Talk:History of a Six Weeks' Tour

Some misspellings

The article features a very nice map. However, as a Dutch reader, I must point out that two of the Dutch towns are misspelled (perhaps in the original also?): "Nijnegen" should be Nijmegen and "Marssluys" Maassluys (or Maassluis in the modern spelling).--MWAK (talk) 06:07, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Changing the article would be easy, changing the map not so. I am not familiar enough with the topic to know if Nijnegen ad Marsluys were the spellings in the book, in which case they would make some sense. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:53, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

• Right. Gerda, thanks for the ping. MWAK is correct--these aren't alternate or "old" spellings; they're simply misspellings. Drmies (talk) 01:11, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
• BTW, did you see who made the map? I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she's not with us anymore. --Oh, it's her article too. Should have known, from the title. Thanks Adrienne. Drmies (talk) 01:13, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

The original has Nimeguen and Marsluys. The first seems to be a variant on Nimègue, the French name; the second might be a respelling using the conventions of British English ("ar" = "ah"). I suspect "Nijnegen" on the map was a typo. It is one the sad side effects of Adrienne's passing that we can no longer turn to her for her valued advice. I might try redrawing the map sometime, or anyone else who's interested could. Lesgles (talk) 20:03, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

@MWAK, Gerda Arendt, Drmies, and Lesgles: I've uploaded a fixed version of the map. Please check that I haven't messed anything up!

Incidentally, I vaguely recall that Awadewit had a go-to helper for maps, so it's possible some detective work might track that editor down and that they might have source files or copies of correspondance and so forth. But, of course, the best thing to do would be to create a new high resolution and vector-based map to replace it. I'll try to look into tools and available base maps to see if there's anything that might let even a bumbling amateur like me get anywhere, but I don't hold out much hope. --Xover (talk) 09:37, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Seems al-right now. Thank you for fixing!--MWAK (talk) 10:07, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Xover, I'd always go with "Maassluis". Spelling it with a "y" is too cutesy, and we have no guarantee that it's in fact authentic and that these spellings didn't alternate already. (Spelling variations between i/y/ij in Dutch are notoriously ubiquitous.) Anyway, the Dutch wiki has the place change its name to "Maassluis" in 1614, but as usual all that is unsourced. UPDATE OK, "Maassluis" is the way to go. All the nineteenth-century books I found through Google Books confirm this, and here is one from 1784, and I saw another from 1706. The other spelling is also attested, but in smaller numbers, so there's no good reason for keeping that spelling. Thanks! Drmies (talk) 14:08, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@Drmies: Fixed. The map now has "Nijmegen" and "Maassluis".

And, unfortunately, looking through the talk page archives, I see that, while I may possibly be right about her having a go-to helper for maps, in this specific instance that's not relevant: this map was all Awadewit. --Xover (talk) 13:19, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Refresh the References?

Since there appear to be a few eyes on the article just now...

Looking through the talk page archives, I saw a request to merge identical references; and taking a look I see the style used is a bit inconsistent, leaves out years in author—date citations, and so forth. I know Awadewit was aiming for MLA style here, and was partial to that style in general, and at the time was not partial to citation templates. But, still, a lot has happened with citation templates in the decade since this article was written; and I would like to do a pass to make them consistent and use CS1 citation templates ({{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, etc. plus {{sfn}} for the short citations). Apart from consistency, this would automatically combine identical citations, link short cite with full cite, and generate the metadata needed for computers to be able to understand them. At the same time I would like to split the explanatory footnotes from the citations (using {{efn}} and {{notelist}}).

There is no pressing need to do it, and the style established by the article's primary author is (more than) sufficiently consistent for WP:CITEVAR to clearly apply, but I feel the above change would still be an improvement.

Opions? MWAK, Gerda Arendt, Drmies, Lesgles? Others? --Xover (talk) 13:36, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

It would improve the consistency. And it is inevitable that articles change through time.--MWAK (talk) 18:46, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with MWAK. BTW, Awadewit and I had the same background and thus the same partiality to MLA style, haha. Go for it, and thank you, Xover. Drmies (talk) 15:12, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok, that should just about do it. As a side benefit, the 90–96 (depending on which older version you look at) individual inline citations have now dropped to just 68, despite my splitting multi-citations, due to the {{sfn}} automatic combining of refs. I've also pruned some misceallaneous cruft while I was at it, but no substantial changes. In any case, please have a look and give me a holler if I messed something up! --Xover (talk) 19:49, 22 January 2019 (UTC)