User talk:Macdonald-ross/Archive 1

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You've been adding some good material to Thomas Henry Huxley. I want to encourage you strongly to provide inline citations to your sources with Wikipedia:Footnotes, which will make your work much more valuable to the project.--ragesoss 18:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Huxley assessment

Hi! If I were to re-assess the T. H. Huxley article, it would probably still rate as "Start-class", for the simple reason of lack of citations. I've been keeping an eye on the good work you're doing, but I want to encourage you once again to add inline citations so that the information can be traced to its sources. This is a crucial consideration in the quality-assessment process.--ragesoss 17:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

A few changes

Just noted your substantial number of contributions to the above. I made a few changes and this is just to let you know. I removed some undue weight given to a ethnology paper and a rather callous poem. I am happy to discuss this or see parts reverted if refs are available. Please add a word or two to your userpage, this will stop it appearing as a red link. Keep up the contributions. Regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 13:40, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Quotes

Hello again. Thanks for the explanation of your edit and the politeness of your response. I rarely delete contributions and I considered this one for some time. It was not found in my brief search of the web or in the Oxford dictionary of quotations. I endorse your position on enlivening 19th century biographies and have been trying my hand at a couple - they are a 'interesting' crowd. I have not any THH, only a lot of Aldous, but what I know about them supports your view. The temptation to illuminate the subject with their own words is one that many editors must have experienced and I think this may be one reason why Wikiquote came to be (your quote is not there either). The guides and style manuals recommend using inline quotes and blockquotes only when crucial to the subjects discussion. Everything else is pushed on to wikiquote where it fulfils the purpose of giving a deeper insight, the link to it is at the bottom of the page. If it is citable I would support inclusion of the quote, for the reasons you have outlined on your (new) user page and in your message. Regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 05:10, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Prose

Your prose at THH is - um - brilliant! What a fine job you have done. I think your use of quotes is very good, if you would like too add footnote or reference templates I am familiar with a couple of the systems. The only thing I can suggest is to avoid 'editorial' comments on the page such as 'see below', etc. Let me know if I can help. Regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 15:10, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Mental Health

Hey, I didn't edit that section because I disagreed with, or was intolerant of it in some way, it was just certain comments like "and what of our hero?", or [more to come], seem abit out of place. Otherwise, fantastic work. ConfuciusOrnis 02:59, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that's fine; it's a difficult section to write because the info is tucked away; at least half his biographers have completely hidden this issue. I'm heading towards a conclusion that THH had a moderate bi-polar disorder, and have at least two more episodes to describe. Macdonald-ross 10:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Huxley photo question

Huxley in 1846

Thanks for your comments on the Huxley-related photo I added. I made the changes to the Huxley article this morning. I'm not sure how I got Golders Green in my mind, but it's been about 20 years since I visited the place. I also remember that Leopold Stokowski, the conductor, is buried near Huxley. -- I have the two volumes of Thomas Huxley letters by Leonard Huxley from 1901, and they have a number of good pictures. Do you think more are needed for the Wikipedia article? The one shown here is taken from the frontispiece of L. Huxley's first volume. -- Astrochemist 14:26, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

You may want to delete the photo shown here. - Astrochemist 16:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Graphics

I'm most grateful for the tombstone, and it's raised the need for some more, and better, portraits than the two existing ones. I'm debating flat-bed scanners versus photography as a method for capturing graphics. Any opinions? As to content, there's obviously a need for a 'Young Huxley' photo, and it has to be one of the two obvious candidates. Macdonald-ross 20:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Glad I could donate the tombstone. Concerning the comments you left on my own talk page, you're 100% correct. Finding good photos and getting quality scans can take a lot of time. I've tried to add some pictures to other pages for nineteenth-century scientists, but it's difficult to locate high-quality original prints, other than resorting to older books with plates or ordering from galleries and such. I've only tried flat-bed scanning. -- When I get a moment I'll check out "the hardback version of Desmond (2 vols)" you mentioned. -- By the way, I seem to remember, from 20 years ago, that the Natural History Museum in South Kensington has a Huxley statue near the main entrance. There may be others of him, I don't know. -- Good luck in your Huxley work! - Astrochemist 04:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Alfred Gibbs Bourne

Hi, found your recent edits of considerable interest. Was wondering if you could find sources and expand on this statement in the Ray Lankester article.

“ ...to lead biological science in the Indian Empire. ”

Shyamal 11:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Later I found this in the Roy Soc archives, relating to his election as Fellow: Professor of Biology in the Presidency College, Madras. Fellow of University College, London. For many years engaged in teaching and in researches upon Comparative Anatomy and Embryology, especially of Invertebrata. Especially known to comparative anatomists for his discoveries in the structure of leeches, and as discoverer of the hydroid phase of Limnocodium, also of two remarkable new genera of Choetopod worms, described by him as Haplobranchus and Choetobranchus. Author of the following, as well as several other memoirs: - 'On the Structure of the Nephridia of the Medicinal Leech' (Quart Journ Micros Sci, 1880); 'Contributions to the Anatomy of the Hirudinea' (ibid, 1884); 'On the Hydroid Form of Limnocodium' (Proc Roy Soc, 1884); 'On the Supposed Communication of the Vascular Sustem with the Exterior in Pleurobranchus' (Quart Journ Micros Sci, 1885). Since he has been in India, Professor Bourne has sent home important researches on Indian Earthworms, on Choetobranchus (a new naidform worm), on a new Protoplasm, and some valuable experimental researches on the suicide of Scorpions. (Proc Roy Soc, 1889). Macdonald-ross

Henry W. Bates article

Hello, I noticed you signed this content page and several others. I've removed these myself, but please ensure you don't sign articles themselves, only talk pages are appropriate, in which case you should always sign your posts. Seeing a random link to your user page is rather confusing to the reader, who may not understand the connection. In any case, it is not appropriate for us to add any mention of ourselves on article pages regardless of how much work we do on them.

Anyhow, I have enjoyed reading your work on Bates and Fritz Muller, keep up the great work! Richard001 09:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, just a mistake. Macdonald-ross

Class

Thanks for your thoughts. I changed the class at the article, you might want to link to the present version. Best regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 19:13, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should made the warning a little more clear. Through a strange wrinkle, GA articles require a consensus, but the higher rating does not - it is the first time I have been so bold. I did think of putting it straight to a feature article discussion, adding a statement that the articles style should remain intact. I like the way it is, or was, referenced. I think that once editors work out how to use the {{Cite}} business, they want to implement it everywhere. I still see the numbered note system being used for your style of citation, full references being listed at the end. The article is very well done; I look forward to reading your work in the future. Best regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 04:04, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that

That was me that went through and changed the referencing style. I honestly wasn't trying to step on your toes, I've been watching the article for a while, and it seemed like you where just about done, so I went through and cleaned up the references and wikilinked a few things, just a minor tidy up ( i thought ) in preparation for submitting it to GA or FA... As for the style of referenceing, to be honest with you, it's the only one I've seen here that uses harvard style, and I guess I just assumed that inline references were preferred.

In any case, all that aside, you've basically taken a scrappy stub of an article and turned it into one of the best bio's here, my hat sir, is off to you. ornis 01:31, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Hey, well, with the inline refs you can click the number and it'll highlight the relevent ref, with a linked caret (^) that'll take you back to where you were. You don't actually have to number them, the software does that for you. In it's most basic form you can just surround a reference with reference tages:<ref>a reference</ref>, then put a {{reflist}} template at the bottom of the page, and the sfotware will do the rest. So for example:

Text Body

Some outrageous claim

References

Anyhoo, just use whatever you're comfortable with, and when you feel like you've finished let me know and I'll standardise the references. Really, before I actually read the article, my knowledge of THH, basically amounted to a) he was aldous' granddad b) he was darwins' bulldog, so of course I'll defer to you on any content, but if I can help you in anyway, just ask. ornis 16:18, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Images

Hello again, happy to help with the images upload. I found it a bit daunting when I first tried. As the big, colourful and scary messages state, copyright is a coonstant concern. As you said, that should not be a problem. Did you scan these images from, those peculiar antiques, books? They may already be available on the telecomputing-network fad we are currently immersed in. I will try to tidy up Commons:Thomas Henry Huxley and see what else I can find online. This one is a bit pedestrian: [1] but I will upload it anyway. It might be easier if show you how to upload to 'commons' from your computer, it is pretty straight forward when you have done it once or twice. Otherwise, send me the plain jpg files if you can - the link is at the left of this page. Regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 18:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

The Water-Babies ..! I had forgotten about this book, thank you for reminding me of it. The page that the above image was uploaded to says the engraving was by Noel Patton. You should sign up to Commons and add your images there.

1. Click "upload file" at the left. Click through on "It is from somewhere else".
2. After all the blather about copyright, you will find a button which will upload the file from your hard disk - show it where. Give the file a name in the next field.
3. Hopefully there will be a template in the edit box, the instructions are above it. Or add a public domain license. Yer done.

If you upload them here (the english wikipedia), I believe this is what you need to add: {{PD-art-life-70}} or {{PD-retouched-user}} (public domain). Add more description if you want. I think the best tip I have received regarding code is: "copy others". Clicking edit, then cancel, allows you to see how a similar page is put together.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I'm looking forward to seeing the images, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 17:27, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Uploaded

Please check that I got these the right way round. I suspect 3 and 4 are wrong, but I thought I would check first. Our article, Woodburytype, had no example to compare with. Perhaps your scan could make an appearance there. Cheers, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 20:10, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

• 
  Young Huxley
• 
  The second, 1857
• 
  Number three?
• 
  Image 4?

Did you say something about a water-babies image? The current one could be overwritten by yours. I also noticed that the 'early' image is a flipped (flopped?) version of another on this page. Yours would seem to be the correct version, based on his parting and the buttons on his jacket. Regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 20:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Number 4 should now be the woodburytype. But I confused myself twice, instead of the lucky three times. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 22:10, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Apologies

Very sorry about giving you the camelcase, I will fix that now. Check whether you saw the last version of the poem-quotation, I made a few botched saves. I will indent it further if that is what you mean.

... or put it like this, if you prefer.

I will add |180 px to the thumbnails. px is the width in pixels, if you want to increase them. What about captions? ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 16:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps by some fluke, they were appearing as four lines for me. Do you want lines two and four to be indented? ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 17:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

How does it look now, be sure to shift-reload your page. 18:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Have a think about the options I have shown and let me, or another editor, undo the damge I have done. Did you want the asterisks in the poem, by the way? Regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 18:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Bekannte Bonmots Huxleys

• „Skeptik ist die höchste Verantwortung und blinder Glaube die eine, unvergebliche Sünde.“

I had a quick wander around the other language wikis, just in case they had something. They will have to come to this one instead. I think they may have trouble translating some of your phrasing though. Anyway, I hope the image sizes and captions are what you requested and the quote style is ok. I am sure others will fix things, in one sense or another. Off in a bit and back next week. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 19:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Image

The image, with the caption about "1890s", is described: Image:Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825 - 1895) by Daniel Downey (1829-1881) - 1863-9.jpg - the emboldened dates being my doing. Any more clues to dates or current location would be appreciated. If you want to change any captions, you can edit the text by finding it on the edit page; it will be somewhere after the image description, just mind the curls, { , and pipes, | . ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 06:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

You might want to look away ...

I changed the commons description to reflect the previous attribution. I also altered the caption at THH, your attempt would have been complicated by the similarity of the caption and the image name. I will try to explain things with an amateur autopsy. Between these 'ribs', [[^open & ]]^close, are the contents of our specimen - with annotations:

Image:Huxley%2C_Thomas_Henry_(1825_-_1895)_by_Daniel_Downey_(1829-1881)_-_1863-9.jpg ^{The name at wikipedia or commons.} |^{a pipe} thumb^{Thumbnail. Note the lower case. You might also use 'frame' or 'frameless'.} | left ^{of the page, or 'center' [note: spelling]. Default is right.} | 210 px ^{A size other than the users default. Bigger for landscape aspect.} | Photographic portrait, circa 1888.^{Finally! The caption's text.} <ref>^{More code in this case. For the contents of a note.} Date based on comparison with other portraits of known date. Photo is by the firm of William & Daniel Downey, active ca. 1872-1919; photographer probably John Edwards [ref: Pritchard M. 1994. A directory of London photographers 1891-1908]^{Text of note} </ref>^{End this note or reference.}

The caption will be at the end, between |^this and ]]^this. Sorry about the gory mess. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 16:34, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

excision

It is both in and out at the moment. An editor would discover your levity in changing the 'voice' of the article, in that we hear yours. However, I must be tedious and suggest that you find a way to present that fact for an encylopaedia ... and so on. It was a small nudge, prompting you to clear any (obviously) unconventional issues that may see your fine work demoted (or promoted), they may draw the attention of editors who are less, er, 'flexible' (More on this in a moment).

Regarding any 'hagiographic' tendencies, you might pay a visit to the articles that are POV battlefields, slumming it around 'start to B class', to see undue weight at work. The THH article skipped this process by an enormous expansion of content; the balance is outstanding, the differing views helping to keep the interest high. It is a superior model of POV presentation and neutrality. Is that is the quality that you are attempting to highlight?  ;-)

I must apologise for cluttering up the article with images. It was partly done as example only - feel free to nominate any changes or deletions. My modest uploads are nestled into a gallery of images on Commons, people interested in the images can view them there.

But now, I fear, you will rue the day you met me ...

Having sullied your page with petty or obscure remarks, low-res images and unsolicited advice, I must now advise you of the rock and a hard-place you find yourself in. You must choose;

1. The death of a thousand microedits of a Good Article review and tag,
2. or perhaps the scrutiny of copyeditors, minutes of fame and a day on the main page is the destiny for poor Tom, the inevitable vandalism accompanying Feature Article status being our harsh reminder of the turgid waters it has briefly bobbed above. Bound and tossed into the 'cathedral', just as his opponents would have wished.

Your remarks have certainly added colour and erudition to my talk page. Cheers, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 14:33, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I was looking for another vanity fair image, when I discovered the tiny drawings. I would be happy to upload any images that you convert, yours would probably be superior to any available. I find the occasional stub on photography and illustration, but the victorian-era would seem to be poorly covered. I will keep you posted. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 17:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

spake

I can put the saline memorial back to the way you had it, or anything for that matter. Looks good. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 19:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Simple is best, for reasons of differing browsers; including handheld and antique devices apparently. There are way of ordering the quotes and images, but I did not put a lot of effort into that until I saw what you thought about the addition of them. By the way, either you have picked up some of the syntax, or you have been humouring me with feigned ignorance :-) I'm looking forward to seeing the new images. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 20:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I not sure I understood part of the problem. Perhaps this will iilluminate ...

An image is added to commons, another site. But a sister site as they say. We then add a string of code to an article.

• The start is the image name at commons [[ Image:Beard of Huxley | thumb| 130 px | Here ]] ; the caption is whatever text you add at the end. It says "here" in this example.
• The software 'gets' the image from Commons, creates an odd sort of page here (the english wikipedia), and then adds it to the article. The mysterious page will appear if an image is clicked in an article. It contains a link back to commons. Enough of that.
• The caption, emboldened and italic in the code example above, can be anything you wish. It is independent of the above process. It can be different at various articles and may contain more links and formatting to the text that will appear.

... or perhaps it won't. I will try to see where these captions that you speak of are. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 18:11, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Well that was an outstanding success or a dismal failure, dependent on your outlook. Would you care to try yourself? Fred ☻ 19:33, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Some encouragement

User:Rusty Cashman awarded this Barnstar to User:Macdonald-ross for his excellent work on Thomas Huxley.

You have done a fantastic job with the article, and I hope that you will be nominating it for FA soon. Rusty Cashman 08:04, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

A barnstar! Possibly a record in the time taken to aquire one of these, a deserved and appropriate award for your efforts. Extremely valuable, but light as a feather. I hope I can write something half as good as your effort. I also hope you can continue to make these improvements. Fred ☻ 16:17, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments and edit. I like brief biographies, they are fun to do. I do give the reader a bumpy ride, unfinished thoughts that I plan to expand on - one day...! I always hope someone will come along and expand them into full articles. As for your work, I will have it quietly reviewed and find out more on the process. Less ambitious promoters than I, might go through the good article procedure first. I must carry that burden, if confronted by anyone thinking that was audacious! We might also find an outside source for an objective view. However, I believe it is traditional to present yourself at inquisitions. Best regards, Fred ☻ 20:24, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Eng.Bot. is need of a rewrite, I am still tossing facts together. Your edit was a helpful reminder, though. For a lighter moment, have a look at the posts and date at this page, Talk:James Sowerby. It will be an active topic one day! Fred ☻ 20:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Flowers

A good target for your skills. I am not sure you need the editing tag, the change halfway through is obvious.

It summarised the first aid knowledge needed by all soldiers to help the wounded before a surgeon was available could possibly be expanded. This was a pretty big deal, giving people the knowledge to preserve life. Many have died while others have tutted and sighed, waiting for a professional to arrive. Simple asphyxiation usually. The link to the website there is a undiscovered mine for me. I do some transcribing from time to time and I have been helping an editor to do one of Smith's works. Let me know if you want something different, I find it relaxing and it is sure to be useful. It is fun to puzzle out little problems that arise from it.

Congrats on the upload, your odd files have not made it as straightforward as I implied. Where was the scan done, by yourself or another? You can either go back to commons and ask on the noticeboard or return the files to your printer and see if they can fix them. It would be a shame to lose the one I tried, (Woodburytype) it would be good if you went to the corrupt file and re-uploaded it; this will overwrite the wonky one and save me having to delete it. I doubt the size is an issue, the bigger the better up to a point. I will find out what I can and let you get on with the hard stuff - writing. Remind me if I'm waylaid, I am all over the place as usual. A friend once translated a phrase to describe one of my moods, You look like your spoon fell into honey!

  Now how can
              one
make this
         happen?
 I can add
  s p a c i ng
               and
                   use
  different formatting?
                                 Without a border?

With this→   <poem>  placed before the first line; the end is before this →</poem>

Edit this page to have a look, then cancel. Note that the end 'tag' has a backslash. Regards Fred ☻ 17:08, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

William Flower

Hi ! The C J Cornish biography of Sir W H Flower is online on the link I added to the article. It has several copyright free pictures. I just added another here Image:WilliamFlower.jpg. There is another of him in the uniform of the 63rd Regiment. It suggests another inspiration for his tirade against bad clothing :). Let me know if you need any of the images. I did not want to add the image just now and trouble you when you were editing. Cheers. Shyamal 14:50, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Polymorphism and geographic variation

Hi. I changed the reference to E. B. Ford that you added to Polymorphism (biology): it's now a footnote like the other references in the article. I've used the same method you used (Ford 1940), but this article had all footnotes.

Why did you add a note that polymorphism was not geographic variation? It seemed to be in the wrong place, as the preceding sentence was about sympatric speciation. Do you think your point needs to be emphasized elsewhere in the article? —JerryFriedman 21:53, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for the footnote. There's plenty of Wiki tricks I haven't mastered yet. I was trying to polish Ford up a bit, and shouldn't have touched polymorphism until I had time to do it properly. It's not adequate as is; to give one obvious example, neither blood typing nor electrophoresis is chemical in nature (the one immunological, the other physical). I'd like to come back to it in a few weeks; at present busy with evolutionary synthesis (which is how I got onto Ford). The definition of polymorphism needs work, and the examples. Macdonald-ross 15:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Bibby

Hey, in the quotes section of Huxley, there are a handful that are referenced as just Bibby and a page number. Are they from Bibby 1972, or 1959? ornis (t) 06:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

1959; i bought 1972 later when I realised it was a different book! Macdonald-ross 13:50, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks, I'll go fix that. ornis (t) 13:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Comments (User:Orangemarlin) refactored. Fred ☻ 18:27, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Polymorphism again

I'm looking forward to your edits on polymorphism.

Above you asked another editor about edit summaries. When you add new stuff, it's helpful to say "New stuff on subject A and subject B" or "added subject C" or something like that. I admit I don't always do this, but I try to remember. —JerryFriedman 02:32, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Bit obsessed with the modern evolutionary synthesis at the moment, so I'll do that first, and perhaps amplify it on E.B. Ford page and Polymorphism page a bit later. I had in mind to briefly summarise the state of thought at 'synthesis-time' by using E.B. Ford's work as an example (1964 Ecological genetics and 1965 Genetic polymorphisms summarise work which started in the 1930s). I have them on order, but they haven't arrived yet. Pro-tem, I'll write a para based on Ford's essay 'Polymorphism & taxonomy in Evolution the new systematics (ed Hux); also Huxley treats it in Evolution the modern synthesis. Of course genetic polymorphism is one of the topics which has stood the test of time really well; and it is the type of polymorphism I'm interested in for these W-pages.

I've been dipping into Hamilton's Gene Lands to get a picture of what problems he found interesting, and how they relate to the synthesis. Very testing ideas! He's way out of sight the best theoretician since Fisher & Co. I found a nice quote saying he felt his work fitted well inside Darwinism; I'll put it in next time. Regards,Macdonald-ross 14:19, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't mean to nag. My paternal feelings about this article aren't your problem. However, the things you mention above sound very interesting. —JerryFriedman 01:09, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Confession

Removed comment[2] by [3]. Fred ☻ 05:52, 11 August 2007 (UTC)