Shakespeare authorship question received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Shakespeare, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of William Shakespeare on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ShakespeareWikipedia:WikiProject ShakespeareTemplate:WikiProject ShakespeareShakespeare articles
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
"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)[reply]
" 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)[reply]
"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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
I'm not sure I follow your explanation - can you clarify? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
" 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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
“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)[reply]
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:
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. ISSN0037-3222. {{cite journal}}: 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)[reply]
"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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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").
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Fine on the redlinks (just checking they were not accidental). Tom fixed the "ff" page range. Johnuniq (talk) 07:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
(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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)
[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)
[reply]
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)[reply]
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 Jonesis 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)[reply]
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)[reply]
It is staggeringly simple to wikilink the publication, either as The Wall Street Journal or as |work=The Wall Street Journal. One can add |edition=WSJOnline for further clarity. If an occasional reader wants to know the publisher, editor, circulation, and other details, it is then just a click away. LeadSongDogcome howl! 19:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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?]
[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.[2]
[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?
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)
[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
"The Marlovian theory asserts that his death on 30 May 1593 was faked". I'm sorry, but this really isn't something which Marlovians 'assert' either, as the word implies a certainty which few of us would believe is justified by the evidence. Based upon the facts as we know them we infer that the most logical explanation for those particular people to have met at that particular place on that particular day was to fake Marlowe's death. The conclusion we have arrived at therefore is that this is most probably what happened. Peter Farey (talk) 12:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Asserts" implies certainty? I'm not completely understanding you here. "Conclusion", to me, implies certainty, while "asserts" conveys a certain amount of subjectivity in the matter. How about if we just change it to "holds"? Tom Reedy (talk) 12:42, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Marlovian theory presumably depends on Marlowe's survival, unless there's a variant according to which he'd written all the plays before his 1593 death, the manuscripts being later found in a cupboard. Putting that possibility to one side, surely Marlovians must assert this as a necessary condition for their theory. Alternatives would be ""requires", "takes the view that", "argues", "suggests", "infers"... Paul B (talk) 13:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)
[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
I was focused exclusively on suggesting a fix for the glaring, or is that flaring, problem with the [citation needed] 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)[reply]
Following your feedback, Nishidani, I've now substituted "upsurge", and we'll see how that looks. Thank you for including me in the group of "master technicians". I'll return the compliment, Nishidani, by voicing my own amazement at your extraordinary verbal skills, including the knack of choosing just the right words to express an idea in a given context. ("Blobs of unworked marble" is just one delightful example.) One of my ongoing pleasures in this company has been simply to read some of your comments. And this is why I refrained from making a hasty synonymic substitution before hearing from you. I'll add that, as I mentioned to Tom the other day, I used to make a living doing this sort of thing (I worked for years as a book editor). Wikipedia editing helps me too by keeping my skills from rusting away. --Alan W (talk) 19:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Looks fine in my browser (IE8). --GuillaumeTell 18:57, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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.
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
I'll be happy to have a read-through. I'm in awe at the amount of work that you all have been doing over the last few weeks, but maybe I'll spot a few infelicities and whatnot. BTW, I bought Contested Will (a great read, and some laugh-out-loud moments), so I now know a bit more than I used to. --GuillaumeTell 19:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Some good points made above about what is advisable to do and not do. For my part, I'll be glad to read through the whole thing at least once more. I also hope to find time to see about further tweaks to the References format, as I mentioned recently. --Alan W (talk) 19:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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:
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)[reply]
The choice and use of citation templates is a daunting subject. Here I will be thinking out loud as I try to learn more about this and consider how we can use this knowledge to our advantage. The following should not be considered as any kind of final, formal proposal.
The major problems I've seen in reference formatting come with references to chapters of books. Ideally, I would like to see (to take Bate 2002 as an example) something that looks like this (following the example in WP:Citing_sources/example_style#Books):
Bate, Jonathan (2002). "Scenes from the Birth of a Myth". In Stephanie Nolen (Ed.), Shakespeare's Face: Unraveling the Legend and History of Shakespeare's Mysterious Portrait, pp. 103–25. Free Press. ISBN 9780743249324
But this older form of referencing lacks some advantages that come from using templates. I see that we are using the Harvard style. The way Bate 2002 originally looked with that kind of template was:
Bate, Jonathan (2002). "Scenes from the Birth of a Myth". In Nolen, Stephanie (ed.). Shakespeare's Face: Unraveling the Legend and History of Shakespeare's Mysterious Portrait. Free Press. pp. 103–25. ISBN9780743249324. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
This is where the "Free Press. pp. 103–25." problem comes in. In order to eliminate it, I attempted to use the option whereby one may control punctuation between elements:
Bate, Jonathan. (2002). "Scenes from the Birth of a Myth.". In Nolen, Stephanie. (ed.). Shakespeare's Face: Unraveling the Legend and History of Shakespeare's Mysterious Portrait. Free Press,. pp. 103–25. ISBN9780743249324. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |separator= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
Even though we now have the more desirable "Free Press, pp. 103–25." this method, as Tom has observed, creates a new problem: it moves the full stops to unwanted places, inconsistent with the formatting in other references.
Another thing I haven't yet mentioned is that I do not like the way this template organizes its elements, in particular that it appends page numbers to the publisher. I would much prefer that page numbers follow the title of the book, as in the manually formatted first example above. It certainly seems more logical that way, as well as following traditional bibliographical practice.
I tried another trick with the template, to try to force the coupling of title and page numbers, and this was the result:
Bate, Jonathan (2002). "Scenes from the Birth of a Myth". In Nolen, Stephanie (ed.). Shakespeare's Face: Unraveling the Legend and History of Shakespeare's Mysterious Portrait, pp. 103–25. Free Press. ISBN9780743249324. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
Clearly not right at all: now "pp. 103–25" appears in italics! On the assumption that long ago this article advanced past the point of no return with the Harvard template (and I'll grant the advantage it gives in linking from footnote to reference), I would suggest that now we are faced with choosing either the strictest observance of the template format, which would give us "Publisher. pp. 35–8."; or the occasional modification that would give us "Publisher, pp. 35–8." but also "Bate, Jonathan. (2002)" instead of the more consistent "Bate, Jonathan (2002)."
That's as far as I've thought the matter through right now. Any comments, of course, are welcome. --Alan W (talk) 03:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any source templates that are problem-free? Or are the problems just different? Also it doesn't appear that the William Shakespeare article has those problems, in spite if its use of harvard nb template. It uses a loc= field for a lot of the data. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Tom, whatever problems with the references on the Shakespeare page, they do not include the one we have been focusing on, involving page sequences for portions of books, simply because somewhere along the line the community of editors decided not to give page sequences for books. See, for example, Bryant (1998). It's easy enough to avoid a problem if you avoid doing the thing that triggers the problem. Obviously, however, a certain flexibility is lost. --Alan W (talk) 05:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Are we looking at the same article? Cos the one I'm looking at has many refs with page sequences of books, beginning with Bevington and ending with Bloom. One other thing I noticed is that their reference entries don't end with "ref=harv", in addition to their cites using "loc=3" instead of "p=3". Tom Reedy (talk) 12:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While we would have to be nuts to consider changing from harvnb at this stage, I am happy to look at whether such a change could be semi automated so required changes would at least be reliably made. Accordingly, if anyone has a suggestion for a better citation system, let them speak now...
Charles Darwin is one featured article I am aware of that uses harvnb, and it has the "Publisher. pp." problem (period following publisher's name, then lowercase "pp"). I do not think there were any other problems?
Assuming there is not some problem-free citation system available, I am thinking we should go back to "vanilla" citations (and accept a period before "pp"). For one thing, my earlier comment about fragility applies because I was looking through the wikitext of the references section of the SAQ and Darwin articles, and I saw some titles in the Darwin article which mistakenly have a period at the end (it gives a double period in the article). Then I noticed some titles in SAQ which also finish with a period, and I was thinking I would have to delete them when I realized they were part of the customizations. We need to make a decision on this soon. Johnuniq (talk) 07:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree the refs need to be formatted properly according to the style and accepting whatever problems go along with it rather than introducing new ones. Once that is done, I suggest doing a mass find/replace with "loc=(page numbers)" replacing "p=(pages number)" and "pp=(page numbers) in each cite and deleting the ultimate "ref-harv" from each reference entry and seeing what happens. As I pointed out above, the William Shakespeare article does not have any problems of the nature this article is experiencing. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm to blame! I adopted it in my draft because it worked snazzily on several articles I wrote, after a suggestion by the Nabster there. One would think, after all these years, that wiki had some policy on this (I don't read policy pages), re optimal citational format, with a ready-to-copy and paste standard template. In any case, I agree with Tom's larger vision that this article was to clean up a messy corner of the Shakespeare articles, resolve the chronic seepage of POV from this area into the broader field of Shakespeare articles, and, as a natural corollary, one would think that, now this issue has been settled, we should aim for an informal agreement to use, from here on in, any standard template that generates the fewest problems, and the Shakespeare article seems, for the moment, to fit the bill. Field consistency should be an ideal we all underwrite. Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The |loc and |ref=harv bits are red herrings; the material difference is that William Shakespeare uses the generic {{Citation}} template (that Tom/Nish originally used) rather than the specific {{Cite book}} and {{Cite journal}} etc. templates (that I added while working on the refs) in use on this article. The reason it appears to not have the same formatting issues is because it is a “dumb” (generic) template: it doesn't know what kind of work it's citing, and so it can't apply work-specific formatting, opting instead to just tack on commas between each parameter (this is an over-simplification, but covers the gist). If we decide this is preferable to the original issues Alan noticed then switching this article to use that template is a fairly trivial mechanical transformation (either I or John can do that easily). However, I will take the opportunity to restate my opinion that we should just live with the (original) minor formatting issues and stop trying to find workarounds in this article when the issues are better addressed centrally in the template to the benefit of all articles that use it. While I sympathize with Alan's being irked by the unconventional use of capitalization and punctuation in the current output (I'm the same way with these things), the issue is a marginal one; is not critical for FAC; and is better addressed elsewhere. --Xover (talk) 21:22, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
1. What is the advantage of using the specific template over the generic?
2. Is any effort being made to address the issues in the specific template that you know of?
3. If it's a relatively simple matter to convert to the problem-free template, wouldn't it be just as simple to convert back when and if the problems are solved, assuming there are benefits to doing so? Tom Reedy (talk) 22:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Whoa! Tom, all—a little misunderstanding about six paragraphs up has snowballed into a sweeping plan to make mass substitutions and possibly change citation templates. Tom, you asked if we were looking at the same article. Well, yes; but we were not looking at the same part of the article. What we call "References", the Shakespeare article calls "Bibliography". And what we call "Footnotes" the Shakespeare article calls "References" (breaking out more substantive footnotes into another section called "Notes", which is another legitimate way of doing things). I am talking about their "Bibliography", which corresponds to our "References". And their Bibliography does not include page numbers for portions of books; ours does. Please look again.
I think that Xover is right about not giving up the Harvard template so fast. The generic template in my opinion (again, agreeing with Xover) is even less satisfactory in its blanket use of comma separators, in ways that don't make sense (e.g., "in deGrazia, Margreta; Wells, Stanley, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare,"; if a semicolon separates the coauthors, I would think we need a stronger separator than a comma to separate the second author from the title).
We may do well to live with "Publisher. pp." Though it goes against the grain with me, it does seem like the best compromise right now. As I've said, I much prefer conforming to standard bibliographical formatting and punctuation; but that would require formatting manually, using no template at all. Though also acceptable (and I've seen FAs that do this), I have to agree with what I gather is the consensus that we are too far along and have invested too much in these templates to give them up at this late stage.
I'll remind us, though, that if we want to use the Harvard template in the most proper way, we will also have to live with a few doubled periods, such as pointed out by Nikkimaria. (E.g., "In White, Paul W.; Westfall, Suzanne R.. Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England.)
Finally, If anyone still wants to experiment with different templates or usage of templates, I suggest posting a few examples here, as I did above, rather than immediately performing a programmatic mass find-and-replace operation. --Alan W (talk) 03:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I favor using {{Cite book}} as it is the "correct" template for books and its problems should be fixed at the template, and while the glitches are irritating, they have minimal impact on the article text (I think the problem is "Publisher. pp" and some doubled periods, and those problems do not occur in the body of the article?). For interest, I will mention that while hunting around for info, I found this discussion where a couple of people strongly express the view that they (and articles) are better off without citation templates. Johnuniq (talk) 04:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Those editors in that discussion you refer to make a lot of good points; look how much time is consumed on something as trivial as the citation apparatus, both there and here. To be perfectly honest, I prefer merely "Author, title of work, title of book or journal if needed, year, and page numbers". With those four or five bits of data anybody can find any source in the world. I think a lot of information is being added simply because it can be, not because it needs to be, and I believe Wikipedia prefers the more data-dense method in an attempt to overcome its inferiority complex. Oddly enough, Oxford publications require only those bits of data I outlined above for sourcing.
Having said that, I realise that the citation apparatus for this article is not going to change to suit me, nor would I want it to at this late stage, but I would prefer a style that favours the reader over the format. To me, neutral, verifiable content is more important than how its cited or how that cite looks to a machine reader. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So I guess what I'm saying is that I'll go along with whatever you guys decide! Tom Reedy (talk) 04:58, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Johnuniq, thanks for the heads-up about that discussion on the Citing sources/example style talk page. Very relevant, and it seems to be very much a current discussion. I have now posted my own comments there, describing the issues we are debating here. That way others will be made aware of some problems that can occur with specific needs when using the {{Cite book}} template for a bibliography in an article on a literary topic. I can fully understand why some would now be arguing against use of templates. I've already stated my objections, so I won't repeat them, but I'll add that I agree that we should stick with this template now that we have invested so much time and energy in it. No, it won't have any effect on the article itself that I am aware of. And, as Xover says, it shouldn't be an impediment to, and might even help getting to, FA status. One beauty of Wikipedia is that nothing is carved in stone. Perhaps at a later time, some solution to our bibliographical problems will be found. --Alan W (talk) 04:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I read your comment and am now watching the page, although it looks to be a difficult problem with no trouble-free solution.
What will we do in this article? We have to finalize this very soon.
If there is currently a problem in the article body that would be solved by returning to vanilla citations (i.e. remove "separator" and the other tweaks performed by Alan), I think that would be best. Final opinions please!
@Alan: Are you saying we should restore vanilla citations (if so, do you want to do that?), or do you want to stay with the current customizations? Johnuniq (talk) 06:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We might want to restore vanilla citations within the {{Cite book}} template, but we don't have to do this immediately. I got a response on that template talk page, and that user has posted something on the page where the template programmers will see it. It is possible that someone will be able to give us the appearance we want, even with the plain-vanilla citations, and then of course we should restore those. I should be able to do that easily enough, since I have kept an offline record of the changes I made. If you think that, regardless, we should revert to vanilla now, please say the word and I will do so at my earliest convenience. I'll say that I agree with you that this problem does not look easy to solve. CharlesGillingham might be a bit too cheerfully optimistic about this. --Alan W (talk) 00:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I am watching the discussion with interest, but I am similarly skeptical about a fix coming any time soon (mainly because of the possibility of messing up lots of articles by even the simplest change to the template). By all means let's wait for a day or even two, but we should aim to achieve article stability very soon. My understanding is that it would be highly desirable for there to be only minor editing for a significant period before presenting the article for FAC, and I think it would be useful to finish known issues ASAP, and I'm hoping you will restore the vanilla citations soon, assuming nothing turns up re cite book. Johnuniq (talk) 10:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds reasonable. I just answered another posting on that talk page, and it looks like the debate could go on a long time before anyone even makes an attempt to change the parsing and display of the template. Also, I'm thinking now that those working on templates are probably not familiar with standard punctuation in literary biographies. These templates are a "one size fits all" approach, which doesn't entirely work, as different fields of study have different requirements and traditional practices. I hope to be able to clean up the templates ("clean up" from a purist perspective, where we should not have any punctuation in the template fields unless the punctuation is actually part of someone's, or some work's, name) at the latest over the weekend, and I may be able to get to it sooner than that. --Alan W (talk) 03:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I ended up doing this now, after all. When I looked through the records I kept, and checked a diff or two as well, it didn't seem as daunting a task as I had expected. I don't think I missed anything. If I did, one of us will catch it. Now I can focus on other things, including reading through the article at least one final time. --Alan W (talk) 04:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
[reply]
Thanks, that's great. It looks like some generic conversations are going to occur, without much progress. Perhaps later if you feel like it we could examine the issue some more (currently I have only looked at it superficially). We could even consider making our own "Cite book2" template at least as a trial to see what is involved (then we could fiddle without worrying about breaking other articles). That would be a month or two after FA! Meanwhile, a last read through would be helpful (but the image problem discussed elsewhere on this page remains). Johnuniq (talk) 06:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That is a good idea, about making our own "Cite book2" template. Maybe Xover, who seems to know a lot about that kind of thing, could provide some input as well. And I see from your user page that you're like a fish in water in this area. Despite all the computer- and programming-related matters I deal with in my current day job, I have not hitherto involved myself in this aspect of Wikipedia at all, but I would certainly be willing to do this in such a good cause. Yes, of course, as you say, first FA for SAQ; then we can see what we want to do about the template issue. Once we make FA (I'm being optimistic), there is no Wiki rule prohibiting anyone from improving articles still further. --Alan W (talk) 11:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Image review
I've had a spin through the images used in the article and we've got some issues there:
File:Shakespeare sigs collected.png—lacks source (when you step through all the derivations until you hit the original upload) Done. The sources were on the original single signatures.
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)[reply]
Xover what do you propose to do about the images on this list that were uploaded 4-5 years ago? The *File:Shakespeare-1747-1656.jpg, for example, which you say lacks a source, clearly indicates that these images are out of copyright: "This image show a simple straight-on shot of the Shakespeare monument, which is in public domain since it is a work created before 1623. It also incorporates an image published in William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) and so is in the public domain." Who scanned them I would think would be irrelevant at this point. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A Trinity of Shakespeare at Trinitys! That was, I think, Fut.Perf.'s main thrust (below): so long as the image is clearly out of copyright, the details of who scanned it is of only academic importance. However, an alternate approach is to the right here; we can re-scan and/or recreate the cases where we can't easily complete the information. Note that this is to illustrate the idea and not necessarily an assertion that we should use this particular image (for one thing, Tom's photo is the best on `pedia, and even that is taken at an awkward angle; why in the world don't we have a better image of this?) --Xover (talk) 19:45, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't want to spend time re-doing work that has been done when all that is really required is the copyright status of the image. Why an article's status would depend on the status of the images is unclear to me; the point at which the quality should be monitored is at the image dump, in this case Wikimedia Commons. Trying to control the quality and sourcing of an image at the article level is a bit like doing quality control at the consumer level rather than at the factory, and if FA reviewers think otherwise something needs to change about the process.
As to the monument images, I intend to take more pictures this fall when I visit the church to gather some other information about the monument. Some sort of Wiki exchange should be set up so that Wikipedians could call on other editors who live in a certain area to take pictures they need for articles. (For all I know that's already set up and I just don't know about it.) Tom Reedy (talk) 20:07, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The FA reviewers are reviewing the quality of all aspects of the article, including the images used in it, and not the quality of all the images at Commons (Commons has not nearly enough editors to do the level of quality control one might wish). They have certain criteria—some explicit, some a result of precedence and practice at FAC—they evaluate against. For images this is certainly whether their copyright status is correct (for which they need information on the source so they have the data to make the determination), but also whether the images are appropriate for the article (in terms of how informative they are, what quality they are, placement, etc.). I do not recommend showing up at FAC claiming they need to change their process; it's always possible that they should, but they are very unlikely to do so based simply on the assertion of a nominator (much like we are unlikely to start allowing cites to issues of Donald Duck based solely on a random assertion). A better question is whether they actually do require such meticulous sourcing for obviously out of copyright images. I've asked Fut.Perf. for clarification on their talk page, so depending on that reply we may not need to do much about that. Note that we still need to address issues of quality, informational content, aesthetics; but those are more in line with all the other little bits of polish we're applying. And you're right, there is an exchange for Wikipedians in various areas to request / provide images; it's just little known and hard to find (e.g. I couldn't locate it to link it now on a quick scan). --Xover (talk) 20:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
While I certainly agree with you in principle (out of copyright is out of copyright, the rest is just bureaucracy), I was under the strong impression that the image use policy as well as practice at FAC was that the proximate source must be provided. For instance, an image snarfed from the web is very specifically required to provide information on the web page from which it was taken (and not just a link to the image itself), with no exemption for public domain or out of copyright works. I would gladly be persuaded wrong by your better wisdom on this, but this was not my understanding of neither policy nor practice. --Xover (talk) 18:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Questions:
1. Can you steer me to the guideline that spells out what the source line should contain.
2. Which specific images are low resolution, and why would they be unacceptable for this article?
3. Which specific text images are out of alignment? I know the Jonson Timbers image is a composite of two pages; is that the one you mean? The others are exactly how the page appears.
4. Where is the book cover policy spelled out? Tom Reedy (talk) 19:05, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
WP:IUP#Requirements and the (non-linkable) section headed “More information on how to provide a good source”. But by default I'm inclined to assume that Fut.Perf. is better versed in this than me, so it may be that no change is needed. If you'd like to apply both belt and suspenders anyway, you probably can't go wrong by simply saying 1) where it was first published, 2) where the uploader found it, 3) who scanned/downloaded/drew/whatever the image. e.g. the Camden reference was first published by Camden in Remaines Concerning Britaine in 1605; you found it in, say, Loomis or Schoenbaum; and you scanned it and uploaded it yourself.
Low-res images aren't unacceptable per se, but FAC reviewers can sometimes be as picky about the quality of images as they are about the prose. Low-res images are often also of low quality, and they have very little scope for improvement (correcting levels etc.). Thus it would be preferable to find higher resolution versions of those images that are a little on the small side now.
For instance, the Poet-Ape picture is pretty much exactly one degree out of alignement, which makes it look crooked in the article. Several of the images of text of some kind have this problem to greater or lesser degree.
I'm pretty sure I scanned most of the text images from facsimiles or got them from EEBO. I aligned the image on the right as a temporary fix, but I'll need to find the original file since I cropped it too close. The problem is that the original works are misaligned on the page and the images are faithful duplications; early modern printing wasn't of the same quality we're used to. And I scanned most of them at a sufficient resolution to see all the relevant detail (high res scanning is ridiculously close--who needs to see the threads of the page?), and in fact the image on the right is at 335kb, and is sufficiently clear at 30kb. There is no point in high resolution just for the sake of high resolution.
I'll read the policy links and see what I can do. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I propose that the "Contested Will" image is removed. Reasons: (a) The serious concerns raised by Fut Perf above, (b) It is low res - some of the text is barely readable even in the clicked-on version (c) it would help deal with concerns that the page is already too much based on this book. Poujeaux (talk) 09:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The resolution is not an issue. In fact, for book covers low resolution is required. I agree we should go ahead and delete it, though, based on the other problems, which I don't want to take the time to try to overcome. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Appearances are deceptive. On analysis, the quantity of notes is what you would expect proportionately from the nature and length of the three major soures used to survey the SAQ history. This is a rough calculation of proportional use of secondary sources.
61 Shapiro.
38 Wadsworth
21 Schoenbaum
(a)Shapiro heads the list as the latest authority (where few exist) writing at book length 354 pages (Brit ed.) and harvested here for 61 notes (25%), of which 22, however. are part of a double footnote, where a second and often a third authority is cited corroboratively (i.e. 15% or so of the text is sourced exclusively to Shapiro).
(b)Wadsworth gets 38 cites, from a short book (pp.164) that surveys a huge amount of recondite marginalia which was unsuitable for the article, which is an overview.
(c) Schoenbaum surveyed the field in 65 pages and gets 21 cites.(10%)
Given the differences in major sources, this gives a fairly even picture.Nishidani (talk) 10:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nish, I don't think Poujeaux was intending to re-open the question of whether the article follows Shapiro too closely; merely pointing out that if one were to remove the book cover image one of the effects of that would be to lessen any such concern should there be any. The two can, and should, be treated as entirely separate questions that only marginally affect each other. --Xover (talk) 11:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, it's good to rehearse these arguments! It looks like we are agreed to remove the Shapiro image? In the interests of balance, should we also cut the image of the Looney book? It's not a particularly attractive or informative image. Poujeaux (talk) 15:51, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Any suggestions for alternative images? Would it be allowed to use the poster image for the film? Poujeaux (talk) 16:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the Shapiro image can be elided (cf.WP:Recentism), but one image from the books that have had great influence on the fringe divagations should be retained. Looney fathered the most currently popular vein of speculation: he singlehandedly revived an all but moribund system of ideas, and deserves a pic if only for that. I've seen handiwork by one or two picture-trimmers here (Jaakobou) that has done wonders for otherwise poorly defined images. Is there some forum where we can ask for assistance? Nishidani (talk) 16:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To me the main problem with the section is the wall of type unbroken by any images. That is the main reason why I added the book covers to begin with. If we can't use a book cover, I hardly see how we can use a movie poster. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:19, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's Beerbohm's Bacon cartoon [2], though Max tiresomely chose to live until 1956, which means it would have to be uploaded to Eng-Wiki. Paul B (talk) 16:21, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't make any difference if it was published before 1923. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Image layout
In an effort to alleviate various issues with stacking, sandwiching, layout, and legibility, I've made and experiment by removing some images, realigning others, and moving them about a bit here. Take a look and let me know what you think. I've selv-reverted all the changes, so the current article is without these changes. --Xover (talk) 16:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That deathbed image of WS's signature to his will almost seals the case agin'im! First impression is that the removal of the Shapiro image unbalances the page, as it leaves a large wall of unadorned text there. Is there any free image available for the moot court trial of 1987 or (in London 1988)? I can see many googling 'moot court+Shakespeare+image', but wouldn't have a clue about how to check on availability. Something needs to go into that section.Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
TYhere are usable images from the 1916 trial [3]. Paul B (talk) 16:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I love that "Sherlock is undone" image! I say we use that! Tom Reedy (talk) 17:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nah, (or only if you tarnish it, to fit its recent decisions!) PB's fished up two great images. I'd use them, but the comic thrust might be taken as cocking a POV snook at the theory.Nishidani (talk) 17:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't think a picture of the US supreme court is appropriate. The newspaper article about the trial is nice. A better solution to the 'wall of text' problem IMHO would be to prune this section. It is 6 screenfulls, where the 'main article' is only 7. This might get us into trouble at FA. Poujeaux (talk) 13:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really care for the image either, but we need something. As far as pruning, what would you prune from that section? We certainly should be editing for comprehensiveness, not try to read the minds of the FA reviewers. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the two sections that seem too long (over a screenfull) are Other candidates emerge and Authorship revives in the mainstream media. In the former, the para about WW2 could go, up to and including the following "revive flagging interest in Oxford". So could the bit about PTT since this comes up later. In the latter, the first two paras about Ogburn and the courts could be reduced quite considerably. Poujeaux (talk) 10:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Strat vs. Ant-Strat
I'm not sure we came to any conclusion on the meta-note about “Stratfordian” and “Anti-Stratfordian” (perhaps we did and I just wasn't paying attention). I'm of the opinion that this is either accepted terminology in the field—in which case it should be in the article, subject to WP:V and WP:RS like everything else—or it is not, and we need to avoid the terms altogether. Since I happened to open Schoenbaum's Lives on a more or less random page and happen on him using the term “Anti-Strafordian”, I'm inclined to say it is an accepted term; but that “Stratfordian” is not. So I would propose that we 1) remove the note; 2) use “Anti-Stratfordian” in the article; 3) explain the term on first use, and cite its meaning to some suitable reliable source (I expect either Schoenbaum, Shapiro, or Matus will do nicely). Note that if the consensus is to leave well enough alone here that's fine too (we can agree to disagree), but we do need to have a well-founded consensus on how to approach this in the article in case it comes up at FAC. --Xover (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, my opinion is that since you, Xover, have found established use for "Anti-Stratfordian", we can justify "Stratfordian" as a back-formation, as well as a convenience for the purposes of the article. We can always add something like, "Although the term is not commonly used..." if we think it really necessary. --Alan W (talk) 21:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the word “Stratfordian” only appears three times in the article: once in the note under debate, once in the construction “Stratfordian chronologies” that could (and should, for other reasons) be rephrased, and once in the pseudo-heading for the external links (which I would argue to be an incorrect usage regardless). My point is that we simply have no need for the back-formation, even were it supportable, and since it is also problematic we may as well avoid it. --Xover (talk) 21:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A look at the various candidate pages shows that every article save the Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship (which Paul wrote) uses both terms. Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide doesn't use the terms, but the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare uses "anti-Stratfordian" (it uses "Stratfordian" to mean a citizen of Stratford, not just Shakespeare). While Shapiro only uses the terms whilst quoting, most all of the other books and articles on the subject aren't as fastidious, no matter who wrote them. I don't care one way or another, but since we're aspiring to near-dissertation quality, I lean towards taking them out or merely explaining the terms in a parenthetical remark without using them at all, as in "Those who believe someone else wrote Shakespeare (often referred to as 'anti-Stratfordians') ..." etc. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Xover, as you can see readily from any older version of our sandbox 2 draft, underlying this version, this issue was annotated in the following way.
Note: In compliance with the accepted jargon used within the Shakespeare authorship question, this article uses the term "Stratfordian" to refer to the position that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the primary author of the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him. The term "anti-Stratfordian" is used to refer to those who believe that some other author actually wrote the works.'(Nicholl 2010, p. 4 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFNicholl2010 (help): "The call for an 'open debate' which echoes through Oxfordian websites is probably pointless: there is no common ground of terminology between 'Stratfordians' (as they are reluctantly forced to describe themselves) and anti-Stratfordians."; Rosenbaum 2005: "What particularly disturbed (Stephen Greenblatt) was Mr. Niederkorn’s characterization of the controversy as one between 'Stratfordians' . . and 'anti-Stratfordians'. Mr. Greenblatt objected to this as a tendentious rhetorical trick. Or as he put it in a letter to The Times then: 'The so-called Oxfordians, who push the de Vere theory, have answers, of course—just as the adherents of the Ptolemaic system . . . had answers to Copernicus. It is unaccountable that you refer to those of us who believe that Shakespeare wrote the plays as "Stratfordians," as though there are two equally credible positions'.")
Mainstream scholarship is uncomfortable with the tendentiousness of this distinction, which is proper to the fringe theorists, but generally disliked by Shakespearean scholars. I think Tom elided the note as possibly prejudicial to the fringe perspective. Personally, I would prefer either for a clarifying footnote to be retained, if the distinction is kept, or, perhaps better, to expunge 'Stratfordian' and simply use 'anti-Stratfordian'. 'Stratfordians' are only such in the fringe view, and to accept the fringe label is to endorse the insinuation that there is something hypothetical about accepting what the documentary record clearly states. I'd appreciate it, again, if what we should do here were decided by a vote among those who were not the primary drafters of the article, but who are examining it closely for bias. Nishidani (talk) 10:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about this last night and have modified my position. The reason Shapiro and others can do without using the term "anti-Stratfordian" is because they use "Oxfordian" to represent the entire range of anti-Stratfordians, which we don't (and should not) do. As far as the objections by academics to the term "Stratfordian", that is not an issue. Our goal should be to describe the field, not spare the feelings of those who for the most part won't even discuss the topic. Of course, if the use of it conveys an intrinsic bias, then we should not use it. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I thought we'd had a discussion on this earlier. Anyway, my suggestion to avoid the implication of bias in the terms is to make it clear that 'Stratfordian' is a term used by Anti-stratfordians, rather than a generally accepted term in academic discourse on the subject. FWIW Kaiguy (talk) 15:38, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
External links
I haven't got around to looking at it in detail yet, but we need to take a long hard look at the External links section and decide which links to keep and which to remove. The relevant guideline is WP:EL, and a relevant extract of its summary is:
Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links), but they should not normally be used in the body of an article. […] Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.
[…] it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable according to this guideline and common sense. […]
This guideline concerns external links that are notcitations to sources supporting article content. If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it. […]
In short, unless the link is to something very close to what we would include or use as a cite in the article, but for some reason can't, we probably shouldn't be providing a link to it. --Xover (talk) 21:24, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think common sense argues for including links to sites we wouldn't cite, such as the Oxfordian and Marlovian sites. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:37, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Shakespeare's signatures illustration
Cf. the illustration of the six known signatures of Shakespeare that we use in the article (see image on right). While it is much better than it originally was, I'm still not entirely happy with it. Even when scaled up above normal thumbnail size in the article as it is now (it's scaled up to 300px, and the default is 200 or 250px) the explanatory text is illegible, and the signatures themselves mostly just look like smudges. The various signatures also appear to be scaled differently (i.e. they are viewed at different “magnifications”), which makes them appear random. And finally, the different shapes and sizes of the signature images makes the overall impression busy and asymmetrical. The scaling also makes layout issues for the article since it is too big to fit properly inside its section.
I wonder if there is some way or ways we could alleviate some of these issues?
For one thing, I would like to see the explanatory text moved out of the image somehow. Perhaps we could use an image map where each individual signature's explanatory text is shown in a tooltip when hovering your mouse cursor over it? Or perhaps we could give each a color-coded outline and include a color legend in the caption? The former would, as a bonus, let us link each signature to the individual source image from which it is taken; and the latter would let us link to other related articles (such as Bellott v. Mountjoy).
Another possibility: perhaps we could generate pure black and white, or maybe even SVG vector, versions of the signatures? That would let us present them visually in a more harmonious manner. For instance, that should make it easier to scale them to comparable sizes and to encase each in a box/frame of the same size as the other signatures.
But perhaps all this is too ambitious for right now and for the graphics skills we have available? Perhaps we should leave well enough alone for now and then perhaps revisit it at a later date, when more pressing issues are done, and then see if we can't deal with these images in the same sort of general way that we deal with articles (i.e. polish each of them both visually, with proper categorization, and with all the relevant information placed on its description page)? --Xover (talk) 13:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've never been happy with that image. How about a gallery beneath the section with each individual signature with a tooltip as you suggest? Tom Reedy (talk) 14:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
{{annotated image}} may also be helpful. You'd have to check the feasability of tooltips - I've never seen an image on Wikipedia that has one, and I'm not sure whether they're possible with our current software. Then again, images are far from my strong suit. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In my Grand Experiment with the images (linked above) I've replaced the six signatures with a single signature (in SVG format) that's scaled up a little for good measure. Since the article only mention the signatures in passing—rather than an article about the signatures themselves—this should be sufficient to illustrate the point. Thoughts? --Xover (talk) 21:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the point about the signatures being "scrawled" and their inconsistency is better made by showing all of them. There're only six; if there were 15 or 20 a few representative examples would do it, but I don't think it's burdensome to include all of them. I'll try to put together a gallery and try that out. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I tried it here but it still doesn't look good and what we have now is better. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pasting in another file for comparison with a different layout and larger signatures. I could re-do this if it looks better than what we now have along with a larger font for the cutlines. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I spent a bit of time playing with {{Annotated image}} and decided to just try it in the article here (permalink). The previous version is at this permalink. I used File:6-known-signatures-of-shakspeare.jpg (October 2006; I think the other images are derived from this). I omitted some of the current text because it won't fit in a reasonable way. Thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 04:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately those are bad freehand copies of the signatures, which is probably the reason anti-Strats use them instead of the signature images. That gives me an idea, though. I'll put together another composite picture to use. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See what you think, Johnny. (It took a while!). Tom Reedy (talk) 05:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's great. Yes, it is painful to do. Possibly some alignment of the text might be slightly better, but it will do me. No wonder the image I used is clearer if it is a hand-drawn tracing! Johnuniq (talk) 05:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the current version (new version from Tom) is good.Poujeaux (talk) 13:03, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hyphens in ISBNs
We decided to remove all hyphens from ISBNs because some FAC reviewers had found inconsistencies in appearance. I just noticed something which I am recording here for consideration. This edit at Charles Darwin was by User:RjwilmsiBot and it inserted hyphens into each ISBN. The bot approval page is here, and one day the bot will notice this page and insert hyphens into each ISBN (checking the bot's contribs shows it is doing lots of articles). Johnuniq (talk) 04:12, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
JHFC! What kind of reviewers make a big deal out of ISBN appearances? Have they forgotten the main purpose of an encyclopedia? Tom Reedy (talk) 04:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Easy, Tom. No reviewer (well, none that I know of, at least) would make a big deal of ISBN appearance - if anything, it'll be a single bullet point on a list like the one I made on reference formatting (and I didn't even notice the hyphenation). Deal with the larger-scale issues, and if you take this article to FAC and somebody complains about ISBN hyphenation I volunteer to personally fix it. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's easy enough to get consistency by always inserting the hyphens, and putting them in the right place – even a bot can do it – and it's easier on the eye than 13 consecutive digits. What was the reviewer's issue? Kanguole 18:28, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I do not know, and am happy either way, although my inclination is to follow whatever Xover says! On the other hand, the bot is inserting dashes at the rate of about five articles per minute, and ISBNs are generally shown with hyphens, so I could also be persuaded to insert them. I believe the only discussion here is in archive 21 where Xover said "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." Johnuniq (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest we do not cater to the ignorance of one reviewer. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:15, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Tom, I suggest you avoid referring to as ignorance those concerns of which you are ignorant (if I can torture the grammar so far to make the point). As Nikkimaria says, it was one bullet point among several comments in a review years ago, and the thrust of it was that they need to be consistently formatted within the article. If you look at the bot approval discussion linked above (and WP:ISBN) you'll see that the underlying issue is deceptively complex (Kanguole: the bot does it by looking up dash placement on WorldCat's API; it may be computationally simple in the strict sense, but not in the sense you imply above). However, the issue for this article is quite simple: if we leave off the hyphens in ISBNs we'll be consistent, and won't have to deal with that at FAC, and if the bot should come by later and insert dashes then great, we'll have correctly placed dashes with zero manual labor. Let's not blow this issue out of proportion. --Xover (talk) 10:01, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't mean to imply it was trivial. I know it involves a table lookup, because I put in the non-zero manual labour that added most of those dashes (and wish it hadn't been undone). Anyway, my point was that removing them was not the only way to achieve consistency. But I suppose that time and the bot will fix all. Kanguole 15:43, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh crap. Does this mean you'd already done the job of looking up and inserting dashes in the correct places before I went over and removed them all? If that's the case then I just plain screwed up; I was so sure they were inconsistent and it didn't even occur to me that someone might have done that (it's certainly more manual labur than I would have volunteered to do). Mea maxima culpa! --Xover (talk) 16:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not to worry. I hope you won't mind if I put them back – let's pretend the bot got here already. I'd be happy to do any that are added later (it's pretty easy, really). Kanguole 21:50, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, I just did a spot check, and, as far as I can see, the hyphens have been placed correctly, according to the rules on ISBN. Thank you, Kanguole! Xover, I wouldn't flagellate myself over this. It may have been very easy for Kanguole to restore the hyphenation. To paraphrase a popular quip, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a bot. :-) --Alan W (talk) 00:17, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Clarifications needed
There is some pointy text in the "Other candidates emerge" section which needs a reference:
academics attacked the methodology as unscholarly and the conclusions as ridiculous.
Recently, a ref after that sentence was removed. The ref was <ref>{{Harvnb|Shapiro|2010|pp=228–30 (200–2)}}.</ref>. Can anyone clarify why the ref was removed? If it does not support the statement, we need to refactor the text to something that is verifiable because such pointy text needs a ref.
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). This is a repeat of my comment at 07:00, 13 February 2011. Johnuniq (talk) 07:56, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
'Real trials' refers (the plural is perhaps problematical) to Fabyan's case before judge Richard Tuthill in 1916, as opposed to the moot court occasions.
The $5,000 in damages was awarded by Tuthill to Fabyan (Wadsworth p.75)
'academics attacked the methodology as unscholarly and the conclusions as ridiculous,' definitely needs a cite and I'll start checking round to see what happens. Almost all of this text was written with books at one's elbow, and that is odd indeed, to contextually specific (post WW2) to be an editor's personal construal of the history.Nishidani (talk) 08:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've put in a cit needed request for that pointy snippet re WW2. The only thing I can recall offhand similar to this ('their ignorance of fact and method is as dismaying as thir non-specialist love of Shakespeare's plays is touching' (Schoenbaum 1991 p.450) has no post WW2 context.Nishidani (talk) 11:15, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The cart was before the horse. I've furnished the needed cite and moved the statement to its proper chronological place. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sutherland's read everything so
Rereading the page this morning I was reminded, while eyeing this,
The mainstream view, to which nearly all academic Shakespeareans subscribe
that Sutherland and Watts have a similar sentence which runs:
There is, it should be noted, no academic Shakespearian of any standing who goes along with the Oxfordian theory.’ John Sutherland, Cedric Thomas Watts, Henry V, war criminal?: and other Shakespeare puzzles, Oxford University Press 2000 p.7
Perhaps that is too sharp. Perhaps it is already explicit in the long note at the top of the ref section where several authorities make the same point. But I've jotted this down here just in case someone thinks rephrasing it, as per this source, is acceptable or an improvement.Nishidani (talk) 13:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why not add that in place of a couple of the others? I'd say delete Schoenbaum, Paster and Pendleton, and cut down the others to their bare minimum. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:38, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
He says 'Oxfordian', not 'anti-Stratfordianism'. It may certainly be considered for the Oxfordian Theory page. As to note 3, I think we have to retain that until FA, though expressing a willingness to elide the details. I think, given circumstances, that all of the references there ought to be retained, just to ward off suspicions that the assertion these quotations back is, well, rather 'particular', and requires strong evidence from the academic world (which is what we supplied). We could of course, there, add Sutherland's citation there as well.Nishidani (talk) 18:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead and add it. I've got some work I need to finish so I gotta get off Wikipedia until Sunday. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:49, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Marlovian theory asserts that his death on 30 May 1593 was faked, and that this deception allowed him to become the ghost writer of the Shakespeare canon.
was changed to
The Marlovian theory is based on the argument that his documented death on 30 May 1593 was most probably a fake, and that this deception necessarily resulted in his becoming the ghost writer of the Shakespeare canon.
This paragraph was added:
However, the various reasons offered by Marlovians since 1955 for believing that this is indeed what happened have been almost entirely ignored by their opponents who have simply stated, for example, that the suggestion that Marlowe's death was faked is "no trail at all", or that the claims for "Bacon and Oxford can be taken as representative" so that it is found unnecessary to deal with the case in detail.
Re "death": As a minimum, the wording needs simplification and clarification: "was probably faked" might do. The deception did not result in ghost writing—a faked death would require that any authorship be as a ghost writer, but it would be safer and simpler to not write at all, so authorship was not a "result".
Of course you are right, in trying to indicate that the only way in which he would have been able to continue writing would have had to be pseudonymously, I succeeded only in producing rubbish. Thanks! How about "The Marlovian theory is based on the argument that his documented death on 30 May 1593 was probably faked, and that Shakespeare was chosen as the necessary 'front' behind whom he would be able to continue his highly successful playwriting."
Re "ignored by their opponents": This para needs reworking as it makes an unverifiable claim (that opponents have ignored various reasons), and it uses cherry-picked items to suggest that objections to Marlowe's authorship are inconsequential. To use this text, we would need a reliable source stating that scholars have made no other objections. Johnuniq (talk) 07:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree, I was going to comment on this section. The last para is not acceptable I think. What also puzzled me is the reference (twice) to 1955. What great event took place in 1955?! OK, I see the answer is there if you search the rest of the article, but it reads rather oddly as it is now. Poujeaux (talk) 09:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is so frustrating. Those of us (including Tom and Nishidani) who have been scouring the records desperately trying to find salient comments by 'reliable sources' on anything other than Hoffman's book of over half a century ago know very well that this is true, but we aren't allowed to say so. The expression 'cherry-picking' implies that I have deliberately chosen these examples from among an abundant crop of other possibilities. Please tell us who you have in mind as it will make our job so much easier! I think that this is a very relevant piece of information, given the constraints under which we are working, but it's catch-22 isn't it?. We can't refer to the lack of reliably sourced comments because of the lack of reliably sourced comments.
An illustration. My own essay Marlowe's Sudden and Fearful End explains in excruciating detail why I claim that the most logical explanation for what happened at Deptford on 30 May 1593 was that they were there to fake Marlowe's death. It appeared in the Marlowe Society's research journal as well as being on my website, and was described by both the Society's Research Officer and its Chairman (neither of whom in fact believes that Marlowe wrote 'Shakespeare') at their AGM as 'the last word' on the event. Park Honan described it (privately) to me as 'brilliant', and cited it in his Marlowe biography. Much of it reappeared in my Hoffman and the Authorship, an essay which jointly won the prestigious Hoffman prize for 'a distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe' in 2007 and is also available on-line. Yet I know for a fact that not a single article has been produced (nor anything in a book) by a 'reliable source' attempting to refute anything I said in either article, or someone would have pointed it out to me by now. But I am not allowed to say so. As far I can see, the RS tail of Wikipedia policy, as interpreted here, is being allowed to wag the NPOV dog, which I had thought was supposed to be paramount. Peter Farey (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I fully understand your frustration, Peter. The problem is indeed technical, and in no way reflects upon the whims of random editors. Loosen RS on topics like this and you enact an open sesame season for all sorts of wild sourcing, as I think you yourself would have noticed here over the years. One just has to exercise patience, and wait for an RS (the Phd you mentioned earlier, for example) to paraphrase your central points. I would imagine that this is not as dilatory a prospect as it might appear. There are several indications that there will be an upsurge in commentary on the SAQ later this year (Emmerich). Shapiro, if I recall correctly, thinks the Marlovian hour may well return, given that the currently most popular candidate hasn't a leg to stand on, and persists as a cultural phenomenon for a variety of reasons unconnected with either evidence, reasonable inference or strong hypotheticals. The Marlovian theory has a seminal element in its favour lacking in all the other candidates, namely, the aesthetic dimension: the fluency of the dramatic mise en scène and mastery of the mighty line one would expect in a Shakespearean candidate. I concur with Honan's judgement re your paper. I still think however Elliott and Valenza's statistical work sinks the argument.
Yes, I do understand, and was really only using this (yet again) as an opportunity to vent my frustration that a genuinely informed discussion of what most of us these days tend to believe and why we believe it seems to be impossible. Thanks for the kind words! As for Elliott and Valenza, we must have chat about them some time, particular concerning whether they managed to eliminate any possible effect of Shakespeare's canon having, according to them, been written almost entirely after Marlowe's! Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For the moment I suggest:-
Mainstream scholarship has rarely engaged with the theory, though some authorities dismiss the idea his death was faked as "no trail at all", or hold that it is unnecessary to refute it since the analogous claims for "Bacon and Oxford can be taken as representative".
One could object that 'Mainstream scholarship has rarely engaged with the theory' lacks an RS citation, of course. But those of us who have read widely in the area would reply that this is self-evident.Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that looks fine to me, although I note your later recommendation and go along with it. I take Paul's point below about "no trail at all", which came right at the end of an Appendix called "False Trails". Nicholl's words are worth quoting. "Another theory goes something like this. Marlowe did not die at Deptford. The affray was a blind: the body that was viewed by the coroner's jury was someone else's. Marlowe was spirited out of the country, and thereafter dedicated his life to writing plays. These plays went out under the nom de plume of 'William Shakespeare'. They contain many acrostics and anagrams that prove they are Marlowe's, but people still go on thinking they are by Shakespeare. This is no kind of trail at all." It is also worth mentioning that this reappeared in his revised edition after he had read my Sudden End essay and, whilst not agreeing with my conclusion, acknowledged that I had made a "strong case" for the faked death scenario, which as presented had nothing to do with the authorship question. Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Park Honan's citation of Peter's essay is as follows "Peter Farey, looking into Middlesex records for 1589-92 finds six cases of death within the verge in which not even the Coroner of the Verge was involved." That's all he says. There is nothing in the book that suggests he endores the argument in the essay at all. What he said privately may be interpreted in many ways, butr we can't use it here anyway.
Well there is a little more than that, since he acknowledges my help (p.vii) and provided the URL for the Sudden End essay (p.403) related to his mention of "within the verge" and the illegality of the inquest (p.355) all of which he got from me. The point is therefore not that he endorses the theory (which he certainly doesn't, as he specifically indicates on p.355) or that we should 'use' his comment, but that clearly regards me as a reliable source of information where this is concerned. Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the last paragraph as it stands become advocacy rather than description. I prefer Nishidani's reading, but I think the "no trail at all" phrase is confusing. The phrasing is odd: "some authorities dismiss the idea his death was faked as "no trail at all",". Can an "idea" be a "trail"? The phrase "some authorities" implies that more than one writer has used this exact phrase, not just Nicholl. I don't like the last part of the sentence, which could equally be added to the Derby section. These words do not apply to Marlowe uniquely, but to all other candidates. And once more this just is one individual explaining his particular choices. Derby gets very short shrift in the book. As author of the Derbyite theory page, I feel I am a sort of Honorary Derbyite, so I am rather miffed by the fact that his glory days are glossed over by Shapiro. Also, it's misleading to imply that Strats have somehow evaded the Marlovian position. Marlowe only became a notable candidate after 1955. Gibson devotes a lot of space to Marlovian arguments in The Shakespeare Claimants in 1962. By the '80s anti-Stratfordianism is beginning to be equated with Oxfordianism, and so many recent books only address Oxfordian arguments and the generic claims that Shakespeare can be somehow excluded as author. Paul B (talk) 18:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reading that last paragraph again, it's kind of a trainwreck. But, I wonder if any of it is necessary. If we just cut that final paragraph from the Marlowe summary, would the article suffer? Kaiguy (talk) 02:47, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@Peter Farey: Just to clarify, my comments were focused on preparing the article for consideration as a Featured Article where strict interpretation of policies should be expected (I noticed the warm welcome you received above, and am not claiming any defect other than the policy problem). The text can always be tweaked in the future, and the place to start is probably at Marlovian theory. At the moment I think we should follow the suggestion by Kaiguy (possibly supported by Paul B's comment), and remove the last paragraph. My main reason for removal would be that this summary should simply state the case for the candidate (as the other summaries do), without commentary on failings in responses to the candidature. A secondary reason is that I hope that the text in the article will become stable very soon because a key requirement for a Featured Article is that editors have not recently been adding new text and then disagreeing over its wording (that is, I am pretty confident there is no easy way to resolve this issue while following Wikipedia's principles, so we might take another week or more to find some acceptable text—and that text would not be particularly helpful because it would essentially be a complaint rather than support for Marlowe's candidacy). Johnuniq (talk) 03:54, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think Johnuniq's point, following Paul and Kaiguy's notes, suggests the appropriate solution for the moment. The controversial addition is best worked out on the Marlovian page. What we have, unfortunately, will have to be sourced to Gibson's text, which is old, but as Paul reminds us, dealt with the topic quite extensively when it was first broached. The section is linked to the Marlovian page, and there the text is not encumbered by the rigorously austere criteria of a wiki article aspiring to FA level. So Peter's points can be retained there, readily studied by any reader who wishes for detail of this kind, until perhaps an RS is forthcoming which might permit us to include the point here. I hope we can prevail on your notable amenity here, Peter, to accept the logic of, if not endorse, this move as one dictated by the necessities of wiki protocols. Nishidani (talk) 12:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's OK. But which bit still has to be sourced to Gibson? Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I read Gibson on line almost a year ago, but Tom had the book. Overnight I recalled however that Tom's approach was to present the arguments for candidacy without rebuttal, or reference to what mainstream scholarship argues. A quick glance over the other candidates will confirm that this policy has been adhered to. The additional point you added, and now removed, as per talk consensus, introduces a complaint that mainstream scholars ignore or dismiss the arguments, creating a kind of dissonance with the way the other three candidates' arguments have been described. By removing it, the text falls into the neutral descriptive framework Tom argued for.
You do still have a point about equal weight, Peter. Marlowe has less text that Bacon and Oxford, though now more favoured than Bacon. This is because a huge volume of literature exists for the former two, and academics have spent more time on describing it, and as hermeneutic sutlers drudging in the slicky slipstream of orthodoxy's learned cohorts, we've little choice but to trade in its currency. In that sense, perhaps, since Gibson does handle the theory at some length, I was minded to think we might eke out a little more from that source, in order to secure more of an appearance of equal representation, until the Phd you mentioned, and other books in the future, become available. I've only read Gibson's chapter in part, online. Tom has a copy of that, (and everything imaginable on this argument!), and I'm sure, when he gets back, he'll review our discussion and pitch in. Nishidani (talk) 12:23, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@Peter Farey: I'll leave Nishidani to answer about sourcing to Gibson (might have been about the Marlovian theory article?). I don't think anything more need happen in this article at the moment. Thanks for removing that paragraph. I think the section is better when it is short, and more details should be at the main article. At one time, Tom wanted to strip each of the candidate sections down to something very short. I don't think that will happen at this stage, but I can see the argument to support that, and I'm thinking that later (in a couple of months) it might be useful to think about pruning each candidate section to about the current length of the Marlowe section (but let's not talk further about that now). Johnuniq (talk) 07:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@Nishidani. Thank you, and if Gibson can indeed furnish us with some excuse for including those countless Marlovian arguments presented since he wrote his book, I'll be both surprised and delighted. Sadly, however, the fact is that there has been a disappointing reluctance in the academic world to refute or even read any Marlovian argument since Hoffman's.
Churchill necessarily had only Hoffman to go on.
Gibson could also attack only Hoffman, whilst completely misunderstanding (misrepresenting?) what Mendenhall, one of Hoffman's prime witnesses, had said.
Schoenbaum, surprisingly ignorant of just when Marlowe is alleged to have died, also restricted himself to Hoffman's arguments.
Jonathan Bate wrote a disgacefully inadequate review of Wraight's The Story that the Sonnets Tell for the Telegraph, which quite clearly showed that he hadn't even read it. And in his book The Genius of Shakespeare, based upon the essay he wrote as that year's prize-winner of the Calvin Hoffman (hypocritical or what?) prize, his only complaint was that Wraight's book was "coded autobiography", which "Elizabethans did not write", completely ignoring her actual claim that they were letters-in-verse which are something quite different. That he also referred to Marlowe's "participation in Sir Thomas (sic!) Walsingham's secret service" may also give us some cause for concern.
Who next? (ignoring Matus, whom I confess to not having read). Stanley Wells answers the Marlovian argument that—based upon all the evidence available—Marlowe's death was almost certainly faked, and that this makes it quite possible for him to have written 'Shakespeare', with the bald statement "What is perfectly clear is that he died". That it is, as he puts it, "one of the best recorded episodes in English literary history" doesn't prompt him to wonder, as we would, just why that might have been so.
And what of Shapiro? According to him, Bacon and Oxford are "representative" of all anti-Stratfordian argument. What crap - equalled only by his extraordinary claim that Calvin Hoffman obtained "permission to open the grave of Elizabethan spymaster Sir Francis (sic!) Walsingham", a claim which could have been made only by someone who who hadn't the slightest clue about what the Marlovian argument actually is.
This is of course just for the archive. That the feet of one's 'reliable sources' might actually be earthen must be of no relevance right now! :o) Peter Farey (talk) 17:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's pretty much a given that Anti-Stratfordians rail against academics for misrepresenting or ignoring them, but Peter, there's no point in it here. Please remember that this article is only supposed to provide a short summary of the main positions. It couldn't include the "countless Marlovian arguments presented since he [Gibson] wrote his book" even if there were another academic source that dealt with them, anymore than we can include all the countless new Oxfordian arguments that are created constantly, or the countless new "true authors" like John Florio, recently the subject of a book. We have to be selective. You have a whole article to be more expansive. BTW, Scott McCrea's 2005 book The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question does discuss Marlovian claims. I couldn't say how accurately it represents the true modern Marlovian consensus . Paul B (talk) 18:45, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Peter, if post-Hoffman Marlovian arguments are neglected on wikipedia, there are only two sources for blame. Wikipedia's rules, and the failure of Marlovians (this applies generally to anti-Stratfordians) to simply sit down and earn a Phd in (Elizabethan) history. Afraid that such a topic might be the ruin of one's career? No problem, one simply writes (and the book is needed) a Phd neutrally examining the history of Marlovian theory. Several scholars who started from Oxfordian premises did things like this, such as Steven May and Ward Elliott. I am somnewhat flustered by this steadfast reluctance to adopt, provisorily, the system's rules. In any number of disciplines I am fairly familiar with on an academic basis, dissident opinions challenging a mainstream model, while using mainstream techniques, exist. The fundamental weakness of all heterodox analysts is that they refuse to understand the groundrules of the discipline whose results they desire to contest. They wish to box, while sneering at the Marquis of Queensbury rules. They would play cricket, but think it unfair that rules exist disallowing you to throw six bouncers and over.
Matus has nothing to say on the matter. A conflict in reports of a murder does not mean the murder of the victim, as designated in the reports, never took place. One could as equally say that the wording of the verdict was fixed, not to cover the ostensible victim's escape, but to cover any number of problematical consequences. As to Shapiro, what he says (p.229 Brit ed.) faithfully repeats Wadsworth's contemporary reportage (p.153), save for the fact that he lapses, in speaking of Sir Thomas Walsingham's tomb as that of his brother Sir Francis, who had of course died 3 years before Marlowe, and confusing the former with the spymaster who was his brother. Even Homer nods, abetted sometimes by Titivillus (as when Schoenbaum is made to have written 20th for the 30th of May, 1593). I don't know why people are upset about this. Use misprints or lapses of memory here and there to invalidate works while ignoring the testimony to the contrary of hundreds of precisely documented pages is any man's game, if he wish to play it. But the central detail, that Hoffman got permission to open Sir Thomas's tomb, is secure. As with Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus, very impressive countertheories can be built up on any historical set of evidences, if you presume all the historical data have been tampered with. History as we are given it in the archives becomes fodder for the palimpsestic scrivener. Your best bet is to wait for the Phd. that is in the works, (Unlike Oxfordians, who seem condemned to tantalic labour under that angst which Pascal describes when he writes: Il faut une infinie patience pour attendre toujours ce qui n'arrive jamais) and I for one, and I'm sure several here, will be happy to plead for it as an RS on these issues when it is approved and published.Nishidani (talk) 11:33, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Paul and Nishidani. Yes, I do understand all of this, which was why I said it was "just for the archive" and added that smiley at the end. 'Railing' isn't really my style, you know, as Tom - with whom I have been quite amicably exchanging this sort of stuff for a dozen years or more - can probably confirm. Nor am I reluctant to adopt the system's rules (whilst reserving the right to express my feelings about them) as I would have hoped my actions here have demonstrated. Sorry, but at 72 I don't think I'll take up the recommended PhD route, but thanks for reminding me of Scott McRea, as I haven't read his book and really should. Peter Farey (talk) 12:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oxford Summary too long
[Title of this post refactored to save the TOC. Original title moved in full below in boldface. --Xover (talk) 09:13, 21 February 2011 (UTC)][reply]
Oxford Summary too long, omitting academically endorsed major facts, and lacking Oxfordian participation, unlike the Marlovian summary which is written by an advocate.
I note that Marlovian Peter Farey is being allowed to rewrite the Marlowe summary. Equal treatment should be given to an Oxfordian regarding academically endorsed evidence for the Shakespeare authorship candidacy. The summary as a summary should be brief, deferring details to the article itself. The Oxfordian summary presently constituted is the only one that goes into secondary detail (like the discussion about secret codes and the PT and PTT sub-theories). Hence its length and emphasis are inconsistent with the rest of the summaries. The placement of the Oxfordian discussion after the Baconian one is another possible question I have: if as the section states, since 1920 the Oxford contention has overtaken the Baconian, why then is the Oxford discussion not placed accordingly in the reading? Oxford was older, so chronology has been discounted.
The basis for Oxford’s prominence in the discussion originates with his contemporary prominence, for instance William Webbe’s remark that he was the most skillful and could challenge to himself that he was the most excellent of the courtly poets. This seems confirmed by Puttenham’s clear statement that if his work were publicized under his name he would be recognized as the first among equals in the aristocratic play-makers. Akrigg took note of Oxford's relations with Queen Elizabeth and with court life. As recently as the U.S. News and World Report, Oxford's travels, academic and cultural achievements, status as a noble, and education were cited as clues to possible candidacy. The linguistic evidence seems compelling from Fowler, Stritmatter, and Waugaman researches into parallel phrasing and subject matter. The Atlantic Monthly has taken on the supposed 1604 question, that no new plays or augmentations occurred after that point, corresponding to his death in June 1604.
These appear to be sound reasons for altering the sub-section, towit, briefer, more pertinent to the purpose, and written by someone, myself, less likely to ignore the major strengths of the candidate. At present all three standards are lacking. Zweigenbaum Zweigenbaum (talk) 22:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have made some suggestions here. Johnuniq (talk) 03:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Peter Farey is not 'being allowed to write'. Peter, like any other editor, is collaborating, with commendable intelligence, flexibility and civility, to make improvements to the Marlovian theory section.
There were several considerations in the ordering of the candidates. (a) Historical priority (Bacon precedes Oxford, but Marlowe technically precedes Oxford also) and (b) quantity of material (both Oxford and Bacon have been the object of a huge amateur published output of 'theory', and both have been the object of extensive academic comment (c) contemporary profile (Oxford is showcased more than both Bacon and Marlowe. Smatprt consistently, being an Oxfordian, pressed for Oxford's priority. We have tried to calibrate these various pressures (coloured as they are by promotional interests) by choosing Bacon first, since he was the first historical candidate, and enjoyed a virtual monopoly for 6 decades (b) Oxford second, since he replaced Bacon as the primary candidate in public opinion (c) followed by Marlowe, who trumps Derby (sorry Paul) in terms of recognizability, and perhaps today in terms of the number of advocates.
The material re Oxford's prominence in Elizabethan times is irrelevant. We are dealing with scholarly assessments, not the rhetoric of patronage and court flattery in status-obsessed Elizabethan literary representations.
As for Fowler, Stritmatter, and Waugaman, as RS mention them, they can be used. Stritmatter is already present.Nishidani (talk) 12:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry about dumping Derby at the bottom. My heart really belongs to Anne Whateley. I read Derbyism from duty. Ross's book "The Story of Anne Whateley" is the only Anti-Strat text I ever enjoyed reading. Lefranc's "Sous le masque..." was a trial. It's easy to see why it never really made it over the channel. It's full of the worst gloire-grubbing French nationalist sentiment. Paul B (talk) 21:56, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If it will cheer you up, Derby will rise from the lowest ranks as soon as I do the Henry Neville candidate for Shakespeare authorship, which, despite my best efforts, will secure bottom place.Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd revert Zeigenbaum's major edit on the grounds that (a) it susbtantially alters a text for which consensus exists (b) introduces poor sources, some of which are either not RS or dubious as such. There is a good argument for shortening some of the Bacon and Oxford material, but it is best done on this work page instead of engaging in individual challenges.Nishidani (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your comment. I do not consider that I challenged anything or anyone. The changes made and since reverted are factual and supportable with acceptable sourcing. Kindly expand on how they are poor, in comparison to that which existed before the alteration. The modification brought the Oxford sub-article into size and factual specificity comparable to the other summaries. These are helpful advances.
1) To discuss the alterations specifically, although I have already addressed several of these points in the editing comments above, citing sound reasons, I will be happy to restate them as I did to Johnuniq upon inquiry.
2) The long section about Looney (paragraph 2) belongs in the history section, or in the Oxfordian Theory article. It could stay, if it were trimmed down. The Looney scholarship is no longer relied upon by the Oxfordian community, since so much other more specific material has been found. It is an important artifact. The best place is in the History section.
3) The two mainstream refutations do not belong, as the other summaries include none and it was agreed by the present editors not to present mainstream arguments in these summaries. Thus "No documentary evidence connecting Oxford to the authorship of the works has been found" and "Although Oxford died in 1604 with 10 Shakespeare plays yet to be written according to the most widely accepted chronology" do not belong in the summary. They will be immediately contradicted by the references following the statements of the summary text, which makes them puzzling, out of place, and liable to make a reader think someone is pulling a fast one on them in the summary. In the context of the treatment of the other summaries, this could be interpreted as gratuitous bias and we wish to avoid that.
4) The longest paragraph ( paragraph 4, about Frisbee and codes) does not belong at all. Detail such as that goes in the Oxfordian Theory article. Presently it is being given far too much space, too much weight, and does not represent the main points raised by most Oxfordians. US News and Atlantic magazines summarize examples of what the major Oxfordian points are. The references are included should the reader seek them beyond what is in the sub-article itself.
5) The long PT description does not belong in a brief summary. It too should go in the Oxfordian Theory article. Placement in the summary can be interpreted as an invitation to ignore the evidence because this aspect of the Oxford contention is considered shocking and sensational and incredible, despite a certain amount of documented evidence supporting such exploratory theories.
6) I suggest that the summary end with the last line of the new text just added. That would make it the most concise summary of the major Oxfordian points, as evidenced by the references provided following the new text.
7) The Minerva Britanna graphic need not be in the Oxfordian summary. This is another example of detailed evidence presented as the strength of the Oxfordian contention, whereas it is really a side-light, showing how the literary types of the era amused themselves and each other by communicating through puzzle means what they did not feel safe to say outright. First, it is not a "major" theme of Oxfordian research, and second, it was used by Baconians as well, so is not specific to the Oxford case. It could go into the history section included in the Bacon expanded discussion (since Baconians used it first), or in one or more of the theory articles. Regardless, it should not be where it is, giving the wrong impression of what kind of evidence is emphasized in Oxfordian studies, (or perhaps what a Stratfordian writer would wish was typical Oxfordian evidence), and--returning to the important standard of brevity observed elsewhere,--it just makes the summary longer.
8) This discussion is really about content. If there is a problem with reference formatting, which is not my concern, then you appear to have several editors that can correct the format issues.
9) In terms of RS, you have already established that the Wall Street Journal is RS. The same applies to US News and World Report and Atlantic Monthly. They are RS by every definition I can find. If one of these magazines reported that Oxford was Looney's fraud on history and scholarship, would its report be ignored?
10) There is absolutely no prohibition on using Primary Sources. No interpretation is being given to them, they are simply being quoted. Besides, there are plenty of RS sources that quote the same material. If you want to substitute one of them, I have no objection. Again, we are discussing content here.
11) To quote ArbCom: " Where an article concerns a theory that does not have majority support in the relevant scholarly community, the article must fairly describe the division of opinion among those who have extensively studied the matter." This in no way limits RS the way you describe. "...those who have extensively studied the matter" is the key here. I note that the only abstention said "I think this would benefit from a clarification to ensure that it's only those views from the scholarly community or accepted experts - even minority ones - that are included, rather than just anyone who has a BA in English Lit." Thus even the abstainer agrees that accepted experts - even minority ones - can be sourced. This appears to support the use of sources as seen in the section (here reverted for alleged poor sources).
12)I note the remarks by Johnuniq and also Nishidani that the Marlovian perspective was not "allowed" but was the result of collaboration by Farey and the majority editors. It is a fact that the Marlovian candidacy is not the threat to the Shakespeare establishment that the Oxfordian scholarship represents. While I do not object to Farey receiving fair treatment, it will likely soon be seen as unfair for the majority group to specifically resist one candidacy's use of and reference to scholarship and at the same time extend every courtesy to another. The disinterested observer will inevitably conclude the majority editors are using a double-standard. We would not wish to convey such an impression.
13)Regarding Nishidani's assertion in explanation of his revert that Oxford's prominence in the literary world of the Elizabethan era is irrelevant, then so would Shakespeare's contemporary fame be irrelevant. Harvey referred to Oxford as the author of Venus and Adonis, published under the name William Shakespeare. Eight Shakespeare plays were performed at court during the Christmas play season following Oxford's passing. Another series followed the death of his wife in 1612. No other honor for husband and wife ever occurred in the history of the English monarchy. Such contemporary renown is relevant. We cannot by fiat squelch history unfavorable to our predisposed views. Thus, the reference, in my edit, to Oxford's contemporary literary reputation, sufficient that James I referred to him as "The Great Oxford", is substantially pertinent to answering this important identity question and certainly appropriate to a summary of reasons for considering the possibility of his authorship. with best wishes, Zweigenbaum (talk) 02:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Regarding Nishidani's reversion of the modified text, for ease of discussion and comparison, I have placed them side by side in the article. In response to Nishidani's doubt that there is such a grouping as "most Oxfordians", I am familiar with the individuals and the publications involved, and the very evidence most emphasized as Oxfordian in this article are least valued by those organizations and publications: the Minerva Brittana puzzle and the variations of the Prince Tudor theory. There is ample evidence exclusive of these topics leading to a convincing proof of Oxfordian identity with the Shakepeare author. In fact few Oxfordians are cognizant of the Cardano Grille code or the Latin anagram tradition that generated these studies. This is why I stated before that, as a Marlovian was respected to explain the Marlovian theory, so should an Oxfordian be respected to know and to cite sources both primary and secondary, regarding the Oxfordian subject matter. Stratfordian editors need not fear to be informed of existing or previously neglected evidence. Zweigenbaum (talk) 05:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(1) ‘The changes made and since reverted are factual and supportable with acceptable sourcing.’
This is an obiter dictum or Sir Oracle style of argumentation. It takes the form: ‘I think so, therefore it is.’
In editing, at a late stage of its drafting an article aspiring to the strictest criteria for wikipedia material, major proposals such as yours should be first presented to the community of editors engaged with the page.
Your sourcing is not acceptable according to the strong criteria used over the past several months. Changes are not 'factual'. Changes may contain reference to facts.
Your new sources, to an article that almost exclusively relies on the best academic works, consist of:-
Bill Bryson. He's an agreeable popular writer. He has no first hand knowledge of Shakespearean scholarship.
Michael Satchell writing in U.S. News & World Report. Satchell is a journalist who has covered, from an Oxfordian perspective, a few events. He is not an authority on the argument, nor the Elizabethan period, nor the state of Shakespearean studies. The only substantive addition to the argument he has made, as far as I know, was to mention that Keanu Reeves was a confirmed supporter of the Oxfordian theory.
William Webbe and George Puttenham are primary sources. In the secondary literature, their remarks are interpreted as pieces of flattery paying obeisance to the ranking system of Elizabethan court society, and not as testimonies to the known facts of the period. In any case, the article avoids using evidence from primary sources, unless it is cited from a reliable and pertinent secondary source in the scholarship on this area. Both Webbe and Puttenham are thus cited in many RS for the period.
Captain Bernard Mordaunt Ward's 1928 bio. of de Vere is a respectable if highly dated piece of scholarship from an Oxfordian perspective. We have numerous modern academic sources, including Alan Nelson and Steven May, who make the same point, and who are already used in the article.
Irwin Smith 's 1964 Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse: its history and its design, is a respectable source, but the material from it is already in several sources used here, including Nelson and May. Occam's razor applies.
G.P.V. Akrigg's 1968 Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, is a respectable source, but for a point that is risible. All members of Elizabeth’s court knew each other. It is not an ‘Oxfordian argument’ to note the obvious, any more than it is a Baconian argument to note that Bacon knew the same people, namely Elizabeth 1 and Henry Wriothesley.
'his academic and cultural achievements'.
According to Nelson he had no academic achievements. If you can find an academic or reliable updated Elizabethan specialist source arguing to the contrary, in explaining the Oxfordian position, by all means use that. His MAs were granted as formal gestures or compliments by the universities. His ‘cultural’ achievements consisted in, like many aristocrats of his day, keeping players and being the object of many book dedications by authors seeking his favour and the prestige of being conferred recognition by him. Both points are, again, sourced to a newspaper (U.S.News & World Report), which is ridiculously incongruous given the high quality of sourcing required of the article. That, like many aristocrats (Henry Neville etc.) de Vere travelled widely does not need referencing to a modern American newspaper. It is in Nelson, who is RS for this kind of detail.
To use the precedent of the Wall Street Journal, as grounds for citing from any number of other American newspapers is misbegotten. The Wall Street Journal was used for an interview with the Elizabethan scholar James Shapiro on precisely the subject of this article. The newspaper articles you wish to cite refer information from people who have no formal credentials in the scholarship on this argument.
William Plumer Fowler's Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford's Letters, fails all tests as an RS for this article. A former fisherman, minor poet and lawyer who presided over the Boston Shakespeare Club, and was an Oxfordian, is not a reliable source on the details of de Vere’s life or Shakespeare.Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, therefore, your twin attempts to edit 'en bloc destabilize the format, and presume to use sources that turn out to violate the strict criteria for an article of this kind. For this reason, I have placed your proposal below, where it can be discussed as an alternative proposal.
(3)
'The two mainstream refutations do not belong, as the other summaries include none and it was agreed by the present editors not to present mainstream arguments in these summaries.'
You are misrepresenting the text. The two points made:
(a) 'Although Oxford died in 1604 with 10 Shakespeare plays yet to be written according to the most widely accepted chronology, Oxfordians date the plays earlier and say that unfinished works were revised by other playwrights and released after his death.' (b) 'No documentary evidence connecting Oxford to the authorship of the works has been found.'
are not 'refutations' but statements of fact freely admitted by Oxfordians. Perhaps 'most Oxfordians' would be better for (a) since some maintain that de Vere lived on, like Marlowe, after a faked death.
(7) 'The Minerva Britanna graphic need not be in the Oxfordian summary.'
We have only your word for it that this is ‘not a major theme’ in Oxfordian theories. RS mention it in that connection, and our text rightly notes that it is adduced by both Baconians and Oxfordians. Is the problem here the fact that the Minerva Britanna graphic is shared grounds for both Baconism and Oxfordianism?
(8) 'If there is a problem with reference formatting, which is not my concern, then you appear to have several editors that can correct the format issues.'
Despite being new here, you have already mastered one stylke of reference formatting, one incidentally used by a previous and banned editor. To say ‘it is not my concern’ reads ‘I don’t care less for what you guys agree on. If you don’t like my style, adjust it yourselves. I won’t.’
'In response to Nishidani's doubt that there is such a grouping as "most Oxfordians", I am familiar with the individuals and the publications involved, and the very evidence most emphasized as Oxfordian in this article are least valued by those organizations and publications.'
Again, neither you, Peter Farey, nor I nor anyone else can edit here proclaiming our intimate knowledge sufficiently vouchsafes for the reliability of the information given. We filter partisan opinions through RS to avoid precisely the obvous abuses to which this kind of confient self-assertion lends itself.Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Zweigenbaum's proposal for rewriting of the Oxford section. Text and discussion
Proposed text as revised with Nishidani's challenged sources adjusted.
The leading present-day candidate is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[3] After being proposed in the 1920's, Oxford rapidly overtook Bacon to become within two decades the most popular alternative candidate.[4]
Oxfordians point to the acclaim of Oxford's contemporaries regarding his talent as a poet and a playwright, his reputation as a hidden poet, and his personal connections to London theatre and the contemporary playwrights of Shakespeare's day. [5] They also note his personal relationships with Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Southampton,[6] his knowledge of Court life, his extensive education, his academic and cultural achievements, and his wide-ranging travels through France and Italy to what would later become the locations of many of Shakespeare's plays.
The case for Oxford's authorship is also based on perceived similarities between Oxford's biography and events in Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and longer poems; parallels of language, idiom, and thought between Oxford's personal letters and the Shakespearean canon; and underlined passages in Oxford's personal bible, which Oxfordians believe correspond to quotations in Shakespeare's plays.[7] Confronting the issue of Oxford's death in 1604, Oxfordian researchers cite examples they say imply the writer known as "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" died before 1609, and point to 1604 as the year regular publication of "new" or "augmented" Shakespeare plays stopped.[8]
The following are Nishidani's remarks prior to revision above:
As far as I can see, the substance of this alternative proposal consists in its different sourcing, since most of the points made are available in the prior text. Zweigenbaum's contention therefore must be interpreted as a proposal, essentially, to whittle down the version we have. That is not unreasonable, though removing good material from a fine article to dump it down in the obscurity of a notoriously poorly edited and almost unreadable page, can be taken as instrumental to image-maintenance.
My own position is that the length of the two is due to the fact that they have been intensivcely studied by academics, unlike Marlowe and the Derby candidates. An abundance of learned commentary makes the more extensive treatment of these two almost obligatory.
I would suggest however that if and wherever we, as Zweigenbaum asks, decide to thin down the present version, the removed passages be copied and pasted on to the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship page. Nishidani (talk) 15:54, 20 February 2011 (UTC) ---------[reply]
In response to the above remarks and ideas: The point of my original proposal and its demonstration is that too much text, and of the wrong kind, is presently in force as a summary of the Oxfordian contention. It is done mainly by non-Oxfordian minds with all that that might affect in terms of selecting the salient facts. At this point, Nishidani seems to be not too far from mine in terms of the brevity issue, and if he wants to solve the issue by adding favored texts into the body of the sub-article that follows--that are properly sourced and credited--it makes for a good compromise under these circumstances. The reader can take it from there, seeing two points of view.
As to the sourcing coming strictly from acceptable scholarship, that term being understood according to the lights of a group unanimously representing the Stratford persuasion, I would only suggest reading the ArbCom ruling and correcting the prevailing understanding, especially in such instances of majority and minority sourcing as described below:
ArbCom: "Where an article concerns a theory that does not have majority support in the relevant scholarly community, the article must fairly describe the division of opinion among those who have extensively studied the matter." and also note the one arbitrator who said " I think this would benefit from a clarification to ensure that it's only those views from the scholarly community or accepted experts--even minority ones--that are included, rather than just anyone who has a BA in English Lit." To me that intent to be fair is achieved by Oxfordian input, not exclusion of it.
On the question of U.S. News and World Report being/not being a properly used reference or any other news periodical for that matter--sources such as WSJournal, NY Times, Atlantic, Harpers, etc.--I would advise that Wikipedia policies do consider mainstream news sources with a reputation for fact checking as Reliable Sources. You may or may not like the reporter. His facts have been checked. Unless the given periodical shows evidence to the contrary it is reliable. No one editor may unilaterally decide what periodicals are unallowable for reference in this article. If Nishidani intends to take such a position, then the proper approach is to go to dispute resolution in order to formally challenge the Wikipedia policy.
If you or your colleagues have decided on a different referencing format, please provide those instructions or a link to them. I am doing the best I can to fumble forward in this system. But I remind you that sourcing-format issues are not a legitimate cause for removing material. Regarding the second-hand view conveyed in Nishidani's post that my attitude on non-content questions is I'll put down what I like and the rest of you can fix it--on the contrary, this is a group effort and if someone wants to reformat the sources, as my recent listing of reasons were re-formatted by someone, they are welcome to do so. There is no requirement that every submission be perfect. In fact Wikipedia specifically encourages collaboration. Add what you can and how best you can and if someone wants formatting done differently, he or she may change it. We are all volunteers and have our different skills and emphases to contribute. That's the Wiki way, I hope. Zweigenbaum (talk) 23:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"You may or may not like the reporter. His facts have been checked." Please clarify what you mean by that. "Facts" about a minority theory in an article promoting that theory are not "checked" in the sense of checking a fact such as Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941. Fact-checking in a periodical is usually limited to checking the spelling of names and the attribution of quotations, and does not in any sense bestow credibility on the statements being offered by those quoted. Invoking the phrase "fact checking" merely means that those aforementioned tasks are done and does not affect the reliability of a text or its suitability for this article as a source, all of which should be the best and most reputable sources, which in this article would be scholarly sources.
We already have been through dispute resolution. Re-arguing the case is not helpful nor conducive to improving this article. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:13, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome back Mr. Reedy. We are not re-arguing the case but making it briefer and more representative of the relevant facts. Nishidani brought up that US News & World Report was not sufficient as a reliable source. The Wikipedia guidelines accept mainstream periodicals as reliable because they fact-check. If you understand fact-check to mean punctuation, et al, I don't know any mainstream magazine that agrees. Their lawyers would be out of a job. Mentioning US News & World Report hardly gives undue weight to the minority view, when the magazine is quoted regarding the novelty of that view. If you forbid even the Wall Street Journal as a source, it is an unfortunate advertisement that credibility is fading for your position. I accept the reliability of the Wall Street Journal even though it panned the Oxfordian position. Wikipedia considers the WSJ reliable. It is not up to individuals in the majority to decide that ONLY scholarly resources apply to an issue discussed by the minority. The guideline aims for a high level, not a unduly narrowed one. I will be ready for another dispute arbitration, about major periodicals' credibility in Wikipedia articles, when you are prepared to contest them. Isolating sourcing only to the Stratfordian chestnuts, i.e., even excluding major magazines, after going to the extent of characterizing the other side as "fringe" and "lunatic fringe" might look somewhat cultish. This would not serve the credibility of the article.
Regarding Nishidani's useful suggestion about stating the central points relevant to the Oxford summary paragraphs, ["it would be helpful if you could provide your input on what there strikes you as central, and what peripheral, to the Oxfordian case."] and then transferring the detailed discussion to the appropriate sub-article:
Everything after the added text at the top of the sub-section is either peripheral or repetitive. Going into the details of Minerva Britanna, George Frisbees codes, Prince Tudor and PT2--is hardly a summary of the Oxford contention. If a given issue really divides the Oxfordians, as the present Prince Tudor discussion states, then it obviously isn't a central point, or they would have already split or disbanded over it.
As shown in the article and above, the Oxford Summary's central points are obvious: Oxford's reputation as poet and playwright, the import of the de Vere Geneva bible; his personal relationship with the Queen and with Southampton; his London theatrical activities (Blackfriars, etc.), his travels and far-ranging knowledge (as recognized by tutors and contemporaries), his reputation as an outstanding but covert author after his youth as per Puttenham. His status as the leading candidate for the last ninety years is appropriate to emphasize, since such recognition grows substantially by the year and the Bacon reputation has correspondingly declined. After the Stritmatter-Kositsky article in the Review of English Studies, the 1604 parameter for any further topical plays or author augmentations is a plus for the Oxfordian position. These are central arguments. To ignore, efface, or minimize them would be valuing the peripheral over the central. If the new text states the case more concisely and pertinently, that should not matter to the Stratfordian contention, given the overwhelming space and detail provided the latter in the article.
Zweigenbaum (talk) 07:19, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is not satisfactory to treat the article as a draft page where text you want is inserted at the start of the Oxford section, while leaving the text that was already there (which you clearly do not want)—I am referring to this diff. If you propose any further significant changes, I suggest the best strategy would be to work on them in a draft page. I would be happy to copy the wikitext somewhere, probably one of the existing sandboxes previously used, and I would clean stuff like "1920's" (no apostrophe), and remove the extraneous spaces and line breaks. You could then edit the draft to show what you propose. Regarding the changes you wanted in connection with the U.S. judges: It is not good encyclopedic practice to list celebrities that support a particular point of view. Those celebrities are experts in U.S. law, and have no track record regarding English history of the 1600s. Consider what an article would look like if the "for" side listed all the celebrities supporting their case, while the "against" side listed theirs. It is just not how things are done here (and bear in mind that there was no support for the issues you raised at the NPOV, RS and NOR noticeboards, so your understanding of how articles should be sourced may not be complete). At any rate, if you want to work on suitable wording, I suggest that you should work in a draft where you will be able to take a few days to get it right, while responding to any points raised here or on the draft's talk page. Then, other editors would be in a position to assist merging improvements to the article, or to state opinions on why no merge should occur. Having a draft would allow other editors to evaluate the competing claims. Currently, it is too confusing with these long comments and unfinished article edits to know what to think. Johnuniq (talk) 09:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I have just undone Zw's (Nina-esque?) edit where he just inserted his proposed text before the existing text, making the section longer, and incoherent. Having said this, I think Zw does make some valid points that are being unfairly dismissed. (I have only been looking at the article for a month and I'm already getting deja vu). More on this later today... Poujeaux (talk) 10:03, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a matter of unfair dismissal. His points, in so far as they are intelligible in these opinionated walls of text, have been addressed. Of everything said, the point that the text on Oxford may be rather long may be relevant, and can be discussed. He has not responded to the cautions and technical objections other than by repeating his initial assertions, which is precisely what other Oxfordian editors tend to do, or have done in the past. It is also apparent that, at this delicate passage towards FA review, his behaviour in ignoring requests to make proposals for major revisions on the talk page or in a sandbox, has the appearance of an invitation to established editors to editwar (here, here and here), against reservations repeated on the talk page by other editors), and thus deprive the article of the central pillar of stability which is one of the governing criteria for FA review. For a year now I have been asking myself why so many editors from that quarter refuse to fix the delapidated mess that is The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare Authorship, where they are free to devote their undoubted energies to a comprehensive exposition of the belief system, and, instead, engage in persistent disruptive attempts to block the completion of this article, which deals with the whole subject, not just de Vere. We are being dragged through Arbcom, forum-shopping runs riot, DYK presentations for forked off material are challenged, just as established editors have returned to fine tune a long, complex, and comprehensive piece of labour written under the most exacting conditions of wiki protocols.Nishidani (talk) 11:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It would be help if you would say what the valid points were. Paul B (talk) 11:45, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Will do later. Meanwhile, here's a challenge for Paul and/or Nishi - please prove me wrong. Look at Zw's 13 points and find one that is at least partly valid and make a minor modification to the page accordingly. Poujeaux (talk) 13:17, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I set up a draft page here and solicited edits to address Smatprt's and Peter Farey's concerns a few weeks ago. Peter utilized it; Smatprt could not, of course, since he was topic-banned and the arbitration was going on, but it is still available. It has the main article lede, the old draft version and the new mainpage version for comparison.
Pardon me if I seem to not be acting in good faith, but we seem to be regressing back to the same conditions that brought on the arbitration, i.e. a war of attrition to destabilise the page and prevent it from achieving FA status. The fact that we're now re-arguing acceptable sources when the arbitration made it clear that the best sources from experts were to be used and the fact that Zweigenbaum is now using the same editing strategies that were specifically referred to--dropping major edits into the page "for discussion" instead of searching for concensus; using the talk page to argue the anti-Stratfordian case instead of how to improve the article, and impugning the motives of other editors as if their main concern were to push their POV--all cause me concern. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:07, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the discussion. Please note the second half of the ruling - "Where an article concerns a theory that does not have majority support in the relevant scholarly community, the article must fairly describe the division of opinion among those who have extensively studied the matter." That is mandated support for I am trying to do and I believe that I am conforming to the ArbCom decisions. In fact, they clearly say that if something cannot be worked out at talk, then dispute resolution is the way to go. The fact that some of these same things have been talked to death on these talk pages, with no resolution, indicates these problems have not been solved, and no consensus has been established. If you want to challenge every edit I make and every source I add, then maybe the only alternative is to take it to the next level. I hope not. I hope you will begin to see the validity of brevity and concentrating on major points. I see that Peter Farey is doing his best to conform to the various rules you have set for this page, and so am I. But I am also trying to utilize the rules set by ArbCom. They said that RS is defined as experts on the subject. They did not say that is restricted to mainstream Shakespeare scholars with PhD's. There are experts on the subject that are in no way represented in this article. Price, Ogburn, Anderson, etc., seem to have been banned, even though they are acknowledged as experts on the minority views. Even given ArbCom's rulings, I have said to Nishidani, and will say again, that if the information I have added has sources you prefer, then feel free to add them. But deleting content because you don't like the sources, is not the way to do that. Nishidani has stated that the information I wanted to add can be sourced better. So be it. I haven o objection to your adding your own sources for Meres and Puttenham. That is minor in comparison to what seems to be a systematic attempt to exclude all minority input, even with otherwise acceptable references. Want to source to May? Do so. But I don't believe any other forum has so taken exception to any of the major points I have added. I am willing to compromise on which sources we use, as long as the content is accurate and fairly describes the central (as Nishidani termed them) Oxfordian points. At this point, the summary is still littered with far too many minor details. It reads like a caricature of the Oxfordian theory instead of a fair representation. Could we agree on trimming down the 2nd half of the summary? To my eye the brief to the point edit tells more than the oddball features you think/prefer to be is Oxfordian theory. If we could work together on the objective of brief but salient, perhaps we can overcome this impasse. Most of the jargon being thrown about to discount my contributions and objections, threaten action, associate me with Nina Green, are static, in comparison to the simple objective, be fair. There is a minority view and it is not legal to ignore it. Please consider these points.Zweigenbaum (talk) 17:33, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You say "There are experts on the subject that are in no way represented in this article. Price, Ogburn, Anderson, etc., seem to have been banned, even though they are acknowledged as experts on the minority views." No, that's not so, not at all. Sorry. See WP:RS. If a minority view is not articulated and accepted within academia as a legitimate theory there is no such thing as "expertise" in it in your sense. A person who promotes the theory that aliens built the pyramids or that Mossad destroyed the Twin Towers may be an "expert" in your sense - they may have lots of arguments and information. But only a scholar who studies the theories is an expert in our sense. Knowing a lot about a subject does not make one an expert in the relevant sense, since the "subject" itself is a walled garden. If I decide to write a book proving that Richard Greene really wrote Shakespeare, then in your sense I will be an "expert" on the topic - the expert in fact - but that will have no value according to WP:RS. Anyone is an expert on their own opinions. However, if a scholar studies and comments on my theory, then that scholar is an expert on the theory. Paul B (talk) 18:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Zweigenbaum, I think perhaps you've misunderstood the purpose of the relevant section in this article. It is supposed to be quite similar to the lede of its Main article (or rather, to the in potentia ideal version of it); that is, it should summarize the major points of the subject while also serving as a stand-alone introduction. In other words, its purpose is explicitly not to present the best current arguments of the Oxfordian theory, but rather it is to summarize all aspects of the theory; including its more ludicrous variants, its weak arguments, its historical form and reception, its current state, and how it is generally received among academics of the field. Thus, for instance, the Prince Tudor variants most certainly belong there (especially considering it has apparently inspired a major motion picture). In considering this it might help you to think of it this way: it doesn't matter what you or I find the most important points about the Oxfordian theory, it is what the mainstream scholars who have surveyed it consider the most important points that matter. For instance, the features and arguments of the Oxfordian theory that S. Schoenbaum, Irvin Matus, and James Shapiro highlight are what should determine what we cover in this article. And that's entirely irrespective of whether they subscribe to those arguments or not. --Xover (talk) 19:52, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Zw's point (2) certainly makes sense. The Looney para in the Oxford section can be trimmed since it duplicates a para in the history section. Poujeaux (talk) 22:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly point 7, the Minerva thing. Note that this is not mentioned in the main Oxfordian article - which fits with Zw's claim that this is not a major Oxfordian argument. The source is a web page by Terry Ross, who I note does not have a PhD :) Poujeaux (talk) 22:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you manage to pick out salient points there that would be good, because I frankly am having trouble finding them in between the surrounding rhetoric. If there is more there that we should be looking at, then please do point it out: as I believe Tom has mentioned previously, it would be useful to have the input of an Oxfordian (provided, of course, that it is constructive and collaborative). As to the specific points, I disagree that the Looney paragraph duplicates the History section and that it can be significantly trimmed in the Oxford section. Looney gets all of a single sentence in History (i.e. there's no overlap worth the mention), and Looney was a watershed event in the Oxfordian theory (so say all my sources, at least) so it really needs to be mentioned in the Oxford section. Even had there been significant duplication between the sections I think that would be the case. Incidentally, I think this is where Zweigenbaum lost us on this point: his argument seems to be that Looney should be removed because Oxfordians no longer rely on his research (they seem, in fact, to be a little embarrassed by it; probably because it's been so thoroughly debunked), which misses the fact that it was, in the context, historically significant (and hence should be included). Your argument, though I don't agree, at least has merit. On the Minerva Britanna thing, Zweigenbaum actually just argued that the graphic should be removed (which it has, as I noted somewhere above). You expand on this to argue that even the mention of it should be removed from the text. I suspect you make this argument somewhat on shaky foundations: see The Not-Too-Hidden Key to Minerva Britanna (by Roger Stritmatter, the only Oxfordian with a PhD, if you'll pardon the levity) for how seriously they take it, and Terry Ross' rebuttal Oxfordian Myths: The Oxford Anagram in "Minerva Britanna" for more information on where and to what extent they rely on it (there is a further full-length article, by Peter Dickson, but it's no longer available online). That being said, however, it seems neither Shapiro nor Schoenbaum mention the Minerva Britanna argument, so I am at least ready to entertain the argument that this particular point might best be elided from the Oxford section. What do the other surveys of the topic (Matus, in particular) have to say on this? Finally, I don't think we should overstate the length problem for the Oxford section: the rule of thumb would be something like 4–5 paragraphs, and the section is now exactly 5 (of which one is very short). In terms of raw length, Derby and Marlowe are a smidgen too short; Bacon is about right; and Oxford is perhaps a mere smidgen too long. There is no pressing need to address length in these sections as such. --Xover (talk) 02:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unless I have glanced through it in too cursory a fashion, there is no mention of Peacham's image in Matus either. However, Zweigenbaum's authority here on its relevance is dubious, for the article surveys the historical field not the most recent consensus among one group of Oxfordians. Both Looney and Eva Clark grappled with it, because it was used by Baconians for their candidate, and it was soon found to support de Vere. In recent articles, forum debates and books by David Roper, Peter Dickson, Roger Stritmatter, Lynne Kosinsky, Mark Anderson, Peter Dawkins, and William Farina, to cite a few, Minerva Britanna resurfaces consistently, and Stritmatter certainly argues strongly for it, as a contemporary Oxfordian. As I highlighted at Zweigenbaum's page, it is not an adequate test of relevance to be told by one editor from the deVerean fold that this is old hat. Deconstructed, all Zweigenbaum is saying is that many Oxfordians he knows do not accept their colleague Stritmatter's revival of the argument. As a general rule, it is a constant feature of ths kind of debate that old arguments, long forgotten, are fished out to be refurbished as new evidence. (The Ashbourne portrait proof was buried in 1979, and yet has recently begun to be revived). What Zweigenbaum's argument alludes to is the fact Noemi Magri was thought, by a good many Oxfordians, to have dealt a fatal blow to Eva Clark's interpretation in her 1999 article (De Vere Society Newsletter, May 1999). Stritmatter, a year later, found a way to conserve the demolishd thesis that it alludes to de Vere. This is quit erecent stuff, Stritmatter is a big name among Oxfordians, and therefore Zweigenbaum's argument represents just one view among many, entertained by the Oxfordian coterie. Therefore, given that it is both a notable historical argument for both Baconians and Oxfordians, and still defended by sundry members of the de Verean school, I see no reason why it should not be included.Nishidani (talk) 12:16, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Zweigenbaum suggested moving the image. It was moved. It is there to illustrate a general point - how motifs are "discovered" to have hidden meanings and that proponents of different True Authors often find quite distinct hidden meanings in the same words or emblems. Note that Zweigenbaum, apparently believes in the hidden meaning ("showing how the literary types of the era amused themselves and each other by communicating through puzzle means what they did not feel safe to say outright"). He just thinks it's not a major point. The general point - about coded messages - is a major one, and it is useful to have actual examples rather than just generic statements that Baconians, Oxfordians et al find them. Paul B (talk) 11:04, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Law follow up
Speaking of excess material.
'United States Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia have since both declared themselves adherents of the Oxfordian Theory, as had Justice Harry Blackmun before them. Justice Lewis Powell, Jr. rejected the Stratford hypothesis without suggesting a candidate. Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor followed suit as an anti-Stratfordian, saying "[The author] might well have been someone other than our Stratford man." [9]
It is true that lawyers play a very important role in the Oxfordian argument, replacing as authority figures, Shakespearean-era scholars. It is natural that the Supreme Court moot court decision against be qualified by mentioning that later, two of the original justices were swayed otherwise. But then we have, imperceptibly, mention of the views of Sandra O'Conner, Anthony Scalia, and Lewis F.Powell, none of whom presided at the moot court. The section supposedly dealing with two moot courts, US and English, is made to drift off into a parenthetical excursus on members of the US Supreme Court who entertain anti-Stratfordian views, in a section devoted to 'Authorship revives in the mainstream media.' Worse still the same source tells us Justice Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer are Stratfordians, a fact not mentioned (and I hope it won't be). Are the private opinions of just US Supreme Court Justices on a matter they have no competence in relevant? If so, we will be hauling in before long Nietzsche's support for Bacon, etc.etc.etc., in a prestige by association promotional battle.
This all sets a potentially destabilizing precedent. The mainstream media covered the two events 1987, 1988, and that was the point of writing of these two decisions. The US bit is given undue weight over the English one (to insiders this recalls the fact that the Oxfordian thesis is a minor American media fixation, not shared by the English media). The British moot court decision is never mentioned (except in academic sources) because, unlike the aftermath of the US Supreme Court given some focus here, sources say it was admitted to be a 'disaster' and 'stinging defeat', given the unanimous dismissal rendered by Lords Ackner,
Oliver, and
Templeton. None of this has been included, wisely. But by the same token, I think the detail on the private opinions of later US supreme court judges is best moved to the Oxfordian Theory page.
There is also the problem that the WSJ ref does not conform to the citation format we are using.Nishidani (talk) 18:08, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On the immediate point of the Wall Street Journal being an improper source, see the discussion above: fact-checked mainstream periodicals are acceptable sources in Wikipedia. On the matter of reversals of the Justices ruling on the 1987 moot court case, that is factual information. Omitting that the very judges who ruled on the moot court all reversed their Shakespeare vs. Oxford decision, (Brennan expressed doubt about it afterward to his law clerk William F. Causey) is curious to the point of concealment. This pertinent information may strike Nishidani as shockingly out of place. However, I am inclined to think that such a position is pretextual in order to cover another, to keep the facts from being read by interested readers. If the Breyer or Kennedy views support a full disclosure of how the Supreme Court Justices have quite remarkably evolved on the question, it is fine to include it in a sentence or another clause too. In general it is better to be truthful or someone will wonder why you are squirming to avoid being truthful. That the Supreme Court Justices agreed to mock rule on this issue is altogether fitting and proper: it is a case testing the reliability of evidence, and they understand evidence. They rule on evidence in each and every case before them. I'd suggest Nishidani graciously let the undisputed historical facts stand as reported and thereby acknowledge they exist. I do not object to the report that the English judges rejected the Oxfordian position. They had their reasons.Zweigenbaum (talk) 23:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Neither the Wall Street journal nor the New York Times checks the facts in an opinion piece, which is essentially what the USNWR article is. If they had, the statement "Today, those who believe that Shakspere was the author have no definitive proof but instead point to Hamlet's declaration: 'The play's the thing.'" would not have passed muster, much less such a statement as "the weight of evidence anoints de Vere as the leading candidate" or "there isn't a scrap of documentation that Shakspere, the Warwickshire merchant, ever wrote anything in his life." I don't know who Michael Satchell is, but he sounds like he's channelling you and he's certainly not any kind of authority on Shakespeare, not does he meet the sourcing requirements for this article.
And speaking of channelling, it appears that you're now bringing up the exact same points several Oxfordians have tried to argue about in this article. You might want to check the archives from the past year and see how those arguments played out, and you might want to re-read the late arbitration sanctions before resuming your current campaign.
Another trait you seem to have picked up is plopping down a large amount of major material on the main page "for discussion", which was same the modus operandi of another bygone editor. Material for comment is placed on the talk page, not the main page. But also please note that we are not going to have long disruptive discussions that flit from one area to another as can be found in the past 15 archived pages. NPOV collaborative editing involves a bit more than merely saying "thank you" and "please".
On another note, celebrity endorsements are not substantive points of any anti-Stratfordian case, even Oxford's and the purpose of this page is to explain the cases to the reader, not try to influence him or her by drooling over which celebrity has signed on to them. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For reasons too obvious to state, I added to the Supreme Court section information that directly pertains to it, namely that two of the three Justices voting AGAINST the Oxford contention in 1987 ENDORSED it later. The third, Brennan, expressed to his former law clerk William F. Causey that he questioned Shakspere's authenticity as the author. The update makes 3-0 against your candidate. But I got that information in the New York Times. These facts, in addition to Lewis Powell, Jr.'s skepticism about Shakspere as author, and Justice O'Connor's recent statement of skepticism to go along with Blackmun, Stevens and Scalia, change the thrust of the paragraph radically. I didn't include every detail I could have for considerations of brevity. If you don't want the relevant facts in your article, have courage and say so. The Supreme Court Justices are hardly "celebrities"; they are world-class specialists in the probity of evidence. That has relevance to this issue, a study in conjecture and little direct evidence. You intended to show that the Oxford case had no probity in your narrative about the moot court decision. The tables turned. They changed their minds. It isn't my fault. I'm not on a contract to do you in. It is fact. Recognize it and we won't have to differ.
On the matter of the major publications not fact-checking on opinion pieces, that was certainly not the case in my experience with the New Yorker. They went through everything like it was a set of legal stipulations. They don't want to make apologies or pay lawyers. The facts have to be right. The opinions are the writers' and they so state.
If I am bringing up points you have previously successfully managed to quash, or their authors, it is likely because the same common-sense questions occur to every reader who encounters the website article as presently constituted. Assuming this little dispute is evidence, you aren't about to let relevant facts get in your way. But that can be a weakness in obtaining a permanent article. I advise against the practice. Zweigenbaum (talk) 08:21, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The actual "thrust of the paragraph" has nothing to do with who won or lost, but the attendant media coverage about the case and its use as a springboard for publicising Oxfordian ideas among the general public. You want to change a structural point about the history of the authorship question into an opportunity for advocacy, which is evident by your belief that that's the purpose of the paragraph, except for the Stratfordian side. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:38, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Zweigenbaum, you are now accusing Tom (or is it all of us?) of “quashing” valid points and generally biased editing (for all that you are couching it in superficially polite language). Please don't do that! If you have issues with an edit, comment on the edit and not the editor. You won't effect the changes you want in the article unless you manage to convince the other editors here of their merit; and making this kind of accusation is a singularily inefficient way to go about that. That being said, your argument, such as it is, is not persuasive: you confuse the moot court with the judges' personal opinions. Granted the whole thing was nothing at all like an actual trial (where there are standards for evidence and expert witnesses), but such as it was they ruled as they did based on (semi-)legal considerations. Whatever they may privately think of the issue is wholly irrelevant, in this case as in every other case, unless it happens to bias their actions in their capacity as judges. You also appear to focus disproportionately on this: the judges opinions are only relevant if your goal is to “inform the reader as to why they should believe the Authorship theory”, but if the goal is “to inform readers about what the Authorship theory is” then their private musings are mere trivia. The article covers the moot court because it was a significant event, as judged by relevant scholarship (i.e. Shapiro), in the development of the Authorship issue, and received popular attention (i.e. it was notable). The judges' private opinions are only relevant as advocacy, and hence do not belong on Wikipedia. --Xover (talk) 10:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Zweigenbaum, you say that these judges are "are world-class specialists in the probity of evidence". No they are not. They are specialists on the probity of evidence according to US law within the US judicial system. That is, they decide how to properly interpret acts of the legislature. They are not judges of what is "good" evidence in some Platonic sense, but of what is admissible in court, is legally relevant, accords with precedent etc, within a particular judicial system. Being experts on US law does not make them competent to judge between different models of Unified Field Theory, or assess the merits of reasons for the Fall of the Roman Empire. They are no more or less competent than anyone else to comment on such matters. Even if we were to discuss their views, we would then be obliged to list judges who have expressed support for the mainstream position. Don't forget that the mainstream won the cases. This would produce an absurd point-counterpoint situation. Paul B (talk) 20:09, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see this is a live discussion point and assume the interest is bona fide and not expressions of annoyance that I am interrupted a schedule for submission of the article for permanent adoption. My general position is that minority facts, views, and sourcing are lacking in the Oxford summary, and that applies to this paragraph as well. To reply to Xover's and Dr. Barlow's concerns, you can't have it both ways: when the panel ruled against Oxford as Shakespeare, it was fine and right; but when all the judges withdraw that view upon further thought and more went public on the validity of Stratfordianism, that's irrelevant and must be hidden from view? Blatant double-standards will not serve the credibility of the article. Regarding the now allegedly legislature-ruling only Supreme Court--establishment of fact is mandatory at any level including the Supreme Court Justices. I won my case there by strong presentation of fact. They demanded it as the first threshold hurdle. Now Shakspere doesn't pass that threshold apparently. Mere "Celebrity" endorsements?--their judgments about burden of proof, clear convincing evidence, etc., rank very highly in the legal profession's and public's minds, if not this group's standards. That says something about the changed view of the subject matter at least from the legal perspective. Cramping the moot court sessions and the article referring to them into a sealed bottle called "history", excluding the striking and relevant fact that they who ruled against the Oxfordian argument have since reversed their views, will be seen for what it is, omission, with the resulting doubt about the author's credibility. How can such an obvious blunder happen? Not co-incidentally, there is never acceptable input from the substantial minority position on the question, which is why the ArbCom guideline is there, to see there is minority input. At this point the majority edits don't give an inch in even this most obvious instance of fact-control. Some would term it bias. I don't think the Wikipedia principles support such a position, nor is it wholesome scholarship.
I note no response to my proposal to aim for brevity and salient facts in the Oxford Summary. I will repeat my discussion from the previous section in case some one has not read through those exchanges. The same principles apply. Please note the second half of the ruling - "Where an article concerns a theory that does not have majority support in the relevant scholarly community, the article must fairly describe the division of opinion among those who have extensively studied the matter." That is the mandate for I am trying to do. In fact, the language in the ArbCom clearly says that if something cannot be worked out at talk, then dispute resolution is the way to go. The fact that some of these same things have been recycled on these talk pages, with no resolution, indicates the problems have not been solved, and no consensus established. If you want to challenge every edit I make and every source I add, then maybe the only alternative is to take it to the next level. I hope not. I hope fellow editors see the validity of brevity and concentrating on major points. I see that Peter Farey is doing his best to conform to the various rules you have set for this page, and so am I. But I am also obligated to utilize the rules set by ArbCom. They said that RS is defined as experts on the subject. They did not say that is restricted to mainstream Shakespeare scholars with PhD's. There are experts on the subject that are in no way represented in this article. Price, Ogburn, Anderson, etc., seem to have been banned, even though they are acknowledged experts on the minority views. Even given ArbCom's rulings, I have said to Nishidani, and will say again, that if the information I have added has sources you prefer more, feel free to contribute. I have no objection to your adding your own sources for Meres and Puttenham. That is minor in comparison to what seems to be a systematic attempt to exclude all minority input, even with otherwise acceptable references. Want to source to May? Do so. But I don't believe any other forum has so taken exception to each and every point I have added. I am willing to compromise on which sources we use, as long as the content is accurate and fairly describes the central (as Nishidani termed them) Oxfordian points. At this point, the summary is still littered with far too many minor details. It reads like a caricature of the Oxfordian theory instead of a fair representation. Could we agree on trimming down the second half of the summary? To my eye the brief to the point edit since deleted tells more than the oddball features other editors think-is/prefer-as the Oxfordian theory. If we could agree on the objective of brief but salient, perhaps we can overcome this impasse. Most of the jargon being thrown about to discount my contributions and objections, or to threaten action, associate me with Nina Green, whom I don't know or wish to, etc., all pale in comparison to a simple objective, be fair. There is a minority view and it is not legal to ignore it. Please consider these points.Zweigenbaum (talk) 23:10, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ogburn is cited in the references. Diana Price is cited. No one who is in any conceivable way a relevant reliable source has been "banned" from this article. You seem to be under the impression that one of the purposes of this article is to give a non-critical exposition of the Oxfordian position. This is not the case. Since the only thing I can see that you've mentioned specifically in this wall of text is the removal of the personal opinions of a few US Supreme Court Justices, let me explain why they are irrelevant to this discussion (I will be brief - I assume your statement "in the interest of brevity" was not intentionally ironic.) Members of the US Supreme Court are not reliable sources for subjects outside US law. They are experts on what constitutes 'evidence' in trial - this is different from historical evidence. We do not throw historical documents out of consideration for being seized during an illegal search, for example. ArbCom did indeed say that "RS is defined as experts on the subject." This does not means that any expert in any field with an interest in the subject is a RS. The only other concrete suggestion I see you've made is that the Oxford summary should be shortened. Please let us know what you feel is extraneous, that we may discuss it. Kaiguy (talk) 02:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the Tom Reedy comment about the Supreme Court issue above: towit
"The actual "thrust of the paragraph" has nothing to do with who won or lost, but the attendant media coverage about the case and its use as a springboard for publicising Oxfordian ideas among the general public."
I'm afraid the statement indicates a biased viewpoint about what the 1987 moot court case was about. This appears to me to be reflected in the article section itself. That paragraph seems unable to credit that Ogburn thought and moreover successfully conveyed the authorship issue was honorable and worthy, but instead the paragraph infers he floated it as a useful publicity stunt. If so, that was dirty pool. Then how on Earth were the Justices fools enough to go along with him? They too must have felt it was an evidentiary inquiry of importance. Hence it wasn't merely a publicity stunt, except to the writer and to Mr. Reedy above. It was an inquiry to anyone else. To you apparently, there is no possible honor on that side of the issue. As a result, the paragraph is going to and indeed does look like that. The brief addition of the facts concerning the Justices' evolution of thought would give a modicum of neutrality to the discussion of the case(s) and contestants. Lacking that, the present form bears an undercurrent that the devious venture backfired on the Oxfordians. This mars the veracity of the article. History decided in the fullness of time the Supreme Court decision was far from a victory for the Stratford Shakspere contention or a demonstration of cheap publicity. They changed their minds. We don't know that because the relevant facts are omitted. Leaving out facts is never defensible in any moral setting. The article will be much improved telling the whole story. Hence my discussion of it.
In response to Kaiguy's request for what is extraneous in the present Oxford Summary, please refer to the list of reasons regarding a too long, wrongly emphasized Summary in the previous section. There are thirteen points listed.
Zweigenbaum (talk) 02:29, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Zweigenbaum, what's going on here? You have been topic banned per the discretionary sanctions determined by arbcom in the SAQ case. Bishonen | talk 02:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]
I have noted it here. I assume you have a good excuse. Something better than your note on your talkpage about how you don't think Future Perfect has the right to ban you. Bishonen | talk 02:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]
As usual, Bishonen, this attempts to silence criticism rather than to reply to it. I have to say that I agree with Zweigenbaum, the paragraph as it stands is sneery, especially in this: "Charlton Ogburn, Jr.... began a campaign to bypass the academic establishment... he learned how to use the media to circumnavigate the academy..." This imputes bad faith and is surely not the way an encyclopedia should be treating anyone, alive or dead. Moonraker2 (talk) 03:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the comments. If this ban is supportable (I do not know what it is based on) you have here the gist of the material I have suggested. The debate should not be about me but about an improved article.
Kaiguy, before you asked what I would change or object to, two others had inquired following my initial proposal, so there may be repetitions under those circumstances. People don't always have time to read every word of every post. The points bear repeating if that helps clarification. I wouldn't want to be banned for answering questions more than once however. Here you go with the link:
[4] Take care, Zweigenbaum (talk) 04:55, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Image review 2
As requested, I am looking at all the images in the article and reviewing them as if the article were at FAC.
File:Edward de Vere.JPG - this image needs to be sourced. The birth and death dates for the artist and, if known, the date of the artwork should be given, as well as the source (the image file says it was scanned, but not where it was scanned from).
File:Christopher Marlowe.jpg - this is OK, but I would add the image template to make sure the source, date, etc. are formatted in the standrad fashion
File:Christopher Marlowe.jpg - this is OK, although it would be nice if the current location of the original image were given (and not just the web page from this version was taken)
File:Sonnets1609titlepage.jpg - this is OK, but it seems likely it is taken from another source (since most people do not have a 1609 book to scan), so if it is from online, that link should be given (as is done with File:Title page William Shakespeare's First Folio 1623.jpg)
File:Poet-ape1616.JPG - this is OK, but it seems likely it is taken from another source (since most people do not have a 1616 book to scan), so if it is from online, that link should be given
File:Shakespeare-1747-1656.jpg - the most problematic image in the SAQ page. The black and white photo is completely unsourced and the engraving (Kupferstich) while old enough to be PD, needs more information as to source, etc. To me this looks like it was scanned from a book, and thus may well be a copyvio.
Thanks Rührfisch! I'm in the middle of a copy-edit and readthrough of the article, so I need to finish that before starting to address the points regarding images that you've so graciously provided. But I'll be looking forward to the rest of your comments, and I just wanted to respond to let you know that it is much appreciated! Incidentally, if you have opinions about the general quality of the images for the purpose of illustrating the prose, or their placement in the article, those would be very helpful too. Please don't put yourself to any extra trouble to address this question, but if you happen to have any thoughts on the subject while you're looking at it anyway then even subjective comments made in passing would be quite helpful for us. In any case, thank you so much for your help with this! --Xover (talk) 23:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It appears to me that File:Edward de Vere.JPG was scanned from the 1975 edition of Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified, as that is the only printed source that I have been able to find. If it's OK, I'll go ahead and add that when I get back home.
The File:Poet-ape1616.JPG was scanned from either a facsimile edition or downloaded from EEBO. I'll try to find the original file (I usually delete them almost right away) and furnish the information.
File:Shakespeare-1747-1656.jpg is a composite of the Dugdale engraving and what appears to be a scan of Chambers's image. I'll check to see. In any case, it's a head-on photograph of an out-of-copyright artwork. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:26, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - these are just the kind of sources and additional information needed. I am not an expert on copyright law, but {{PD-Art}} says in part a mere photograph of an out-of-copyright two-dimensional work may not be protected under American copyright law and this is a photo of a sculpture (three-dimensional art work) so I am not sure that applies. Jappalang is very knoweldgable about copyright law and may be someone to consult here. Ruhrfisch><>°° 03:33, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
File:King Lear Q1.jpg and File:Camden on Shakespeare.jpg - these are OK, but it seems likely each is taken from another source (since most people do not have a 1605 or 1608 book to scan), so if it is from online, that link should be given
I believe that is all of the images. Ruhrfisch><>°° 04:35, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Shakespeare on trial and Other candidates emerge
The sections Shakespeare on trial and Other candidates emerge seem to be rather unbalanced in terms of sheer length (the former is a single paragraph long); and, perhaps more to the point, they seem to be grouped according to different principles: Shakespeare on trial is a thematic grouping where Other candidates emerge is a chronological one. I think we either need to first merge these two sections only to split them into two entirely new sections by some suitable chronological period; or we need to strengthen the Shakespeare on trial section into a thematic one that can stand on its own (which would make it analogous to the top level History and The case for/against…, and hence seems a poor fit to me). My strong preference would be for merging and then splitting rather than retaining a strengthened Shakespeare on trial section.
I've as yet not found a good way to merge + split the two, but barring dissent here I intend to have a go at it as soon as I find some way to attack the problem. Also, if someone who knows the material better than I do would like to have a go at this then that would probably be preferable: I'm simply not sufficiently versed in the topic to see the best temporal categorization here. --Xover (talk) 01:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Xover, I think it would benefit from the editing on someone not all that familiar with the topics, since it's a structural problem, not one of content, so by all means go ahead and let's get this thing wrapped up.
On another topic, it appears that we're right back where we were two months ago. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Originally I wrote two thematic sections, since these two elements, unearthing proof, and trial by moot court, were constants in the RS. I still think organizing those parts of the material by theme the best way to sustain the reader's interest through what is a long article, though Xover is right that a certain anomalous tension might be felt in the jar between chronological and thematic treatments. As Tom says, decisions on this are best left to third parties here.Nishidani (talk) 12:16, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I raised almost the same issue here [5] . I think 'other candidates emerge' is too long. Interesting comment from Tom. I think the best process is a collaboration of experts and nonexperts. I agree with Nishi here, I think a thematic split is more readable than a dull, long chronological list of events. Poujeaux (talk) 13:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Derby section
I think this section is a bit of a rag-bag. I'd suggest that the bit on Honigman should go. He's not a Debyite and in any case the claim dates at least as far back as Lefranc's 1920 essay Le Secret du 'Songe d'une nuit d'été' (possibly further). Do we need the assertion that Derby appears in group theories? So do they all - sometimes. A. J. Evans accorded him the chief role, but I don't think ity's a widespread view beyond his book. The whole section seems choppy. Paul B (talk) 13:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
^Gibson 2005, p. 27 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFGibson2005 (help)
^Schoenbaum 1991, pp. 445–6 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFSchoenbaum1991 (help)
^ name="brit">"Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford". Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-31.; McMichael, George and Edgar M. Glenn. Shakespeare and his Rivals: A Casebook on the Authorship Controversy. Odyssey Press, 1962. p. 159.
^Ward 1928, pp. 274–275; Smith, Irwin M. (1964), Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse: its history and its design, New York University Press
^ Akrigg, G.P.V. (1968), Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, Harvard University Press, pp. 31–32, 39
^Stritmatter, Roger A.,"The Marginalia of Edward de Vere's Geneva Bible: Providential Discovery, Literary Reasoning, and Historical Consequence", University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2001.
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)
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
