Talk:Hamo de Crevecoeur

Original research

Though in general, it is better to fix than delete material, the detailed account of Hamo is heavily derived from Original Research in Primary sources, so much so that I can't tell what can be supported from legitimate sources. The following all represent primary sources and deriving material only from these sources is illegitimate: Rolls of arms of the Reigns of Henry III and Edward III; Three Rolls of Arms of the Latter Part of the Thirteenth Century; Inquisitions post mortem; Calendar of the Charter Rolls; The Cartulary of Leeds Priory; Registrum Roffense; National Archives (UK), Discovery Catalogue (this isn't even a real source); The Gesta Regum with its continuation; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum; Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III; Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III; The Great Roll of the Pipe; Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati; Henry III Fine Rolls Project; The Survey of Kent (e.g. Kent Domesday); Testa de Nevill; Calendar of Liberate Rolls; 'Annales de Dunstaplia', in Annales Monastici. Wikipedia is not the place to publish original scholarship. Agricolae (talk) 15:58, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Why, then, have you substituted for it a former draft of the article which has (a) no inline citations at all (and was tagged as such since 2009), (b) does include references within the text all of which are of the kind you object to? The logic of your objection should lead you to remove what you have just posted also. So far as those references in the version to which you have gone back are concerned, all I had done was to convert them into proper bibliographical form and to render them as numbered references, with links to editions at the locations cited. That is to say, you have left in the monastic chronicles which you object to. So far as the new references I introduced are concerned, I offer the following comments:

• The calendar, patent, fine, pipe and similar rolls are official government records, as published over the past 200 years by Her Majesty's Stationery Office. They represent an approved and received form of this information in the hands of expert editors and it is quite usual to refer to them in this way. I have not introduced secondary or interpretative comments on those pieces of information (which would be argumentative) but have drawn them together.
• The Inquisitions post mortem referred to are published and discussed in the articles in County Archaeological Journals. I am sorry I could not find them in a more popularist source, but that was hardly to be expected: but, while the scholarship is old, it is secondary and contains its own scholarly infrastructure. I don't think you can maintain that reference to articles in the County Archaeological Journals is "primary" or original research. If so you close off the possibility of all but the popularist digests, which often express things in unverifiable ways.
• I don't understand your objection to the UK National Archives Discovery Catalogue. It is the Official Online Catalogue of the UK National Archives online, a British Government resource, and is in itself a perfectly respectable official published secondary source describing the collections of documentary materials, based upon the work of generations of archivists. References to this or any other Catalogue are not references direct to manuscripts, but to modern legitimate sources describing them. If you wished to refer to a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, for example, it would be perfectly legitimate and correct to refer to the Catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery, or in the case of a book in the British Library, to the British Library Catalogue. It is an absolutely real and important secondary resource, as much as if it were printed on paper. It is not the same as referring to, say, information in an unpublished letter by an artist, perhaps in private hands, which was entirely uncatalogued and so unverifiable.
• The monastic chronicles which you describe as illegitimate were all given with reference to secondary scholarly published editions. You have in any case gone back to an old recension of the article which still includes them. I should not have found them if they were not referred to as citations by more modern writers whose works are perfectly legitimate as sources, and it seems only helpful to support and clarify their references, by backing them up with precise location references to the published places which the modern sources mention. As for referring to them at all, if a modern writer says "X did such and such a thing in such and such a year" without giving a precise citation, then supplying the precise source of that information here goes towards the principle of verification. And if it is true that Registrum Roffense, or Testa de Nevill, or the Annals of Dunstaple, refer to Hamo de Crevecoeur, and these texts exist in scholarly printed editions, it is not original research to follow the modern sources in saying so, and to point to the correct place. A footnote in a modern published article (secondary source) is as much part of the secondary source as the text it supports, and it may need verification.
• Verifiability. The process of verification of secondary scholarly citations is essential, since even modern scholars can sometimes give inaccurate citations, and verifiability is expressly part of Wikipedia policy. The fact that some of them are in Latin does not violate wp policy, which does not require sources for verifiability to be in English nor that they should be visible online, though it seems useful to direct readers to visible online places where possible.
• Secondary sources. I cited several of these with full bibliographical references and linkage where available, on the basis of which the additional supporting material was given, and you have deleted them all, for reasons which are unexplained.

Those are my comments. The full article remains in the page history, 29 November 2017 for anyone who wants to read it.Eebahgum (talk) 20:22, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

A lot here to address. Why did I substitute an older version that included primary references? because it didn't include as many primary references, it wasn't as bad, and there was so much illegitimate material that I couldn't sort out the few appropriately-documented items. A catalogue is never a source. It is a finding aid, that is all. It helps you find primary sources, which themselves are not legitimate sources for Wikipedia. A scholarly published edition is still a primary source, no matter how carefully it was edited. Sources don't have to be in English, but sources in Latin are invariably primary sources, which should be avoided. Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own research, which with the heavy reliance on primary sources is clearly what you are doing. Agricolae (talk) 04:01, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Evidently our understandings as to what constitutes "original" research are very divergent. The compilation of any Wikipedia article involves research in the assembling of source materials, the verification of the materials cited, and their presentation in a coherent form with adequate and correct reference. That does not constitute original research, though to do this work thoroughly is good scholarly practise. Your use of the term "illegitimate material" is a very sweeping and downright condemnation which doesn't bear the test of scrutiny. Wikipedia does not forbid reference to primary sources, but states that they must be used with great care, working from reputably published editions, which I attempted to do, and that they should be supported where possible with reference to secondary sources, which I also attempted to do. Also you have not addressed the matter of verifiability, which is paramount, either in your first edit above, or in your reply. To say that you could not sort out the few "appropriately-documented items" suggests that you have not followed the links which I provided to the secondary sources (I mean the sources which you would accept as "legitimate") and verified for yourself what they say. In fact you have deleted them wholesale, though they were cited correctly, which is contrary to Wikipedia policy.

The suggestion that anything written in Latin is invariably a primary source is extremely wayward. I take an example at random. You are familiar with Early Medieval scholarship. You will know therefore that Casimir Oudin's (Latin) essay (published 1722, cf. 'Dissertatio de Scriptis Venerabilis Bedae Presbyteri, et Monachi', in Casimiri Oudini Commentarius De Scriptoribus Ecclesiae Antiquis, 3 vols (Maur. Georg. Weidmanni, Francofurti ad Moenum 1722), I, columns 1681-1712) on the authenticity of the attributions of texts in the earlier attempted "Collected Works" of the Venerable Bede (Hervagius 1562, Hieratus & Gymnicus 1612, Friessem 1688) was influential in persuading J-P Migne to substitute the correct Commentaries on the Pauline epistles in the Patrologia Latina (rather than those of Florus of Lyon, which were wrongly included in those old editions), to the extent that Migne in 1850 reproduced the whole of Oudin's essay among his own (Latin) introductory materials to his editions of Bede's works (Patrologia Latina, Vols 90-94, 1850: Vol. 90, Cols. 71-102). If the subject is Casimir Oudin, then Oudin's essay is a primary source. But if the subject is Bede's Commentaries, Oudin's essay is an entirely secondary source, and one of the greatest importance, and Migne's introduction is also a secondary source which, in quoting Oudin, becomes a tertiary source. There is plenty of good secondary scholarship in Latin from ancient times down to the present day. Just because something was written more than 200 years ago, and in Latin, doesn't make it a primary source.

I see that at the same time as writing your second comment above you have also taken out the references in the text to which you had reverted, realizing that they were by your standards 'inappropriate'. The problem there is that you have not also removed the information that was supported by those inappropriate references, but have left the text, with all its inaccuracies and irrelevancies, standing naked of all reference whatever. You would have done the readership of Wikipedia a better favour by removing most of it altogether. The fact that the sequence box at the bottom states that Hamo was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports (a title which did not even exist in his time) in 1263 (considering that he was dead by February of that year), and was (according to official records republished in reputably published sources) overseeing the ports in c. 1235, is of itself a nonsense which you have substituted for my verified correction. Surely the policy of Wikipedia is not intentionally to keep restoring incorrect, unverified information, when correct and verifiable information is available? But that is what you have done.

I believe that you are failing to distinguish between three different things: (a) Scholarship, (b) research, and (c) "original" research. Wikipedia has no injunction against scholarship, and can do with as much of it as it can get. Scholarship involves the careful and considered approach to sources, which often begins with verification of references. That means, reading what somebody else has said and checking that what they have said is what their source does actually say, and that they have given the reference correctly. Some research is involved, but it is not original research, because the person whose work is under review has already done it, although perhaps inaccurately. That is the point of checking or verifying. Having provided a full and correct bibliographical reference to their source there is nothing in Wikipedia policy which forbids its inclusion for verification. There is a great deal of research, or searching and checking, to be done, which is scholarly but not under the category of "original research", and which is necessary for the maintenance of correct information. To argue against it is to support the perpetuation of the sort of chinese whispers of repetitive mistakes which arise from so-called "secondary scholarship", which is really no sort of scholarship at all. Secondary sources by all means, but "secondary scholarship", never. Otherwise one may merely be repeating "unreliable sources".

What then is "original research"? Something which, drawing upon primary sources, synthesizes them or uses them in an argumentative or interpretative way to make them reach a conclusion which is beyond the meaning of the sources themselves. That is by no means the same thing as the exclusion of all primary sources as "illegitimate". Or "original research" may simply be digging into newly-discovered or long-buried, probably altogether unpublished primary sources which are not available for anyone else to verify them. Reputably published sources are reputably published sources, and looking something up in them in the normal course of study does not constitute original research. And when they are perfectly good secondary sources you need a better explanation than you have yet given for deleting them. Your assertion that I am using Wikipedia to publish my own research, you make this mistake: it is not "my" research, but verifiable information which is out there in reputably published sources for anyone to verify, if they take the trouble to follow the links which I provide. Eebahgum (talk) 04:56, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses secondary sources in the production of its biographical articles. A scholar is expected to use primary sources to compile a novel account of an individual, but a Wikipedia editor is to paraphrase/summarize that secondary account (preferably merge multiple secondary accounts). Wikipedia counts on the process of scholarly publication for its expertise, verifiability and to distinguish what constitutes due weight (as opposed to trivia), rather than depending on the opinions or supposed expertise of Wikipedia editors in interpreting primary records. A Wikipedia contributor is an editor who summarizes accounts published by scholars, not a scholar who summarizes primary documents. If you think information in the article that is without reference is not valid, remove it or flag it as needing a source; if you have a secondary source that draws a different conclusion, then add it in, but this does not represent carte blanche to present your own conclusions based on your own scholarship using primary sources. Agricolae (talk) 13:41, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

A sorry article?

In its present form, this article is so inaccurate, so ill-constructed and so little overall use that I wonder if it might as well be deleted? Clifford Mill (talk) 18:39, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that might be a hard sell - I suspect an AfD would be a crap-shoot, with someone arguing that a Warden of the CPs is inherently notable, and that an AfD isn't for cleanup. I doubt anyone is emotionally invested in its current form, so were you to stubify you would likely not get reverted. Agricolae (talk) 19:01, 28 March 2018 (UTC)