Talk:Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft/Archive 1

Layout

After the table was broken into decades by Circeus, each table adjusted itself, size-wise. It would be nice if all of the columns of all of the tables were the same width and matched the 1750s table. Does anyone know how to fix this? Awadewit | talk 01:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I had not noticed that, but then I was vaguely planning to switch to a definition list format similar to that of Timeline of peptic ulcer. Just had a "width=31%" to each of the columns except the first. That should do it, I think. Circeus 02:02, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The year-by-year doesn't work. I tried it (you can go back in the history). Mixing up Wollstonecraft's life with the history is too confusing. Awadewit | talk 02:12, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Including history

On a completely different level, as I look at it, I can't help feeling that quite a few events are not linked enough to Wolfstonecraft (after a cursory glance, anyway) to warrant entries. E.g. Brittanica's editions (Why the first and third, but not the 2nd?) or the discovery of Uranus. I can understand that in many books, these are given as "contextual references", however, I believe such asides are entirely unnecessary and distracting in Wikipedia. Circeus 00:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Here was my reasoning for including events: if they were on multiple timelines that I consulted, I included them (see my concerns about original research above). I feel that if I start deleting items that I personally feel are not relevant to Wollstonecraft, the list will tilt even further towards OR. Whom am I to say that the discovery of Uranus is not relevant to Wollstonecraft, for example? Furthermore, I do believe that timelines with "context" are far more useful than timelines that just list the major events in a person's life. I cannot tell you how much I learned putting this together. I would hope that a careful reader would learn the same. Awadewit | talk 00:51, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

If there is no information as to the way something impacted her, thats equally much OR. This looks as much like a "british timeline of the second half of the 18th century with events of Mary Wollstoncrafte's life" as a "Timeline of Mary Wollstoncrafte". If there is reason to connect the events, they should be included, such as the French Revolution (I if understand correctly, she wrote quite a few things about it), but otherwise, I fail to see why they belong.

How about we copy this to the article's talk page and continue the discussion there? Circeus 02:07, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I would say that, yes, it is a fusing of two timelines: "second half of the 18th century" and "Mary Wollstonecraft", but as I am a firm believer that one must know history in order to understand literature, I guess I do not really see the problem. I have not found a timeline labeled "historical events related to MW" and since all of the MW chronologies I did find are labeled as "brief", they do not include much historical information. I see no harm in having the historical information here, especially as it is supported by multiple eighteenth-century timelines; in fact, I only see a benefit accruing to the reader. Listing the events of MW's life without any historical context is only helpful to those who know the history of the time period well, I'm afraid. Awadewit | talk 02:18, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally I think all Wikipedia timelines should adopt this format. Context is important. Kaldari 15:32, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I sternly disagree. I fail to see any justification whatsoever to consider that the discovery of Uranus is as related to the topic as the publication of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Circeus 22:18, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah sorry, guess I hadn't looked at it that closely. I think you may have a point. Perhaps it should be limited to historical events more relevant to Wollstonecraft's life, i.e. mainly events in Britain and France. Kaldari 22:29, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Even then it's not difficult to find dubious presences: The Times' and the Brittanica's publications, for example. I think the course is to take each entry in the culture and history columns and check it against Mary Wollstonecraft and its related articles, and if no connection is clearly visible, remove it. (something like "If the list was in the format of Timeline of chemistry, would the entry look completely out of place?") The other material can probably be merged into 18th century.

Random thought: Would a link to Timeline of the French Revolution be useful/pertinent? Circeus 23:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Using Circeus's logic, I should then mention on the timeline every text and event that is listed in any Wollstonecraft article. I cannot understand how that is not original research. No timelines that I have looked at look like what would be the result of doing such a thing. I really must stress that I feel it is helpful for readers to understand what is going on in the world during Wollstonecraft's lifetime, even if none of the sources I happen to have read on Wollstonecraft mention its direct connection to her. The point of such entries is to let readers know the kinds of discoveries and inventions that were being made at the time so that they don't start asking silly questions, like why it took Wollstonecraft so long to travel from place to place. I can hear my students now: why didn't she take a train? Awadewit | talk 01:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I think there should be some happy compromise between your position and Circeus'. Perhaps we could just remove some of the more tangential listings such as the discovery of Uranus and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius? Kaldari 16:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, as opinion seems to be against me on this, I will remove a few things. Here is what I took out (the items mostly relate to science, as you will see):

• 1758 - Publication of David Hume's treatise An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• 15 January 1759 - Opening of the British Museum
• 1760 - Josiah Wedgwood founds his pottery works in the English midlands
• 1767 - Publication of Joseph Priestley's The History and Present State of Electricity
• 1774 - Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen
• 1779 - Penitentiary Act authorizes state prisons
• 1781 - Publication of Immanuel Kant's treatise Critique of Pure Reason
• 13 March 1781 - Frederick William Herschel discovers Uranus
• 1789 - Publication of Laplace's Laws of the Planetary System
• 1789 - Publication of Antoine Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimi, the first textbook on modern chemistry
• 1790 - Lavoisier develops a table of thirty-one chemical elements
• 1794 - Publication of Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia
• 1797 - Publication of the third edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
• 1798 - Henry Cavendish of England calculates the mass of the earth
• 1798 - Publication of Baron Cuvier's Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux, the first modern work of comparative anatomy

Please retain the citations just in case we decide to put some of these back. Let me know what you think. Awadewit | talk 18:33, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Someone's got the date wrong on Mount Vesuvius. The Wikipedia article says Vesuvius erupted in 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, and 1794, but this timeline says 1774. Kaldari 18:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Except the Vesuvius article doesn't have a source and I do. I am certainly willing to change the date, if it is wrong. But wikipedia articles are not (yet) reliable. Do you have a source for the eighteenth-century eruption date? Awadewit | talk 19:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

There is a detailed list of Vesuvius eruptions here. It lists 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, and 1794, but not 1774. Let's just remove the Vesuvius listing for now. Kaldari 19:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Makes me wonder if anything else is wrong in Lynch's timeline. Kaldari 19:31, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Other dates may be wrong on Lynch's page - it is entirely possible. I tried to correct for this possibility and for bias in the creation of the source timelines by only including events that appeared on more than one timeline, creating thereby some sort of check. I did, however, include a few items that only appeared on one timeline. Whether or not this was one of them, I don't remember. I have frequently noticed that few timelines match precisely, even when listing the same events. Awadewit | talk 00:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

GA nomination: Removal without comment

The GA process specifically excludes list articles; any list that would pass a hypothetical set of "Good List" criteria would NOT be significantly different than one that would pass the Featured List Criteria. I am simply removing the article from consideration rather than failing it. As a personal note, having gotten a few lists through The Featured List Candidates Page this list should pass easily. Consider taking it straight there. Check my user page for two lists I worked on extensively and got featured; this easily meets the standards of those... Good luck, and any questions please drop me a note at my talk page. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:30, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oh, I didn't know that. How embarrassing. I had wanted a review before I took it to FLC, but with the backlog a peer review I am beginning to think that is impossible. Awadewit | talk 19:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Squishing and elbowing out

On my computer, I find several of the pictures overlapping and squashing text so that it becomes very narrow (sometimes one word a line) and the compartments elongated. This is the case, in particular, with the Friedrich and the Kauffmann, with the pictures of Price, Burney, Paine, and Wollstonecraft, the Rights of Men cover and the the tennis court oath picture. I don't like these set tables myself. I prefer to see a simple bulleted list of events under each year, as in books; but Wikipedia seems to tolerate these chart forms which to my eyes are somewhat ropy.qp10qp 16:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• I tried a list under each year, but it was a mess. It was hard to see the MW-specific events. Are you saying that the boxes change sizes? I thought they were supposed to be forced to stay the same size. Awadewit | talk 17:16, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The pictures cover up some of the text, and the text is sometimes in strings, with one or two words per line. The boxes don't change before my very eyes, but they do not look right to me in places. I haven't got any fancy settings, as far as I know.qp10qp 18:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• I'm going to try and find someone who knows more wiki-code than myself to fiddle with this. (Obviously it looks fine over here, or I wouldn't have nominated it for FL.) Awadewit | talk 18:21, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Qp, what setup are you using? This sort of thing often related to what OS you're on, what browser you're using, etc. The more detail the better. (Any chance you can email me a screenshot? My address is here.) Thanks. – Scartol · Talk 19:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

(undent) I've checked it on Windows 2000 using IE, Netscape, and Firefox. No problems on my end yet. I'll try several Mac OSX browsers when I get home later today. – Scartol · Talk 19:31, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• I have Linux-Ubuntu-Firefox. No problems here. Awadewit | talk 19:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't believe this is a problem with a specific browser. Rather it sounds like a lack of screen real-estate is the problem. If you resize your browser window to be rather narrow, you can see the problem that qp10qp is describing - pictures overlapping the text and crowding the content into narrow columns. Also, if their browser is set to automatically enlarge either text or images, this will cause the same problem on a smaller monitor. I don't really think there's anything we can do about this. Kaldari 19:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm just using Mozilla Firefox. Does "lack of screen real-estate" mean I've got a cheap computer? It cost me enough in its time, but it's certainly out of date now. It's not a small monitor; as far as I know, it is not set to enlarge text or images. I'm feeling a bit inferior, all of a sudden (:)). Especially because I don't know what OS is or how to do a screen shot.qp10qp 20:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

"OS" means "operating system". You have to have some sort of operating system running programs such as Mozilla Firefox. Windows 2000, for example. In Linux, to take a screenshot, all you do is click on the program that says "take screenshot". I'm not sure about Windows, though. If you measure your monitor diagonally, then we'll know if it is small - that is what "lack of screen real-estate" would mean. Or, if you deliberately chose to look at wikipedia in a small window, even on a large monitor, that would also mean you were using a small amount of the vast amount of real-estate you owned. :) I had to go really narrow for this to be a problem, though, with my window-sizing. I agree with Kaldari, that I'm not sure we can do much about this. Awadewit | talk 20:14, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

No, it's nothing to do with the inferiority or superiority of your setup, Qp. I'm curious to know why it's doing for you what it's doing, but without a screenshot it's hard to tell. (OS = Mac or PC or other?) What I think Kaldari means is that the timeline is trying to do a lot of things in a little bit of space – regardless of how big someone's screen is, there's a chance there will be problems.

Look at it this way: Every wikipedia page has the links on the left, right? Okay, so that takes away 15% of the screen's width or so. The timeline is split into three columns, so each of them is 1/3 of the remaining 85% of the screen's width. If there's a picture in there, the picture may be 50% of the column, and if text is supposed to flow to the left of the picture, it's natural that some things are going to look odd (on many screens). Am I being fair to your comments, Kaldari?

I think the only real solution would be to reduce the number of columns, or (gods forbid) use a fixed-width table for the timeline (which we should never do). Or start the text after the image. None of these are very attractive prospects. – Scartol · Talk 20:26, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've sorted this out now. I'd like to apologise for bothering everyone with this, because what Kaldari said prompted me to check my settings ("Also, if their browser is set to automatically enlarge either text or images, this will cause the same problem on a smaller monitor.") My screen is sixteen and a half inches, I think; but when I dug into my settings I found that the font was set at 17. By reducing it to 16, everything fell into place and the timeline looked fine (the smaller you make the font, the neater it looks; it's immaculate at 9!). So it was all my fault and I am sorry not to have realised it (I can't remember setting the font, but obviously I did when I set Firefox up).qp10qp 21:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Glad we could help :) Kaldari (talk) 14:54, 11 July 2008 (UTC)