User talk:Tosindmin

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[edit] Mary

Exuse me, sir, but as a Dane living in the US your accout of the Crown Princess is incredibly wrong!! Check you facts carefully before wording her biography!!!!!

Stop deleting all the interwikis and categories. I have no idea what you are trying to do, but you are making a right mess of the formatting. Just take a few small changes at a time. Do not try to do hundreds of major changes at one go. --Mais oui! 10:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark

After reading your question at the HD, I looked over the above article and added a tag requesting restructuring; in particular, the introduction (that refers to all content above the first section heading). There are a lot of external links in the body text, which is generally agreed to be poor form, and then even more in list form. I recommend that you judiciously trim these down and move them into an External Links section, as per the accepted norm. Have a look through WP:MOS and WP:IA to guide you, and if I can offer any further advice, you are welcome to contact me; I will be happy to advise you in whatever way I can. The better equipped you are in terms of knowledge, the less reason any other editors will have for editing your changes. I was going to add a Welcome template to your talk page, but I saw from your contribs that you are not a new editor, so I'll just say a belated "Welcome"! Regards, Adrian M. H. 13:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I had gone through the article a day beforehand and fixed most of the in-line external links - either change to internal links, remove, or convert to references. The number of external links was excessive for a Wikipedia article. Please do not just revert these changes without explanation, if you have a problem with specific links, please let me know. -- Chuq (talk) 14:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I happened to view the article again after Chuq's efforts and I have to review my comments based on those diffs. As it is now, it is a well-formed and fairly well written article - other than the possibility of removing the Trivia section, there are no major issues. That is in stark contrast to your version, Tosindmin. Per AGF, I will assume that your apparent mass changes were done with good intentions, but the result is very counter-productive. You may view Chuq's reversions as riding rough-shod over your work, but I have no doubt that they are not intended in that way and they clearly are necessary in dealing with your changes. I think you need to work with Chuq and other editors, not against them, if you want to contribute to that article. My offer of advice still stands; if you would like some help with Wikipedia's editing policies, I would be willing to advise you. Adrian M. H. 14:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Adrian, thanks for your reply, it is most helpful. I have no intention of working against those who want the best outcome for this page. The problem for me is that I participate on other fora and was asked to assert myself over the content of the page which has been so appalling for so long.

I openly confess to not knowing about the wiki way of doing things and am happy to learn and improve the quality of Mary's page and those of her family. There are so many edits to Mary's page, that to be honest I haven't really worked out who are making positive changes and who are engaged in a game which is played by those whose motives are otherwise, and which are played out against the 'canvas' that is Mary. I have reasserted my edits only when the previous change has been one of the continual coded malignings of Mary - there is a group who apparently will do this until hell freezes over! For this reason I haven't put many explanations of why I have edited the page - these people I refer to just love to engage in the fight. I hate that kind of stuff and think there are so many better ways to use my time! So, I have tried to address the content and facts and have not had time to address structure and quality as a wiki page. I am not interested in a wiki war - that has been what I have tried to avoid being drawn into I suppose. I put all the external links to Mary's patronages because previously the whole article was basically a bunch of trivialities (flower decorations in the church where she was married, the CV of her father) - all endless ways to diminish a perfectly normal and unremarkable history pre-marriage. Anyway, I won't go on, you get the picture.

I will have a look at your suggestions and try to work through them and apply them. Just so you know, there are numerous errors which continually circulate in the media about Mary because they have been here for several years (which is why wiki is considered both an affront and a joke by those who do know about her life). Prime example is that she was a real estate agent - she never was, and this page has been the source of incorrect information for the media which is now institutionalised as fact. I have no idea why this woman should be so contentious for some, but I suppose it takes all kinds to make a world.

I just wanted to make clear that I have no intention of being counter-productive and I appreciate you offering your advice. If there are any other editors with positive intent I would be happy to hear from you. It hasn't been my intention not to participate in the normal way here, but to deal with the content without the war.

tosindmin 01:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to respond, Tosindmin. You are obviously working in good faith, which is very welcome. In its current form, the article is perfectly acceptable in terms of layout and structure. It could benefit from some rewriting here and there, but not mass changes. I'm not familiar with the subject, so I cannot assess the article's accuracy, but... and here is a very crucial tenet of Wikipedia policy: all statements must be absolutely unbiased, verifiable, and attributable to reliable sources. What constitutes a reliable source? Well, primarily, that means widely published and notable. For example, a good source might be a biography or newspaper interview; an unacceptable source would be an internet forum or blog, for example, because anyone can say anything and it is worth very little whether it is true or not. Now, how this relates to subjects that are surrounded by misinformation is a tricky issue, and should be discussed on the talk page. For example, I might want to add a fact to an article that I personally know to be true, but I cannot do that if I cannot back it up with a reliable source. Of course, some of those apparently reliable sources may have got their facts wrong, either unwittingly or deliberately. But if I want to remove content that is affected in this way, I cannot, because my hands are tied by the key policies about verifiability, which is a "double-edged sword"; I need to find a good source that counters the existing material and then I can at least raise a discussion about it and maybe edit the article to show both viewpoints. And that's very important; many subjects are affected by clashing viewpoints and inaccurate information, and the way to deal with it is to create a balanced article that presents and assesses both viewpoints without bias or judgment. Members of royalty can be a sensitive subject because of the loyalty that is shown by their proponents and the stories that appear in the media. Anyway, let me know if you would like any more advice and I'll do my best to help you. Regards, Adrian M. H. 14:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Adrian, I have done a re-write of the Mary of Denmark page based on the structure established by Chuq. I have cut the flabby text down, fixed some links (eg: to the right Maria Feodorovna, to Valdemar II) and made some clarifications (eg: Mary gave birth to a daughter who happens to be a princess, not gave birth to a princess). I have also reduced the trivia section as per your suggestion. Perhaps there is more I can do to improve it in future, but now I am tired. For the moment I have left the patronages links (they were a lot of work when I first did them!). There may still be a bit of adjustment to having some facts and reason on this page -- I put them there to counter the people whose criticism of Mary has been, well, beyond the pale. I will also look at the entries for Frederik, Christian and the new baby soon. Can I get a clarification? Internal wiki links are preferred over external links? With some of the content in this case it is difficult to have appropriate references in English as most in recent times are in Danish. Also, newspaper and magazine references in English are littered with errors. Also, are wiki references in Danish acceptable? I have really appreciated your prompt responses to my messages. As Mary has just had a baby a few days ago, the search rate is very high at the moment, so it is great to have a reasonable page on wikipedia. Thanks for all your help and do bonk me on the head if I have messed up again! tosindmin 16:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Added: Oops! I put this on the general discussion page, but I suppose it won't do any harm there. tosindmin 16:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems OK to me. In case I haven't mentioned it already, you can find most of Wikipedia's advice and guidelines about style and layout from the Manual of Style and its associated pages, all of which are very useful. There is also a guide called Article development. The trivia section looks fine to me, although I personally do not mind their inclusion as long as it's not excessive. What it needs is a citation for each of those statements, and you might want to mention what those three plants are.

In terms of prose, it's a little bit "fluffy" at the moment (hence the tag at the top of the page) and it is worth working to make the text a bit more formal in tone.

Danish sources should be fine where there are no English equivalents. I sometimes have to use foreign language sources (though I'm not fluent in other languages). I usually add a note in brackets, ie: (German language), for example. People can run it through Google or Altivista, although the results are sometimes unintentionally amusing! While I think of citations, have a look at citation templates; you don't need to use them (I prefer not to, as they require a bit more typing) but they are very useful as a guide to the layout and information that is expected.

WP:EL will guide you about external links, in conjunction with the Manual of Style. As it is now, the Patronages section is not terribly bad, but I wonder if those titles could be incorporated into prose instead of a list. Bear in mind, though, that doing that would mean losing the external links, but I think that it would be a worthwhile change.

Good work so far! Adrian M. H. 17:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Princess Isabella of Denmark

I invite you to comment on Talk:Princess Isabella of Denmark about an edit of yours that I disagree with the phrasing of. I don't want us to get into an edit war, so I think it's better to get a consensus on the talk page. Lilac Soul ^{(talk • contribs • count)} 07:44, 4 November 2007 (UTC)