User talk:Bearpatch/Archive 1

Adelaide

It's great that you want to add citations to this article and expand it, but can you please write it as if it were an encyclopaedia article and not just a list of husbands and children(-in-law). It currently has no lead sentence and too many blank spaces. Srnec (talk) 18:39, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Further, if a move you made is disputed you ought to make a formal request on the talk page. Srnec (talk) 18:43, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Why do you assume I'm finished? Try to be patient and not interrupt edits in progress. It may take days or weeks for me to find the sources I need to finish. Tagging and moving the page while it's obviously still in work can't be taken to be in any way helpful. And on what grounds do you dispute the move? Please provide source citations to show her name was not Adelaide-Blanche and I will happily review them. Thank you. Bearpatch (talk) 19:11, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

There is really no such thing as a work in progress in Wikipedia article space. The current version of every page is the version everyone sees and everything is potentially a work in progress. If you want to work in your own userspace, you could create User:Bearpatch/Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou temporarily; or you could add the template {{Under construction}} to the top of the article. Srnec (talk) 19:21, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Battle of Brechin

Hi I am pretty sure the correct Earl of Huntly is Alexander Gordon, 1st Earl, and so have changed the article accordingly. As for the Black Douglases link it was originally linked to James Douglas, Lord of Douglas who died in 1330, and as this battle took place in 1452, I thought it would be better to link to the Earl of Douglas page which has information about the Black Douglases. However it might be better in fact to link to an article for who ever was the Black Douglas at the time. Will look into it. QuintusPetillius (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed a problem on the 2nd earl's page with the chronology. George Gordon, who would later become the 2nd earl, would have only been around a year old at the time of the battle (at best). After checking I found two sources stating it was Alexander and used the better of the two. If you have any difficulty in discovering which of the Black Douglases it was, let me know as I have a few Douglas references available and might be able to help. Thanks. Bearpatch (talk) 17:33, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Lady Catherine Gordon

I too was surprised to see Gustav Bergenroth's long footnote discussion of the Warbeck letter in Calendar State Papers Spain, vol.1. This is the only copy of letter, which he has there translated from Latin, and I think if you read his footnote again, you will see he is working through the possibilities of what the letter is and how it came to be in Spain, and concludes that it is the Warbeck letter. The problem for Bergenroth was that the letter doesn't say "Dear Catherine, ... yours Perkin," and so doubts are legitimate, and need not be suppressed. Nevertheless, most subsequent secondary histories, like the collection you cite, are not so tentative as the scholar who first found it. You will see the context of the Spanish ambassadors forwarding the letter to Spain, as Bergenroth surmised, in the wikipedia article Pedro de Ayala. Unoquha (talk) 18:36, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

I understand, but I could only give a brief reason. I was concerned first regarding it being a web reference and as such subject to link rot. True, this reference did go back and forth over the authenticity of the letter before arriving at an opinion that it was warbeck's letter, but it isn't a clear reference. I was and am concerned over losing readers trying to follow this. I used a source [Records of Aboyne] which makes reference to the letter and it's source in a footnote, which any reader can follow up on and verify for themselves. So the point was the contents of the letter (verified by a decent secondary source) not how it came to be in possession of the Spanish Ambassador. I think you and I both would be interested in drilling down to find out everything possible about the letter itself, but I reel in those kinds of interests myself as they're probably not shared by the average reader. I had long discussions with my students over WP articles and while at the time wasn't a big fan of them, I've since decided to take what I learned from them and apply it towards making articles better. One key area is in better source citations. But I don't claim the inside track and am perfectly willing to work with anyone interested in the same article or articles. If there's another way to set up a reference to Pedro de Ayala, perhaps another alpha note, I would have no problem with connecting him to the letter. But like the notes I placed, I feel it's more of a side issue. I am presently trying to replace the David Nash Ford web references with valid print source citations. I'm not so concerned that his only source was the 1911 EB article, but that it's "heavily edited" with no source citations for his edits, and that it's not peer reviewed (that I could see). Thanks for bringing this up and again I'll be happy to work with you on any part of this article. Bearpatch (talk) 19:18, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The Calendar is in scanned format on googlebooks, if you find the 'British History Online' version eccentric and confusing, as I do although it does have a good search engine, the letter is p.78, Bergenroth, Gustav, ed., Calendar State Papers Spain, vol.1, London (1862), and Bergenroth's opinions of Perkin in the preface may be of some interest. You might also like the peer-reviewed article by David Dunlop, 'The Masked Comedian', which can be found free online somewhere. Unoquha (talk) 18:53, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The article is at JSTOR, and in fact I already had it open and was reading it. We edit conflicted a few minutes ago in both posting here so I didn't see your additional comments and you didn't see my response. So let me know what you think of creating another alpha note for Pedro de Ayala. BTW, I find British History Online very useful especially for information to follow-up in VCH series and others. Thanks Bearpatch (talk) 19:22, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

That's all good. I suppose there is a tension between making articles readable with alpha note (new to me) and also then slightly more tricky to edit. Then also, there is perhaps a question of how much you might want to include in an article about "being an historian" for readers, so Bergenroth's processes described in his footnote is perhaps interesting as an example of that. Recently I put a bit about John Knox vs Agnes Strickland in one of the four Marys, Mary Livingstone on those lines. Similarly, with primary source blockquotes, I've added a fair amount of Scots, with a sentence of introductory gloss, so that the reader might see a bit of the written language, particularly if it is from the hand of the subject, e.g., Mariotta Haliburton. If these were alpa-noted away, they would be taken away from the gloss in the flow and context of the article, and not serve so well. Pedro de Ayala, I wrote from start to finish from primary sources, and is thus a wiki-fail, and likely to be prone to error. I didn't even have Gerard Mattingley's book, but recognised him as the Harrison Ford character in a film of a Tom Clancy novel from his obituary, so on ye go. However, Lady Katherine did attend the proxy wedding of James IV at Richmond Palace. Unoquha (talk) 20:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The alpha notes are simply explanatory footnotes, separated as WP recommends from reference notes, the same almost as those used in term papers, dissertations, and scholastic articles. Their purpose is the same, to carry additional information not essential to the text but which could be useful or interesting to readers. In my experience where subsequent edits were made to articles I worked on, the alpha notes were usually left as-is. One I remember was abbreviated and included in the text by another editor, but in that case it was OK either way. I try to makes sure they’re self-sufficient by including source references in the notes.

I see what you mean in the letter in Mariotta Halliburton’s article. Here it works with the flow of the article very nicely whereas in Catherine Gordon’s case it seemed more of an aside since it wasn't actually written by her, but to her. I thought it had interest for two reasons, one as a style of that time and two, that it contained information about her. The explanatory footnote seemed the better choice. I did consider the primary source issue but I still think some brief information on Pedro de Ayala would get by as an alpha note without any challenges, if you'd like to add it. Lady Catherine’s attendance at the proxy wedding was fine in the text, but I was unable to find a quality secondary source to cite, so for the time being left it out. I plan to do more research and so may just find what I need, in which case I’d include it. The web references still need to be replaced with better quality sources, but if it’s in the 1911 EB article, even a tertiary source is better than an uncited web page. I’ll keep looking. Bearpatch (talk) 21:39, 20 December 2012 (UTC)