Talk:Great Fire of London
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Talk:Great Fire of London/Archive 1
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[edit] Vandalism
Given that this is today's featured article, shouldn't it have been temporarily locked? The vandals are having a field day... --Owain loft 19:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Certainly not. The selection of the daily featured article is crucial: anyone not already a Wikipedia addict may base a substantial part of their judgment on its appearance and content, so it should be a model, and this means not just proof that we can be as good as Encyclopædia Britannica, but a demonstration that, because we're open source, we're better. To lock would be to turn this from a model Wikipedia article to something less than a Wikipedia article. There have been dozens of works of vandalism here today, most of them replacing the entire article with a single sentence. Examine the history page, and you'll see every single one has been reverted within a few seconds.
- I'm sure I've seen a "Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled" message on featured articles before now. The reason I made this post was that I kept getting redirected to some random movie every time I clicked on the featured article link, it was starting to get annoying. --Owain loft 10:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Note re. wording
Re. "This reasoning has recently been challenged on the ground that poor and middle-class people were not recorded anywhere..." in the intro, perhaps the words in bold should be reworded. I don't have any specific suggestions, but perhaps even just saying "this reasoning has been challenged by modern scholars on the ground...". 211.28.226.29 23:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Hansen
How reliable is The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London? Secondary deaths from lynching or hunger really don't count - otherwise the death toll becomes negative as the fire killed remaining plague rats and flees cutting the number of deaths there would otherwise have been. (The last plague death was in fact a few years later in Rotherhithe). This is a fire which travelled 1 mile or 2 km in three days - most people can travel a little faster than that. --Henrygb 01:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Capitalization of "City"
I noticed this throughout the article- is there a special reason for the word "City" always being capitalized? Is it part of London's official name? Nothing urgent- I'm just curious. --Wafulz 02:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- The "city of London" and "City of London" aren't the same thing. It's pretty crazy, but take a look at London, Greater London and especially City of London for the gory details. --Spangineerws (háblame) 02:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you, Spangineer, for that clarification! It is really nice when people bother to explain some local naming detail that can make the reader really confused. I wonder if there is a good, non-intrusive way of working that fact into the text of the article itself? Maybe the introduction? All in all, an absolutely beautiful article, especially considering the grim story it has to tell. Big thanks to all who did this! --Ronja Addams-Moring 07:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
- Sorry, I managed to miss the expression "the City proper—the area bounded by the City wall and the river Thames" - that makes it quite clear. --Ronja Addams-Moring 16:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you, Spangineer, for that clarification! It is really nice when people bother to explain some local naming detail that can make the reader really confused. I wonder if there is a good, non-intrusive way of working that fact into the text of the article itself? Maybe the introduction? All in all, an absolutely beautiful article, especially considering the grim story it has to tell. Big thanks to all who did this! --Ronja Addams-Moring 07:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Quote source
The quote, "But the fire overtakes us faster then we can do it" was recently changed to "But the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." Could someone with access to the source verify that this change is correct? --Spangineerws (háblame) 02:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- Well, you could say both are correct. It's from Pepys, and I originally quoted it exactly, with "then". But somebody changed it to "than", which could be seen as modernized spelling. It's probably clearer to the reader in modernized form. As far as I remember, it doesn't come up with the other Pepys quotes, and both original spelling (well, not original, as Pepys wrote a kind of shorthand, but your basic 17th-century spelling) and modernized spelling have their proponents. I figure we might as well leave it modernized. Or indeed, change it back... whatever. I don't see it as a problem. Bishonen | talk 14:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC).
- Wasn't the source published recently though? I'd think that we would want to stick with whatever their editorial decision was. But eh, not a big deal. --Spangineerws (háblame) 23:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Progroms
Why is there no mention of the progroms that ensued as a result of Jew not sucumbing to the plague etc? Chavatshimshon 04:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
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- As I recall, only a modest number of Jews remained in England at the time, as most were expelled by the time of the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. See discussion of Jewish harrassment and persecution in Black Death. WBardwin 07:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- It's not germane to an article on the Fire, you know. However, Oliver Cromwell had taken a "moderate" position of tolerance toward Jews. This did not sit well universally with other Puritans, but he was very definite about it. The actual effect of such nominal tolerance is hard to measure. There may not have been very many Jews, and certainly not so many as to have had a pogrom over. The mob could go amok over the thought of Jews, of course, and rumors of Jews, as it did with Catholics and rumors of Catholics, but that's just the mob. I have never heard of Jews getting blame during the Fire. Geogre 11:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] starberries
Can someone explain to me what "Roman starberries settlement" refers to? Jim Farmer jims-email@hotmail.com.
[edit] Possible Vandalism
Under the section, "Fire hazards in the City", the following sentence appears to be vandalism: "The City was the biggest little whore town in texas." However, when attempting to edit the sentence, the editing page shows a correct statement. Someone with more Wikipedia experience should to address this. Ifruit 18:20, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you for your attentiveness. What that means is that someone had already rolled back the vandalism between the time you loaded the page and the time you went to edit. It's a good thing. Geogre 18:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Incorrect figures!!
"It is estimated that over 100 billion people died in this tragic fire" 100 Billion people?!?! consierding only 80,000 lived in the city and that the whole world doesn't even have this! lol
- Oh, all is well, the article is now called Weekend at Bernie's, so no worries. :-) Thanks for your concern, but this is simply what happens to articles on the Main Page. On the upside, vandalism is even easier to revert than to perpetrate. Bishonen | talk 19:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC).
- 100 billion? I guess it ain't called the "great fire" for nothing :oP --87.112.31.15 01:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Incorrect Figures II
London in the 1660s: 80,000 people = 1/6th pre-plague population (implying 400,000 remaining.)Aftermath: 80,000 people = 1/4 of population. Not a desparately important point but these figures don't add up.217.154.66.11 08:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
- A very important point, it seems to me. 80,000 is described as 1/4 of the population (implying a population of 320,000) just after the population is described as half a million. (otherwise a fantastic article!). Dast 18:21, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Unlikely...
As a ringer I find this statement somewhat implausible:
Public-spirited citizens would be alerted to a dangerous house fire by muffled peals on the church bells,
First off I've always been told that the "alarm" signal was ringing "back-rounds" i.e. ringing the bells in turn from lowest to highest (instead of highest to lowest, the normal "default") - unfortunately I have no sources for this. Second, muffles (a leather pad which fastens on to the clapper) take a reasonable amount of time to fit - not ideal when you are trying to raise the alarm. David Underdown 10:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
