Talk:Patriot Whigs

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You have new messages (last change).

Here is why I made the edits that I did:

  1. Date fragments are not to be linked -- see WP:DATE
  2. There is no need to link ordinary words -- see WP:CONTEXT
  3. House of Commons is an article that discusses the concept of a House of Commons. British House of Commons is a better link for this article.

Please explain why you think these changes should not be made before reverting. Ground Zero | t 21:23, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

  1. Forget WP:DATE, because it doesn't apply. Dates were not linked compulsively. The years that were linked were pivotal years. I.e. the article did not link every year, but years that were editorially determined to be turning points in the history of the movement.
  2. Which words are ordinary is a matter of debate. What you see as ordinary, someone else does not. What someone else sees as ordinary, you may not. Therefore, there is no compulsion to favor your unlinking view over another person's linking view. Hang onto this thought for #4.
  3. I agree with you that that was an improvement.
  4. Your edits introduced a typo. The line went from "Patriot Whig" to "atriot Whig."
So point 1 was erroneous. Point 2 was a matter of opinion, and your opinion is as good as mine, mine as good as yours. Point 3 was a nice help to the article but not an overriding one. Point 4 was an obvious and overriding deterioration of the reading of the article. So, without a way of selectively preserving #3, arguing #2, and explaining #1, but with a need to get rid of #4, I used rollback, which was rude but exigent. I apologize for the bad taste it must have left, but when I link a year, I mean to link it, and I have put some foresight into it. I appreciate people unlinking years to give each year as much thought as I did and not to go through with forms. Geogre 03:12, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I forgot the apostrophe stuff. I'm getting fairly sick of this dumbed down business manual editing at this point. Apostrophes are used in the plural marker of dates and acronymns. If you must have a "style sheet" that agrees with this, look at the New York Times. However, you can also look at British practice. However, you can also look at grammar handbooks, like the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich handbook. The place where you see the apostrophes removed is in business writing in America. Removing them from articles where they have been intentionally used is boorish. (What is the difference between a 350-s Mercedes and multiple 350 Mercedes cars? When do the number and letters end? What is the difference between an SOS-7s and some SOS-7s? The apostrophe is used to indicate the contraction of a letter. I do not demand that everyone else on the Wikipedia use apostrophes properly, but I'll be damned if they're going to tell me that I must use them in the same illiterate fashion that they do.) Geogre 03:19, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
And here I was being forgetful again. I had linked the word "satire" because I wanted people to click on it. I thought they might benefit from reading about satire, which was rife in these decades and probably the most important form of literature for the whole 50 years and certainly the most common weapon used by the Patriot Whigs. Silly me, thinking that, because the word is common to you, I shouldn't encourage anyone to find out more about it. Sheesh. Geogre 03:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. WP:DATE: "So when considering whether such a date should be linked or not, editors should take into account the usual considerations about links, including the recommendations of Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context." My point was not erroneous. I still don't see the point of linking the year here, but since you seem to care about it, I will leave it alone. I will only point out that you provided no reason for linking it when you reverted, so you shouldn't be surprised that I removed the link again subsequently.
  2. As a long-time editor here, I am sure that you understand that there are many editors who merrily link everything in sight. It is worthwhile to clean up some of this overlinking, as is recommended in the Manual of Style. Again, now that you have explained that you think the link to "satire" is important, I will leave it alone.
  3. I am glad that you agree that the more precise link to British House of Commons is preferable. In the future, I hope that you will edit selectively instead of using the rollback button.
  4. Thank you for catching my typo. It would have been easy to correct by editing instead of rolling back.

"Apostrophes are used in the plural marker of dates and acronymns." Not according to WP:DATE. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style applies here, and should take precedence over other style manuals when there is a conflict. I will remove the unnecessary apostrophe. "without a way of selectively preserving #3, arguing #2, and explaining #1, but with a need to get rid of #4," -- yes, you had a way of doing this. You could edit selectively, and explain yourself on the talk page. Simple. And polite.

"Silly me, thinking that, because the word is common to you, I shouldn't encourage anyone to find out more about it. Sheesh." And silly me for not realizing that this is "your" article and I should know that you chose every link carefully. Sheesh indeed. Ground Zero | t 11:59, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, it was silly of you to assume that someone who creates an article from scratch must be ignorant and in need of the cookie cutter of some ill educated person's change to the MOS. Silly also to think that no editor but you could have thought out what he was writing. It's as impolite, hamfisted, and ill-bred to go through applying these blind guidelines as it is to rollback. As for the apostrophe, WP:DATE is not policy. It is a style guideline, and it is incorrect. Again, having some respect for those of us who understand grammar would be nice. However, if you wish to edit war over the apostrophe, you will be welcome to do so. I stayed out of the MOS debates because I have always believed that we were supposed to respect each other. However, people wield the MOS the way a fool wields a pole-ax -- breaking their own shins as they swing at everything in reach. The apostrophe plural marker for dates and acronyms is not a question of style sheet: it is proper grammar. Yes, I will revert to the apostrophe.
Please realize that I wouldn't roll back without a reason, that I don't write haphazardly, and I'm not thrilled when someone throws a blanket over an article and, without reading or thinking about it, says, "Form 22-stroke-3 clearly indicates that all articles must conform to a vulgarian standard, so I will insert boxes, templates, tags, and change punctuation." Geogre 13:48, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia encourages us to be bold in editing. I make no apology for that. Anyone can edit WIkipedia, and as a result, there are a lot of new editors who merrily link everything in site. Now that you have explained that you intended those links, I will leave them alone. But don't berate me for making the edits in the first place. "Please realize that... I don't write haphazardly...." It is unreasonable to expect other editors to know which articles you have edited and therefore should be left alone, and which articles have been sloppily written by other editors.

So there is somehting in the Manual of Style with which you disagree. You can start a discussion on the the page to get it changed. Or you can just go around imposing your own style and abusing editors who adhere to it. The question is, which is the better way of editing harmoniously.

Apostrophes to denote plural for years and acronyms is not a question of grammar. It is a question of style. The style in the United States is to use the apostrophe. The style is the United Kingdom is not to use the apostrophe. In Canada, both styles are used. Lynne Truss has an interesting discussion of this in Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Profile Books, UK edition, 2003, p.46). For whatever reason, Wikipedia has chosen to follow UK style on this matter. (I was not involved in the discussion about this in any way.) Ground Zero | t 12:26, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Nor was I involved in it. Do you know why? It's zero sum. As long as the MOS left things as "you may do this or that," I didn't care. The last I saw, it had been left that way: apostrophes may be used or may not be used in plural dates and acronyms. However, some people go about slapping the MOS onto articles and claim that they have superiority because it is MOS, and MOS debates are argued with heat, never light, with schoolyard preference, never logic. I don't impose apostrophes on other articles, and I expect them not to be stripped out of my writing. I see that you've been on a WP:DATE campaign. That "consensus" is very narrow, very tenuous, very new, and, I think, very temporary. I urge you to know that this is novel at this point, that it might reverse, and that -bot assisted unlinking of all dates is a lot easier than re-linking them later. Err on the side of conservativism with other people's articles, I'd say, unless there is internal evidence that they were written by someone who hasn't a clue. It should be fairly evident that the articles that have gotten this cookie cutter treatment were written with rather a full slate of clues. Geogre 13:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I have been on a campaign to disambiguate "House of Commons" to either the British one or the Canadian one, except in two cases where it was appropriate to leave the link to the general article. The dates thing is just a sideline. I think that having an MOS is useful as a way of providing a general uniformity for Wikipedia. Otherwise, why have an MOS at all? I understand that you do not agree, and that is your right. As far as erring on the side of conservatism with "other people's articles", I continue to disagree that any articles belong to anyone. They belong only to Wikipedia. "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." I do not expect anyone to leave alone any articles that I have written. Ground Zero | t 22:15, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad we're being more civil, and I'll do my part. The thing is, I disagree on the dates thing. Once MOS got set that way (tentatively, as I think it's always going to be under fire), I began using date links for very specific occasions. Birth and death years should have date links. Within the body of an article, I link only years I feel are cornerstones for the event or person under discussion. Therefore, with the Giles Mompesson article, I'm going to re-link the body years and the birth/death. This is because, as you may have noticed, I hadn't linked every single year. I had linked the years that were the turning points in legal and personal history that allowed his rise and fall. The original idea behind year links was that anyone who did one would then go to the year article and list the event there. Granted, that would make the years unusable if we truly did that with every single link, and that's why I link where I think the event should be mentioned in the year's article. If we have a biography of someone, that someone is probably significant enough to be listed under "births" in a year's article. Otherwise, the "trial of Giles Mompesson" is probably a thing that should be listed in 1621. As for "owning," it's more a case of "single editor writing and shaping." The worst articles on Wikipedia are the ones that every passing reader tacks information onto, willy nilly. (See what happened to "my" Parody article. See what happened to "my" bathos article.) The ones that go to FA are almost always because a single author has shaped and, yes, controlled them or overseen their writing. Further, making a change that is helpful, like disambiguating the house of commons, is something no one will get proprietary about, but going in and unlinking the words they linked? I'll bet quite a few people get annoyed, think that what you're doing is not helpful, that what you're doing is simply sticking your finger into the article to say you were there. This is especially true if there is no discussion, no time taken to see whether there was rhyme or reason to the existing structure. Geogre 04:20, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I have relinked the key years in Mompesson as a gesture of good faith. I still consider links to years as unnecessary as I do not think that they are commonly used to add the events to the year article, but I don't see linking key dates as causing the sort of mess that linking every year does. The practice of linking every year is far more common than the selective linking that you practice. You are the first to complain about my copyediting, and I have been doing it for a long time. Furthermore, there are a lot of editors who copyedit to fix common errors and things that are contrary to the Manual of Style. Many of them use bots. I prefer not to do use a bot to ensure that I use more discretion. I will use more discretion in the future when it comes to year links where not every year has been linked. Why would I want to "stick my finger into the article to say I was there"? I make changes to improve Wikipedia. I'm not interested in people seeing my pseudonym just for the sake of it. Ground Zero | t 11:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

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