Talk:Edwin Robert Booth House

Too long?

User:Doncram: Thank you for creating this. However, isn't the direct quote too long?Zigzig20s (talk) 20:12, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Too long by what standard? It is a quote, i thought it was interesting and well-written, and if I tried to put it into other words it would be simply inferior.

In the past, there was discussion perhaps at wt:NRHP and elsewhere, reflecting incorrect beliefs by some that the percentage of an article which is a quote was somehow relevant to copyright law, which is just false. It seemed to be a twisted-around version of the fact that in some copyright cases a "10 percent" rule of thumb has been mentioned about what can be quoted in some situations. I.e. a university professor could photocopy and distribute a chapter out of a book, as long as it was about 10 percent or less of the book. Of course that photocopy would be 100 percent a quote, but it would be 10 percent of the source. And that is a different situation than here, one salient difference being that the textbook publisher had a financial interest and they wanted to defend/pursue that, while there is no commercial value and no commercial interest/parties interested in here (and this matters in practice of copyright law).

Also in the past there were claims of quotes being plagiarism, which is blatantly incorrect.

My brief take: there is no real issue here. Do you have a real interest here for some reason? --cheers, --Doncram (talk) 20:48, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

It just seems unusual. Usually we try to summarize and rephrase content.Zigzig20s (talk) 20:53, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

That still begs what is your concern. If it is a matter that you think the article would be better for readers if you rewrote the material, in terms of quality of writing, please do go ahead and try. However, it may be hard to do so without too-close paraphrasing, which is a form of plagiarism. Sometimes I see NRHP editors have clearly done that, and/or changed the meaning of material that they reworded, when just rewriting for the sake of rewriting. So it is not necessarily easy to "summarize and rephrase". Or is your concern about plagiarism (giving adequate credit to original authors) or about copyright protection because you might think that Wikipedia is at financial risk somehow? If either of the latter, I think you need not have that concern.

I do write without any quotes at all most of the time, including say in Circle Cross Ranch Headquarters which i just created, where I felt I could put stuff into my words without too closely paraphrasing. I use short quotes sometimes as in D.H. Sutherland House, where a need for "protection from enemies" seemed better to quote, to disclaim responsibility for that perhaps-odd judgment/interpretation. It would not seem right, there, for the phrase to seem to be from the editorial voice of wikipedia. Including a longer quote is also okay, and can make sense when there is well-written, compact stuff which cannot easily be rewritten without close paraphrasing. There are many many NRHP nomination documents, including say most of those in Grant County, New Mexico which are written poorly or at least not with any passages I would want to quote. But sometimes it seems good to share to readers the nice, interesting writing done sometimes in NRHP nominations. I don't think there is any hard-and-fast rule about how long a quote can be. In Wikipedia there are many featured articles with much longer passages quoted from unambiguously copyrighted works (while the copyright status of NRHP docs is much less), clearly with widespread collective/consensus approval of the practice, clearly celebrating the well-chosen wording of a good author/authority on a given topic. (Those are not in the NRHP area, where we have few Good or Featured articles.) --Doncram (talk) 21:27, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, I am surprised because you don't usually do this. It seems too long to me. If the main source is the NRHP, I usually summarize it with the main facts and then look for other sources on Newspapers.com or Google Books to flesh it out. For example here you could write that it was "built for Edwin Robert Booth Jr. and his wife, Anna Elizabeth Brough" and then add short summary of his career, possibly by citing his obituary on Newspapers.com if you can find it. Then the next editor can expand it with more sources...Zigzig20s (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay...you are mainly observing this is different from your experience...to me you are not explaining how/why you feel it is "too long". Maybe simply we should have many more longer quotes in NRHP articles, then you would feel more comfortable?

In this passage there is colorful/subjective stuff that cannot be put into my words: "The refined Victorian elegance of this home speaks eloquently of the bourgeois values of the rural entrepreneurial class and the effort they put into making their homes reflect their distance from the less successful participants in the frontier settlement experience." That idea can only be conveyed by a quote, it would not be acceptable for the voice of Wikipedia editorship to be saying that. Then there is some more factual stuff which could perhaps be restated by Wikipedia's voice. Then there is more "color": "Because of Edwin's civic and business involvements, the Booths entertained extensively. The double parlor in the home was the setting for many parties and dinners--with nieces and nephews pitching in to help." I think the idea of nieces and nephews pitching in is a nice one, conveying familial conviviality and all that, but I can't put that into my words. Reading the quote, I "believe" that there was familial goodwill etc going on in the parlor, and that the author has personal knowledge of it. If I said it as "it is believed that nieces and nephews helped" in Wikipedia's voice that would come across as odd, and not be believable.

Okay, I think it would be possible to somewhat rewrite it, to use Wiki-voice for more factual stuff, and to quote still about the more subjective stuff. But why? It is okay to just use the whole quote, and I think rewriting would be a) hard and b) maybe verge into Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing (which is bad, i.e. is not giving adequate credit to the author). A quote gives complete, explicit credit where due, and avoids issues. --Doncram (talk) 22:23, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Many (most?) people entertain family and guests in their parlors. I don't see much encyclopedic value in this.Zigzig20s (talk) 22:27, 5 February 2019 (UTC)