User talk:Dek-ko

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[edit] McEvedy

Hi. I've been polishing the McEvedy article a bit. I hope you approve of the wording I've finally(?) settled on. I also de-linked a few things, based on Wikipedia Manual of Style (aka WP-MOS, or just MOS) guidelines. I'm thinking the article could stand expansion -- some of the stuff from his psychiatric career might be worth including. Anyhow, I'd like to collaborate on making the article the best it can be, and hope that our ideas of what that is do not differ much. So this is partly a good-will message, to say that if you have objections to my edits then I'd like to talk about them, working toward an article about which we both are glad.

Peace. Lonewolf BC 02:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

(I've copied your reply to me over to here, from my own talk page, for the sake of keeping discussions in one place. Hope you don't mind. -- LW)

Hi lonewolf, my edit was really just to tidy up the slightly over elaborate sentence structure- my only remaining objections are where you say "witty and engaging writing-style, with which he often made reasoned challenges to established opinion", which to me implies its the style with which he is making the objection, as opposed to the substance of his writing, and also to the word revered, which seems like it might need to be supported by a reference, its not that clear that he was admired to that extent. Anyway, rather than just edit, I thought I'd let you know my thoughts... Dek-ko 14:21, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, we seem to be in quite good agreement, then. I know that my sentences sometimes get overly long and elaborate, but I believe that I've mended that in the case of this article. I gather that you concur. (Leaving a draft for a while, and coming back to it later often helps much.) Turning to our two remaining points of difference, I do mean to suggest that the witty style, besides enlivening McEvedy's writing generally, was used in challenging established opinion. More than one of the obituaries makes note of this -- "witty digs". The substantiality of the challenges is, I think, covered by "reasoned" and illustrated by the next sentences, about the standing that McEvedy and his views eventually gained. So it's both their style and their substance that are notable about the challenges, and my aim was to indicate that. I believe I have succeeded. As for "revered" one of the obits uses that very word. I could add a reference if you like, but the WP article is quite short and the obits are already listed for reference, so I'm not sure a specific reference for "revered" is really needed.

Anyhow, I'm not adamant about any of this, so don't hesitate to make further changes if you think they are needed.

Best regards, Lonewolf BC 19:41, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

how about changing from "McEvedy's witty and engaging writing-style, with which he often made reasoned challenges to established opinion among historians and demographers" to "McEvedy's witty and engaging writing-style, which he used on occasion to challenge established opinions among historians and demographers"- I've read everything on the list (except rise of the world cities, which I've never seen on sale) many times over, and I would say "occasionally" is more appropriate then "often" for this- really its just in the population history atlas and the intro to the new atlas of ancient history that he does this. Also, I still don't really like "revered", I just think respected is more than enough Dek-ko 22:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

That'd be fine. I think, though, that there are more instances of the "witty digs" than you are allowing for and that, when considering them within the body of McEvedy's popular publications, "often" fits their frequency. "Occasionally" also works for me, though. After thinking on it some more, I agree with you about "revered". It's perhaps a bit of an overstatement, not out of place in an obituary (where it is traditional to be somewhat laudatory), but smacking of puffery in an encyclopedia article. I shall make the edits. Lonewolf BC 04:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delete "mcevedy" redirect?

Unless you've an objection, I'm going to list the ""Colin mcevedy" redirect page for deletion. I'm assuming its title was just a typographical mistake by you -- that you meant to make it "Colin McEvedy" to begin with. Nothing links to the redirect page, and its brief history is merely trivial: just your initial creation of the stub, a tag for suspected non-notability, another tag as an "orphan" (not-linked-to) article, and then your re-direct to the right name. So it seems like there are no snags with deleting it. But if you object for any reason then I won't list it for deletion. (The proposed deletion would not affect the "Colin McEvedy" page, of course. The only loss will be the brief article-history of its "...mcevedy" predecessor.) Lonewolf BC 01:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

re mcevedy redirect- yeah go ahead and delete it I didn't know how to rename the title so I redirected it as you thought Dek-ko 18:38, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Done. By the way, in case you have not learned how, meanwhile, to rename an article, use its "move" tab, which is up between its "history" and "watch" tabs, above its title. That transfers the whole article, edit-history and all, to the new title. It also creates a re-direct from the old title to the new. (I gather that, instead, you created a new article and turned the old one into a re-direct, which accomplishes the same thing except that it leaves behind the edit-history from before the move. Generally that would be a problem, although in this case not, because the article had no edit-history that mattered yet.) -- Lonewolf BC 20:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)