Talk:Ybor City/Archives/2007/November

Including vivid wording

14-Oct-2007: Several people have suggested using more vivid wording and ^wilder ^expressions in an article to stimulate reader interest, but that violates WP style policy. I wondered how to avoid those restrictions and found the real answer when reading the German Wikipedia, noting how Germany includes vivid wording: by directly quoting a vivid source. Many German articles contain songs, jokes, anecdotes, and even poetry. Just directly quote a related source, such as, "The news agency reported the witness as saying, The drunk driver zoomed along the Pacific highway driving like a bat out of hell." To add vivid descriptions about life in Ybor City, simply add direct quotes from related sources which contain vivid wording. Avoid the policy restrictions, and, at the same time, tie the writing back to lively sources for more information. It's that simple to add spice to the articles. I hope that reduces the writing frustrations. -Wikid77 15:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the box, mikeL; it should have never been there in the first place, imo. At the risk of rekindling the argument, I have yet to find the wikipolicy which says that original (non-quoted) writing must be drier than buffalo jerky to be considered "encyclopedic". To what policy are you referring, wikid77???

• non-encylopedic writing = "Ybor City was an intoxicating swirl of sights, sounds, and smells; a cosmopolitan city grafted on to a small town in the American South. It was an amazing and wonderful place." That'd be a good opening (or closing) to a book or article seeking to describe Ybor in glowing terms, but it's not formal and businesslike and is full of opinion, so it's not appropriate for wikipedia.

• encyclopedic writing = This article, which objectively describes the place in time by telling the "who what when where why how" while keeping the writer's personal opinion out as much as possible - all statements of judgement come from the cited sources. Just because there's some thought put into word choice and detail doesn't make it non-formal.

This is my last 2 cents on the subject; my contributions to this article are done unless someone makes an error of fact. Zeng8r 13:41, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Casual Tone

This article, while containing a nice quantity of information, reads like a tourist pamphlet. It needs a rewrite. BrickMcLargeHuge (talk) 00:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Have you read the rest of the talk page? As a new user (right?), perhaps you are unaware that you should look at the history of an article before slapping on banners. This topic has already been thoroughly hashed and rehashed, and the tone banner you just stuck on there was previously added, discussed, and removed.

To recap: The opinion you express (proper tone = deadly dull) is unsupported by any wikipedia policy and is detrimental to wikipedia as a whole. It seeks to alter objective, organized, and well-written articles that have some semblance of life to them because they don't read like DVD player instructions and/or a collection of random factoids on a bunch of post-it notes.

This is a history of a time and place that has come and gone; there is nothing "tourist pamphlet"-ty about it unless you happen to own a time machine. That being said, the edit button is at the top of the page; have at it. Zeng8r (talk) 12:23, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps I worded it wrong, then. There's also some NPOV issues: "Even worse, the cigar business had changed." Even worse... for who? Why is it worse? Should we be judging 'better/worse'?

Regardless, I'm registering the opinion that I'm reading a tourist pamphlet here. 20:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid I'm going to have to get in the mix again. This article does need a rewrite in terms of tone and hopefully some other more experienced editors from other fields can be called in for a review of it. DEVS EX MACINA _pray 01:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but I find it very odd that a "new" user somehow found this obscure article about the history of a neighborhood in a random medium-sized city and:

1) Already thinks he understands wiki-policies well enough to judge the article's tone, 2) knows that WP banners exist, 3) knows how to use them (there were no formatting fixes involved), and most interestingly 4) adds the very same banner which had been previously added, discussed, and removed. And then Deus Ex Machina, the user who placed the original banner but who did not participate in the subsequent discussion after his opinion lost support, amazingly reappears on the very same day to agree with the "newcomer". Wow, what a small world it is...

Anyway, once again, there's the edit button right at the top. Even though you, I mean, you two are obviously experts on both wikipedia policies and the subject of this article, I'll be monitoring any changes very closely to make sure that important facts are not removed, misinterpreted, or made inaccurate in your unending quest to make all WP entries as homogeneously boring as possible. Zeng8r (talk) 02:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you file a request for checkuser instead of making a blanket bad faith accusation? I forgot all about this article but I had it watchlisted, which I am sure you do as well. I understand you wrote these articles, and they are good writing, but the tone is inappropriate and unencyclopedic. Encyclopedia writing is specifically "homogeneously boring" for a reason, and that is to convey an aspect of absolute neutrality in the information it conveys, not to read like an advertisement for visiting Ybor City, which I am sure is very nice but that is not for the article itself to judge. You should also check out WP:OWN.

I have referred this to an editor with much more experience and talent than I, because I'm not comfortable pressing the point on this any further as I lack the know-how. But the tone does seem off. DEVS EX MACINA _pray 04:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Like I said, it's a small world. I'm just wondering why, if you have this watchlisted, you didn't respond weeks ago when there was a request for comments re: the last banner you put on the article. (To recap, there were no responses in support of your opinion and the banner was removed.) It's rather unconstructive to come back and revisit the same old non-issue after two months have passed, imo, especially since you're ignoring the conversations that took place in your absence and instead keep repeating the same vague "it seems off"-type criticisms.

One last time - here's the offical wikipedia policy on tone:

Wikipedia articles, and other encyclopedic content, should be written in a formal tone. Standards for formal tone vary depending upon the subject matter, but should follow the style used by reliable sources, while remaining understandable to the educated layman. Formal tone does not mean the article should be written using unintelligible argot, doublespeak, legalese, or jargon; it means that the English language should be used in a businesslike manner.

Articles should not be written from a first or second person perspective. Articles written in this fashion are often deleted. First person pronouns such as "I" and "we" imply a point-of-view inconsistent with WP:NPOV (although "we" may be used in mathematical contexts). Second person, "you" or "your", perspective often appears in how-to instructions and is inappropriate. First and second person usage should only be used in articles in attributed direct quotations relevant to the article's subject. Gender-neutral pronouns should be used where the gender is not specific; see Quest for gender-neutral pronouns and the related discussion for further info.

Punctuation marks that appear in the article should only be used per generally accepted practice. Exclamation points (!) should be used only if they occur in direct quotations.

The Ybor article clearly does not violate anything in that policy. And pay close attention to the bolded part. An article about a random widget should be dryly explanatory. An article about the history of a place should objectively but descriptively give a sense of that place. That's exactly what it does.

I'm not arguing that every word is perfect as-is, by the way. However, adjustments here and there are one thing - claiming that the article reads like an "advertisement" or a "tourist brochure" is so ridiculous as to make anything else you say hard to take seriously.

Here's an example of a "touristy" history of Ybor City:

There's a place not far from downtown Tampa that has plenty of people talking. It's a place full of history. It's a place full of nightlife. It's a place called Ybor City.

You'll know you've entered Ybor City when the streets turn from asphalt to brick and the lampposts from concrete to ornate wrought iron. When the atmosphere turns from button-down to bottoms up. No sterile high-rises here. Ybor City's buildings bespeak a bygone era when craftsmen prided themselves on quality workmanship. At every turn are elements of classical and Mediterranean architecture...

...For more than half a century, Ybor City was the "Cigar Capital of the World." While the cigar industry was thriving, Ybor City was alive and kicking with Latin culture and language...

Etc, etc. (You can click the link above the quote for more of the same.) Now that's an example of a "casual" or touristy or advert-like tone, and it obviously wouldn't be appropriate on wikipedia. Can you not see the clear differences? And can you give a specific example of a "touristy" passage, sentence, word, or even punctuation mark in the (wikipedia) Ybor City article as currently written? Zeng8r (talk) 17:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I am rolling my eyes at the "coincidence" of random non-local users suddenly stumbling upon this out-of-the-way article and "independently" coming up with the "touristy" comment. Anybody want to discuss it rationally, or have snarky edit summaries and every-two-months drive-by banner-placings become part of some new wikipedia dispute policy? Zeng8r (talk) 20:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• Having read several editors' similar comments above - and sharing their views - I have started to improve the way this article is written by removing POV, OR, travelogue details, "he saids" "he thoughts" and similar.Abtract (talk) 00:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

So it is against wikipedia policy to explain the actions of historical figures? Wikilink that policy for me, please. And once again, (since I'm sure you caught up on the previous discussion on this topic, right?) please point out the passages that read like a "travelogue". Zeng8r (talk) 00:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

His trip to Florida was long and difficult. The railroad ended in Sanford (near present-day Orlando), and the rest of the trip was across the state by stagecoach, over poor country roads ... is just one. Abtract (talk) 00:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm no one's sock puppet. I'm just new and clever. I stumbled across this article because I wanted to learn more about Ybor City, seeing as I've been to clubs there before. There's good information, but it does read like a tourist pamphlet. Sorry, no one's perfect! Even English teachers can use a little style polish now and then. I'll be working on cleaning this up this weekend. BrickMcLargeHuge (talk) 01:41, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I made a few minor grammatical fixes to Abtract's revisions. I'm a little disappointed about the comments left on the edit summary. Aren't we all supposed to assume good faith? No one owns the articles on Wikipedia. Also, why the newcomer biting? Shouldn't we be working together and not making baseless accusations about other users who disagree with our position?

Looking through the comments on the talk page, it'd seem that more than a simple majority of users think the article needs to sound less like an advertisement. I don't think there is a policy explicitly geared toward articles that read like travel guides, but I agree with most everyone else here that the article reads a bit too much like an advertisement, or, to paraphrase, is written in an overly promotional tone. I agree that the article is really well written and would look excellent on any travel magazine, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That's not to say that the article should be boring, but paragraphs like:

His trip to Florida was long and difficult. The railroad ended in Sanford (near present-day Orlando), and the rest of the trip was across the state by stagecoach, over poor country roads.

that Abtract removed don't really add anything of value to the article. As such, I don't really see why Abtract's revision was undone. Eulerskunk (talk) 05:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

"Doesn't add anything of value"? That passage illustrates that travel to Tampa was very difficult at the time, inhibiting the area's growth potential. A couple paragraphs later, the article states that a railroad line was in the works, making the establishment of Ybor City possible. If you know the subject (or just read the article, actually), it's obvious that one little sentence is actually an enormously important detail about the history of Ybor City and Tampa.

Once again, the official wikipedia policy on tone is block quoted in its entirety above. In all this typing and opinionating, I have yet to see anyone explain how the article as written violated anything in that policy. That's probably because the entry didn't violate it at all.

And "promotional"??? C'mon, now; what exactly is it supposed to be selling??? The only example anyone has given for the infamous "travel brochure" comment is a sentence that tells how bad Florida's roads were 100+ years ago. Yeah, that'll really bring in the tourists... Zeng8r (talk) 19:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Let me just cite a few examples of "important" information that was removed:

• Cigar making is an art that takes practice to do well

Um, I think that's pretty obvious. It's like saying making fine wine is an art. The important idea, that there was a lack of experienced cigar makers, was retained.

• His trip to Florida was long and difficult. The railroad ended in Sanford (near present-day Orlando), and the rest of the trip was across the state by stagecoach, over poor country roads.

It's not that these things aren't important, but we all know that this took place around 1900. We know they couldn't jump into an air conditioned SUV and drive down I-95 or A1A. Obviously it would be a difficult journey. Is it really so bad to remove that? Couldn't we say that in a few words? What's wrong with removing these few paragraphs? The article is on Ybor City, not the Life and Times of Transportation in Central and Southern Florida.

Please see my comment below about polarizing this discussion. Thanks :) - Eulerskunk ♫ 19:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)