User talk:Tom Reedy

Hello, Tom Reedy! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already loving Wikipedia you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Happy editing! LittleOldMe 14:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC) Getting Started Wikipedia Tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Fair use • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Pages needing attention • Peer review Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Tom, When you are on my talk page, just click on "e-mail this user" in the toolbox. (That procedure works for anyone on Wikipedia who's entered their e-mail address into their preferences - and I have :). - Nunh-huh 14:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Latin

May I enlist your help on Latin? Although I'm not a bad copyeditor, I'm no magician. RedRabbit1983 14:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Shakespeare

Good work. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Shakespeare&diff= 147380578&oldid=147003695]

Marriage stuff

I'm just doing a light copy edit on the biography, because it's the best part of the article, thanks to you, RedRabbit and earlier editors, so I'm not really looking much up. I think that bit's almost fine now, except that we are getting a bit more detail on who issued this licence than perhaps anyone will be interested in.qp10qp 21:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

You change whatever you need to. I hope to repeatedly copyedit the article in diminishing circles, with less and less to do each time. The tithes were there already and I just added some detail. The reason was that the passage read, for some reason, as if New Place resulted from the Blackfriars profits in some way.

On the profits from the tithes, I am just going by Wells, who says that the tithes brought him £60 a year, but of course, that has to be set off against his investment (£440) and an annual fee, which Ackroyd tells me was £17. The details aren't anything I'm wedded to, so long as we draw together some examples of his wealth (if you want to move tithes, I could put the 1602 Chapel Lane cottage in there instead).

On your point about the leasing of Blackfriars, I think it might be a little overtechnical to try to explain to the readers the nuances of the financial arrangements. The books I have with me don't nuance it; for example, Wells says "In August 1608 the King's Men took up the lease of the smaller, 'private' indoor theatre, the Blackfriars; again, Shakespeare was one of the syndicate of owners." I wonder if the readers of our article need more than that? We have in effect three layers of the King's Men: Cuthbert Burbage, the seven partners, and the wider acting company; but in a way they are all "The King's Men", so to speak. For me it's like saying that Chelsea have leased Stamford Bridge (if you are American, let's say that the Houston Oilers have leased the Astrodome). In truth, the financial complexities go beyond the simple statement; the chairman may be leasing the ground to the club, whose directors are making profit from the gates, etc. But for most purposes a fairly general statement covers this sort of stuff, I think. However, you do what you think is right.

As far as repetitions are concerned, there are quite a few here and there in the article, which we can iron out as we go along, I'm sure. I agree that the article is much better. I also agree with Alabamaboy that there's some dense stuff lower down, but I am confident that I can make it more and more lucid with each copy edit.qp10qp 22:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Semicolons, etc.

I didn't know that I did. Could you give me an example?qp10qp 11:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Looking at my last edit yesterday, I deduce that you are referring to the caption. Well, I made the best of a bad job there. The clause is actually not dependent on "National Portrait Gallery, London", or it would seem as if the gallery itself, rather than the picture, was on display at the gallery in Washington. The comma there was unacceptable for that reason. The problem arises from the convention that captions don't have to be sentences: someone at some point must have piled extra information into the caption without reorganising it properly. I have solved the problem by removing the superfluous and temporary information about where the portrait might be on loan.qp10qp 11:26, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty confident about the cites in the lower parts of the article, because I've added quite a proportion of them myself. Of course, there are many refs that one cannot check, but I'm not aware of any extraordinary statements. I intend to fact check "Life" myself in the next few days as well, so don't worry if you can't do all of it.I was gutted when Xover said the number of Judith's children was wrong. It hadn't occurred to me to check such basic things as that, but now I'm determined to go into FA knowing the whole article in depth and not just the critical and arty stuff I had concentrated on.

I feel we can go to FA in the next few days. The article meets the criteria; and the main criticisms at the last FA were to do with references. That doesn't mean it will certainly pass, because we wouldn't be human if we didn't feel rather pleased with what we're doing, and cognitive dissonance might be deluding us. I don't know if you have been through an FA before, but gird yourself for some harsh and potentially upsetting criticism. And maybe for some hard work. An article like this is bound to be held to exceptionally high standards, and people might come along asking us to rewrite or ditch huge chunks of it. We should hold our nerve, however, and resist the temptation to buy supports by blindly doing everything requested. (For me, the gold star would be nice; but having a quality article with some integrity about it is more important.) In particular, I think we should be cautious about any one asking us to change our whole reference formatting (a common request at FA). The amount of work would be enormous, and the criteria say only that we should be consistent, not satisfy any particular style choice. We should hold reviewers to the criteria, as they will do to us.qp10qp 12:43, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on the ref formatting at the moment. I'm going to standardise Xover's refs when I fact check "Life", probably tomorrow. Consistency in the ref formatting is impossible at the micro level; and having been through a few FAs, I'm 100% certain that we will pass on referencing. The reason 100% formatting consistency is impossible at the micro level is because this article does not have a separate bibliography. Therefore it is using the footnote system as a references system (based on the formatting in the references template); and you do not find that in printed books, so there is no provision for it in manuals of style. This means that the style used is a hybrid of alphabetical bibliographical referencing and short-note footnoting. In the circumstances, I think it is remarkably clear. The only marked inconsistency is that we are using full stops for full references and commas for shortened references (the usual distinction is commas for notes and full stops for bibliographies). However, as inconsistences go, using a mere two styles, in a logical way, is not likely to challenge the reader: it is clear enough what is going on. The quality of our referencing is so far above average that I think it will be an asset at FAC. Any complaint by a reviewer about too much Schoenbaum or too many references to individual points will be irrelevant to the criteria. I notice by the way that more than one edition of Schoenbaum's Compact is cited; I will sort that out shortly, but could you have a glance at the refs to two editions of Lives and ref them consistently to the edition you have (I don't have a copy)? Again, not essential; but it's neat.qp10qp 15:26, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The semicolon is most excellent for antithesis, something I learned from Fowler. But edit as you wish: both are correct.qp10qp 12:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

We need to keep our beans chilled

Oh, it's fine. This is normal for the Shakespeare article! People latch on to something they feel is under-represented and focus on that rather than the summary-style needs of the article. Also, not everyone grasps that Shakespeare scholarship is a three-ring circus where too many people are trying to make their name. That's why it's always best for us to go with the wise general-Shakespeare scholars, who (in this case, as in others) take no side but mention the theory in passing. Bottom line: we don't know. We shouldn't have to cite partial scholarship in an article like this.qp10qp 08:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I've just checked Greenblatt: Mamalujo overstates his position. Greenblatt actually says, "As the scholar Ernst Honigmann and others have suggested, Cottam could have been asked by the Hoghtons to recommend a promising young man to be a teacher to their children....", etc. In other words, he never strays from "could, might, assume...". The difference between our article and the biographies of people like Greenblatt is that whereas the latter need to explore every last possibility in order to fill up their books, we need to keep our article concise and as close to the known facts as possible.qp10qp 12:32, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Wells ref

Tom, when you are available, could you drop me the book details for your edition of Shakespeare: A Life in Drama (I don't know what edition you have). The p 99 ref is promising. My only reservation is that this is one of Wells's early books, and we should be citing current opinion, since anything with even a hint of cultural imperialism is deprecated nowadays. Because the opening claims, though true, are challengeable, we need to have all angles of attack covered. I've stuck a Greenblatt ref in there for the time being: fortunately, he's a full-on Harvard prof, but anyone who's read it will also know how wiffly and populistic that book is—so reinforcement is certainly required.qp10qp 10:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Image:ShakespeareMonument.JPG—apology

There was a request on the William Shakespeare page to crop this image. I jumped in and did it, then noticed that you were a prominent contributor to the page yourself. Apologies for not giving you enough time to do it. I will not be offended at all if you do just this, and replace my attempt. --Old Moonraker 06:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The Tempest topical allusion

You might be interested to read the full case for the Stephano Janiculo allusion in my response to BenJonson's objections on The Tempest discussion page. (Puzzle Master 12:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC))

FA

No, it's quiet at the moment. No big things to do yet (calm before the storm?), except that someone said it might go over the heads of school students, so I'm copyediting for reading ease. It would be cool to have you sign the nom, though (Wrad and RR have), since you've done so much hard work on the article. Enjoy your holiday. I envy you Stratford, Ont.qp10qp 23:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, it's easy. Just put your sig and maybe a comment at the bottom of my little introductory statement. Check previous FAC link to see how it was done last time, if you like.qp10qp 10:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Tom, stop swanning about at Stratford for a minute and jolly well get your name on that nom. It's going well (famous last words), and we want your contribution known. Guillaume has name-checked you; but I don't care if you have to sign in from a satphone in the desert, just get your arse in gear and do it.qp10qp 08:55, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Shakespeare FAC

Glad you showed up. I was worried you'd come back from Stratford to find you'd missed all the excitement. AndyJones 18:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Will

		The Copyeditor's Barnstar
		I commend you for all of your hard work on William Shakespeare. To compose and copy edit articles with multitudes of other people is never easy. You have helped produce a fascinating and eminently readable article. Think how many high school essays will reflect your language! :) Awadewit | talk 04:53, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Copy editing?

Although the work-intensive Shakespeare FAC is still ongoing, I wonder if you might have some time to copy edit Mary: A Fiction. It is currently at FAC and some concerns have been raised regarding the prose. Frankly, I feel that some of these concerns are unwarranted, but I am still trying to find editors to look at the article for me and fix anything that is amiss. I would greatly appreciate it. I would be willing to copy edit or review an article for you in return. I am, despite appearances, a good copy editor and reviewer. Awadewit | talk 07:38, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Hamlet

I don't know if you're interested, but Wikipedia:Peer review/Hamlet could use some comments, or alternatively your help would we welcomed at the page itself. Best, AndyJones 20:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The Tempest

any thoughts? ;-) AndyJones (talk) 08:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry: any time! AndyJones (talk) 20:54, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

othello

is othello the only one that the villain survives in? Wikisaver62 (talk) 13:44, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

• I responded to this question at Talk:William Shakespeare. AndyJones (talk) 13:52, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

A. S. Cairncross

Earlier today you edited the Ur-Hamlet article, changing "Alfred S. Cairncross" to "Alexander S. Cairncross". My edition of Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare gives the name of this gentleman as "Andrew S. Cairncross" (p.289). Do you have the actual book by Cairncross? If not, what is your source for his first name? —Aetheling (talk) 05:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC).

Fowl

I suspect the edit summary was refering to WP:PEACOCK; which isn't a policy, but a generally accepted style guideline. The house style, reflecting the house's own peculiarities of preference, if you will. --Xover (talk) 18:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Approaches...

Hi Tom,

Listen, I think you ought to cool it a bit in dealing with the WS article. Smatprt has been very constructive, acting in good faith, and trying to build a consensus; where you've had a tendency to take a hardline stance, not really made much of an effort to keep the vitriol out of your discourse, and are now at the point of edit-warring with him (which particular activity he shares the blame for, of course, but still). The approach you're taking only serves to polarize the discussion and cause needless drama. I would strongly suggest you assume he's acting in good faith (which I am, personally, quite convinced he is; both in this specific issue and in general) and interact with him with a little more humility and respect, even if you vehemently disagree with his points.

I do think most of the notes will likely end up being removed from the article (my biggest worry is actually that they were brought up at the FAC, not any argument brought up during the recent discussion), but I wouldn't call the current situation a consensus (at best it's a simple majority among too few editors to carry that much weight). We need to take the time to go through the issues point by point, try to find alternate solutions (for instance, moving the Hamlet note to a suitable place in the body of an article and finding the right way to phrase it) before taking the “nuclear option” and simply deleting them outright. And you know what? Smatprt has indicated (in word and deed) that he is perfectly willing to try that and to listen to other editors' opinions on this.

Consider this: Smatprt's restoration of the disputed material is merely defending the status quo; deleting the (properly sourced) material without a full consensus is actually the disruptive act here (which point holds even if you're convinced the material in question is in some manner or degree deficient)!

Anyways, I'll not presume to tell you what to do; but I will say that in my—highly subjective and highly fallible—perception you seem to be fighting dragons while your actual opponent sits on a tree branch preening its feathers, hoots, and turns its neck at impossible angles… --Xover (talk) 11:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I wish I could contribute more directly to that discussion, but I'm woefully short of time (and the heatedness and sheer number of words doesn't really help there) and the topic is a little outside my area of expertise (I'm a biography wonk; anything smacking of internal evidence in the plays or critical approaches sets my teeth on edge). I'm trying to write up a proposal for the WS talk page that I hope can serve as a framework for bringing us forward without exacerbating existing conflicts. I would appreciate your feedback on my proposal once it's posted. --Xover (talk) 12:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

authorship

yes i've been reading the discussions o the authoship page. i try to avoid becoming involved because I can barely keep my temper when confronted with the double-think and twisting of evidence that's typical of Oxfordians. I also find Smatpmt a deeply disingenuous editor who is not remotely interested in presenting that actual state of play, and who resorts to fits of hysterics whenever his pet fantasies are challenged. in other words my view is very different from Xover's. Part of the problem is that many contributors here really have no idea of the fringe status of of these theories in academia, since so few editors have expertise in the humanities. So "community" decisions on the relevant noticeboards can be problematic. I think the important thing is to establish that authorship doubters come ito the category of WP:Fringe and that the appropriate policy should be followed in such cases. They can then be discussed at the Fringe Theories board. There was a time when Wikipedia policy on fringe theories had a contradiction built into it - the fringe theorists could use non-reliable sources published by any old fantasist, but mainstream opinion could only be represented by reliable sources, which resulted in the absurdity that wild website speculations remained unrebutted because there were no academic articles about them. The situation is now different, which allows non-reliable (i.e on-academic) literature to be used if it responds to positions outlined in i writings of fringe theorists. we also have to abide by wp:undue weight rules, which means that articles shoud be balanced, and should not list every argument that some Oxfordian, or Climate Change denier, or believer that aliens built the pyramids can come up with. Paul B (talk) 02:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The new editors "WellStanley" and "Anna Gram" have all the usual cryptographic subtlty and delicate wit of self-regarding Baconian User:Barryispuzzled. Paul B (talk) 10:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

ps, you can email the jpg file to me (you have the address) or follow instructions at Wikipedia:Upload. Paul B (talk) 10:37, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

File source problem with File:Shakespeare signatures.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:Shakespeare signatures.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of that website's terms of use of its content. However, if the copyright holder is a party unaffiliated from the website's publisher, that copyright should also be acknowledged.

If you have uploaded other files, consider verifying that you have specified sources for those files as well. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged per Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion, F4. If the image is copyrighted and non-free, the image will be deleted 48 hours after 20:01, 9 January 2010 (UTC) per speedy deletion criterion F7. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. FASTILY_sock^(TALK) 20:01, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Re:Source information?

Hi Tom Reedy. At File:Shakespeare signatures.jpg, could you please list the books you used (preferably bibliography formatting) and/or the links which you used? Once you have done that, feel free to remove the deletion tag. Hope that helps to answer your question. Regards, FASTILY ^(TALK) 02:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

File:Shakespeare signatures.jpg looks good. I have removed the deletion tag. Regards, FASTILY ^(TALK) 22:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Egyptian verdict

I just saw your post about Emerson's 'Egyptian verdict' that Shakespeare was a jovial actor and manager. You say you have no idea why he calls the verdict Egyptian. By "Egyptian" I'm pretty sure he means "gypsy" (which is of course a contraction of "Egyptian"). I think he means that he can't reconcile the idea idea of Shakespeare as a "bohemian" (gypsy/jovial figure) with his verse. It's standard victorian bardoloatry. The Bard must have had a Higher Purpose in mind than mere public entertainment. Paul B (talk) 08:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, right, so he means, essentially, something like "hermetic" or "gnomic". That never occurred to me - and I'm supposed to be an expert on the Victorian era! Paul B (talk) 14:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's just the Oxfordian habit of wilful misreading. I remember having a debate about Ogburn's claim that "death to me subscribes" in sonnet 107 means "I am dying", even though it obviously means "I have triumphed over death", but that one keeps being repeated. Paul B (talk) 15:16, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

OK

You're now on your own with Smatprt ... and you won't get what you want ... he'll grind you down ... and when he does and you wish there was support for what you want to do (because no one will help you) I want you to think about your comment "Please spend your time more productively". Meanwhile, if I want to edit here I will and no ban will stop me ... StanIsWell (talk) 19:30, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Jack Quinn UK

I think his comment can just be ignored. He only created his account on Monday, and appears to be a specialist in gibberish. I doubt that anything useful will come of the RfC. It might be better to raise the matter at the Reliable Sources noticeboard;. Paul B (talk) 18:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll do it later tonight. Paul B (talk) 18:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

3R

Tom, I believe you know this, but WP:3rr is a pretty strong policy here. You have broken it before, but if it continues, I will need to take some action.Smatprt (talk) 02:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

A 3rr report was filed against you here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:Tom_Reedy_reported_by_User:Ssilvers -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)