User talk:Musophilus

Welcome, and notes on Samuel Daniel

Hi, Musophilus. Wikipedia needs experts, so I'm pleased you're here. Because you're an expert and new, as you begin to edit, you'll be in the challenging position of simultaneously knowing more than pretty much any other editor about what you're doing... and less. Consensus is important here, but in the topic you're initially attacking (Samuel Daniel), I doubt there are enough editors who are active, interested, and knowledgeable to get a real discussion started. So it's good that you're asking for input, but don't hold your breath. You don't need any permission to start. WP:BE BOLD. Clearly, you already value WP:Reliable sources, so you won't need a lesson on that. My caution to you, as an expert, is that the article must not flog your own ideas and arguments. It should be balanced and appropriate for a general readership. As to more technical advice, some thoughts:

• I think it's generally better to modify an existing article gradually, a section at a time; however, I realize as a writer it can be more convenient to develop an article as a whole. Either way, since you're new, you'll probably want to test your work before going to the actual article, so I've made you a test page here: User:Musophilus/SD where you can, for instance, experiment with formatting before committing to a live edit. (You certainly don't have to do it this way... just my suggestion.) You can then cut and paste bits to the live article when you are satisfied. Wikipedia is never done, so ultimately the only criterion of each edit is that the article is better than before... maybe 0.1% better, maybe 50 times better... either's a good edit.
• I will put Samuel Daniel (and your new test page) on my watch list, and if I happen to notice something I think you can do better, I'll let you know. And if you have any questions, of course feel free to ask. I'm not too active right now, but I do at least check in somewhat regularly.
• For style, use William Shakespeare as a model. This has been intensely vetted, so if there's a question of how to present something, it's probably doing it well. My only demurrers might be that I'd avoid a Notes section unless really needed, and I sense that editors are pretty split on whether those little floating gray quote boxes are a good idea. I don't know how you approach Wikipedia, technically speaking. My view (partly because I'm old) is that it will be advantageous to learn the Wikimarkup that you see in the "edit source" tab, rather than just relying on the visual (WYSIWYG) editor; the markup will give you better control over the result. For example, I suspect that the {{sfn}} template (as seen in the WS article) will be more fitting for the kind of inline citations you'll use than the regular ref/ref style would be. Of course, I'm happy to assist with formatting/templating types of questions. Samuel Daniel may not need quite the bulk that WS has. Keep in mind that some information, say, details about specific works, may be better linked and discussed in their own articles, rather than lengthening the Samuel Daniel article itself.

Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 16:00, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Phil, For Incredible Advice

Can't say how much appreciate the detailed, practical advice. I look forward to taking advantage of it in the future, though it will probably be a while. I will reach out if I need further guidance. In the meantime, I especially appreciate you setting up my own talk page and providing a link to yours. As a novice, I'm not quite sure how I'll use my page, but I am sure I will. In the meantime, I'll provide you with an appropriate quote from Samuel Daniel:

So often things which seem at first in show
Without the compass of accomplishment,
Once ventured on to that success do grow,
That even the authors do admire th'event;
So many means which they did never know
Do second their designs and do present
Strange unexpected helps . . .

— The Civil Wars Book II, Stanza 9, lines 1-7

References

Sources

• Daniel, Samuel (1595). The first fowre bookes of the ciuile wars between the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke. Peter Short for Simon Waterson. OCLC 606637358.

Musophilus (talk) 16:18, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Musophilus

You're very welcome. Normally, it's very bad form to alter someone else's entry on a talk page, as I have just done above, but — because I hope you won't mind, and I think it will be instructive — I've altered the formatting of the passage above. (Use the "edit source" tab to see the markup I've used.) There are several ways that editors can properly format verse quotes, and this is just one, but I guess it's my preferred method. The way I'm displaying the reference ({{Reflist-talk}}) is only appropriate for a talk page like this, so it will be slightly different in an actual article. But I wanted to show you how I use the templates {{poemquote}} and {{sfn}}, which I think will be useful to you. Also, I've replaced the curly apostrophe with a straight one. I myself do not care much for straight apostrophes and quotation marks, but Wikipedia prefers them. Now, you will never be expected to do all this on a talk page... I've only done this as an example of markup that might be useful to you. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 05:17, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Again

Excellent. Thank you for the pointers on formatting and for correcting my entry. I was hoping you would do so, especially seeing your personal focus on appropriate quoting and formatting. I'll leave you with one last question. What is considered good form with offering to communicate with people outside of Wikipedia and leaving your actual name and e-mail address? If this is discouraged, I will not do it. But I did want to offer (request really) to correspond with you offline, so I don't have to use the talk page like this for all questions. With that in mind, below is a link to my page on Academia.edu. You can contact me through there if you are OK with corresponding. In any case, thanks again. https://davidweiss.academia.edu/ Musophilus (talk) 11:10, 13 July 2020 (UTC)Musophilus

You may of course reveal as little or as much about yourself as you wish. Usually, this is done on your User Page, and examples range from literally nothing to endless personal blather. One warning: because edit histories are always accessible on Wikipedia, if you do reveal information that you later wish to hide, it will be accessible to editors who are sufficiently nosy. There are more specific expectations with potential conflicts of interest (WP:COI) where I believe you are required to divulge certain information if you are, say, paid for editing or attached to an institution you're writing about. But that probably won't apply to you. Conversely, revealing any personal information about other Wikipedians that they themselves have not already revealed on Wikipedia is strictly forbidden. Usually, any conversations about Wikipedia should be kept on Wikipedia, because this allows any interested editor to refer back to them if useful. However, if you go to a User page, in the links to the left you should see "Email this user"; this is an individual setting so every user has the function turned on or off as they like. I have it turned on, so this will allow you to e-mail me via Wikipedia. I'm pretty rusty on this, but if memory serves, more or less I get a forward from Wikipedia, so I would then have both your message and your e-mail address, and if I choose to e-mail you back, then naturally you will also have my address ... then further communication is just normal e-mail without Wikipedia as a middleman.

Normally on talk pages (whether User talk or Article talk) we like to keep related conversations together. A heading indicates a new conversation, whereas indented text (like these paragraphs, indented using initial colons as markup) indicate a response to whatever's above. If you respond to this, then you'll start each paragraph with 2 colons to indent them even further. Also, it looks like you're signing your edits with 4 tildes plus your name. But the 4 tildes already generate your User name, so you don't have to bother typing it yourself.

I've got to sit around for a while tomorrow while my friend has a (non-emergency) procedure, so maybe I'll start reading your papers. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 04:06, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Editing Wikipedia Article on Samuel Daniel (2021)

I've started editing the Wikipedia article on Samuel Daniel. Please check it out and feel free to leave me comments and suggestions either here or on talk:Samuel Daniel. Musophilus (talk) 05:41, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Musophilus. Great to see work being done in this area on Wikipedia. It is sorely needed!

However, I must also add a caution: if you have published on the topics you write about here, you need to be very familiar with WP:COI and in particular WP:SELFCITE. If for no other reason then because even technical violations of the policy can cause the sort of embarrassing todo that can hurt one's academic reputation and career. The policy has some commonsensical leeway so long as one is careful to adhere to the neutral point of view, but I would personally strongly advice that you be an absolute stickler about adhering to the letter of the policy.

I see Phil wink has been giving you some general advice, and would probably be happy to do so on issues related to this as well. I imagine Bertaut may be similarly willing to help. I'm happy to do so as well, but I don't edit on the project very often these days (you can always {{ping}} me or drop a note on my talk page if you like).

And just to be extremely clear: I absolutely do not mean to imply that you have in any way erred here! It's just general advice for any academic working on articles in their own field on Wikipedia. Xover (talk) 15:49, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Xover, thank you very much for the advice and for the very well-founded note of caution. I will be re-studying the guidelines you cite, but I have definitely tried to be careful to maintain a neutral perspective in everything I have included. Nevertheless, it is very good to be reminded of the concern. Thank you and please feel free to keep the feedback coming.Musophilus (talk) 15:58, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd echo what Xover has said. I have to admit, I'm not hugely familiar with WP:COI precisely because I've explicitly stayed away from contributing to articles on topics where I've also had material published (mainly stuff concerning narrative structure and the like). Having said that, I don't see a problem here - it's not like you were changing the entire basis of an article or trying to insert fringe theories or anything like that, so don't sweat it, but, again, to echo Xover, do keep it in mind going forward. I'm hoping to get the time to read the Huntington article myself over the next week or so, but irrespective of that, the material you added to the chronology page seems fine - if anything, you could probably expand it a little further. As for Samuel Daniel, unfortunately, I honestly don't know a huge about him beyond his Shakespearean relevance. But I'm more than happy to advise on anything I can, whether it be content or more technical stuff. MarnetteD and Tom Reedy are both good people to know in this general area as well. Bertaut (talk) 20:14, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed feedback, Bertaut. I really appreciate it. I will definitely be keeping it in mind going forward. And for now, I think I'll just leave the relatively innocuous (I hope) comment on the possibility that Shakespeare used an early manuscript of Daniel's work. If after looking at HLQ article you see a piece that you think would be particularly useful in the article on Shakespeare's Chronology or on Daniel, let me know and I'll reconsider. Or feel free to add something and cite it yourself! Thanks again.Musophilus (talk) 20:23, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Observations

It's just my references so far (probably near-final), but I've created User:Phil wink/observations. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 17:49, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Looks good so far. Thanks for setting up the page. I'll be tracking it.Musophilus (talk) 18:00, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Assessing the assessors (a little-known Elvis Costello B-side?)

Hi, Musophilus. I notice that the WP:POETRY page where you requested an assessment is inactive (and that whole Wikiproject, as far as I can tell, is pretty moribund). I don't know if any Wikipedians are now actively updating poetry assessments at all; I would not hold my breath for any action from that quarter. I have more hope for WP:BARD, but while you've already had contact with 2 good editors from that side... my sense is that they don't do assessments! Anyway, my fear is that if anyone does wander in to give SD a project-based assessment, they'll just tag it with an A or B and move on, without providing you the feedback which is, I think, what you really wanted in the first place. I say, nominate it for Featured Article (I think it's beyond Good at this point). The steps you may want to take first would be: if you have specific questions or areas of concern outstanding, ask me or Xover or Bertaut... we'll all be better at responding to specific queries than general ones. If you still want more input, try Wikipedia:Peer review/guidelines which, unlike Wikiprojects, seems to have dedicated editors committed to actually getting through the list (I've never done this, so I'm not making any claims about its speed or quality). Then nominate.

The bits of the article that strike me as potentially in need of action before FA nomination are:

1. I believe an FA will normally have a somewhat longer lead section... probably 1 or 2 additional paragraphs the size of the current one?
2. I advocate spinning off the Shakespeare/Daniel influence section into its own article, and replacing it in the main article with a summary, maybe 1/4 or 1/3 the current size, and more narrative, less listy. Benefits: better flow and proportion in the article; opportunity for expansion of details of influence, including parallel passages which would bloat the main article; I think the spin-off article would probably merit inclusion in the {{Henriad}} template, which the main SD article probably wouldn't... this would help to advertise the spin-off and to justify the inclusion of the template on the SD page.
3. Maybe the Works section should be moved to the end of the main text? Personally, I think it makes sense where it is, and would hesitate to move it. However, my sense is that shoving the list of an author's works to the end is highly normative, so this may be something the FA assessor would request.

As I think I've mentioned, any major changes should be made before nomination (though not necessarily before peer reivew). And you certainly shouldn't take my advice on faith; I expect @Xover and Bertaut would be happy to agree or disagree with my positions, either way, likely with better rationales. Thanks again for your hard work, and I hope you eventually manage to get the kind of feedback you're looking for. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 15:40, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Phil wink, thank you once again for your excellent feedback and guidance. I like all of your comments and will likely be making substantially all the changes you suggest over the next few weeks (in between preparing to teach online asynchronously for the first time). The only one I'm uncertain about (as it seems you are as well) is the movement of the Works. I'll take a look at some other FA articles about authors and see what they generally do. Thanks again. Musophilus (talk) 16:20, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Asynchronous teaching: I'm sorry, but now I'm picturing you in a sci-fi sitcom, where you have to instruct a rag-tag band of failed time-travelers who have all ended up in just slightly out-of-phase temporal realities. Your catch-phrase will be "OK class, remember that yesterday I'll be quizzing you on the material we reviewed tomorrow." Hijinks will ensue as Biff keeps accidentally nearly preventing his classmates from having been born. Phil wink (talk) 18:08, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

That's exactly right. By the way, I actually played Biff in a community theater production while I was in high school. So I'm not sure how that time travel stuff will impact my current life. I'll let you know. Musophilus (talk) 18:58, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping Phil. You can indeed feel free to ping me or put a message on my talk page (for which I will get an email notification) at any time if you think I could be of any assistance. I make no warranties regarding promptness or utility of the response. I am periodically really swamped IRL, and I do most of my on-wiki work over on English Wikisource these days, so pings here on English Wikipedia sometimes get lost.

For whatever it's worth, Phil's advice above does look eminently sensible. I'll try to have a real look at the article and see if I have anything useful to add, but at a skim it looks very good. Excellent work! Xover (talk) 13:57, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Xover.Musophilus (talk) 14:03, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Notes on vandals

Hi. As I mentioned elsewhere, your work has now suffered its first instance of vandalism and, happily, speedy reversion by a bot, as you can see here. If you think of vandalism as a disease, you'll be pleased to find that rather extensive notes on the topic exist at WP:VD. No one here is obliged to counteract vandalism; we all do the tasks we choose to do. But I don't have to explain the benefits to you. And because of your area of interest, if you stick around here you're likely to be in the position of having a Help:Watchlist of articles that have very few other editors watching them. In case you're willing to join the fight, I thought I'd offer some notes and links on the topic, with apologies for, likely, telling you a lot of stuff you already know.

Very obvious vandalism is reverted almost instantly by bots (as in the case linked above). But because this involves no human review, the bar is set very high: these bots have to maintain -- I don't know -- something like a 0.3% false positive rate; meaning, there are a ton of edits that bots are pretty sure are vandalism, which they don't touch. Then there are semi-automated processes where bots serve up lists of these questionable edits that they themselves can't revert, which are evaluated by human editors. (I don't have anything to do with either of these, so I trust I'm simplifying grotesquely). Of course, anyone can happen upon an article with a bit that doesn't smell right and correct it, but between that happenstance and the semi-automated systems is the most powerful anti-vandalism tool of the plain-ol-editor: the watchlist. This serves up a list of every edit made to every page you've chosen to watch. From here you can see exactly what was altered by viewing the diff. And if you detect vandalism, you can (usually) quickly revert it by simply clicking the undo link associated with the offending edit.

Then, there's a next step: it is good practice that when you revert vandalism you leave a warning template on the offending user's talk page. (Note that this practice is for reversions of vandalism and similar disruptive edits. There may be times when you revert good-faith edits by experienced editors, and these should generally not be dealt with by templates -- but instead by explanatory edit summaries and, if necessary, further discussion on the article talk page or user talk page.) Personally, I already feel dirty enough having to undo some hilarious IP adding "butttts" to an article, and I used to not bother to slap a template on this IP talk page (which the user probably doesn't even know exists). But these templates are not for the user only; they also help to track misbehavior and justify sanctions, given that the offender has been warned. So now, I almost always carry through and slap on the template.

Finally, I thought I'd share a slightly more interesting vandalism case that I just encountered this morning, which shows the value of trudging though and evaluating every single edit. This morning, several vandalizing edits were made by 2 IPs to The Woman Hater. Seemingly, these were 2 dorks using the page to suggest which of their classmates might fittingly feature as lads, prostitutes, and incels in the play. Anyway... at some point a human editor (using a semi-automated service) evaluated one of the edits as vandalism and reverted it; then the same vandal made another edit which was instantly reverted by a bot. Good right? Not really: because each of these processes had only detected and reverted a single edit, all the previous vandalism was still there. And now that vandalism had cover: because the article had just been "cleaned" of vandalism, this created a sort of loose imprimatur for the previous edits that had not been reverted. Well, I reverted the lot (including the anti-vandal reversions, which, based on my method, unavoidably got caught in friendly fire). You can see the course of events here if you like. There is a power which can be granted to editors -- WP:Rollback -- which can make some multiple-edit reversions like this slicker. However, I've never used this... I did this the old-fashioned way, which is to find the most recent version of the page without vandalism, edit this old version, and save it with no changes. This overwrites the live version with the older version. Obviously, this needs to be done with caution.

Sorry for the wall of text. Take what you like; ignore what you don't. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 18:00, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Phil wink, thanks for the heads up and for the very helpful guidance. Keep it coming. I did know about the Watchlist and do keep track of a number of sites regularly. But much of the rest of your input on how to combat vandalism I was not aware of at all. I will certainly do what I can to contribute to the integrity and quality of WP articles as I come across issues. Musophilus (talk) 01:20, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

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