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A fact from George Dawson (builder) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 9 April 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Re the removal of parental dates: giving the lifespan of a biography subject's parents and spouse 1. identifies them from others of the same name, 2. shows whether they died before the biography subject, that aspect being an important part of their lives. In this biography, where the subject marries twice becuse his first wife died so young, the spouse's death date is an important factor in his life.
Re "West Riding of Yorkshire". Please do not change that to "West Yorkshire" which did not exist in the era of this biography.
Re the nationality or country of origin: please do not remove that from the lead. If you do that, the rest of the lead does not make sense.Storye book (talk) 10:14, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please discuss before tagging this article for style and quotations. This is a historical article with a style and quotations to match the purpose of the article, and the era of the subject. The quotations are there for a reason. The reason is that the words of the time show the attitude of the time. We are not allowed to interpret or rephrase attitude or opinion, but we can show how people felt about all that development in those days (while there are plenty of objections to that sort of thing today). Thus, with the quotations, the reader can interpret and have their own opinion. Storye book (talk) 15:30, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is no requirement to discuss before adding tags, and please don't remove tags without addressing issues. Wikipedia uses a house style rather than matching style to the era of the subject. The inclusion of brief quotes to illustrate attitude etc can be done appropriately, but overuse of quotations, and particularly entire sections containing nothing but quotations, is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:46, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am asking you to please avoid getting into an edit war on this. One of the WP rules is to use common sense regarding the rules, and to be sensitive to the necessary style of construction of articles on certain subjects, where there is a reason for certain constructions. Your tags asked for paraphrasing of quotations which would impose a modern "neutrality" on the original source. 19th-century sources can be patronising to women, and can praise works which we would not approve of today. We cannot show opinion or interpret those contemporary sources on WP, but we can use quotations which show the contemporary point of view. This helps the reader to understand how and why they did what did. Common sense editing is not just about counting the lines in quotes. It is about using quotes to communicate the history correctly, without falsely neutralising the contemporary attitude. The old attitudes are part of the history. That is the reason why the quotations are there. They are part of the context of the subject of the biography. Please stop tagging the article inappropriately, and stop edit warring. There are no crimes in the article. Storye book (talk) 17:21, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Storye book, if you want to avoid getting in an edit-war, please get consensus for your position before removing tags, per Wikipedia:Tagging_pages_for_problems#Disputes_over_tags. "WP rules" do not support what you are saying here; we are an encyclopedia, providing a neutral summary of sources rather than reproducing extensive quotations from them. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:30, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The quotations are not extensive, and they are not unnecessary. It is not possible to paraphrase or neutralise the sentiments of a time past. It is the very words of the quotations which are the context of the biography subject's life. We are only allowed to use what is in the sources, and to attempt to paraphrase those sources and neutralise them would be to falsify them by imposing a modern point of view on them. Not imposing an opinion is one of the rules of WP. This is about using common sense, which is one of the rules of WP. Storye book (talk) 17:41, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Common sense" would suggest that if your argument completely contradicts multiple key tenets of Wikipedia - suggesting that what we actually do is impossible - it's not an argument compatible with WP rules. We write articles on historical topics every day, without simply mirroring sources. Pick a random historical FA and you'll find that it consists mostly of paraphrasing rather than direct quotation.
As to "the quotations are not extensive": there is a section consisting entirely of quotes. That plus the blockquotes, even ignoring the shorter inline quotes, are a third the size of the actual readable prose per the DYK check tool. "Common sense" would tell us that that would not qualify as "brief". Nikkimaria (talk) 18:06, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To say that the quotations are a third of the size of the readable prose per DYK check is an exaggeration. Besides, the article is long enough to bear blockquotes. Obituaries of that type have to be quoted; they don't work to put the subject in context, otherwise.
What I could do as a compromise, would be to put the entire obituary section on the talkpage, so that it is not lost. However I am not going to remove content from the rest of the article, because it does need that context. And I am not going to remove content from the other articles, just because you don't like it. That is my offer: obituaries on the talk page, take it or leave it.
The problem here is, that I have dealt with you before, and on those occasions, when I resolved an issue, you just invented another non-existent issue and another inappropriate tag, and you have in the past weaponised rules, to the extent of suggesting that if you accuse me (inappropriately) of something the rules say that I must then convince the world that I am innocent (!). That is goading. So I would need your reassurance that you would back off if I did that. I have wasted a whole day dealing with your repeated removal of content, tagging and inappropriate misuse of rules, and it is time that this stopped. I have other work to do here, as do you. Storye book (talk) 18:28, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
