

I understand about the significance of "provincialism" and First Church is not provincial in that sense. Nor is it "colonial" - part of what makes it interesting in this context. As for "extravaganza" - we don't need to go there. You know what I think.

Regarding the turrets on Boys High: none of them are chimneys. I've been and looked at all of them after you first floated the idea. I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong and would if there was any sign of it. There isn't.

If you turned up on my doorstep I'd tell you to go and hire a room. I'm not that hospitable even to my blood relations. I'm too busy being a grumpy old man.

This is not a nice, warm, safe part of the world. That is part of the myth about New Zealand. Feel free to come here any time but don't be taken in by the stuff that's published about the place. Much of it is inaccurate. On the other hand it does have some interesting buildings.


Peter Entwisle Peter Entwisle (talk) 09:54, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • You are welcome to NZ architecture, I was just filling a gaping hole until someone better came along. So long as work is referenced, as it should be, then it matters not a jot who writes it - a professor of architecture at Università di Roma "La Sapienza" or Fred the Bin-man from London. Regarding one's own opinions, you don't seem to have grasped the Wikipedia philosophy, which is quite well summed up below. Like me, you may not agree with it, but it makes life easier here if you accept it. Giano (talk) 12:10, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: "Experts are scum." For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War -- and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge -- get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment.

Lore Sjöberg, from "The Wikipedia FAQK"

Yes, references are important. But in the end everyone has to stand by his own pronouncements, however acquired. They aren't automatically better for being second hand.

I'm sorry if you have got the humph and I really meant what I said about appreciating the fact of your taking the trouble.

New Zealand would be better off if more people like you felt like persevering. Admittedly it's not a fun task.

Regards,


Peter Entwisle Peter Entwisle (talk) 12:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Last word on the subject: I am trying to point out, probably badly, that you are adding too many unreferenced facts and opinions. If you are writing a book for publication that is fine, but you are writing here an encyclopedia, also remember that all Wikipedia work is uncredited. That means your name will not go at the bottom of the page to prove it is an accurate account. All of us are guilty at some point of droping in the odd fact and opinion that is our own, but it is not supposed to happen. I am not humphed, just trying to give you some advice before "Randy from Boise" comes along and reverts you. That's it, nothing more to say. Giano (talk) 13:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would like my last reply to Giano to be recorded.


My reply to yours has been edited out.


Oh well.