Talk:William Melmoth

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A fact from William Melmoth appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 14 January 2008.
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[edit] Let's start over

I've removed all the WikiProject ratings on this talk page and archived all the old discussions to Talk:William Melmoth/Archive1. Can we get back to focusing on the encyclopedia's articles? giggy (:O) 08:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Areas needing work

The article as it stands says that the subject wrote anonymously, based on being in the "public life". What exactly does that mean? There is nothing in the article to indicate it. Was he successful in the public life, or not, and to what degree? Did he have any particular achievements in public life? We have no indications of any. Considering that the subject evidently considered his other career(s) more important than his writing career, it is very hard to imagine that at least reasonable information on that career, if it is available, is not something that the article would require to be complete. Did he get paid for the publications or not? If not, how did he acquire money, or even did he? Also, in my own limited experience with the single extant source, the DNB, on the Arthur Bryant article, I found it to be both incomplete and non-neutral. What can be true in one article can be true in another, even if such recurrences are unlikely. On that basis, I believe, even given the reputation of the source used, that there is every reason to believe at least one other source meeting RS standards to any reasonable degree should be reasonably included to make this article more clearly reliable. John Carter (talk) 23:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't confuse the current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography with the Dictionary of National Biography and it's supplements. The current ODNB article on Melmoth has been written for the new book (though it draws on the older material to some extent), both old and new articles are avialable from the link I've no winserted in the article (every British library member should have access to the online version). I note that the ODNB also contains a new biography on Bryant - but we must also recognise the essential difference about writing about someone who died almost 300 years ago, as against someone who died less than 15 years ago. With one we've had time to come to a mature assesment of his writings and importance - with the other, opinion is still changing. David Underdown (talk) 09:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I acknowledge the time for reviewing the life of a subject is different. Also, there is the matter not only of his writings and importance, but also of his life itself. This is, first and foremost, a biographical article about the subject, so it is reasonable to expect that it contain the relevant biographical content. Regarding the DNB and new version, in fact, there are two complete sets of the new DNB in the Olin library here, the full 2004 version is available here as per here, as is the 1949 edition here, among others. Also, it should be noted that the existing Oxford version contains additional material which is missing from this article, most of which directly relates to the subject's regular life and should be included as an indication of his activities and would seemingly be required for it to be even remotely complete, unless one were to argue that that source contained superfluous material. Granted, there may be problems using the same source for all the material, but that just means other sources should be consulted. Also, regretably, any human endeavor is subject to error, so, on that basis alone, it is I think generally recommended to consult additional sources. Doing so would also ensure that there is no possible extant bias or lack of information regarding possible recently released material on the subject. John Carter (talk) 13:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
We don't seem to be missing anything wildly important from the ODNB, in my judgement, though obviously others might set the bar somewhat higher as to what is really important. It's possible that more may have come to light since the 2004 publication - though not particularly likely, and the online ODNB is regularly updated in any case. Proving a negative is of ourse notoriously difficult. In the absence of readily accessible sources to the contrary, there is no reason to assume that the ODNB article is not as comprehensive as it is possible to be. The ODNB article does give a list of sources, the vast majority of which are pre 20th centruy, so it's possible that soe may be in Project Gutenberg or similar, and so it might be possible to attribute material directly to those. His will for example is avaialble online here (for a fee), which is lsited as one of the ODNB's sources. David Underdown (talk) 13:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)