User talk:MichaelMaggs/Archive/2019
 | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hi, I'm RonBot, a script that checks new non-free file uploads. I have found that the subject image that you recently uploaded was more than 5% in excess of the Non-free content guideline size of 100,000 pixels. I have tagged the image for a standard reduction, which (for jpg/gif/png/svg files) normally happens within a day. Please check the reduced image, and make sure that the image is not excessively corrupted. Other files will be added to Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing. There is a full seven-day period before the original oversized image will be hidden; during that time you might want to consider editing the original image yourself (perhaps an initial crop to allow a smaller reduction or none at all). A formula for the calculation of the desired size can be found at WP:Image resolution, along with instructions on how to tag the image in the rare cases that it requires an oversized image (typically about 0.2% of non-free uploads are tagged as necessarily oversized). Please contact the bot owner if you have any questions, or you can ask them at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. See User:RonBot for info on how to not get these messages. RonBot (talk) 18:04, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi, I'm RonBot, a script that checks new non-free file uploads. I have found that the subject image that you recently uploaded was more than 5% in excess of the Non-free content guideline size of 100,000 pixels. I have tagged the image for a standard reduction, which (for jpg/gif/png/svg files) normally happens within a day. Please check the reduced image, and make sure that the image is not excessively corrupted. Other files will be added to Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing. There is a full seven-day period before the original oversized image will be hidden; during that time you might want to consider editing the original image yourself (perhaps an initial crop to allow a smaller reduction or none at all). A formula for the calculation of the desired size can be found at WP:Image resolution, along with instructions on how to tag the image in the rare cases that it requires an oversized image (typically about 0.2% of non-free uploads are tagged as necessarily oversized). Please contact the bot owner if you have any questions, or you can ask them at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. See User:RonBot for info on how to not get these messages. RonBot (talk) 18:09, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi, I'm RonBot, a script that checks new non-free file uploads. I have found that the subject image that you recently uploaded was more than 5% in excess of the Non-free content guideline size of 100,000 pixels. I have tagged the image for a standard reduction, which (for jpg/gif/png/svg files) normally happens within a day. Please check the reduced image, and make sure that the image is not excessively corrupted. Other files will be added to Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing. There is a full seven-day period before the original oversized image will be hidden; during that time you might want to consider editing the original image yourself (perhaps an initial crop to allow a smaller reduction or none at all). A formula for the calculation of the desired size can be found at WP:Image resolution, along with instructions on how to tag the image in the rare cases that it requires an oversized image (typically about 0.2% of non-free uploads are tagged as necessarily oversized). Please contact the bot owner if you have any questions, or you can ask them at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. See User:RonBot for info on how to not get these messages. RonBot (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
DYK nomination of The Ladies Dining Society
Hello! Your submission of The Ladies Dining Society at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:39, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
Facto Post – Issue 20 – 31 January 2019
Facto Post – Issue 20 – 31 January 2019
 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Recently Jimmy Wales has made the point that computer home assistants take much of their data from Wikipedia, one way or another. So as well as getting Spotify to play Frosty the Snowman for you, they may be able to answer the question "is the Pope Catholic?" Possibly by asking for disambiguation (Coptic?). Headlines about data breaches are now familiar, but the unannounced circulation of information raises other issues. One of those is Gresham's law stated as "bad data drives out good". Wikipedia and now Wikidata have been criticised on related grounds: what if their content, unattributed, is taken to have a higher standing than Wikimedians themselves would grant it? See Wikiquote on a misattribution to Bismarck for the usual quip about "law and sausages", and why one shouldn't watch them in the making. Wikipedia has now turned 18, so should act like as adult, as well as being treated like one. The Web itself turns 30 some time between March and November this year, per Tim Berners-Lee. If the Knowledge Graph by Google exemplifies Heraclitean Web technology gaining authority, contra GIGO, Wikimedians still have a role in its critique. But not just with the teenage skill of detecting phoniness. There is more to beating Gresham than exposing the factoid and urban myth, where WP:V does do a great job. Placeholders must be detected, and working with Wikidata is a good way to understand how having one statement as data can blind us to replacing it by a more accurate one. An example that is important to open access is that, firstly, the term itself needs considerable unpacking, because just being able to read material online is a poor relation of "open"; and secondly, trying to get Creative Commons license information into Wikidata shows up issues with classes of license (such as CC-BY) standing for the actual license in major repositories. Detailed investigation shows that "everything flows" exacerbates the issue. But Wikidata can solve it.
If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:53, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
DYK for Ladies Dining Society
On 18 February 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ladies Dining Society, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Louise Creighton and Kathleen Lyttelton founded the Cambridge University Ladies Dining Society in 1890 "not without an idea of retaliating on the husbands who dined in College"? You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Ladies Dining Society), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:02, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Facto Post – Issue 21 – 28 February 2019
| Facto Post – Issue 21 – 28 February 2019
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Systematic reviews are basic building blocks of evidence-based medicine, surveys of existing literature devoted typically to a definite question that aim to bring out scientific conclusions. They are principled in a way Wikipedians can appreciate, taking a critical view of their sources.  Ben Goldacre in 2014 wrote (link below) "[...] : the "information architecture" of evidence based medicine (if you can tolerate such a phrase) is a chaotic, ad hoc, poorly connected ecosystem of legacy projects. In some respects the whole show is still run on paper, like it's the 19th century." Is there a Wikidatan in the house? Wouldn't some machine-readable content that is structured data help? Most likely it would, but the arcana of systematic reviews and how they add value would still need formal handling. The PRISMA standard dates from 2009, with an update started in 2018. The concerns there include the corpus of papers used: how selected and filtered? Now that Wikidata has a 20.9 million item bibliography, one can at least pose questions. Each systematic review is a tagging opportunity for a bibliography. Could that tagging be reproduced by a query, in principle? Can it even be second-guessed by a query (i.e. simulated by a protocol which translates into SPARQL)? Homing in on the arcana, do the inclusion and filtering criteria translate into metadata? At some level they must, but are these metadata explicitly expressed in the articles themselves? The answer to that is surely "no" at this point, but can TDM find them? Again "no", right now. Automatic identification doesn't just happen. Actually these questions lack originality. It should be noted though that WP:MEDRS, the reliable sources guideline used here for health information, hinges on the assumption that the usefully systematic reviews of biomedical literature can be recognised. Its nutshell summary, normally the part of a guideline with the highest density of common sense, allows literature reviews in general validity, but WP:MEDASSESS qualifies that indication heavily. Process wonkery about systematic reviews definitely has merit.
If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:02, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Facto Post – Issue 22 – 28 March 2019
| Facto Post – Issue 22 – 28 March 2019
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Half a century ago, it was the era of the mainframe computer, with its air-conditioned room, twitching tape-drives, and appearance in the title of a spy novel Billion-Dollar Brain then made into a Hollywood film. Now we have the cloud, with server farms and the client–server model as quotidian: this text is being typed on a Chromebook. The term Applications Programming Interface or API is 50 years old, and refers to a type of software library as well as the interface to its use. While a compiler is what you need to get high-level code executed by a mainframe, an API out in the cloud somewhere offers a chance to perform operations on a remote server. For example, the multifarious bots active on Wikipedia have owners who exploit the MediaWiki API. APIs (called RESTful) that allow for the GET HTTP request are fundamental for what could colloquially be called "moving data around the Web"; from which Wikidata benefits 24/7. So the fact that the Wikidata SPARQL endpoint at query.wikidata.org has a RESTful API means that, in lay terms, Wikidata content can be GOT from it. The programming involved, besides the SPARQL language, could be in Python, younger by a few months than the Web. Magic words, such as occur in fantasy stories, are wishful (rather than RESTful) solutions to gaining access. You may need to be a linguist to enter Ali Baba's cave or the western door of Moria (French in the case of "Open Sesame", in fact, and Sindarin being the respective languages). Talking to an API requires a bigger toolkit, which first means you have to recognise the tools in terms of what they can do. On the way to the wikt:impactful or polymathic modern handling of facts, one must perhaps take only tactful notice of tech's endemic problem with documentation, and absorb the insightful point that the code in APIs does articulate the customary procedures now in place on the cloud for getting information. As Owl explained to Winnie-the-Pooh, it tells you The Thing to Do.
If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:45, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Facto Post – Issue 23 – 30 April 2019
| Facto Post – Issue 23 – 30 April 2019
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
 Talk of cloud computing draws a veil over hardware, but also, less obviously but more importantly, obscures such intellectual distinction as matters most in its use. Wikidata begins to allow tasks to be undertaken that were out of easy reach. The facility should not be taken as the real point. Coming in from another angle, the "executive decision" is more glamorous; but the "administrative decision" should be admired for its command of facts. Think of the attitudes ad fontes, so prevalent here on Wikipedia as "can you give me a source for that?", and being prepared to deal with complicated analyses into specified subcases. Impatience expressed as a disdain for such pedantry is quite understandable, but neither dirty data nor false dichotomies are at all good to have around. Issue 13 and Issue 21, respectively on WP:MEDRS and systematic reviews, talk about biomedical literature and computing tasks that would be of higher quality if they could be made more "administrative". For example, it is desirable that the decisions involved be consistent, explicable, and reproducible by non-experts from specified inputs. What gets clouded out is not impossibly hard to understand. You do need to put together the insights of functional programming, which is a doctrinaire and purist but clearcut approach, with the practicality of office software. Loopless computation can be conceived of as a seamless forward march of spreadsheet columns, each determined by the content of previous ones. Very well: to do a backward audit, when now we are talking about Wikidata, we rely on integrity of data and its scrupulous sourcing: and clearcut case analyses. The MEDRS example forces attention on purge attempts such as Beall's list.
If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:27, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
Facto Post – Issue 24 – 17 May 2019
Facto Post – Issue 24 – 17 May 2019 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Two dozen issues, and this may be the last, a valediction at least for a while. It's time for a two-year summation of ContentMine projects involving TDM (text and data mining). Wikidata and now Structured Data on Commons represent the overlap of Wikimedia with the Semantic Web. This common ground is helping to convert an engineering concept into a movement. TDM generally has little enough connection with the Semantic Web, being instead in the orbit of machine learning which is no respecter of the semantic. Don't break a taboo by asking bots "and what do you mean by that?" The ScienceSource project innovates in TDM, by storing its text mining results in a Wikibase site. It strives for compliance of its fact mining, on drug treatments of diseases, with an automated form of the relevant Wikipedia referencing guideline MEDRS. Where WikiFactMine set up an API for reuse of its results, ScienceSource has a SPARQL query service, with look-and-feel exactly that of Wikidata's at query.wikidata.org. It also now has a custom front end, and its content can be federated, in other words used in data mashups: it is one of over 50 sites that can federate with Wikidata. The human factor comes to bear through the front end, which combines a link to the HTML version of a paper, text mining results organised in drug and disease columns, and a SPARQL display of nearby drug and disease terms. Much software to develop and explain, so little time! Rather than telling the tale, Facto Post brings you ScienceSource links, starting from the how-to video, lower right.
The review tool requires a log in on sciencesource.wmflabs.org, and an OAuth permission (bottom of a review page) to operate. It can be used in simple and more advanced workflows. Examples of queries for the latter are at d:Wikidata_talk:ScienceSource project/Queries#SS_disease_list and d:Wikidata_talk:ScienceSource_project/Queries#NDF-RT issue. Please be aware that this is a research project in development, and may have outages for planned maintenance. That will apply for the next few days, at least. The ScienceSource wiki main page carries information on practical matters. Email is not enabled on the wiki: use site mail here to Charles Matthews in case of difficulty, or if you need support. Further explanatory videos will be put into commons:Category:ContentMine videos. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:52, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
GNL
Thanks for working on short descriptions! Question: would you be able to swap manned for crewed in the descriptions you wrote? That will align it with WP:GNL and a recent RfC. Kees08 (Talk) 16:17, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- Sure. One already said 'manned' so I copied that. But I can change them. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:23, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- No worries; I was going to change them myself but wanted to explain why. Kees08 (Talk) 16:27, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- All done I think. I see that the word 'manned' still appears in most of the the main texts. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- That sounds about right; I have been thinking of setting up an AWB run to go through and intelligently change each instance since there are so many that need done. Thanks for doing that. Kees08 (Talk) 17:41, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- User:Kees08 I've had a go at updating some of the most obvious articles with WP:JWB. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:41, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
- I reviewed a (semi)-random number of them and they all look good to me. Thanks for doing that. It looks like you hit up the Apollo program category to at least some extent; if you manage to find the time it would be awesome if you went through Category:Apollo program prior to the Apollo 11 50th anniversary that is coming up this month, as I imagine the articles will receive a traffic boost. If you do not find time, no worries! I would do it myself but I am making other preparations to get ready for the anniversary. Thanks for your efforts regardless! Kees08 (Talk) 16:21, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
- User:Kees08 I've had a go at updating some of the most obvious articles with WP:JWB. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:41, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
- That sounds about right; I have been thinking of setting up an AWB run to go through and intelligently change each instance since there are so many that need done. Thanks for doing that. Kees08 (Talk) 17:41, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- All done I think. I see that the word 'manned' still appears in most of the the main texts. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- No worries; I was going to change them myself but wanted to explain why. Kees08 (Talk) 16:27, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- Should be able to do some at least, if not of all the sub-categories. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:26, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
- OK, I had a bit of free time, and have completed and all of Category:Apollo program and its sub-categories. I've tried to update all instances of 'manned' to 'crewed' where possible - apart of course from quotations, report/book titles and so on. Hope the changes look OK. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:42, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Just letting you know, that your edit summaries (e.g. Special:Diff/905820954) with regard to WP:GNL incorrectly link to mainspace article GNL. —andrybak (talk) 18:13, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
- Oh dear. Thanks for letting me know. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:14, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
For your introspection - "was was". [1] [2] Shenme (talk) 17:25, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
- Well spotted. Thanks for letting me know. MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:17, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
wrong theory
I don't know if you will get this message Michael but your theory about the origins of standing bells is completely wrong. The singing bowl is based on earlier bronze bowls from Persia. They are not at all related to the bells of China. In fact, the standing bowls of China and Japan came much later. You have completely hijacked this post and deleted years of other people's editing, then have the nerve to attack those trying to restore real information. Your theory may be interesting but it is completely false. There is no historical relation between standing bells and the tuned bells of China. Your "research" in 1 book is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.172.165.238 (talk) 17:44, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
- Hi 12.172.165.238, thanks for your comment. The Standing bell article doesn't set out 'my theory', but the best available information from scholarly and other sources that I've been able to find within the books and academic papers held by the British Library in London. No doubt there are other sources from reputable publishers that I've missed, and if so you might like to mention them on the talk page. We can then work together to make the article better. Wikipedia only accepts reliable sources, though, and I fear that the self-published book (yours, I assume?) that appears to be the basis for your recent major edits to the page does not fall within that definition. But maybe the information in the book is derived from other specific scholarly sources that we could use. Could you indicate what they were? So that other interested editors can contribute, I suggest that we should continue this conversation on the talk page. All the best, MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:43, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
DYK for Mary Ward (suffragist)
On 17 September 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Mary Ward (suffragist), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that though she lacked her brothers' opportunities for formal schooling, the Irish suffragist Mary Ward was the first woman to pass the Cambridge moral sciences tripos with first class honours? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mary Ward (suffragist). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Mary Ward (suffragist)), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
valereee (talk) 12:02, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Initials
Hi Michael, regarding your claim that the article is written "in British English which does not use full stops and spaces between initials," I'd be most interested to see a source for that. Are you proposing to change all of the content in the C. S. Lewis, A. N. Wilson, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. P. Snow, F. S. Flint, M. J. K. Smith (I could go on, but you get my point) articles to accord with your rule? Do you have sufficient time? Meanwhile, have you studied WP:Manual of Style/Biography#Initials? I think you might be confusing the acronym/abbreviation rule in BrEng (no spaces or initials, hence NATO, MCC, CIA etc) with the rule for people's names. All of the people I have cited above are generally written as per their article title, i.e. with space and full stops. Take a look at some A. N. Wilson book covers for a start, all published in the UK. Regards, Ericoides (talk) 14:41, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
Michael Gilbert
Glad to see someone else doing serious work on Gilbert's works. I did a LOT of articles over the years, including a major biography of Gilbert that got severely truncated into Wikipedia-Look by someone or other who took out about 80% of what I had written. I was too tired to argue with him about any of his edits, so it's still in his form. Here's the original at Citizendium, where you can judge for yourself which one is preferable. A lot of the articles about Gilbert's works I originally did in CZ and then ported over here -- with SOME modifications to fit Wikipedia-Look....
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Michael_Gilbert
Cheers! Hayford Peirce (talk) 20:01, 9 August 2019 (UTC):
- Hi Hayford, thanks for noticing. I have to confess that I actually know very little about this author, and only came across him recently while reading Smallbone Deceased. I see that you've done a lot of work on him and his novels, which is why many of his books have much better articles than do a lot of others written during the same period. Well done indeed. Not sure I'll have too much time to work extensively on him, but I do think that his wiki article could indeed be expanded with some of the sourced material currently quoted on Citizendium. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:22, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
- Glad to hear from you! As you say, over the years, I HAVE done a lot of Gilbert stuff, mostly in fits and starts. I have to admit, however, that Smallbone is WAY down my list as a favorite. It's clever, of course, but simply doesn't grab me -- I have read it at least three times, however. My favorites are Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens. There IS some POV in my CZ Gilbert bio, I suppose, but it's MOSTLY pretty well sourced. I dunno why whoever it was took out so much -- I guess he's one of those Wikipedians who is a minimalist, and I'm a completist -- for me, the more info the better. Why not? We're not using up paper here! Hayford Peirce (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
- I suspect I liked Smallbone Deceased because, as an ex London lawyer myself, I recognised quite a few little details about life in a small firm. Thanks for the new recommendation. I very much like short stories (have just done the page on Penelope Fitzgerald's The Means of Escape). I'll get hold of Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens. Once I've read it I'll see if I can add to its page here. MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:05, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
- ps just ordered it from Abe Books. MichaelMaggs (talk)
- Great! But that's the SECOND collection, I think. Game Without Rules is the first one and sets the standard. Anthony Boucher first said that it was the *second* best collection of spy stories ever written, after "Ashendon", then a few months later wrote that he had changed his mind and that it was out and out the best. I don't see how he could be wrong about that! "A Prince of Abyssinia" is one of the most moving stories I've ever read. But the second book is terrific also! Enjoy! And, I'm sure, Gilbert was a master of working in information from his own life as a solicitor into his stories -- I gather that he put in 40 or 50 years as one. And wrote DOZENS of stories directly incorporating his experiences.... So there must be MUCH that will resonate with you! Hayford Peirce (talk) 04:34, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- Ouch, Game Without Rules is no longer available new in the UK and second-hand copies are extremely expensive. I'll have to look at an eBook version, though I try to avoid those. Too many things to read ... MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:45, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- Strange how some books go for pennies and others for hundreds of pounds, doesn't seem to be any real reason for some it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mathematics_of_Murder:_A_Fearne_%26_Bracknell_Collection is a collection about London solicitors, and Anything for a Quiet Life is about a London solicitor who retires to the coast. Both are enjoyable. Hayford Peirce (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- Hayford, thanks once again for the recommendation. I've now finished Game Without Rules and am half way through Mr Calder and Mr Behrens. I've been impressed with how Gilbert's writing has kept me gripped, in spite of the fact I know next to nothing about the subject matter or this genre of fiction. By the way, looking at the Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens article I wondered if you happen to have to hand source and date information for Anthony Boucher's "second-best" opinion, and his later change of mind. NYT I assume, but on what dates? MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:02, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
- Glad you enjoy them as much as I do! I re-read both books every couple of years and must have read "A Prince of Abyssinia" at least ten times. I am going crazy trying to track down the exact references you mention. I saw BOTH of them online about a year ago but was too lazy to do the work and put them into the relevant articles. For what it's worth, the first reference, when Boucher called it the second-best book was indeed in the New York Times -- which has a TERRIBLE search engine. The second one, where he calls it the best, came later that year in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, for which he *also* reviewed books. I found *that* one a year ago, but not today. This is *really* annoying! (Did you see my Citizendium article? http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Mr._Calder_and_Mr._Behrens It is, I think, more complete than the Wikipedia one, although I haven't compared them for a while now.... Hayford Peirce (talk) 19:52, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
- Hayford, thanks once again for the recommendation. I've now finished Game Without Rules and am half way through Mr Calder and Mr Behrens. I've been impressed with how Gilbert's writing has kept me gripped, in spite of the fact I know next to nothing about the subject matter or this genre of fiction. By the way, looking at the Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens article I wondered if you happen to have to hand source and date information for Anthony Boucher's "second-best" opinion, and his later change of mind. NYT I assume, but on what dates? MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:02, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
- Strange how some books go for pennies and others for hundreds of pounds, doesn't seem to be any real reason for some it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mathematics_of_Murder:_A_Fearne_%26_Bracknell_Collection is a collection about London solicitors, and Anything for a Quiet Life is about a London solicitor who retires to the coast. Both are enjoyable. Hayford Peirce (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
- Hayford, hope you'll be pleased to see that I've now written two new Wikipedia articles for the short story collections, Game Without Rules and Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens (book). They are directed to the books specifically, leaving your original article Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens to cover the characters. As there's now a certain amount of overlap, I'll tweak Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens tomorrow to tighten the focus of that page. I found a few more references, which I've added, but unfortunately don't have access to the review you saw that mentions Boucher changing his mind to state that Game without Rules was even better than Ashenden. So I've had to leave that out for now. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:39, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Michael, I've been super-busy for the last couple of days but have now got things cleared away. I'll revisit your above comment tomorrow when I will be able to follow up on it. Cheers! Hayford Peirce (talk) 23:31, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Michael Gilbert Sources for Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens
Hi Michael, sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you but I *have* been trying to track down various sources, with very ambiguous results. First, I found my hardcopy American edition of "Overdrive", published in 1967 in the States (the UK book has another title). The back of the dust jacket has ten quotes from reviews of "Game Without Rules". One of them, in its entirety, reads: '"These are short thrillers, in the sense of entertaining and exciting reading. They are also short works of art in social realism." -- New York Times Book Review.' I have tried Googling this, and doing Searches at the NYT site itself, and can find NOTHING more. (Except one BLOG site that quotes the same thing.) I have been totally unable to find an actual review of the book in the New York Times -- but, as I said earlier, their Search function is not the best one in the world. I DID find THIS, however: On June 4, 1967, in, apparently, the weekly book review section, there was a page called "Hammock Chillers", and one of the entries reads: GAME WITHOUT RULES Michael Gilbert (Harper & Row $4.95) The second-best volume of short spy stories ever published. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/06/04/90351652.html?pageNumber=146 More than that, I can't find. Nor can I find the Ellery Queen source in which Boucher changes his mind and says that it is the best. I KNOW that I saw it within the last year or so, but now it's hiding in the shadows. All over the internet, and in his obituaries, etc., the NYT is quoted as saying it was the second-best, or the very best, and it may well because of ME -- I stuck that into the Gilbert (or Mr. C & Mr. B) article YEARS ago, without a source, and it looks to me as if people have been copying it every since! It's too late to do anything about it, however. You know, it just occurred to me that I DO know Janet Hutchings, the present editor of EQMM, maybe I could ask HER if she has a search engine for EQMM that could find it! What are your thoughts on all of the above? Cheers! Hayford Peirce (talk) 19:11, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for doing that, Hayford. This is really frustrating. I'm not too bothered about Boucher's 'second best' opinion, as I did find a citable quote for that in Gilbert's obituary in The Times (a second-hand quote, but still a reliable source for Wikipedia: 11 February 2006. p 75). Nothing on the later change of mind, though, so I think we may need to remove that pending someone unearthing that source again. MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:52, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
A Dobos torte for you!
.jpg)
|
7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it.
To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. |
7&6=thirteen (☎) 22:33, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
- Oh, thank you MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:15, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Old Style / New Style Dates in the UK in 1605/06
I refer to your revert of my change to a date in the article Observance of 5th November Act 1605 from 1605/06 to 1606. I understand why you reverted my change and your revert is consistent with the Wikipedia guide on dates during this period of English history. Nonetheless, I think that most readers will find it confusing that Parliamentary legislation dealing with observing an event which history books state happened on 5 November 1605 (thus today's bonfires and fireworks in the UK) could be interpreted somehow happening in January of the same year (noting that the current wording in the article is: The originating Bill was drafted and introduced on 23 January 1605/06).
Would it not be better to note that the legislation was introduced in January 1606 and note that this is a Julian date and is consistent with the Julian date used for the Gunpowder Plot date. In that regard it is interesting to note that modern celebrations in the UK of the Gunpowder Plot occur today (5 November) based on the Julian date rather than the Gregorian date. I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks Chewings72 (talk) 10:46, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
- Chewings72, I agree that the wording could be clearer, as most readers won't understand the OS/NS convention of "1605/06". What about changing the wording to to something like "23 January 1606 (New Style)" ? I'll be away for a few days, but won't object if you wanted to do that. MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:32, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
- Your suggested chnage sounds fine to me. I will make the change. Regards Chewings72 (talk) 00:29, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
R v Dudley and Stephens
Thanks for putting me straight on the legal spelling of judgment. I’ve learned something! Point of Presencetalk 11:24, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom 2019 election voter message
 | Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add |
Mondegreen
Michael, It may be that the Mondegreen article doesn't deserve a B class rating, but, if so, it is not because of quoting two different versions of the original line in the ballad. These differences come from anglicization of Scots English. If you look at the article The Bonnie Earl O' Moray, you will see variations there. Even the anglicized version in the Child Ballads vary from standard 21st century English (e.g. "layd" instead of "laid"). That being said, can you give me some suggestions on how to improve the article? Paulmlieberman (talk) 15:42, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree that in itself wouldn't be enough. I have added a few thoughts to the talk page. MichaelMaggs (talk)Z