User talk:Richerman

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Salford, 1950s

Dunno if you might find this of interest. You might even be in it, lol! Parrot of Doom 01:01, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ely, Cambridgeshire

Richerman. Thank you for taking the time to copy-edit the Ely article. Much appreciated. I have a few matters arising which I would like you to consider

1 "... as well an almost complete specimen ...". I changed this to "... in addition to an almost complete specimen ..."

2 Whilst accepting my general tendency to overlink, this edit still raises a number of queries ...

My "... railways in 1845" was intended to indicate to the reader that 1845 was not the earliest British railway by linking railway. I guess this is debatable though I would like you to reconsider this one and revert this change
My "... [Drainage system (agriculture)|drained]] ..." was intended to indicate to the reader specific agricultural drainage. Please reconsider
We write for an international audience and my linking of city status in "In 1974 city status was granted ..." was intended to inform the reader. Again, I accept my general tendency to over-link but again, I ask you to reconsider this change
My understanding of compound adjectives, such as my "... sixteenth-century pottery ...", is that these constructs should be hyphenated. Compare this with "... in the sixteenth century". Consequently, I would like you to review your almost wholesale changes of a similar nature within the article. Of course, I am not an expert on this topic. I have however consulted experts in building this article so your review of this would be appreciated

3 From the guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, links may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, and at the first occurrence after the lead." which is a what I believed I was following. Your removal of Kimmeridge Clay here breaks that guideline and consequently I would like you to review this edit

4 a few queries as follows

Isle of Ely and St Etheldreda are, I believe fair and reasonable in the body of the article. Please consider reviewing your edit
This, the first occurrence of Danish, explains more clearly what is meant by Danish here and I would ask you to consider reviewing your edit
These all appear linked in the lead and again, I believe I am following the MoS guideline: Sacrist, Alan of Walsingham, nave crossing and Norman. I would therefore ask you to consider reviewing your edits

5 Another of my edits which I thought adhered to the principle of linking in the lead and the body. Please consider reviewing this edit. Incidentally, you appear here to be tacitly accepting that this profession should be linked against the advice of the MoS. I would agree with you that unusual professions should be linked in this way
6 I contend that the following are valid compounds: "... following the fourteenth-century plague and sixteenth-century reformation ...". Please reconsider this edit
7 I was not aware of the principle of not linking within quotations. Thank you
8 I do not accept that your removal of the link in the first occurrence of Scotland within this article to be valid to an international audience. Please reconsider this edit

Once again, I am very grateful for the time you have obviously taken to copy-edit this article. Your other edits are brilliant and remain without need for comment. I urge you to reconsider the edits detailed above.

yours most sincerely

--Senra (Talk) 13:31, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Senra, I'll work through the points you made and answer here but, as it will takee some time I'll save it in bits as I go through - of course you are free to disgree and revert any changes you're not happy with.

1. I think my version was improvement but yours is even better :)
2. My test of whether is link is needed is "is anyone likely to click on the link?" so;
- 1. I see what your trying to achieve but is anyone likely to click on the word "railway" to get to that?
- 2. Again is anyone likely to click "drainage"?
- 3. Debatable, but I'm happy to change it back
- 4. I can't see they could be confused with any other meaning and it appears from the link you gave to compound adjectives that it's only the form "20th-century" that needs a hyphen, if I've understood correctly what they're saying. I definitely didn't like the 'hanging hyphen' in 'sixteenth- and seventeenth-century'. However, I'm no expert either - I just copy edit until I think it looks right.
3. Links may be repeated not must be. As Kimmeridge clay is mentioned twice in the lead I don't think anyone will have forgotten what it means by the first line of the first section. Richerman (talk) 22:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

4.
- 1. To use an expression I mentioned on Malleus's talk page recently - ok, I'm not precious about those two :)
- 2. I wouldn't click on 'Danish' because I think I already know what it means - why not put 'Viking' in the text instead? As it says in the MoS - better to explain in the text than make the reader follow a link.
- 3. Again, I don't think these are far enough from the lead to make them need linking again. On a slightly different point, I've just noticed thst the MoS says you shouldn't have two links together (as in these terms) so that they look like one link.
5. Again, I think if it's linked in the lead it doesn't necessarily need another link. As to your second point, I thought 'surveyor' was a commonly understood word that didn't need linking so I first unlinked that but later went for 'chorographic surveyor' as a better option, with a link to the less understood term. I think the reader would easily work out what it means from that.
6. see 2.4
7. it's an obscure bit in the MoS linking section that I picked up :)
8. I believe it says in the MoS that countries shouldn't be linked. And if you only link that one country you'll probably upset all the Scots as they'll think you're suggesting that no-one has heard of Scotland :) Richerman (talk) 23:40, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking time to think again or further explain your reasoning. I will certainly learn from this and perhaps others may do too. I have always preferred discussion to reversion. I guess I am on the verge of WP:OWN here but in my defence, (a) I had an off-wiki copy-editor review the article and he responded with nine pages of red ink which I went through (from A to Z!) although looking at our MoS I did not agree with his "south west" rather than our British English "south-west". I guess I did feel a little protective following your edits soon after his. Sorry and (b) I think if I was fully WP:OWN I would have used reversion which I hate so much as conflict can arise so easily --Senra (Talk) 00:33, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a brief note on the geology section of Ely. Another off-wiki friend, this time a geologist, is re-writing that whole section so I am not overly concerned about how it looks at present :) --Senra (Talk) 00:38, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) No offence taken whatsoever and no explantion needed. I believe those those who accuse others of wp:own are usully the ones that haven't tried to get an article to GA or FA. Once you've done all that work I think you certainly should be protective of it. Richerman (talk) 00:44, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Erm. Be careful my friend. Your edits above did not change meaning but your recent edits ([1], [2]) are most certainly changing meaning. I changed the former but please change the latter. I have the source and coprolite's were the local misnomer. Phosphates they were; most certainly not fossilised dung - see Gallois 1988 which I have in front of me --Senra (Talk) 01:33, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, in this instance I strongly believe that agricultural phosphate link should stay. I did a lot of research on that couple of words and wikipedia has too much on phosphate to state anything other than agricultural phosphate in this context --Senra (Talk) 01:36, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The link's fine - I wasn't thinking of removing it. The Coprolite article gives the impression that the ones mined near Ely were fossilised dung so it looks like they must have got it wrong. I wondered why you said 'known locally' - perhaps it needs a bit more explanation. Richerman (talk) 01:51, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Coprolite (OED. Noun. Greek: dung, stone) does indeed mean fossilised animal dung but in the context of the local agricultural phosphates industry it was misnamed. My issue is sources. There are many non RS on-line sources to this but the authority is Grove which I do not have a copy of. It would be synthesis of me to add the phrase "misnamed locally as coprolites" as my source, Gallois, does not say that --Senra (Talk) 01:57, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough - it can be frustrating when you know what you want to say but the sources won't let you. I was about to revert it but you got there first. Anyway, I think it's time I went to bed. Richerman (talk) 02:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the basis of the above, I will seek out Grove (1976) so that I can clarify why "known locally" is there. It will also give me a source for correcting the coprolite article :) For the record, from Gallois, R W (1988), Geology of the country around Ely: Memoir for 1:50 000 geological sheet 173 (England and Wales), London:HMSO: British Geological Survey, ISBN 0118843958 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) pp. 91–92 he quotes primary sources as Seeley (1866b), Fisher (1873) and Penning and Jukes-Browne (1881) then quotes an analysis by Oakley (1941) and finally Grove, R (1976), The Cambridgeshire coprolite mining rush, Cambridge: Oleander. I do recall, reading last year about this industry, that some archaeology dude mis-named the local stuff as animal dung. I just cannot recall his name. Animal dung stuck, as many local people I talk to still show me their "dinosaur sh*t" souvenirs! (Apologies for mis-spelling your name in a recent es :( --Senra (Talk) 02:22, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's quite a bit about the history here They say that it's an industry name that stuck but some say they should be called pseudo coprolytes. Richerman (talk) 02:30, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for this. I added a note on the origin of coprolite and changed "Agricultural phosphate" to "Phosphate nodules" as both Gallois (1998) and your O'Connor (2001) both use the term nodule. Great source find by the way. As I said above, I did recall some dude coined the word but could not remember who. On re-reading the OED entry for coprolite, it does indeed mention BUCKLAND 1829. Brilliant! Thank you --Senra (Talk) 09:45, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, neither Gallois nor O'Connor directly say coprolite is a misnomer. However, I feel justified in introducing this misnaming on the basis that at least O'Connor mentions the Greek derivation of the word meaning dung-rock but calls the stuff animal bone this tacitly saying it was misnamed. What do you think? --Senra (Talk) 09:51, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The plot thickens! I have just been reading our article on William Buckland who, it seems, coined the word coprolite correctly. We cannot of course directly use a Wikipedia article as a source, but it makes interesting reading. He was studying the stomach contents of dinosaur fossils. Coprolite was then mis-applied to the bones used as a fertiliser. So it was not his misnaming, but the industry mis-naming. You are a better word-smith than I am. Please feel free to re-word so long as "known locally" is still in there which is even a direct quote from Gallois --Senra (Talk) 10:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Coprolite mining is also explained in an earlier article I significantly contributed to: Little Thetford#Economy. And, er, ha ha. I notice that I used O'Connor (2001)! --Senra (Talk) 16:26, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks a lot better now. I was concerned about calling it mining of 'agricultural phosphates' as it's not really that until it's been processed - but that's not a problem now. My next niggle is about 'Tawdry lace' but I'll take the discussion to the Ely talk page. Richerman (talk) 16:53, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	Thank you for helping to raise Ely, Cambridgeshire to GA status -- Senra (Talk) 01:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]