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Talk:Dorothy L. Sayers/Archive 2

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Archive 1Archive 2

Infobox title dispute

@SchroCat: @Tim riley:, why do you insist on removing something that is universally standard just because it was added by someone you don’t like? Are you literally trying to spite me over adding a title to an infobox? Dronebogus (talk) 17:55, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Can you take the aggression out of your comments? For a start this isn't "universally standard" (whether you italicise it or not!) If you look at the template documentation, you'll see it's not always necessary, particularly if the birth name field has been filled, as it has here. - SchroCat (talk) 18:11, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
I looked at the documentation and using the first parameter is “suggested”. Your not using it is being weird for weirdness’s sake. Dronebogus (talk) 18:22, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Again, any chance you can take the aggression and bad faith out of your comment? - SchroCat (talk) 18:26, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Putting the name both above and below the picture looks fairly silly. I don't like it when WP is made to look silly. We should strive to present a professional and competent text. Tim riley talk 18:31, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Here we go again. Can someone please catch me up on this? Davest3r08 (talk) 13:03, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Nevermind, I think I have a major idea of what's happening here. Davest3r08 (talk) 13:05, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Actually, they do have a fair point. Seeing the name on the IB twice is a bit weird tbh. Davest3r08 (talk) 13:07, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Presumably the reason for deleting it is that the name already appears within the image. Would both of you be satisfied if we went back to the previous portrait, which does not include her name? That way there would be no objection to including the parameter.---Ehrenkater (talk) 18:34, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Not allowed, alas, as the image is free use and the other isn't.Tim riley talk 18:47, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Watching a few talk pages here and seeing the collateral damage spill out from here onto those, giving my suggestion: any reason not to crop the image (removing the text below Sayers) and then adding the name param? - Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:36, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
I was planning on that actually. Dronebogus (talk) 18:41, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Yes, doable, but for myself I prefer the untampered version. Gives flavour, I think, but what think others? Tim riley talk 18:43, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
I also prefer the uncropped photo layout but it's merely my own personal judgement, not that I think the alternative would be wrong. Also, I rather shy away from thinking things should be "universally standard" (and I'd be happier if accomplished editors were left to get on with productive editing). Thincat (talk) 19:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but I also don’t want those accomplished editors to just make up and enforce their own rules on the fly and get mad when people don’t follow them. Dronebogus (talk) 20:26, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Ahem, that is why I asked "What think others?" Tim riley talk 21:01, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
No-one is making anything up. No IB fields are set in stone (much like having an IB in place at all) and the fields are there only when they do something useful. The IB already has the name in it, so to have it twice is even more redundant than having it once, given it's the page title and given twice in the opening sentence. Do we think readers need to have the name hammered into them five times in the top couple of inches of the article? - SchroCat (talk) 22:17, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I think that's right. Tim riley talk 22:41, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
I’m mostly annoyed you’re breaking a pretty standard and uncontroversial format, something at wikignome maintenance level, because you don’t like the way it looks. Dronebogus (talk) 20:55, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Go ahead, be as fake-angry as you wish. Do you think it sensible to have the name Dorothy L. Sayers (or Dorothy Leigh Sayers) appear fives times in the upper few inches of the article? The MOS and template documentation are both flexible on approaches to IBs because the consensus of the community is that flexibility is needed where common sense can be used. Repeating the name fives times is too much. Why are you continuing to press this point just because you don’t like the way it looks? - SchroCat (talk) 21:24, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
No, it’s not “common sense” if it looks like it’s broken, and people will try to fix it only to get shot down, maximizing the useless, unnecessary maintenance workload because the two main authors said so. Crop the image and it’s fine, but we can’t do that because it adds flavor or historical context or some rubbish like that. Dronebogus (talk) 21:27, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm just asking a matter of WP practice, is the image going to be challenged at FAC. Not trying to annoy you, Bogus, easy though that clearly is. Tim riley talk 21:28, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
It doesn’t look broken to me, and I doubt any reader visiting the page (remember them: the people we actually write for) will be left in any doubt whose IB it actually is. - SchroCat (talk) 21:35, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
How about no infobox? Disagree with it personally myself, but I know Tim R and SC wouldn't mind, and if it ends the dispute ... why not? Tim O'Doherty (talk) 21:39, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
As there’s been one here for a while, I wouldn’t think of imposing my personal choice and being disruptive by removing it. Nice thought though! - SchroCat (talk) 21:41, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
That’s a very bad idea. It would only start an even WORSE fight. Dronebogus (talk) 21:53, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Ah well. Don't ask, don't get. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 21:54, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Victor Gollancz

The article as currently written states (9 Jun 2023) that Sayers worked for Victor Gollancz in the early 1920s, but he didn't start his publishing company until 1927. I suspect there's been an error somewhere but I don't know enough to correct it with certainty. Does anyone have definitive details? JohnGHissong (talk) 05:11, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

She could have worked for him at Ernest Benn. There may be some confusion between Victor Gollancz and Victor Gollancz, much as there can be between Ernest Benn and Ernest Benn. DuncanHill (talk) 09:40, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Citation style

@SchroCat: I apologise; I did not realise that the change I made to the citations came under the list of alterations to be avoided. Thank you for warning me.

The reason I considered the changes desirable is to make better use of the existing references. Given the cite further down, if you hover over this refnote,[1] all you see is a name and date; whereas if you hover over this one,[2] it shows a link, and hovering over the link shows the full details of the reference. The same is true for entries in the reflist; quite useful when there are hundreds of them. (Note: this only works when the full reference details are scrolled off the bottom of the current window, otherwise it just highlights them.) In any case, I see no reason for disabling all the anchors with ref=none.

However, without a consensus for change, I shall leave well alone.

References

  1. ^ Reynolds (1993) p. 99
  2. ^ Reynolds (1993), p. 99.
  • Reynolds, Barbara (1993). Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul. London: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-34-058151-3.

-- Verbarson  talkedits 23:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I am well aware of the differences between the two and the merits and drawbacks of both, having taken numerous articles to FAC with one or other of the two formats. This article has never used the sfn format, even before the rewrite for FAC, so it shouldn’t be changed based solely on one reader’s personal preference.
Using the ref=none perimeter doesn’t ‘disable’ the references, but it does stop them generating an error message for those editors with certain scripts installed. - SchroCat (talk) 07:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
I was not aware that these references can cause errors. Which scripts do they interfere with? -- Verbarson  talkedits 10:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't know which one, but it's a relatively well-known problem for a number of editors. - SchroCat (talk) 10:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
It's not that they cause errors, as such: there's a script (User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js) that shows up when a reference is given through a citation template but not used in a SFN template. Since the two templates are designed to work together, it'll show an error unless you manually tell it to ignore those references (this is also useful when, for example, using the citation template to list books someone wrote, but which might not be cited). UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:35, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
So if I have a bunch of {{cite book}}s that I reference with {{sfnp}}, it's not a problem, but if I list some more {{cite book}}s under Further reading (ie not referenced) they will show up on that script unless I tag them with |ref=none? -- Verbarson  talkedits 12:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes. - SchroCat (talk) 12:16, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll check some of my previous work. -- Verbarson  talkedits 12:23, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Oxford colleges

Moonraker, I don't doubt that your changes today are correct, but they leave us with the question of the integrity of the citations. The first change doesn't actually contradict the cited source and is probably OK, but the second one does, it seems to me. Brabazon (pp. 3 and 39) clearly makes it an either-or-choice between two colleges. If there were two other possible choices we need an additional source to substantiate that. Can you furnish such a thing, in the citation style of the rest of the article? – Tim riley talk 17:49, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Looking here and in some related books, there's some typically Oxonian confoundingness going on. There was such thing as the "Delegacy for Women Students", which was an organisation which hired tutors and arranged accommodation for female students, but it didn't technically become a college (St Anne's) until 1952. St Hugh's had, however, started calling officially itself a college in 1911, but had theoretically been a private hall before that, and didn't strictly become part of the university until 1920. There's then St Hilda's which was, at least theoretically, a PH, and didn't technically become a college, despite using the name, until 1960, according to their own records. I'd suggest that for most readers, the distinction between a PPH and a college is academic (sorry), but equally we do need to make sure we don't actually say anything inaccurate here. Certainly, it's not quite true that Sayers only had a choice between LMH and Somerville if she wanted to study in/at Oxford. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:00, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Good work, UndercoverClassicist. I was thinking of St Hugh's and St Hilda's. I had forgotten that they both started out with "Hall" in their names, but that is also true of LMH, which never updated itself to LMC. They were still all women's colleges, although none of them was a college of the University of Oxford until 1920. And St Edmund Hall is called a college, without having the word in its name. If we deem LMH to be already a college (rightly in my view) then we can hardly deem the two St H's not to be. For what it's worth, I have found another date for St Hugh's Hall changing its name – 1915. In reply to Tim riley, I thought the wording I put in finessed that point. If we needed to rely on other sources, we could use those found by UC. But all we need here is surely that "either-or-choice between two colleges", without mentioning any others or worrying about how many there were. I jinked at the inference that there were only two. Moonraker (talk) 19:33, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I’ve removed the reference to a dual choice, but retained the secular aspect. - SchroCat (talk) 21:17, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

But why take out LMH, SchroCat? The source tells us the choice was between the two, so why not name both?
On "secular", is it Brabazon's word? Somerville is very much that now, but for the early 20th century "non-denominational" would be better, and I have found several sources which say that, not one that says "secular" for the early 20th century. Moonraker (talk) 04:35, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
The source is available online and linked from our list of sources. Tim riley talk 09:30, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Many thanks, Tim riley. As I suspected, Brabazon says "non-denominational", rather than "secular", as other sources do, so I have changed it to that. I doubt if there were any secular institutions in Oxford or Cambridge at the time. Moonraker (talk) 05:54, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Somerville and God, redux

Sniffing around a bit after reading Somerville College Chapel, I'm trying to work out exactly what Somerville's status n religion was: it sounds like they were founded with religion distinctly at arm's length (rather than being, like lots of Oxbridge colleges, resolutely Christian but equally determined not to pick a denominational side) -- they do have a chapel, but it's dedicated vaguely to God rather than specifically the Christian one; at the same time, it's inscribed with biblical verses and has a window dedicated to Jesus. However, my sense so far is that Somerville was still theoretically a Christian place.

Strictly speaking, we've buried a lead with instead of an Anglican college: there was, as we've established above, technically only one Anglican college to which S. could have applied. However, there were non-collegiate options available. Not sure that's a major problem, though it might perhaps be worth a footnote? UndercoverClassicist T·C 08:47, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

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