Hi, Paul, loved your
History of Scotland stuff. I'll get the
History of England crosslinked asap. Keep up the great work!
sjc
Nice write up of
The Clash, too. And
Talking Heads.
GWO
You have a flaw in your write-up of IKBrunel, in the section on the Thames Tunnel. "Isambard spent nearly" -- nearly what? 17 minutes to fix it? What took ya so long? :-)
That is a nice Talking Heads writeup. I can see your background in writing. Adding it to
Brilliant prose. :-) --
Koyaanis Qatsi
what's "too many" history books? can I have any discards?--
MichaelTinkler
Just adding my words of admiration on the Scotland history article. I'd love to see more on William Wallace and Robert Bruce, and on the Picts. --
BryceHarrington
Nice spot on the Dunwich Horror, Paul. It must have been some other horror writer (maybe August Derleth?) that did the story about the Cthulhu tunnels from Walberswick to Dunwich.
sjc
Paul, shouldn't the entry be under Walter Scott? --
MichaelTinkler
I've been going solely on the basis of "What is he most commonly known as?" Winston Churchill is popularly "Winston Churchill", despite being a "Sir", so his entry is without a title. On the other hand no-one calls Sir Walter Scott "Walter Scott", probably since that's a relatively common name; so "Sir Walter Scott" it is.
I'm operating on the theory that I want to pander to what people are likeliest to type in some article that mentions him, oblivious of what decision I may have made in naming my article. If necessary, it's complete replacements of names: "Duke of Marlborough" instead of John Churchill, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" (when I get around to him) instead of Charles III. All on the basis of popular usage...it seems to me to be the most logical and, more importantly, effective way of filing, seeing as Wiki frees us of alphabetical ordering and the limitations of paper. --PaulDrye
that's reasonable enough. We aren't bound by page-flipping searches, after all. It takes some getting used to, though! --
MichaelTinkler
I did have the
Thomas More entry linked to as Sir Thomas More, on the same reasoning, but that decision was vetoed. it does, however, present something of a problem for people who are alive and are knighted; for instance I would not expect to link to [[Sir Alec Guinness]] or [[Sir Paul McCartney]] though those may be the most common references a century from now. --
KQ
While I see the problem, I don't think we should be apologizing for not being able to predict the future :) We can cross that bridge when we pass water under it. What was the reasoning behind the veto? --
PaulDrye
Good point in re: the future. All those calls to the Psychic Friends Network just aren't panning out. ;-) I don't know why it was moved; I don't remember any discussion of it. I'm not broken up over it; it's just something I noticed. Which reminds me to check that all of the links are now to the article rather than the redirect. --
KQ
I would point out on the issue of Thomas More that a rather large body of those who actually know his name refer to him as Saint Thomas More. --
MichaelTinkler
I suppose it's more a matter of culture than anything; titles are "identifiers" in British culture. To Americans, they are just information about a person and/or his accomplishments. We would never think to title an article "Dr. Albert Einstein", so why "Sir Alec Guinness"? He is, and always was, Alec Guinness. It so happens that he was later knighted, which fact should certainly be included in the article. But that's not
who he was. Of course, that distinction doesn't work as well for hereditary titles that really are like identities (Lord Byron), or for simple names that can only be disambiguated by titles (Pope Gregory). --
LDC
Which brings us back to "Sir Walter Scott" -- British, far more popular and talked about in the 19th century (when -- horrors! -- one DID NOT drop the title) than in the 20th, and with a moderately ambiguous name. My experience is that the "Sir" is practically part of his one-word name: "Sirwalterscott", so pronounced by my English professors. Rather like "Sirwalterraleigh", now that I think about it. Maybe it's just the Walters. All I can say is "Thank God his name isn't James". As far as I can tell, every third male in 18th century Scotland had that as a first name....
PaulDrye
Good points which bring us back to the problem of whether to title or not to title, and (in this case) which one to choose if there are several. Perhaps we should hash out a voluntary policy on it. --
KQ
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