Talk:Shakespeare authorship question

References and duplication

It looks to me that all we lack on the list is formatting the references and a few refs. Xover started them and I've worked them through "G". If anybody wants to help it's pretty much self explanatory; just be sure to add the harv temp at the end. It might also be best to post the range of refs you're working to avoid someone working on them simultaneously.

I also noticed some duplication between the history and the candidate sections, especially in the Bacon and Oxford entries. Possibly the history could be cut down to a mere mention and it be left to the candidate sections to explain it in a bit more detail (now I wish I hadn't delinked the candidate sections!). Anybody want to have a go at it, lead on.

Once this is all done I don't see why we can't go to FA and let them take a look! Tom Reedy (talk) 05:59, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

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I have processed the remaining citations, transforming them as had been done for earlier ones. I'm pretty sure I did this accurately, but I did it on remote control on the assumption that "ref = harv" should be added to each, without checking if that was in fact appropriate (although I think it is). There are a couple of minor issues I will fix in the next day or two (at least one inconsistent space after '|'), and I'll look at the order of the fields.

The following refs use "chapter-url=". I have not fully investigated, but it looks like it should be just "url=" (and "chapter-url", if used, should be "chapterurl" according to {{cite book}}):

• Bate 2002 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ck4HsjjC0SgC&pg=PA103
• Londré 1997 http://books.google.com/books?id=E4vHMEMdbvIC
• Nevalainen 1999 http://books.google.com/books?id=CCvMbntWth8C&pg=PA332

Should these just be "url="? I'll fix it with the stuff I just mentioned. If anything else routine like this is needed, let me know. Johnuniq (talk) 09:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

John those links go to the cited chapter in a book of essays. The page isn't available for Londré, so it just goes to the book. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:27, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the refs thing is not about formatting the wikimarkup, it's about making sure that the resulting displayed reference is formatted consistently. As an example, in one of our FACs, the reviewers seized on inconsistent placement of dashes within ISBN numbers (which will always be inconsistent as ISBNs are of different lengths and conventions among publishers vary), so the only way to make them completely consistent is to remove the dashes entirely. Another thing that has tended to come up under the heading “consistency” (which I would rather have termed “accuracy” or “completeness”, but…) is the inclusion of place of publication (i.e. “Oxford: Oxford University Press” rather than just “Oxford University Press”) everywhere that the information is available. Another point they've raised—this time under “accuracy”—is actually missing or imprecise/inaccurate bibliographic details; such as leaving out one of multiple editors on a work, or not including the name of the “work” when citing a web site (using {{cite web}}) or the name of the publishing entity (usually, the publishing organization). We also need to wikilink the names of presses (i.e. Oxford University Press), authors/editors, etc. Titles of works must be correct in capitalization (and there are some odd ones out there), and employment of italics or more rarely boldface. In terms of more technical stuff we need to make sure all the dashes used in the refs are correct according to the Manual of Style, such that, for instance, page ranges are separated by an “–” (ndash) and not “—” (emdash) or “-” (plain hyphen).
Once the references are dealt with we need to inspect the inline citations for consistency: particularly how we separate multiple citations inside the same ref tag, and how we terminate each such citation. The exempli gratia is that we are (IIRC) currently inconsistent in terminating inline citations with a full-stop; some just dangle without any terminating punctuation.
And finally we need to make sure all the references included are actually cited in the article. It's remarkable how often I've run across references that aren't actually cited in various articles. I don't think there are many in this article, but it needs to be checked.
As for FAC, I agree that the article is probably close to ready for an attempt at FAC; but nominating while the ArbCom case is still pending would be, I think, suicide. The “anti-Strats” would, somewhat justifiably, be outraged and probably kick up a right shitstorm, and the FAC itself quickly devolve into the worst excesses that we've observed on this talk page. I would expect a nom like that to be quickfailed under the “stability” criterion fairly soon. --Xover (talk) 09:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Found and fixed a few stray hyphens that should be en dashes in number ranges. (Except in file titles and ISBNs, where they must be left as is.) --Alan W (talk) 04:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Just jumping in here, but ref formatting and consistency is one of my review areas at FAC. If someone wants to ping me after you're satisfied with the formatting, I'd be glad to check it. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

That was quick! Thanks to all, especially since I know next to nothing about what I'm doing with those; I only followed Xover's pattern and hoped I was doing it right. Xover our serial refs are separated by semi-colons until the last one, which uses a full stop.

I semi-understand about the furore that could erupt, even though all the time they had it to themselves they never even tried to get it up to GA standards, but we can wait until the ruling. One thing I thought about reading Smatprt's comments is possible adding a few sentences about Diana Price, which is thought so well of by anti-Stratfordians. The problem is that it hasn't had a response from the academy, and pointing out that it is merely an extended argument from silence and an example of selection bias (and that's not even mentioning that her facts in a few categories are a bit, shall we say, creative) would be OR without that, and from my reading an academic response is necessary to include her arguments. I know that type of evidence is favoured by anti-Stratfordians, but including it without any source to point out its defects would be unbalanced. McCrea and Shapiro touch on her lightly, but not, IMO, enough to include her. I'll review them both again and see if something can be included.

If anybody else has any ideas, please bring them up and we can use this time to polish even more. It is amazing how much work has been done on the past few weeks. When this is all over I'm taking a long vacation to some place that has no Internet access! Tom Reedy (talk) 15:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

We shouldn't go to FAC, but we can get a good peer review from someone like User:Awadewit or User:Qp10qp. Wrad (talk) 19:43, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Sadly both Qp10qp and Awadewit are essentially unavailable right now, but, yes, we can request either a(nother) Peer Review or hit up the League of Copyeditors for a review or copyedit, etc. I'm sure we could all manage to apply a bit of polish too if we applied ourselves: Tom and Nishidani have probably stared themselves blind at the text (at least I would have had it been an article I'd contributed so heavily to), but everyone else should be able to bring fresh eyes to bear. In that vein, here are some things you could look for:

• Tense—Subtle shift from past to present tense, often triggered by something in the sources you're consulting, tend to sneak into every article. It's generally a good idea to write articles about history in the past tense; but try to make sure you used it consistently and you will have watched out for abrupt changes because they have ruined the flow of the text.
• Context—When you're familiar with a topic you tend to weigh down the text of the article with meaning that is not actually there in the plain words on the page; and for articles on controversial subjects this goes double. It is very likely that the article contains formulations that are contorted to counter or avoid a meaning that isn't actually present in the text, it's just there in the author's mind as baggage from the talk page or from other such meta-levels. If you dissect the text to remove instances of this problem, you can often find much simpler and elegant ways to get the point across to what is most likely a reader without this contextual baggage.
• Affinity—When you write, you echo your sources. Even if you change every single word you are still likely to bring along the conceptual approach. For instance, if you are using a fact from a source that treats the fact humorously (makes a joke about tasty Bacon, say), your instinct will be to treat it humorously in the article, even if you avoid every word of the original joke. Reading through you can often spot these as incongruities between objective meaning and the tone of the sentence. If the language is light, perhaps even flippant, while discussing something sombre; or using flowery language to recite a list of facts. There is a particular risk of this where the source material is in a narrative style (like Shapiro's 1599, e.g., is), which is seductive but ill fitting with Wikipedia's primarily neutral tone (what's referred to as “encyclopedic”; it's supposed to be a bit on the dry and stuffy side!).

I am, admittedly, more apt to honor these in the breach than the observance—and there are plenty of other things to watch out for—but looking through the article for this kind of thing might turn up any number of little linguistic warts that could be improved. --Xover (talk) 08:54, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

@Xover: Thanks for those details which I will investigate in due course (I have already done some checking as suggested). Formatting the wikitext was a first step (and consistency is good).

I confirm that Alan W has fixed all hyphen/en dash issues.

I have never fully understood WP:LQ, so would someone please check these:

• Search the article for ,' and ," and decide if the comma is in the correct place.
• Search for each of the following and decide if the period is correct: straight biography." and for the world." and common players."

Re "chapter-url" above, would someone please see what it says at {{cite book}} and confirm what is needed (Tom's reply sounds as if it should be replaced with "url" in at least one case). While trivial, I assume we should not use "chapter-url" with a dash because that is not documented. Johnuniq (talk) 08:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

A cursory check suggests the commas are incorrectly placed: they're placed inside the quotation as common non-Wikipedia style guides often do, but do not appear to be a part of the original quotation, or they could be left out even if they were. Note that this applies only to those instances found within the article text and not to those instances where the quote is itself part of a quote from a source (i.e. in the citations). All the instances I saw of ,' were within the citations and were quotes inside of quotes that should be left as is. A useful guiding principle may be to never alter the quoted text by inserting punctuation, and another that quotations should only end with punctuation when they coincide with the end of a sentence in the article (i.e. it will be a full-stop or question mark most of the time).
“chapter-url” is unambiguously wrong, even if it happens to work, as the documented param name is “chapterurl”, and these should be changed. The usage I am more ambivalent about. The “url” param is intended to link to books that are entirely available on the web—such as at archive.org or Project Gutenberg—and the “chapterurl” as a more specific link when the book is not on a single web page but split out on several pages. However I am considerably skeptical about the use of links to Google Books (which is a commercial service designed to sell advertizing, that it is inappropriate for us to privilege above other such services like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble) since they duplicate the functionality of Special:Booksources with less functionality and because, as far as I know, Google Books links are not stable (that is, the URL may one day without warning point at an entirely different book). I acknowledge that they can in some cases be a utility to the reader—i.e. as an aide to WP:V—but I also weigh the contrary arguments quite heavily. One approach that might work would be to link to Google Books only for books that are so old as to have no ISBN and who are available as full-text on Google Books but not on archive.org or other such ideal ventures. --Xover (talk) 08:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

A good example of the problem with Google Books: of the three links at the beginning of this section, two are intended to point directly to the relevant page/chapter and one is intended to point simply at the book in general; but due to Google Books' regional restrictions and various implementation details, only the last link actually takes me to a specific page, the other two just lead me to the info page for the book. IOW, the destination of the links will be different for each reader, and is likely to be different based on when in time the access is attempted. --Xover (talk) 08:47, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

That is disappointing, as I find the Google page links helpful and often use them myself. I'd like to understand this problem better. The first of the three links is to the right book (although dated 2004, not 2002) but on the page which comes up for me I read "no preview available". No access date is given in the citation template. If there is a regional restriction, does anyone know who can follow the link and who not? Moonraker2 (talk) 09:26, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that there is no documentation on how the Google links work, but experience shows that a link to a Google book may produce markedly different results for different people. I think that those in the U.S. have the best access, presumably due to friendly copyright laws, whereas in other parts of the world (inferred from the IP address of the user), access may be quite different (no preview available, or only snippets preview, or just some pages). I have heard it said that the recent history of the user's IP address can also influence the result (e.g. if it looks like the user is reading a lot of stuff online, they will find their access restricted). I have not previously heard the suggestion that a book link may change to point to a different book, but I would agree that there is no guarantee that a link will be stable. In practice, there are many cases where the link has been stable for an extended period.

I am sympathetic to the concerns expressed by Xover, and have seen other editors express those views. Yet the Google link is often so incredibly handy that it seems unhelpful to remove the book links due to commerciality concerns. In the discussions that I have seen on this issue, no conclusion was ever reached (i.e. I do not recall seeing consensus say "remove the links"). Johnuniq (talk) 09:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The links are in practice are quite stable (keep pointing to the same book), and I'm fairly certain there is no general consensus on Wikipedia to remove them (or the opposite). While I believe there has been some discussion at FAC about this, I do not believe I've seen it turn out to be a make-or-break issue (perhaps Nikkimaria has a better idea of this?) However, keep in mind that for most books the included ISBN number will link to Special:Booksources which in turn will furnish links to a great many sources for books; including, most prominently, Google Books and Amazon.com, followed by a whole host of topically specialized or regional services (e.g. one lets me find the work in my local library). Based on previous discussions I believe Tom was unaware of this feature, which I surmise has influenced his decision to include the Google Books links, and may suggest that it would be appropriate to reassess this choice. --Xover (talk) 10:30, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

There was an RfC not long ago about page-specific GBooks URLs (URLs which link to a specific page of the Google Books view), which pretty much resulted in "Don't remove them if they're there, don't add them if they're not". ISBNs are generally required, GBooks links are generally not. Personally I dislike the page-specific GBooks links, simply because I'm not in the US and as a result they tend not to go to where I want them to (because of copyright restrictions), but you are allowed to include them as long as you also include ISBN and page number for deprived people like me. As for other FAC reviewers...some will complain about them, but as long as your formatting is otherwise good it shouldn't be a dealbreaker. In short, it's up to you, but if you do decide to include them make sure you still provide complete citation information. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:45, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

If Special:Booksources links to Goggle Books I don't understand why Xover would object on the grounds of commercialisation that the refs for this article link there also. The links are stable in my experience, although there's no guarantee, but then again there's no guarantee that any Internet link is eternally stable, including Wikipedia's. As to their universal availability, it is correct that some countries don't have full access, but isn't that true of some of the files of Wikipedia? My understanding is that some files can be uploaded to Commons while others have to be uploaded to Wikipedia on account of differing copyright laws.

I tried to link to Google books only if it had a preview or unlimited view. Those that have no view or snippet view I didn't link to, although others have added those. Rather than delete them, it doesn't hurt anything to leave them there, IMO. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Special:Booksources includes Google Books among the list of things it links to, but it also includes free sources like Project Gutenberg and OpenCat. The issue of link stability is partially related to the issue of availability - for example, if you have an unlimited view of a particular book, you might choose to link directly to page 20 of that book. However, if I only have a preview of that book, the link that gives you page 20 might give me an error message, or page 30, or the book's information page - none of which are particularly helpful to me. As for the image issue, that's a red herring - even if certain images are uploaded locally because of their copyright status, those images are still visible to everyone. A book on Google Books, on the other hand, will not be visible to everyone. The links to GBooks with no view that you mention aren't harmful in and of themselves - however, they aren't helpful, and they do increase the size of the page. YMMV. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

So IYO should we delete all Goggle Books links, keep only the ones with unlimited or partial view, or what? My understanding of the page size is that it doesn't include the refs or images. When measured like that, the page come sin less than 75kb. Tom Reedy (talk) 19:56, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion we should delete all the Google Books links, except for the cases where that's effectively the only way to get at the source. Or possibly rephrased as, we should delete all the Google Books links from the article where a trip through Special:Booksources will get you to the same place. IOW, only add them where needed because a better mechanism is not available for whatever reason. --Xover (talk) 20:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll go either way on this, but one problem I see is that format is driving content here. It is very helpful for readers to have the links without having to go through Booksources, which I just now figured out how to make work. The primary purpose of anything in an article should be to help the reader, not to slavishly conform to an arbitrary standard for the sake of--what, exactly? Tom Reedy (talk) 01:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Summary of Anti-Stratfordian Arguments

The SAC page has been rewritten over the past year to make the anti-Stratfordian position appear to be unfounded. Most of the rational arguments supporting the anti-Stratfordian position have been removed. I open this discussion section as a place for summarizing rational arguments supporting the anti-Stratfordian stance. Please do not fill this section with comments rebutting these arguments. Authors who control the SAC page may over time condone the inclusion of some arguments appearing here within the main article.

The fact that Shakespeare did not come from a background of nobility is not the key argument for anti-Stratfordians. Other writers in Shakespeare's age did rise from simple background to gain access to the nobility.

A key, rational argument for the anti-Stratfordian position is that Shakespeare left no "literary trail." In contrast to every other known personality of his age, there is no evidence that he wrote any personal letters. At least no letters have survived, nor any references to any letters. In addition, nobody left any record, such as a reference in a letter, or in a diary entry, that he actually met the man from Stratford face to face on a given date to so much as congratulate him or to comment on his work. People of the time wrote about seeing his plays, and there are some references to him acting, but no one wrote of actually talking with the author of the plays. And most incriminating is the fact that no manuscripts in his own hand have survived. Clearly, whether Stratford was the author or not, there was a conspiracy to eliminate all trace of his hand having been involved in the writing of Shakespeare's works. — Jdkag (talk • contribs) 12:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

There are records of people meeting Shakespeare, but even if there were not, the absence of such records is hardly remarkable and no conspiracy is required at all. You cannot expect editors not to dispute your claims, but it is of course appropriate to include the main anti-Stratfordian arguments. You should be trying to convince us that this is a significant argument in the literature, not that it is reasonable, or good evidence. Whether we consider the argument to be rational or not is essentially beside the point. The relevant section is Shakespeare_authorship_question#Missing_documentary_evidence. Paul B (talk) 12:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

More argument from silence? If you don't want rebuttals, then you want what you say to stand unchallenged. If it is so clear that a conspiracy was at work to "eliminate all trace of his hand having been involved", then there must have been a conspiracy for the other 90 per cent of playwrights of the era, including John Webster, et al, who are named in the article. The arguments given in the article are indeed those most often leveled against Shakespeare's authorship. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:46, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Seconded, or thirded, or whatever we're up to. If you feel that important Anti-Stratfordian arguments are missing from the article, please feel free to share them along with whatever reliable sources you plan on including in the article as references. We'd love to improve the article. If you want to discuss the SAQ, rather than the article, you're not going to convince anyone, especially with such specious arguments as 'no evidence has survived in 400 years, therefore no evidence ever existed.' Besides which, there's no evidence of Shakespeare as a writer if and only if you discount the existence of the plays as evidence.Kaiguy (talk) 15:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Books by Diana Price and by Robin Williams (the citation of which has been removed injudiciously from the list of references) give many anti-Stratfordian arguments that have not been included in the article. As it is, the article reads as a Defense of the Stratfordian Position, rather than being a presentation of the Shakespeare Authorship Question. Nevertheless, if there is a record of someone meeting Shakespeare, this should be included in the article. Currently, the closest the article gets to making such a claim is the comment that "contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor," and the only source for this claim is a 1965 out-of-print article by Milward Martin.Jdkag (talk) 20:16, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Jdkag, perhaps you should join this discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Shakespeare_authorship_question Tom Reedy (talk) 20:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Jdkag, perhaps you misunderstood. Is there a specific argument (from those books if you want) that you feel is not represented in the article that should be? Please put it on this discussion page, and we'll happily discuss how to incorporate the information. If, however, you just want to complain about bias without trying to help improve the article, you're just going to contribute to the stereotype (however unfair or inaccurate that stereotype is) that Anti-Stratfordians aren't interested in joining the scholarly debate, but just in screaming bias.Kaiguy (talk) 00:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

On the face of it, I agree that the article does read as a defence of the Stratfordian position, and I suspect its chief contributors may be comfortable with that assessment.

Could we please explore the citation for "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor"? A LibraryThing card for Martin's Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? A Lawyer Reviews the Evidence is here, but I do not have access to a copy and it is a pity that no page numbers are given in the citation. Does anyone here have a copy of this work to hand? If so, may we please have some details of the particulars the statement appears to be summarizing? Moonraker2 (talk) 00:43, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Page numbers are clearly given for every cite except for web site cites. I'd be happy to furnish the information and place it in the article, but anti-Stratforidans complain of all the negative quotations. In any case, the sentence is a summary of the evidence that follows. As far as it reading as a defence of the "Stratfordian position", reality has a Stratfordian bias. It is not anybody's fault that all the real, tangible evidence supports Shakespeare of Stratford as the author. Blame Burghley for doing such a good job. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:02, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The page number given in the citation is 131, which is the first page of chapter xv, entitled "it was Shakespeare of Stratford who was the author". Paul B (talk) 13:31, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The article reads as a summary of the available research by Shakespearean specialists on what the fringe literature has argued over 160 years. Its only fundamental criterion for citability was that of a strict reading of WP:RS, and that made much of the drafting particularly arduous, since the few RS surveys of the subject ignore salient material anyone who acquaints himsedlf with the fringe literature is familiar with. I'm sure quite a number of books are in the pipe on this relatively poorly examined history in the literature of minor ideas or fringe beliefs, which is a legitimate and often fascinating area to study in any discipline (the ideas that never made it into mainstream academic discourse). I am always astonished by the failure of true believers, who are intelligent enough to earn degrees as lawyers or doctors, to take out a Phd in Elizabethan literature, and write an impeccable historical account of what went wrong, according to the Baconian and deVerean schools, with mainstream interpretation. It would make a wonderful book, and if it found a quality university imprint, would substantially shift this article towards a more complete history of the subject. Nishidani (talk) 04:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm supposing you don't have it, Nishidani? I have gathered from somewhere that Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? A Lawyer Reviews the Evidence has an introduction by Louis Marder. Moonraker2 (talk) 04:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes it does. Is this important? Paul B (talk) 14:56, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

For a lawyer who was approaching the matter judicially, I just thought it was surprising for Martin to choose someone with such a committed Stratfordian view, but perhaps it isn't important.

I'm still puzzled by "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor..." which is cited to Martin. Would anybody who has this book mind saying here which contemporaries are being referred to? As a lawyer, Martin could hardly say such a thing without naming them somewhere. Moonraker2 (talk) 08:12, 2 February 2011 (U

I'll dig the book out and post it later today, but I'm puzzled why you're puzzled. The first half of the sentence is obviously a summary of the examples following, and as such needs no specific cite. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for not being able to get to this yesterday. Here's the source for the statement "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor, and explicit contemporary documentary evidence attests that the actor was the Stratford citizen", which is cited to p. 135 of Martin:

But it is unnecessary to argue the hollowness of the anti-Stratfordian theories. The affirmative documented evidence destroys their every claim.
At times our anti-Stratfordian friends put forward the assertion that there is no proof that Shakespeare of Stratford and Shakespeare the London actor were one and the same man. But the documents thoroughly knock that arguments out.
Of primary, and overwhelming, importance on that point is the priceless document that emerged in 1602 when Ralph Brooke, the York Herald, accused some of his fellow Heralds of being too easy in the granting of coats-of-arms, citing as an instance the granting of a coat-of-arms to John Shakespeare, William’s father. Fortunately the document is still extant and is now in the Folger Library in Washington. There, on that document (see frontispiece), is set forth a drawing of the Stratford Shakespeare coat-of-arms and under it, thought to be in Brooke’s handwriting, are the words “Shakespear ye Player.” This irrefutably shows that Shakespeare the player was Shakespeare of Stratford.

The page then goes on to the will bequests and begins the First Folio's "Sweet swan of Avon" allusion, continued on the next page.

While we're on this topic, let me say that the reason for the extended quotations in the article is because of challenges to the text. While Wikipedia doesn't require that all cites be quoted nor even that the sources be readily available, we got tired of the anti-Stratfordian habit of assuming that if they don't know or have access to a source, then it doesn't exist or we were lying about it (similar to their arguments based on silence, i.e. there is no record of Shakespeare attending school so he didn't), so we larded the article up with quotations to preempt the objections. Ironically, that is now being portrayed as a strategy to denigrate the anti-Strat arguments in an overly biased fashion (again, similar to the non-falsifiable arguments they make about conspiracies, etc.). Tom Reedy (talk) 17:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Your first sentence seems to me to be a non sequitur. Noone said he was approaching the matter "judicially", whatever that means, but even if he were, that would not preclude his use of an accredited expert to endorse the book with a preface. I'm sure he does name them, though being a lawyer is irrelevant, any scholar would. However, I only have access to the google preview. Paul B (talk) 09:03, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

From the sub-title, "A Lawyer Reviews the Evidence" I thought he was approaching the matter judicially, which means in the way a court deals with evidence; perhaps he wasn't, I don't think it matters. Is this the google title you can read? Unluckily, it gives me "No preview available". Moonraker2 (talk) 11:06, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

That means he's a lawyer who is reviewing the evidence, not that he is applying legal rules, which is what "the way a court deals with evidence" would mean, I suppose. Legal rules apply to admissibility of evidence to protect defendents, for example. They have no relevance to historical evidence. That would like ruling out a manuscript because it was discovered during an illegal search! Such technicalities of law do not apply to history because it not a matter of interpreting the wording of legislation. There seems to be a view that lawyers are somehow masters of logic, and that legal methods are superior to other ways of determining the truth. Lawyers do not have training in logic. They are trained be advocates, which often involves breathtaking defiance of logic and probability to make a case. They look at case-law, precedents, the precise wording of legislation to get round evidence etc. None of these skills have much direct relevance to history as such. Paul B (talk) 13:11, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

This is the link I used [1]. Paul B (talk) 11:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

From that link, all I get is the snippet view (better than just the front cover, I agree, but not much better). --GuillaumeTell 15:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC) (just finishing reading Shapiro)

That's all I get too. Sorry! Paul B (talk) 16:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Jdkag, the article does state that "No letters or signed manuscripts written by Shakespeare survive" so your argument is in there. If there are other valid arguments that the article does not include, let's hear them. It is certainly the case that based on the information provided in this article, the case against Shakespeare and pro, say, Oxford, is very weak. I am trying to maintain an open mind as to whether this is because (a) the case really is very weak, or (b) this article is biased! Poujeaux (talk) 16:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Obviously the case for Oxford, specifically, should be detailed in the Oxfordian theory article. It's entirely based on the idea that there are direct parallels between his life and the plots of the plays (of course there are also supposed secret ciphers pointing to Oxford, but so there are for other candidates too). Essentially it depends on the assumption that Will couldn't have done it. One of the issues is whether we should concentrate here on the anti-Strat arguments rather than the pro-candidate ones. But there is also the question of how many of the arguments to include. Most reliable sources do not even discuss many of them - for example the many hidden messages in poems; the coded signs in Droeshout portrait. No actual art history literature that I know even mentions the theories about the Stratford monument. They are here because literature scholars have discussed them. Paul B (talk) 19:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much to Tom for providing the longish extract from p. 135 of Martin's Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?. That supports the claim in the article "explicit contemporary documentary evidence attests that the actor was the Stratford citizen", meaning the Ralph Brooke document, which is dealt with much better and indeed reproduced elsewhere on the page, so I don't quite see why the obscure Mr Martin needs to be relied on here. It clearly doesn't support the passage I was challenging, viz. "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor..." Who added that, and isn't it now clear that something is wrong here? Moonraker2 (talk) 06:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Romanticism and Self-Revelation, Again

Somewhere in the dark backward and abysm of this talk page and its archives, I called attention to the problems engendered by framing the authorship question in terms of "Romantic" notions and "self-revelation", at least without considerable qualification. My qualms returned when I just reread the section "The case for Shakespeare's authorship". I think that my small edit pinpoints the kind of self-revelation that is relevant here, and I don't think that anything is lost in this context by omitting "Romantic". --Alan W (talk) 04:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Alan, I think, if one wanted to, one could make out a counter-argument about romanticism and self-revelation, using any number of passages from Keats (negative capability) and Coleridge. There was a strong concurrent view, wasn't there, that Shakespeare was great, in a distinctive way, because he embodied every kind of human temperament or could think in any mould, hence was most himself, when (neg cap) being no particular self other than the one the immediate dramatic instance required?Nishidani (talk) 06:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely, and an excellent point! Coleridge, Keats, and Hazlitt, too (who influenced Keats's thinking about negative capability), all emphasized Shakespeare's unparalleled ability to hide his own character and "become" any of dozens of other characters as the dramatic occasion demanded. All the more reason to avoid associating anti-Stratfordianism with the Romantic period in any kind of specific way. --Alan W (talk) 00:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I meant to add that in the interim I have read Shapiro, with much enjoyment, so that I might gain at least a little better idea of what this is all about, and I think that the gist of his argument supports my focus on self-revelation in the specifically autobiographical sense, even if he doesn't always make that explicit in every sentence on the topic. --Alan W (talk) 04:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

The road to FA

Although I've been over this thing a hundred times, I still find little errors every now and then, but fewer and fewer, and I really don't think there's anything substantial left to do. I've pinged Nikkimaria for a ref formatting review before we take it to WP:FAC as soon as the arbitration is over (unless I'm permabanned from Wikipedia, but then I won't care anymore). I personally think this is the best short article about the SAQ I've ever read anywhere, and it will be a good resource for people looking for a reasonably concise explanation about the topic. Thanks to all for the hard work and input, and by all means bring up any problems you see in the article. I'm not gonna look at it for a few days so I can read it with fresh eyes next week. Cheers all! Tom Reedy (talk) 03:41, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

And here are my comments - although note that I'm only looking at reference formatting, not anything else. However, this might be helpful to you for manual of style details.

• You will likely run into objections about the extensive use of quotes in footnotes. It's up to you what you do about that, just thought I'd warn you. If you end up keeping them, make sure they are completely accurate (does Kathman really use "antiStratfordism", or is there a space/hyphen missing?)

For what it's worth, Kathman uses the form "antistratfordian" (no internal cap) on his Shakespeare Authorship Page website. Someone who has Wells and Orlin handy (which includes Kathman 2003) should check this. --Alan W (talk) 02:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• You might consider making References two columns
• "Love 2002, pp. 87, 200)" - what's the parenthesis for? Nothing. An obvious typo. Fixed.
• "Baldwin 1944; Quennell 1969, p. 18" - Baldwin page(s)?
• "Shapiro 2010, pp. 255 (225)" is only one page (even if two editions) - there are a few of this type of error

I think I've caught and fixed all these, but hard to be sure with things like this. --Alan W (talk) 03:39, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• "Saunders 1951, pp. 139–164; May 1980, p. 11." - careful about page range consistency: elsewhere you notate such a range as 139–64

I think I've got all these now. --Alan W (talk) 03:15, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• " Chambers 1930, pp. II: 218–9." - is this a multivolume work? If not, what does "II" represent? If so, the other footnotes to this source need volume indications

Could this be a typo for "pp. ii, 218–9"? Don't have this book handy, or I would check. --Alan W (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• "Shapiro 2010, pp. 271 (238–9).; Chambers 1930, p. 224." - nitpicking on this one, but for consistency there shouldn't be a period before the semi-colon. Also, I'm not sure about "p." vs "pp." in this case, given that it's only one page in the primary edition - that's an issue you might want to take a brief look at

I've changed this as suggested. ("pp." to "p.", which I think is correct here, as the "p." refers explicitly to the "271" , "pp." is implicit in the parenthetical page numbers; at least that's my opinion.) I can appreciate nitpicking. I've made a living by it for many years. :^) --Alan W (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• Current note 103, "Claremont McKenna College 2010", seems to not be linking to its reference entry properly
• Be consistent in the use of "quoted in" versus "quoting" (and the resulting citation order)
• Another nitpick, but be consistent whether there is or is not a space between the colon and the quotation mark in footnotes where you quote the source
• "Shapiro 2010, pp. 83–9 (73–9):"The shock waves of Strauss's work soon threatened that lesser deity Shakespeare, for his biography too rested precariously on the unstable foundations of posthumous reports and more than a fair share of myths." (p. 84 [74-5])." - other multi-page citations with quotes don't seem to include secondary page numbers
• "Gross 2010, p. 40; Schmucker 1853." - Schmucker page(s)?
• "Holmes 1867; Halliday 1957, p. 176." - Holmes page(s)? Stopping here to say that a few of the footnotes in the last column need page numbers
• Wall Street Journal is a publication not a publisher, and should be italicized Fixed.
• Be consistent in including or not including publisher location
• be consistent in including or not including retrieval dates for weblinks to print-based sources
• Be consistent in including or not including publisher for journals
• Check for doubled periods caused by citation templates
• Be consistent in whether retrieval dates abbreviate months or not
• Don't switch between different citation templates, as the output is slightly different. You're using both {{cite book}} and {{citation}} - pick one (probably the former, based on numbers) and stick to it
• Be consistent in what is wikilinked when. Are you going to link things in references on first occurrence only, or every time? What parameters will be linked?
• Be consistent in titling - for example, The Tennessee Law Review, or just Tennessee Law Review?

I'm headed offline shortly, will do more tomorrow. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The reason some of the books don't have page numbers is because the refs were converted from the external Google book page link that were in the article, so it merely marks the publication of the book. Should those stay or go? Tom Reedy (talk) 05:28, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your explanation - can you clarify? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Re {{Cite book}}: Xover has fixed A–M of the refs by changing {{Citation}} to something more appropriate, and expanding retrieval dates, and more. Exceptions: Cressy, David (1975) and Crinkley, Richmond (1985) are still {{Citation}}.

Inconsistency: "Dictionary of World Literature – Criticism, Forms, Technique" has an en dash, while "Routledge Library Editions — Shakespeare" has an em dash. Johnuniq (talk) 07:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

At some stage soon we should go through the criteria carefully, with some of us playing the role of devil's advocate. Poujeaux (talk) 12:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Continuing the list...

• Kroeber 1993 is in References but not in Footnotes; same with Law 1965, Lee 2010, Nelson 1999, Rosenbaum 2005, Wells 1997
• For republished books, be consistent in whether you format as [year] or [first published year]
• Lefranc is dates 1918-19 in References but just 1919 in Footnotes - which is correct?
• Check alphabetization of References, there are a few out of order

I think I've caught and properly rearranged these now. --Alan W (talk) 19:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• " Commentary (Commentary)" - duplication unneeded
• May 2004 missing journal title
• Is Tennessee Law Review published by the University of Tennessee or by the Tennessee Law Review Association?
• Supplement # for Nicoll and Vickers?
• Publisher for Schmucker?
• Don't repeat cited sources in External links. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Xover's TODO for References

Making my own little sub-section here to treat as a todo list without messing with Nikkimaria's comment above.

• Chambers 1930 is a multivolume work, so we will need to add volume number to the page numbers in citations; unless we're only citing one of the volumes, in which case we can give the volume once in the References.
  •  Done We only cite Vol. II so I've given that in the references and changed the cites to only give page numbers. I also added Nicholl 2008 (The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street) as an additional—and somewhat more convenient that Chambers 1930—cite for Beaumont's “To B:J”. --Xover (talk) 11:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
• Claremont McKenna College 2010 doesn't link because you checked while I was in the middle of a cleanup of the References which changed the assigned author (and thus broke the link from the cite). Will need to be fixed when going over the cites.
  •  Done Fixed. We now cite to The Shakespeare Clinic 2010” as the assigned author. --Xover (talk) 11:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
• “Wall Street Journal is a publication not a publisher, and should be italicized Fixed.” Hold yer horses! While The Wall Street Journal is a publication and not a publisher, the cite is to the work WSJ Online for whom the publisher is (the company) The Wall Street Journal. IOW, the formatting is correct (it's provided by the citation template), but one can quibble over the parameter usage of the template (i.e. one might argue that WSJ Online and The Wall Street Journal are one and the same publication).
  • Hmm. Point taken. This is very minor, but of course we should try to figure out which way is correct and fix this correctly if possible. --Alan W (talk) 03:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
• Publishing location is now included for all works where such can be determined, and where it makes any kind of sense (i.e. most modern works are published simultaneously all over the world; even including Oxford and Cambridge university presses, otherwise strongly associated with a particular location).
• All web-linked works should now have access dates, unless I missed some.
• All journals should now have publisher information (where it is available).
• Johnuniq has fixed the abbreviated month names in retrieval dates.
• Differing citation templates was due to me being in the middle of a cleanup run. All references should now use the appropriate citation template for the work in question.
• All publishers, journals, and authors etc. are now wikilinked on first occurrence only.
• There are still references not actually cited in the article. Will definitely need to go over that.
  •  Done All done, and I've removed the following references that were not actually cited in the article:
    • Kroeber, Karl (1993). "Shelley's "Defence of Poetry"". In Kroeber, Karl; Ruoff, Gene W. (eds.). Romantic Poetry: Recent Revisionary Criticism. Rutgers University Press. pp. 366–70. ISBN 9780813520100. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
    • Law, Marie Hamilton (1965) [First published 1934]. The English familiar essay in the early nineteenth century (Reprint ed.). New York: Russell & Russell. OCLC 490015772. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
    • Lee, Sidney (2010) [First published 1898]. A Life of William Shakespeare. Read Books. ISBN 9781444656183. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
    • Nelson, Alan H. (1999). "Review: Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time by Joseph Sobran". Shakespeare Quarterly. 50 (3). Folger Shakespeare Library: 376–82. doi:10.2307/2902367. ISSN 0037-3222. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
    • Rosenbaum, Ron (18 September 2005). "The Shakespeare Code: Is Times Guy Kind Of Bard 'Creationist'?". The New York Observer. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
    • Wells, Stanley (1997). Shakespeare: The Poet & His Plays. Methuen. ISBN 9780413710000. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

All republished books (all uses of |origyear) now use “First published year”.

Lefranc 1918–19 is due to ref cleanup without fixing cites. Will fix on runthrough of cites.

•  Done Now citing “Lefranc 1918–19”.

Alphabetization will need to be checked.

•  Done Alan has fixed these. --Xover (talk) 20:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

"Commentary (Commentary)"—“Commentary” is both the name of the journal and the name of the publisher, so this use is correct (even if it looks awkward).

May 2004 now has journal name.

The Tennessee Law Review is published by the Tennessee Law Review Association.

The name of the journal is Tennessee Law Review (no “the”). Fixed.

does Kathman really use "antiStratfordism", or is there a space/hyphen missing?

•  Done Kathman 2003 uses “antiStratfordism”, and the rest of the quote verifies as well. --Xover (talk) 20:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to look at the remaining stuff here tomorrow, and if time allows start a runthrough of the citations. --Xover (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Borrowing this section to add a couple of points:

• The article currently has four red links, each in the References section: journal = Essays in Criticism, journal = Empirical Studies of the Arts, publisher = Baywood Publishing, journal = Literature Compass. Should these be unlinked?
• The text "...performed at Derby's wedding banquet" has citation "Honigmann|1998|pp=150ff.". Ideally the "ff" should be changed to the actual page range (it's the only "ff").

Johnuniq (talk) 08:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't have Honigmann 1998 to hand and neither Google nor Amazon are being cooperative. I was able to verify that he starts his discussion on page 150, but I can't tell how far it extends. Anyone else have this work handy to check? --Xover (talk) 09:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

The redlinks are deliberate. I went back and forth a bit on this, but ended up redlinking these as they should probably have articles and redlinks are not as such bad. Since we have so few elsewhere, we should, IMO, be able to allow ourselves a few hidden down in the middle of the references. --Xover (talk) 11:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Fine on the redlinks (just checking they were not accidental). Tom fixed the "ff" page range. Johnuniq (talk) 07:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Remaining issues for References

Here, as far as I can see, are the remaining issues brought up by Nikkimaria:

• Extensive use of quotes. We will get flack for these at FAC, so we need to decide whether to keep them and stick to our guns, or nuke `em before FAC.
• Page numbers for things like Baldwin 1944. We're missing page numbers for a bunch of cites (usually very old or very odd stuff), and this needs to be fixed.
• Nikkimaria: «Be consistent in the use of "quoted in" versus "quoting" (and the resulting citation order)» Not checked, but probably needs fixing.
• Nikkimaria: «Another nitpick, but be consistent whether there is or is not a space between the colon and the quotation mark in footnotes where you quote the source»
  •  Done It's more than just consistency: the space should be there; if it's not, that's an error. I could find only one of these, and I fixed it. --Alan W (talk) 05:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
• Nikkimaria: «Check for doubled periods caused by citation templates» I'm not quite sure what's intended here. But whatever is meant we need to decide how to deal with it and do so consistently.
  •  Done I knew what she meant. If you are still unclear, just generate the diff, and you'll see. --Alan W (talk) 05:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
• Vickers 2006 lacks a supplement number (|issue in the template). I've been unable to find the number since it's not in the summary version (public access) and the archives (which give bib details without a subscription) only go up to 2005. Anyone with TLS subscriber access able to look this up?
  •  Done Tom has fixed this. --Xover (talk) 09:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
• Honigmann 1998 needs the proper page number or page range.
  •  Done And before I'd even posted this Tom had added the right page range. :-) --Xover (talk) 21:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
• Citation needed tag in article, cf. #Taylor "2002" cite.
  •  Done I cited this to Kathman's article in The Elizabethan Review, but since it was a pain to find the bib info I copped out and cited the copy on the Kathman/Ross web site instead. --Xover (talk) 09:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
• The correct publisher to use for Alter 2010 (is WSJ Online strictly the same publication as The Wall Street journal?).

I think that actually covers it for the references. --Xover (talk) 21:11, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no. I just found something else, another unfortunate side effect of using this kind of reference template. In cases where a range of pages in a book is given, you get this, e.g.: "In Nolen, Stephanie. Shakespeare's Face: Unraveling the Legend and History of Shakespeare's Mysterious Portrait. Free Press. pp. 103–25." We have to decide whether this should read: "Free Press, pp. 103–25." or else "Free Press. Pp. 103–25." I don't think that the full stop followed by a lowercase letter is acceptable. It certainly looks bad to me. The trouble with this kind of template is that solutions to such problems often have to be kludges, which is what I did to get those "doubled periods" to go away. There are several of these. --Alan W (talk) 05:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I just looked more closely, and, unfortunately, given the nature of the beast, I can't see a way to fix this problem. We enter "pages=103–25", e.g., in the template, and the program that interprets this renders it as "Free Press [or whatever publisher]. pp. 103–25." Of course we don't want to switch to another kind of referencing at this late stage, and so we might just have to live with this. I think it looks bad, but I don't know what we can do about it. --Alan W (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The docs at Template:Cite book have several examples where "Publisher. pp." occurs, and Template talk:Cite book has some discussions regarding the fact that people sometimes have to omit the period after an author's initial to avoid a double period. In both cases, the lowercase "pp" is not mentioned as a problem. I don't think we should worry about it—it's better to follow the standard, even if it produces a less than optimum result (and the lowercase "pp" is ok). Johnuniq (talk) 09:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Problems with the formatting—unless particularly egregious—caused by citation templates should be fixed in the template rather than worked around in the article. One reason for this is that the templates emit metadata (data that can be interpreted by computers), so that by omitting the full-stop here we're actually feeding incorrect data to it. We should make sure our data is semantically correct and let the templates worry about the formatting. Another reason is that while the formatting may be suboptimal or downright wrong now, once this is fixed in the template it will fix the problem in all articles that use them without manual intervention from editors. If, on the other hand, we put incorrect data into the template to work around this issue, once the template is fixed the formatting will silently and automatically become wrong again at some unpredictable point in the future. This goes for both doubled full-stops and the lower-case “pp”.
We also need to keep in mind that the primary concern here for FAC is consistency. It doesn't really matter what our formatting for citations is so long as it is internally consistent and consistently applied. Nikkimaria's review (as will all other FAC reviewers' be) is deliberately nitpicky—because that's the best way to identify and fix problems, and make the article as good as it can be—but ultimately these kinds of things boil down to what may be termed “reviewer preference” (for lack of a better description). And while we should bend over backwards to address all the concerns raised—because however personal, Nikkimaria's (for example) “reviewer preference” is founded on long experience and much discussion on numerous FACs and articles and represents the best available wisdom of the project on this issue—we do not in fact have to blindly make all changes suggested by the reviewers' comments. Recall that we're now down to arguing about single instances of punctuation here: the issue is material, but not critical, and no FAC will be failed on this basis alone. The FAC reviewers (wolves! wolves, I tell you!) have of necessity quite thick skin: you are allowed to disagree with them (politely and constructively, mind!) and they won't oppose a nomination over a single issue of overall minor importance. Scary and fearsome though they may be, they're still just editors like you and me (hey, that rhymed). --Xover (talk) 10:25, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that Nikkimaria is quite right to be nitpicky. And while we do not have to follow all of her suggestions (this actually was not one of them, but a problem I found myself), if some formatting looks clearly bad by typical editorial standards, I think we should try to fix it, within reasonable bounds. On the other hand, going too crazy over this, and trying to implement bizarre workarounds, would be, I agree, far more than is desirable now. I thought the observation worth making, but your points are good ones, Xover and Johnuniq, and I agree that unless a standard method of working within the template can be found, it is probably best to leave this alone right now. --Alan W (talk) 03:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I looked more closely at Template:Cite book. There is a way to fine-tune the formatting of these references within the accepted language of the template. The result is still not perfect, but I have been able to change "Publisher. pp." to "Publisher, pp." I think it is an improvement (to me, "Publisher. pp." looks very bad). Naturally, if the consensus is against keeping this change, I will be happy to revert. --Alan W (talk) 04:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Forgot to mention that I found another (minor) problem: "Tudor Aristocrats and the Mythical "Stigma of Print"". Having double quotes within double quotes also looks very bad in my opinion. I have changed this to "Tudor Aristocrats and the Mythical 'Stigma of Print'". There is at least one other instance of the doubling of double quotes that I fixed as well. --Alan W (talk) 05:19, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, good catch. I corrected all the titles to be identical to the original published sources—there were quite a few arbitrary differences—but didn't go after to see if this lead to any such problems as you here describe. I believe (but would have to check to be sure) that the MoS guidelines here suggest that we alter the quotation marks (ugh. I just checked, and while the preceding is correct, it makes some other rather unsavory suggestions in that section as well). In fact, We may need to check the entire article for quotation mark usage (I know I tend to type typographer's quotes by mistake, and the MoS wants straight quotes). This latter I think is probably a job for John or myself (who both have efficient semi-automated tools for making such changes on an entire article), but we'd probably best try to identify whether there are any edge cases first. --Xover (talk) 09:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

(re punctuation in cites) Ah, but you see, this is exactly the sort of thing I warned against above. You've now altered the name of the authors to “Stephanie. Nolen” and “Jonathan. Bate”, and the page number range is now no longer numerical: “103–25.”. That is, you've fixed the current visual presentation of it, but you've made the underlying data incorrect. --Xover (talk) 09:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying you were wrong. As I said, even with the changes, the entries are far from perfect. And in the case of those entries you have pointed out, I will now, taking full responsibility for my experiment, go back in and see if I can fix those problems. "Jonathan. Bate" bothers me as much as it does you, you can be sure. Probably something can be done about that. We certainly do not want the data to be incorrect. I agree 100%. --Alan W (talk) 03:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

You have me puzzled, Xover. I cannot find any "Stephanie. Nolen" or "Jonathan. Bate" in the References as viewed on the article page. Of course they might appear odd within the templates as viewed on the Editing page. But it's supposed to be like that. What I did was perfectly legitimate. The template allows for the use of a "separator" keyword with an empty value to signify to the interpreting program that punctuation for this entry will be entered manually. That is what the "separator" keyword exists for, to override the default separator punctuation. It's just another, and probably little-used, but still not incorrect, use of the template language. This does not make the underlying data incorrect at all. The "data" is "Bate" and "Jonathan". The period/full stop on the page as viewed is not conceptually part of the original data any more than it was when done the original way. No more are the literal "[[" part of the data, they are just part of the formatting to create Wikilinks. The template necessarily includes internal formatting devices, and I have just opted to enter some of them manually in the instances I've changed. If we must have only the most literal data in the template entries, then we shouldn't have "[[Cambridge University Press]]" either. After all, the square brackets are not part of the name of the publisher.

Having said all that, I will add that if the consensus here turns out to be that the way the References looked originally is still preferable, there is still plenty of time to revert before FAR. And I will take the trouble to do it carefully myself, if that is really what is preferred. --Alan W (talk) 04:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe that Xover is making the point that in the wikitext is a citation which includes "editor-first = Stephanie." (with the period as part of the first name of an editor). People do not see that period as data (it displays as text in the article), but if the citations were extracted by some hypothetical system for use elsewhere, the data extracted would include punctuation. Furthermore, if someone decides to "fix" the citation template, the workarounds of including punctuation in the data would persist and may cause problems with the fixed template. I am unaware of any such hypothetical system, but I am sympathetic to Xover's argument: it is not really our problem if the standard template produces some punctuation which is suboptimal; including workarounds like this makes the citations a little clumsy and fragile (future editors will wonder why some names end with a period, and someone will "fix" it by removing the period, or by adding periods to all the names). Johnuniq (talk) 06:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Despite what I've said above, I am in a sense also "on the fence", Johnuniq. This is not a perfect solution, but is there really one? I do see the point. Ideally, we would not have to have the period actually present in that field in the template. But I will also note the fixing of another thing Nikkimaria pointed to: "Check for doubled periods caused by citation templates". This also necessitated monkeying around with the raw "data" in the templates to avoid something like "Smith, John.." appearing in the References. Unfortunately, these computer programs are far from perfect, and sometimes compromises are necessary. We have already had to make some compromises. I believe it is most important to conform to generally accepted bibliographical practices. I also firmly believe that the programs used in rendering these Wikipedia pages, like all computer programs, are tools for practical use, often imperfect ones, and we shouldn't let ourselves be enslaved by them. We need to maintain some perspective. We don't want this to become a case of, "If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". --Alan W (talk) 06:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

You make good points, and I might now be leaning in your direction. It's certainly true that the cleanups you have performed have added up to a major improvement. Let's see if there are other thoughts. Johnuniq (talk) 07:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, Alan, no; I did not mean to imply that you'd done something “wrong” (and my apologies if I expressed myself poorly!). If this was a question with only two answers (“right” and “wrong” ways to do it) we wouldn't be debating the best way, we'd just be doing it the right way. All your points above are valid (and thus “right”), and as John says they are persuasive; and we may end up weighing those points most heavily.
However, and please forgive me for going into interminable technical detail here, there are a separate set of concerns that also bear on this issue. The “article” that you see in your web browser exists—technically—in several different stages or levels. There is the WikiCode that you edit (possibly via the WYSIWYG rich-text editor) that is mostly just text, but which also has some minimal markup code that describes the text (i.e. “This is a link. This here is a heading. etc.”). A part of this WikiCode is the template system; and templates are pre-processed using a macro processor that emits WikiCode. For instance, some of the parameters in the template are emitted with '' surrounding them so that it is eventually displayed as italic text. This WikiCode is what is stored in the Wikipedia database. When you request a page on Wikipedia this WikiCode is processed by the Mediawiki software and emitted to your web browser as HTML code (like any other web page), which your web browser interprets and displays to you with all the normal formatting, active links, etc. So… What you've done is “fool” this chain of events so that in that final step—the display to the user in the web browser—the citations look right. In other words, you've employed some technical trickery that makes the final appearance of the data correct. However, and this is the crucial part, in the transformation from WikiCode to HTML there is more happening than meets the eye (literally). In addition to producing the HTML code that your browser renders as italic titles and boldface volume numbers etc., the WikiCode processor also generates what is known as COinS metadata. This is data structured in a way that makes it possible for an automated system (i.e. a computer) to interpret it, but that is invisible for users in a normal web browser. The data is possible to extract using software such as Reference Manager, Zotero, or citeulike.org; and enables such things as JSTOR's “Most cited” lists only for Wikipedia. There is a similar thing going on with “Persondata” (for biographical articles, the name date of birth, date of death, etc. are embedded in the article as invisible metadata) and there is an extension you can turn on in Wikipedia that will display this data to you in articles that have it (the display looks vaguely like a typical infobox). The pervasive existence of such data is the only way short of Strong AI that we can achieve intelligent tools for querying, extracting, and processing data on the web. The distinction is one of “Say what it is” rather than “Say what it looks like”: if you tell a computer that “This text is italic” it's still no wiser, even if a human being can infer from context and prior experience that it's probably a journal title; if you tell it “This is a journal title, that's the author's last name, that's his first name” then it can decide dynamically how to display it as well as let you search for books authored by Chambers distinctly from a journal with Chambers in its title. Or narrow a search to only apply to hits between two specific dates. Or other such semantic features that we would expect from, say, JSTOR or arXiv, but which are not currently (yet) available on Wikipedia.
Anyways, the relevance of the above to the current issue is this: by jigging the template such that the citation looks right in the browser, the metadata has become incorrect. The name is now not “Jonathan” but “Jonathan.” (as far as a computer is concerned), and a computer can't distinguish between the period in that and the period in, say, “E. R. C.” (i.e. Brinkworth) or “T. W.” (i.e. Baldwin). It can guess, but computers are notoriously bad guessers (humans, on the other hand, are exceptionally good guessers). The reason I brought up whether we need to implement every suggestion made by the FAC reviewers is this: if we explain to them that the problem of initial capitals or doubled periods are caused by limitations of the citation template, they will accept that and won't hold up the FAC over such a minor issue (and they've likely also seen this kind of issue before). Thus we can have correct metadata without jeopardizing the FAC, at the cost of some—strictly speaking minor—niggles with the display of the citation in the article. Hence the issue then becomes: do we think this display issue outweighs the other concerns that are caused by the workarounds. And here is the point on which reasonable men may (and do) disagree. --Xover (talk) 09:50, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Xover (and no offense taken or anything like that; I think of this as a friendly debate), for pointing out the connection of Wikipedia bibliographical material to various projects to extract searchable data from these pages, and to COinS metadata, of which I was not aware. In my current employment, I work with computer technology every day, and one thing I know is how little I know. So I am always glad to learn more. I am certainly quite aware, probably more than most, of the difference between "Jonathan" and "Jonathan." to a computer program that parses such data, and have written such programs myself (not, to be sure, at the advanced level required for such projects as those you mention; I'm saying this so you're aware that I'm not entirely ignorant of such things). And therein lies a dilemma, and I'm torn between the two sides and as much "on the fence" as Johnuniq. I also have strong background in editorial work, as well as cataloguing of reference materials. And it really goes against the grain with me to see such things as "Jones, Susan M.." and "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 75–9." There is no easy solution to this problem. One problem is most likely that the programmers of the code that parses these templates are not aware of all the uses to which it is being put, or they would have found ways around these problems, and punctuation would be correct while metadata is being preserved for the search engines. But this code has probably not yet advanced to that point, so we have to take what we can get.

Whatever is decided—and I certainly welcome more opinions on this matter—I would remind everyone that if we do opt for clean preservation of the metadata, that means that we will have to revert to templates that display many entries as "Jones, Susan M.." as well as "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 75–9." There is no point in keeping "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich" clean while having "Jones, Susan M" along with, elsewhere, "Johnson, Charles P.". I think that consistency is important—either consistency among entries as viewed, or consistency in keeping the metadata clean. I could go on about this, as it has engaged skills I've acquired through many issues of this kind wrestled with in as many as three of my numerous careers. But this is quite enough for now. :-) --Alan W (talk) 04:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm on the side that looks the best for readers. I'm sure that somewhere along the line a program will be written that solves all these problems for machine readers and people readers simultaneously, but until then I think our primary concern should be for those who turn to Wikipedia for information about a topic rather than for indexing information. Just my 2p. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Publisher of WSJ Online

(Breaking this out into its own section.) How to deal with the publisher of Alter 2010 is an interesting question, albeit far from our most important issue. I have a couple of further thoughts on this. First, I cannot find any good examples in Wikipedia showing exactly the kind of reference we have here for an online publication. However, WP:Citing_sources#Webpages does not stipulate the need for a publisher at all for a web page. If we do include the publisher, who in fact is the publisher? In a loose sense we could say it's The Wall Street Journal. But, really, that publication is published by Dow-Jones and Company, Inc. Another observation is that WSJ Online, on the page with the Alter article, identifies itself as WSJ.com. Probably, however, that article did appear in the printed Wall Street Journal for April 9, 2010 (and the page also identifies itself as The Wall Street Journal), so there is some connection. What about leaving out the publisher as publisher but identifying the publication as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ Online)? That way we will avoid having readers wonder, What the heck is WSJ? The Wall Street Journal has instant recognizability. And yet we will also be clarifying that this reference was retrieved from the Web version on the retrieval date given. --Alan W (talk) 22:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

While the guideline may not explicitly require a publisher for a web page, I can tell you from experience that FAC does require it - minimum at FAC for webpages is URL, title, publisher and retrieval date. FWIW. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:17, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feeback on this, Nikkimaria. But what I am wondering is, who the heck is the publisher? Really, as I said, it's Dow-Jones. But would it make more sense to give The Wall Street Journal? If this is required for FAs, then can you point to some precedent, so we can see what the general practice is in cases like this? --Alan W (talk) 03:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

On the current FAC page, the most relevant thing I see is "Site publisher names should be given rather than website names", but not much beyond that. I'll look around for a similar case to the one here. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'd be interested to see what you find. This might be relatively uncharted territory. Maybe we'll be breaking new ground and set a precedent ourselves. Wikipedia might be ten years old, but that doesn't mean that all the best ways of doing things have yet been thoroughly worked out. --Alan W (talk) 04:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Whoops. I added the publisher before reading this. I'll leave it there until somebody decides what's right. Personally as long as there's something there that's not wrong I'm all right with it. Dow Jones & Company is the WSJ pub, and WSJ puts their content online, so it's not wrong. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Are we sure Dow is the publisher? It is the owner, certainly, but that's not necessarily the same as the publisher. It is common for newspapers to be published by a separate legal entity of the same name as the publication (i.e. the paper The Wall Street Journal is published by a legal entity named “The Wall Street Journal”, or the journal Commentary that is published by a legal entity named “Commentary”). In this instance I suspect the legal entity named “The Wall Street Journal” publishes the printed-on-dead-trees newspaper The Wall Street Journal as well as the electronic-news-site WSJ Online. WSJ Online is definitely not the same as The Wall Street Journal (the content and editorial policies are different). My conclusion is that in this case, the work is “WSJ Online” and the publisher is The Wall Street Journal. You may, of course, disagree. :-) --Xover (talk) 09:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe you're making a distinction without a difference. No one reading the cite would be confused about this. On all the books we've cited from Google Books, should we add Google as the publisher? My guess is no. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll freely admit we're now into staggering levels of nitpickery here, but in your example Google is clearly not the publisher of the work any more than JSTOR is the publisher for any of the articles found there. The work has a set of editorial policies etc.—which are often more lax and geared towards quick updates on the online editions of well known papers—and it has a publisher which takes responsibility of the published work (and is who takes the summons when somebody sues the paper). But in this specific instance I just now discover that you're actually entirely correct: when I finally got around to checking up it turns out Dow Jones is the publisher in the sense I refer to above (I had them pegged only as an investment / financial analyst firm, but they actually started as a publisher). That leaves only whether to cite it as WSJ Online or The Wall Street Journal, which, while I prefer the former, is a bit too esoteric for even me to have strong opinions on. :-) --Xover (talk) 18:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Well when we cite TLS or NYTimes with a link we don't call them anything other than Times Literary Supplement and New York Times, so I vote for Wall Street Journal. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:24, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

SAQ FAQ

I think we probably need to think about drafting an FAQ for the SAQ because of all the past contention and the issues that new editors keep bringing up because they're not familiar with past discussions and dispute resolutions. Talk:Muhammad, Talk:Global warming, and Talk:Barack Obama all have FAQs. I realise we're going to be going to FA soon and that's going to be a lot of work, so any concerted effort at creating an FAQ will have to be put on the back burner, but we might want to start thinking about it. Thoughts? Tom Reedy (talk) 23:24, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. We could probably do the same for the Shakespeare article too. Wrad (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to remove all the ref quotations from the article and place them on the FAQ page, maybe put a link on the ref to the quotation? Has that ever been done? Tom Reedy (talk) 00:51, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Er, no. The FAQ is meant to supplement the discussion/editing aspect of the article, not reading. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:40, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Christopher Marlowe

If you want an example of how the policy to rely upon information from "reputable sources" can go wrong, the revised first paragraph of the "Christopher Marlowe" section is an excellent example. I'm sorry, but if Wikipedia's intention is to summarize the most accurate and up-to-date information about just what Marlovians currently believe, then you simply cannot rely upon the wildly inaccurate opinions of Gibson and Schoenbaum to provide it. That so much of what they say concerns arguments of Calvin Hoffman which were rejected long ago by most Marlovians inevitably gives an impression - for those of us who really know what's going on in this area - of the 1911 Britannica or of Sidney Lee's DNB. The repetition of Schoenbaum's howler that Marlowe's 'death' occurred on 20 May exemplifies this beautifully.

I tell you this only to register my dissatisfaction with what is currently there, and as a record of my intent to provide something which gives a rather more accurate idea of what most leading Marlovians currently believe and which, as far as possible, uses what we might reasonably hope to be accepted as coming from responsible sources, even if I myself must therefore be excluded. Peter Farey, 86.29.76.146 (talk) 14:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter, none of us are Marlowe experts, and the primary emphasis here is on what can be verified in reliable sources as defined at WP:RS. Wikipedia is not so much concerned with up-to-the-minute information as it is what the academy has responded to. Also keep in mind also that this section is a summary; more detailed information should be reserved for the Marlovian theory article, which also can use more recent sources such as Daryl's book and your essay (and I'm not sure that your essay couldn't be used here; a query to WP:RS/N would determine that). Tom Reedy (talk) 15:54, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I've only been here a couple of weeks, but this so far seems typical of Anti-Stratfordian contributions to the page. "Hey guys, this article is horribly biased, it doesn't address any of the major arguments for X candidate." If anyone is interested in actually helping with the article, why don't you outline one of those arguments, along with the reliable source, and post it here on the talk page. This isn't a conspiracy, we do want this article to be as accurate as possible. But I'm not going to go read five Marlovian books just to figure out what you think is missing. Kaiguy (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think we can change the date. Part of the problem is that we have no reliable way of determining who "leading Marlovians" are. We can judge the status of scholars in established academic institutions, but how can we determine the "leading" authorities in Marlovian theory, or the level of respect or acceptance of specific arguments? That's why we have to rely mainly on what academic literature says about Marlovian theories. Paul B (talk) 18:13, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Peter - I reread your comment, and I over reacted here. Let me welcome you to the page. Kaiguy (talk) 18:27, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Tom: no, none of us is a Marlowe expert (although I'd back myself to do pretty well on Mastermind with his life and works as my specialist subject!). On the other hand, a Marlowe expert is of course not what is really needed, but an expert in Marlovian theory, and modesty forbids my saying who I would put right up there among the front runners where that is concerned. I know very well what Wikipedia deems necessary, of course, and thought that the section as it was left by Nishidani was a pretty good reflection of what we believe, even if staying within those limits. Why dump that in favour of information from Schoenbaum and Gibson which is irrelevant to today's version of the theory? You say that this section is a 'summary', but that first paragraph contains hardly anything appearing in the Marlovian theory article. Search for "secret lover" "homosexual" "France" "Italy" or "go-between" for example, and you won't find any of them. By my essay, I take it you mean the Hoffman one?

Kaiguy: Apology accepted, and thanks for the welcome, although I am not entirely a newcomer here. I was in fact the main author of the Marlovian theory article, and made several comments earlier on about the SAQ article which appear by and large to have been acted upon. I'm certainly not accusing the editors of being biased (even if they are! :o)) merely pointing out how a slavish following of the "reliable source" doctrine has in this case actually resulted in a section which has over time become progressively less and less reliable and useful to its readers.

Paul B.: The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society was founded a couple of years ago by a small group of Marlovians each of whom had written a book or a film on the subject, or had articles published about it. Its website is a fair representation of what those people have agreed to be the main common elements of what Marlovians think, whilst allowing for a fair amount of variation amongst its members. There are several forums (closed and open) where the founding members and others who have joined us explore our different ideas and this provides an excellent opportunity for us to know just what the current state of play is. It's just a pity that Wikipedia's policy means that we are seen to be less credible on this subject than a couple of 'reliable sources' who had simply read Calvin Hoffman's book and apparently nothing else! Peter Farey, 212.183.140.12 (talk) 11:26, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, the problem is that the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society has a grand title, but I could set up the International Whateley-Shakespeare Society, but it would still just be me and my mates speculating (I mention this because I have a pet obsession with the Anne Whateley theory, but in reality I have no Whateley-loving mates. It would be just me). In other words "what's really going on" in theory x may be no more than the speculations of a small group of individuals. I'm not trying to be disparaging, I think it would be useful to have a sense of what the current viewpoint of believing Marlovians is, but according to WP:PARITY even websites for fringe theories have to be "reliable". It's very difficult to know exactly how that would be determined. Whether having written a book or made a film contributes to that depends on the context of publication and distribution. What is or isn't credible in Marlovianism is very difficult to speak of. At least Hoffman's book has been discussed by academics. However, I agree with you that it is inappropriate to summarise his theory as if it were "Marlovianism" as such. However, his also applies to the main Marlovian theory article. If we find no reference to "secret lover", "homosexual", "France", "Italy", or "go-between" in the current article on Marlovianism, then that article is incomplete. It should give the full range of Marlovian thought, including Hoffman's ideas. It shouldn't be your personal idea of what "Marlovian theory" should be. Paul B (talk) 16:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Paul. The title is unintentionally 'grand', but reflected the make-up of the founding group - two from the States, two from the UK, and one each from Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and Spain. The 'international' was included at the suggestion of the Spaniard, in fact, who wanted to indicate that we weren't based in any one particular (especially anglophone?) country.

You asked how one might recognize 'leading Marlovians'. I was suggesting that it could be those who have in some way taken a 'lead' in developing or promulgating relevant research, and that a consensus of their views would probably represent the most reliable source for what Marlovian theory actually 'is'.

Your point about the lack of the Hoffman stuff in the main article is a good one. However, my thinking at the time I wrote the first version of what now appears there was that the title I inherited was "Marlovian theory" and not "Marlovian theories" and for this reason (as well as considerations of length, of course) I decided to concentrate upon the two things which all Marlovians would agree upon - the faking of his death and the writing of 'Shakespeare' - and those reasons which most would accept as being why they thought these things were probably true together with the orthodox response in each case. I still think that this is all that is really needed. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 14:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter, I think in my version I did find something in Honan's bio regarding the homosexual bit, and edited to that effect, but I'm afraid I can't recall where. As discussed some months back, anything you can find from Honan or any other RS to this effect would be most welcome. You certainly know that side of the literature better than all of us, who are struggling to keep up with the Shakespearean stuff generally. Given the high bar for inclusiveness we (Paul, Tom and myself) set ourselves, there's little other option I'm afraid. You have been a most amenable editor, and I hope you continue to keep an eye on the page in the future, to offer us improvements, not only on Marloviana.Nishidani (talk) 06:59, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Nishidani, I'll do my best, but must confess that Wikipedia is way down my list of priorities right now! For the record, I think that you have all done an excellent job in managing quite fairly to represent what most anti-Stratfordians believe, given the constraints within which you were working. It's just the (in my view) now thoroughly inadequate 'summary' of Marlovian theory with which I take issue. And in all humility I believe that I am among the most qualified to do so. 3 November version good, 4 November version bad. Sorry Tom! Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 14:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter, no doubt we've got at least a week to rewrite. I'll take a look at the two versions and see what was cut that can be added based on WP:RS and try to address your concerns above. Smatprt also made some suggestions at arbitration that should be addressed in the Oxford section. I'm very busy today, so it will be a couple of days before I can have a draft ready. When I do I'll post it here and ping you.

Thanks. If it helps at all (which I doubt!) let me comment upon what is said right now:

The case for Marlowe relies upon historical conjectures

[Semantically tendentious - most of us do actually rely upon what we believe to be logical inferences from verifiable historical facts]

predicated on the speculation

[as above]

that the government records of his assassination

[the legal (not governmental) records say nothing about his being "assassinated". His killing was found to be in self defence.]

on 20 May 1593

[As I pointed out, a direct copying of the "reliable source" Schoenbaum's howler.]

was a hoax,

[A "hoax"? OED 1.a. "An act of hoaxing; a humorous or mischievous deception, usually taking the form of a fabrication of something fictitious or erroneous, told in such a manner as to impose upon the credulity of the victim." Doesn't this trivialize a quite important issue?]

and that he lived on to write the Shakespeare canon from exile.

[No, this implies that it was all written while he was overseas, which any of us could refute with one hand tied behind our back. We all think he returned to England a couple of years after his departure, even if not permanently.]

The purpose of this deception was to allow Marlowe to escape arrest and almost certain execution on charges of subversive atheism, and flee the country

[This is a subject about which there is no agreement in Marlovian circles. Did he 'flee' or was he sent into exile?]

to live in France and Italy. Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe's secret lover,

[A.D. Wraight, one of the most influential Marlovians ever, campaigned vigorously against what she regarded a such a slur, and took a whole generation of Marlovians with her.]

arranged the imposture,

[I don't think that there is a single Marlovian who these days thinks that Walsingham was alone in arranging this. The involvement of one or more members of the Privy Council is nowadays taken as read, even if we disagree as to precisely who or how many that would have been!]

and also acted as the go-between to deliver the manuscripts to the actor Shakespeare.

[No, I could be wrong, but I can't think of a single Marlovian who, even if they once did, still believes that.]

Literary conjectures, historical and biographical coincidences, and cryptographical revelations are found in the works to support this scenario.

[This wording is semantically biased. A NPOV would say that inferences derived from historical facts, similarities in the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, and hidden meanings in associated texts support this scenario.]

Sorry for my naivety on this, but how will I know if you 'ping' me?

Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the suggestions. You'll know when you hear a loud BONG go off beside your head. Or I'll e-mail you. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Tom, an e-mail from you sounds good, as it would have done last November, but I would still like to know what 'pinging' is, even if 'bonging' sounds much more like my sort of thing. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 17:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

[2] Tom Reedy (talk) 17:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your opinion about the neutrality of the article and its presentation. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Tom, you of all people are more than welcome. And I meant it. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Gosh, this looks like a love-in! Might I mention that Thomas Walsingham (mentioned above as Marlowe's secret lover) is not Thomas Walsingham? --GuillaumeTell 22:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh yes, Tom and I get on together pretty well considering his delusions. Not that I really did comment on the "neutrality" of the article, only its "managing quite fairly to represent what most anti-Stratfordians believe" which isn't quite the same thing. I said from quite early on that this article should concentrate upon the Stratfordian position, leaving the case for each of the contenders to its own entry, together with those arguments specifically targetting each one. And I think that we are gradually getting there, even if the NPOV must inevitably be most evident only in the collection as a whole. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 16:19, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter I've found a possible source, an article titled "Fusion of Various Methods for Resolving the Shakespeare Controversy" by Mikhail Malyutov, published in Data fusion for situation monitoring, incident detection, alert and response management, Vol. 198, (2005), pp. 671-84. The author is pretty naive about the SAQ, but he quotes your website and rehearses some of your arguments, and the journal is a reliable source. The only sticking point I see is that the book is not primarily concerned with the authorship question, although the article is. We might want to take it to WP:RS/N and get an opinion. If we do so we should ask about your essay also. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Well done, Tom. Mike Malyutov, eh? I remember innocently claiming (HLAS, "The Shakespeare Code?", Sept 2004) that whilst "He repeats quite a lot of the usual errors concerning the authorship debate, ... he clearly knows his stuff statistics-wise," which Terry Ross took as a personal challenge, and gave us a master-class in demonstrating how wrong the second bit was! But if it works, so be it. It would certainly be better if we could use the essay for which I was awarded (by Park Honan, who also cites another essay on my website in his book, p.403, n.34) a share in the Hoffman prize for "a distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe". There is another possibility very near to being available too - Ros Barber's PhD thesis on Marlovian theory, which has been submitted and now only awaits the viva before the final award. I'm assuming that, if passed, this would have to be acceptable? Peter Farey, 193.237.254.37 (talk) 09:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

PhD thesis and similar are not usually considered reliable in the WP:RS sense (there's some latitude, but generally not). However, if Park cites your web site (depending on how he presents it, of course) and it's been recognized by an independent entity (I'm not familiar with the Hoffman price, so I can't off the cuff evaluate its significance) then that weighs in favor of allowing it directly as a reliable source for some uses. For instance, I would guess there to be a good chance we could use it as a source for “Here is what the Marlowian theory supporters think” and similar. Iff we should end up using it, please keep in mind the Conflict of Interest guidelines: it's probably best if you do not insert cites to your own web site yourself—or write too much article text that's supported by a cite to your own web site—but rather limit yourself to making suggestions and proposals on the talk page so that another editor can make the changes. The COI guidelines allow some latitude too, but since anything related to Authorship is (sadly) tainted by controversy it's probably best to mind all of our P's and Q's here.
PS. I think you have a user account here (the account: Peter Farey)? If that's correct it would be helpful if you could log in when editing so we can more easily keep track of who's doing and saying what, and so we can leave you messages on your user talk page. If you have trouble logging in there are venues for technical support (and there's a password reset function if you've forgot the password). --Xover (talk) 10:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. In fact I'd forgotten (as I forget so much these days) that I had a user account, and have now reactivated it; this will test whether it works. The Hoffman Prize is regarded as quite prestigious in the academic community, having had among its adjudicators Stanley Wells, Ernst Honigmann, T. W. Craik, Darryll Grantley, Jonathan Bate and Park Honan. Its winners have also, with very few exceptions, been professional academics. See <http://www.marlowe-society.org/reading/info/hoffmanwinners.html>. Park Honan is of course a biographer of both Shakespeare and Marlowe. Peter Farey (talk) 13:53, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe you're in error here. Completed PhD dissertations are specifically designated as acceptable sources. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:32, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

It wouldn't be the first time... I may have been thinking of the Masters stuff, and I'm pretty sure I've seen fairly strong caution applied to using even PhD thesis as sources; but like with most things I suppose it depends on what we want to support based on it. For instance, even a self-published random website can be used to support some things, especially if there are no better sources available. In any case, based on the information Peter provided above, I think we may be able to use the essays on his website directly. --Xover (talk) 18:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd be against using it in this article at this time. The last thing we need is a WP:RS dispute in the middle of an FAC. With the level of detail we need for the summary, I think the sources we have are probably sufficient. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:17, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I've pasted in the two versions of the Marlowe section here for everyone to work on. It shouldn't take but a day or so, and then we can do the Oxford section the same way. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Tom, Peter. The only part of my version I could not source adequately was the statement left hanging at the end:

Marlovians use very few of the standard anti-Stratfordian arguments to support their theory, believing many of them to be misguided, misleading or unnecessary.

I had this both on Peter's authority, and my own impression on reading the literature. Neither was adequate but I left it in there in the hope some RS would be forthcoming. It is an important point, but until we obtain an academic survey, Tom's elision of it must stand, wikipediawise. Peter, Ros Barber's Phd will certainly resolve minor points on this page, and virtually guarantee that the Marlovian page can be brought up to wiki snuff rapidly, as long as it can find a, preferably university or academic publisher, as per Xover. Keep us posted on this. This kind of academic review of the theories is what all of us feel starved of.Nishidani (talk) 11:00, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Anybody and everybody are invited to pitch in here. The "current" section is the one being edited. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:28, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter if you're done with the Marlowe material go ahead and move it into the article for discussion and copy editing. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Tom, I see that you have beaten me to it. Thanks. Incidentally, I have now read Ros Barber's thesis, which could be quite helpful as a RS. If successful, she tells me it would be made available in electronic format, either through Sussex's own portal or possibly through The British Library. Peter Farey (talk) 12:07, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Taylor "2002" cite

The cite to “Taylor 2002”—which is actually to a 2002 transcription on Project Gutenberg of a 1967 facsimile edition of a 1869 reprint of the 1630 folio (which, I gather, is actually the second folio; the first having been issued in 1620)—fails my “WP:NOR-test”: this is primary source material we're citing. It's attached to the sentence “John Taylor was the first poet to mention in print the deaths of Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont in his 1620 poem The Praise of Hemp-seed.” We need to find a modern WP:RS to support this, unless Matus 1994 (which is cited at the end of the para) covers that point. Note that we don't need a cite to support the mere existence of The Praise of Hemp-seed (or its authorship), but we do need one to support the claim that he “…was the first poet to mention in print the deaths of Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont…”; and it would probably also be wise to have cite for its date of publication. We also need a direct cite for the (block)quote from Jonson's elegy (all quotes must be cited directly). I'm going to remove this cite—and replace it with a {{cn}} tag—in my runthrough of the references. --Xover (talk) 21:12, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

We're citing a bunch of pre-20th-century sources (Ogburn & Ogburn, Bacon x 2, etc.) in the article in a way that's awkward. These are, as noted above, in effect primary source documents and should not generally be relied upon for most things. However I've an inkling that they are there now mostly to note the mere existence of the work (i.e. its publication), and are remnants of direct weblinks that were in the original article (i.e. before the rewrite). If that is the case they should be either removed entirely, or merely moved to the External links section; and the sentences they are attached to should be supported instead by a modern reliable source. This even goes for direct quotations, as it's preferable to have a modern scholar's peer-reviewed opinion on the correctness and relevance of the quote rather than extracting the quote and making that determination ourselves. It is allowed by WP:RS (there is some latitude there), but it would be better if we did not have to rely on it. I plan to take a sweep through the article with an eye towards addressing this as soon as I have the time. --Xover (talk) 10:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, those were originally external links in the article that were turned into refs. They don't support anything, and they don't have page numbers, but they're merely there for the convenience of the readers in case they want to read the work referred to. If they are moved to the external links section, should they be listed under an appropriate tile? "Primary sources" or some other such appellation?

On your comment above about Jonson: do you mean it should be cited to the FF or a modern version or what? IIRC the title blue link goes to the poem on Wikimedia. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:36, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I've addressed most of the cites to pre-1900 sources by re-citing to a modern(er) work and moving the original cite down to a Primary sources section in the External links. I've mostly just stashed them there for now, because as mentioned elsewhere we need to take a good long look at the whole External links section at some point. There are still a few that need to be checked, that are post-1900, but which are still primary sources (i.e. Ogburn & Ogburn, Looney, etc.).
The quote from Jonson should be cited to some reliable secondary source that gives the poem (a critical edition of the folio might do; a pure facsimile edition probably wouldn't) and makes the connection that the surrounding sentence does (i.e. that “… he identifies Shakespeare as a playwright, a poet, and an actor…”). --Xover (talk) 08:57, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

"Anti-Stratfordian thesis and argument"

That Tom Reedy character is finally supposed to be out of here for a few days, see arbitration workshop. Time for a little copyedit! [/me rubs hands together in evil anticipation]. First: isn't there something faintly uncomfortable about the section "Anti-Stratfordian thesis and argument"? The facts and arguments are fine; but the flow? Doesn't it trip you up? For instance, isn't "Anti-Stratfordian arguments share several characteristics" a typical topic sentence, crying out to be the first in the section? Maybe it's just me. Anyway, just for demonstration purposes, I've boldly switched the order of the paragraphs. Please take a look, then revert. :-) Bishonen | talk 22:27, 6 February 2011 (UTC).

I don't recall you asking my permission to edit this page. Nevertheless, since it's a minor edit I'll let it stand so you won't complain later I reverted every one of your edits. Tom Reedy (talk) 01:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Arrgghh, it was a trap! Tom said (amidst a stream of insults) that he was going away for a few days, and here he is, wikilawyering, WP:OWNing, personally attacking and biassing away all over the place. Of course his plan is to get me banned. Bishonen | talk 06:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC).

Tom has absolutely no right to give or deny permission to anyone to edit this page before conducting prior consultations with me, the other owner, as has been established by a huge volume of repeated statements at Arbcom. I'll be quite glad to make a further submission to Arbcom on this matter, preferably before I'm perma-waved off or away on this one as well. Nishidani (talk) 06:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Please direct me to the policy that says it's wrong to post an adequate volume of statements in arbitrations. Bishonen | talk 08:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC).

Hey guys. While I appreciate the humor—and both have and do engage in it myself—both irony and sarcasm in textual form can so easily be misinterpreted as ridicule. And particularly while there is an ongoing conflict it is not a mode of communication that is conductive to de-escalation and harmonious discourse (recall that the goal is not to win but rather to achieve consensus). If you'll forgive the presumption, I would recommend avoiding it entirely, or at the very least not let it grow out of hand. This talk page tends to grow quite long enough even if we all stick ruthlessly to the point. Now, if, on the other hand, you'd like to take a few jabs at my overly nitpicky and tedious shuffling of angelic instances on the blunted end of sowing implements my user talk page is that way --> --Xover (talk) 10:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It's no excuse, but months of hunkering sown in my parent's basement with no outside contact while being under barrage has taken its toll. When something that is supposed to be fun (editing Wikipedia, for those of us who have forgotten) becomes a tedious, day-in-and-day-out war between two houses, one sometimes makes one's own humour that sometimes approaches the brink of violating WP:NPA. My apologies and I'll do my best to refrain, no matter how wide the target presented. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

'months of hunkering sown in my parent's basement'. Whatcha smoken, Tom? I know varieties of 'ganja' have all sorts of regional names, but it's the first time I've heard that one. I'll check The Sot-Weed Factor just to see if I've missed anything.(Apologies to Xover) Nishidani (talk) 15:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yet another personal attack--this one involving accusations of trafficking in narcotics--while admins just stand by and let you take over the place! I generally try to avoid correcting typos on a talk page, preferring instead to rely on the good sense of the readers who can readily look at their keyboards to determine the identity of the intentioned key, although the events of the past few weeks have shaken my confidence in the overall distribution of that commodity. I also try to not disturb sections unnecessarily in order to not delay the archiving bot. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:24, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Contested Will

I can't quite make out the point of this paragraph:

In 2010 James Shapiro surveyed the authorship question in Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, marking the first time a recognized Shakespeare scholar devoted a book to the topic. He approaches the subject from a sociological standpoint and finds its origins firmly rooted in traditional scholarship going back to Edmund Malone, and he criticises academe for ignoring the topic and effectively surrendering the field to anti-Stratfordians.

While NPOV is good, I find the para puzzling. Does "firmly rooted in traditional scholarship" assert that questioning (as in doubting) Shakespeare's authorship is good scholarship? Could the use of "sociological" be explained with a couple more words? Side issue: While Edmond Malone allows "Edmund", should we use the same spelling as in the article? Johnuniq (talk) 07:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the last sentence makes sense. And is it really the first time that a "recognized Shakespeare scholar" has devoted a book to the topic? Paul B (talk) 07:56, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

He is the first of his stature to have done so, even though Schoenbaum, Bate, and Wells have devoted sections of their books to it, so perhaps it should be changed to "well-recognised" or something similar. As to the question about the SAQ roots, he demonstrates how unscholarly speculations based on the works led to the same being done by anti-Stratfordians, and says that might be one reason why Shakespeare scholars are reluctant to engage with them. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

That last sentence was added very recently by Tom in his effort to avoid one-sentence paragraphs! Poujeaux (talk) 16:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

IIRC I just split a long sentence. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Ignore everything in Edmond Malone except what's under the Biography heading. Everything else is cut&paste from various public domain encyclopedias, entirely uncited, and then futzed with by multiple editors over many years (that's not to diminish their contribution, of course, it's just that that sort of process does not lend itself to a coherent overall article). In particular the lede does not even attempt to summarize the body of the article right now. I've removed the note about the variant spelling of his first name: it's actually a lot more relevant that his sisters called him “Ned” or “Neddy” than that his name has some times appeared in print as “Edmund”. --Xover (talk) 08:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The candidate sections

Hi all,

It's great to see some polish being applied to the various individual candidate sections. But keep in mind that an ideal Main article section should be very very close to the lede of the standalone article on that canidate's theory; and since the lede should summarize the content of the article, this means we should ideally not write these as standalone sections but rather flesh out the individual articles, fix their lede, and then adapt them to this article. This is of course not practical without doing the work of bringing them all up to FA-quality first (perish the thought!), but it's worth keeping in mind when working on them: think about all the points that should be covered in a complete article on that particular theory, and then try to write the section such that it approximates what the lede for that hypothetical article would look like. --Xover (talk) 10:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

"... an ideal Main article section should be very very close to the lede of the standalone article on that candidate's theory if that article were up to Wikipedia standards."

FTFY. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Right. As I said, writing those up to FA-quality first is not a practical option. My point is simply to keep this ideal in mind when (re)writing the relevant sections in this article; or put another way, it's a suggestion of the kind of structure and level of detail that would be appropriate. --Xover (talk) 18:03, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I have pasted in early and current versions of the Oxford section and the Marlowe section for editing purposes here in order to minimise conflict with the apparatus edits. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Use of italics

Italics are used for titles of books and plays. They are not used for poems or short stories. Those poems whose titles are italicised need to be changed back to regular quotation marks. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Done, thanks for info. My enthusiasm for changing quotes to italics was started by this text in the section I was editing:

in his 1620 poem The Praise of Hemp-seed

That was in italics, so I "fixed" the other mentions of poems/elegies. I have restored all italics back to quotes, including the above. I mention that in case there is some factor making the above an exception. I also searched the article and confirmed there are no other italic titles that are close to "poem" or "elegy". Johnuniq (talk) 03:34, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I suppose we need to be a bit more specific about In Praise of Hemp-seed, which is the name of a book which contains a long poem of the same name. The name of the long poem that Shakespeare and Beaumont's death are alluded to is "The Originall of Paper", published in the same book. Most writers (or all that I have read, anyway) just name the book instead of the title of the poem. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:07, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Tom, it's not exactly the case that italics "are not used for poems". Book-length poems should be italicized, as with Venus and Adonis. Quotation marks are to be used for "short poems". I bring this up not to nitpick but to remind us to check to that the poems with titles in quotes were not published as books in themselves. I suspect that most if not all of the italics-to-quotes changes by Johnuniq are fine and correct, but one or two that are not might slip by us if we don't keep this distinction in mind. As everywhere, there are no doubt borderline cases (a poem published as a short pamphlet, perhaps), but these can be brought up and discussed if necessary. (Tom, I did not see your last edit as I was formulating the above. I just noticed it. So The Praise of Hemp-seed should be italics, and if the poem quoted from in that book is named, then that should be in quotes. Are we sure that all other poems we cite or quote from are "short" and not books in themselves?) --Alan W (talk) 04:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I see you have restored the italics to The Praise of Hemp-seed, Tom, and clarified that it is a book. So this is fine. If we are sure the other quoted poems are not book-length, then all is well. --Alan W (talk) 04:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

James and Rubinstein reliable?

I question whether Brenda James and William Rubinstein's The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare (2005) is a reliable source for the statements it refs, since it is a promotional work. I don't think it meets the independent and parity definitions as set out in WP:FRINGE. In one use ("as the tradition of amateur autodidactical writing was marginalized by professional university-based knowledge") I don't know that the point needs to be made as it is contentious and not supported by any other academic source, and in the other it's not needed since multiple sources support the statement. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:23, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree, but I see that Diana Price, who has absolutely no qualifications as a scholar, is cited 6 times, and James and Rubenstein, before my edit, once (footnote 207). I wouldn't call either work 'promotional', as opposed to lousy (both are exceedingly misinformed about the state of Shakespearean scholarship), since both endeavoured to make a new argument rather than promote the old stuff, and come under a notable imprint. Unlike Price's book, this one was co-authored by an academic, Rubenstein, even if he's a rank outsider to the period. I know we have set ourselves a punitively high standard for strict sourcing because unless you do raise the bar, articles like this become unwritable and unreadable given the huge volume of trash even by known authors, on this question. But incongruencies in the application of those rules still persist in the text (Price being the main one).

The alternative would be to eliminate my edit together with the J&R reference in note 207, and then find substitutes for Price.

I'm sorry if I'm making this hard, Tom, but if we have any credibility here, it lies in ironing out things like this for reasons of consistency in policy, whatever the sweat.

I still think the point made is an informed one, that the rise of professionalized research dealt a death blow to much of this amateurish stuff. I've read it elsewhere and will keep my eyes peeled to find a more adequate source, if editors think it a useful addition to the text. Otherwise, I have no problem dropping it.Nishidani (talk) 16:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree we need to find an alternative to Price if she is used for anything other than describing the anti-Stratfordian assertions. She's not reliable, as the scholarly reviews of her book indicate quite clearly. When I say they are promotional, I mean they don't meet the WP:RS standard of independence, and should only be used to describe what the theories say. IOW James and Rubinstein are fine to describe their theory; they're not acceptable for describing anything outside of that, or to source general statements about the causes of the SAQ. That should be done by peer-reviewed sources. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:45, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The Oxfordian Flare

Apart from the homonymic slip, your adding of the "brief flare of" Oxfordian "enthusiasm", as reported by Shapiro, Nishidani, is close enough to Shapiro's own words that it makes me a bit uncomfortable. Though clearly unintentional, it might be interpreted as plagiarism. This could be avoided by keeping those words but using in-text attribution; or, alternatively, substituting a synonym for "flare". Unfortunately, to me, as evidently to you, "flare" seems just the right word here. And for such a briefly introduced bit of evidence, it might seem like too much to add "as reported by James Shapiro" (or something of the kind). Not sure how to handle this passage. It might be safe to leave it as is, but, well, I don't know. Any ideas? --Alan W (talk) 23:12, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I was focused exclusively on suggesting a fix for the glaring, or is that flaring, problem with the eyesore. The homonymic slip was indeed atrocious. I watch on amazed at the extraordinary acuity with which several master technicians of article craftsmanship review this and so many other points. I'm happy just to haul in, or check, sources, like blobs of unworked marble, and have you chaps finetune it into Canovan shape. I have no, and never will have, any ability to apply myself to this formal side, so whatever the experts determine is fine by me. If there's a plagiarism prob with 'flare', I suggest 'burst' or 'upsurge'. I don't think 'as reported' worth insertion, since Shapiro has been sourced for such points many times without the in-text attribution. Nishidani (talk) 09:21, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Candidate mugs

I moved the Marlowe portrait to the same side as the rest of them. I really think it looks classier to them all on the same side. Opinions? Tom Reedy (talk) 04:22, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

While it's nice to have them all on the same side, to me the Marlowe portrait looks better on the right because in it Marlowe is facing left. The others, facing right, do look better on the left. We don't want a person to seem to be looking outside of the article space. --Alan W (talk) 05:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if he were isolated from the others surrounded only by type I think it would look better on the right, but it's impossible to look at his section without seeing the surrounding images. Although his body is slightly turned off the page, he's looking straight ahead enough so the effect you're talking about is not noticeable since he's only one image in a stack of images. If you look at the main image in the lede, most of their bodies are turned off the page, but I think the central portrait and Marlowe's body compensates for it, especially since their relative position draws the eye down and to the left in a straight line. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how the page looks in your Web browser, Tom, but I can see only one or two of the images at once in mine when scrolling down the page, not the whole "stack". You may be right, but I'll be interested in how others see this. --Alan W (talk) 06:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Are we ready for FAC yet?

Is there anything undone that would keep us from achieving FA? If not, I suggest we all take off a week to recoup our energies and submit it when we come back, say Sunday, 20 February. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. I was intending to continue my tweaking spree (I am up to "Evidence for Shakespeare's authorship from his works"). Let me know if you think I should stop. I have forgotten exactly what atm, but I did notice some stuff (probably the section with "brief flare of enthusiasm" in it, but a bit more I think) where I know what is on the editor's mind when they wrote the text, so I can work out what the text is supposed to mean, but the text needs work for two points: (1) Insert a word like "claim" or whatever to clarify that the text is not describing an established "fact" ("Elizabethan state secret"?); (2) Use plainer language for slightly more NPOV—the text should not appear to deride what it is discussing.

In the section "Shakespeare on trial", what is meant by "real trials"—surely "The first such litigation" is not correct (it was "The first such occasion")? What is the $5,000 damages? I was planning to think about how to reword the 'PBS Frontline broadcast "The Shakespeare Mystery"' text to remove the external link embedded in the article (such links are not prohibited, but are frowned on).

In conclusion, I suggest another week of tweaking and attending to any issues on the talk page, then taking a week break, then submit at the end of February. It would be useful to examine a couple of recent FAC nominations to see if anything requires attention here (e.g. the alternate text I recently added to the images). Johnuniq (talk) 07:00, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I've rephrased the state secret bit to make it clear that this is Ogburn's thesis, and discovered as 'discerned', which has the same effect, of using language that does not give the reader the misleading impression that any real discovery was made. Hope this works. Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, go ahead and continue tweaking. I also plan to retweak a few of yours (that "gentleman" tweak I think made it awkward, for example), but I was waiting for a while to give my mind time to see what really needs changing and what's just my preference, and in fact I'm OK with everything just the way it is, although that's probably due more to topic fatigue than anything. Although we do need to remember that constant stirring often turns things into mush. IMO we don't need to keep going over the article again and again--FAC editors will let us know what needs to be changed, and trying to second-guess them or watering down the article to try to anticipate their objections is harmful, I think. Our only consideration should be the beat and most comprehensive article in the least amount of space. My honest opinion is that it's so close to FA now as to not make any real difference. Tom Reedy (talk) 07:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a very long article, so, given the complexity of criteria for FAC success, caution, and a σπεῦδε βραδέως approach, even at this late hour, are still advisable, particularly since you, Paul and I have worked so close to the content problems of drafting the text to see it with the necessary technical scepticism. Perhaps, we could ask those who have so generously pitched in over the past months, to just read through it once more and vote as to whether we are more or less at the FAC presentation state. I’m thinking esp. of the following.

• Alan W
• Nikkimaria (ref formatting and consistency)
• Wrad suggested not going to FAC right now (Jan 29) but roping in someone like User:Awadewit or User:Qp10qp for a peer review.
• Xover
• Hamiltonstone
• Johnuniq
• Kaiguy
• GuillaumeTell
• Poujeaux
• Bishonen. Nishidani (talk) 09:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and want to add a reply to Tom above. Yes, constant stirring often turns things into mush, but while the FA is my motivation, I think some text needs plainer and more NPOV language not as a sop to Oxfordians or FAC reviewers but because it is the right thing to do. Also, stuff like "Elizabethan state secret" is too mysterious and needs some clarifying words because it is not satisfactory to use coded language in an encyclopedic article. Yes, it is hard to keep a straight face while describing the Prince Tudor theory, but that's what the article has to do. I think there are also a couple of places where some plainer language is needed for slightly more NPOV. What I wrote above about "Shakespeare on trial" also needs attention. Johnuniq (talk) 10:29, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read through again, but last time there were several such more or less minor issues; that fall in both directions. We some times echo the disdain of our sources in ways that are not NPOV, and other times we say things like “discovered that there were hidden ciphers” rather than “believed they had discovered” or some such. This stuff needs copy-editing for balance and NPOV; and it's generally a good idea to copy-edit for flow and quality of prose before FAC. In fact, once we deal with all the subject-specific stuff we may want to ask the League of Copy-Editors for help. They're badly backlogged and under-staffed, so it may take time, but on the other hand there is no particular urgency. FAC is insanely nitpicky (as it should be), and showing care before asking them to spend their time on reviewing our work will be appreciated (it's not their job to fix our article; they're there to make sure only the very best articles get featured on Wikipedia). --Xover (talk) 14:01, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

References and periods again

I know I didn't follow all the discussion about this earlier, but why do some authors have periods after their names and others have the periods after the date? Examples:

Londré, Felicia Hardison. (1997)

Churchill, Reginald Charles (1958).

Tom Reedy (talk) 06:21, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Alas, this is another unwanted side effect of using this kind of template, along with fixing other kinds of problems in some instances. If we want consistency here, we might have to give up trying to fix those other problems and settle for "Publisher. pp. 256–7" and that kind of thing. As I said, even with my fixes, the solution is not perfect, and you have just found one of the imperfections. This is one reason why I prefer other styles of listing references. Not that I think we should change to a different style at this late stage, but, well, just mentioning it. I'm thinking now that I might be able to figure out another way of handling cases where page ranges are mentioned; but I wouldn't be surprised if that causes some other problem. Getting late here, but I can look into it tomorrow. --Alan W (talk) 06:39, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Image review

I've had a spin through the images used in the article and we've got some issues there:

• File:ShakespeareCandidates1.jpg—by itself is fine, but as a derivative work it inherits the problems from the source images
  • File:Edward de Vere.JPG—lacks source information
  • File:Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban from NPG (2).jpg—is fine
  • File:Christopher Marlowe.jpg—lacked source but I've pointed at another copy that did have it
  • File:6thEarlOfDerby.jpg—is fine
  • File:Title page William Shakespeare's First Folio 1623.jpg—is fine
• File:Edward de Vere.JPG—lacks source, cf. above
• File:Shakespeare sigs collected.png—lacks source (when you step through all the derivations until you hit the original upload)
• File:Sonnets1609titlepage.jpg—lacks source
• File:Poet-ape1616.JPG—lacks source
• File:Shakespeare-1747-1656.jpg—lacks source
• File:King Lear Q1.jpg—lacks source
• File:DeShakespeareNostrat.jpg—lacks source
• File:Camden on Shakespeare.jpg—lacks source
• File:Passionate Pilgrim title page comparison.JPG—lacks source
• File:Shakespeare monument plaque.JPG—lacks source
• File:Shakespeare's grammar school.JPG—lacks source
• File:Delia-Bacon(18811-1859).jpg—lacks source
• File:Cipher wheel.jpg—lacks source
• File:Shakespeare Identified cover.JPG—lacks source
• File:Contester Will dj.JPG—lacks source, copyvio
• File:Edward-de-Vere-1575.jpg—lacks source
• File:Minerva Britanna Peacham device.JPG—lacks source

Note that the requirements are not to give where the image was first published, or which gallery the image currently hangs in, or even what type of image it is; the requirement is to say where the uploader got it from. That means “Scanned from Schoenbaum's Records & Images” (if you scanned it yourself from a book) or “The web page at <URL>” (if you snarfed it off the web) or “Own work” (if you went to Holy Trinity and took a picture of the plaque or whatever). The book cover asserts no copyright possible by virtue of being just text and a crop of the Stratford monument; but I very much doubt the Commons guys will see it that way: the composition is an original and copyrightable work in its own right. There are exemptions to the upload policy specifically for the covers of books or music records (and company logos, etc. etc.), but we need to employ those properly rather than assert lack of originality (because it's very unlikely to fly).

Finally, the quality of several of these pictures is poor. Many of them are of very low resolution; the images of text are out of alignment; and there are various color balance and general cleanup issues. I'm not sure to what degree the reviewers at FAC pounce on the esthetics and general quality of images these days, but if they do I think we'd have trouble defending several of the current images. IOW, I think we need to put some work into finding replacements for or fixing up the current images before we expose them to FAC, quite apart from fixing the source issues above. --Xover (talk) 16:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I slightly disagree: when it comes to source attribution for the purpose of copyright assessment, the ultimate original source is actually the more important one. Having the proximate source (where we scanned it from) also is a nice extra, but as long as the identity and authenticity of the document is not in doubt (in which case there'd be a WP:V issue), it is of secondary importance, as far as I'm aware. – The "Contested Will" cover page has been marked for deletion on Commons (tsk tsk Tom, bad Tom). If you wanted it badly, you'd have to re-upload it locally under WP:NFC, but you'd need to come up with an unusually compelling rationale for it, since normally we allow such items only in a dedicated article about the book itself. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:44, 13 February 2011 (UTC)