User talk:Rtmisst

Problems

First - read WP:OR. And WP:SYNTH. And then look at the information you added with this edit. You added "In 1164, Nigel played a small role in the Becket Controversy, being among those bishop's summoned to Clarendon to agree to the Constitutions of Clarendon." which is sourced to the actual Constitutions of Clarendon here. But nothing in the webpage you cited supports that Nigel played a small role (that's OR on your part), that his participation at the council was part of the Becket Controversy (again, OR), that he was summoned to Clarendon, and that the reason for his summoning was to agree to the Constitutions. ALL that the original document supports is that A Nigel, bishop of Ely, signed the Constitutions. (technically, it doesn't even really support that the particular Nigel signed the constitutions because we don't have anything in that document that makes it clear that the Nigel who signed was the same Nigel who is described in the article - it's SYNTH to assume that the Nigel of the document is the same Nigel as the article.) That's it. None of the rest of it is supported. Now, in historical writing/research, citing the Constitutions would be perfectly fine. It's what historians do - they interpret documents. Wikipedia does not do that. We report what secondary sources say.

Now, with Nigel, there are other issues. One, it's a featured article. That means, among other things, that the referencing style is consistent. Look at the version of the article after your edit here. Look at the Citations section. See how all the sources are cited in a similar form... well, except for the one you added? It's common courtesy to conform your citation style to the style already in use in an article. This is especially true for good articles and featured articles, which have gone through a quality control process to help make them good examples of Wikipedia articles. You've also tacked on the information out of chronological order - the sentence before your addition is dealing with 1166, and we skip back to 1164. This makes it look like you're just spamming information into the article, not really trying to make it better because you've not really read what was already in the article and tried to fit it into the proper place.

Another issue is the way you cited the constitutions. You cited them as {{Cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/constcla.asp|title=The Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164|last=Henderson|first=Ernest, F|date=1896|website=The Avalon Project at Yale Law School|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=4 April 2018}}. Well, that's saying that Henderson is the author of the constitutions. He wasn't. You're also saying that the Avalon Project at Yale existed in 1896 AND it produced the website then. Well, that's not possible. The actual citation should look like {{cite encyclopedia |editor=Henderson, Ernest F. |date=1896 |title=Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164 |encyclopedia= Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages |year=1896 |publisher= George Bell and Sons |location=London |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/constcla.asp }}. You're actually citing Henderson's edited version of the Constitutions that was published in the book Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages put out by George Bell and Sons in London in 1896. Avalon Project is just hosting the information.

Further to the featured article issue - there is the issue of trivia. In the grand scheme of Nigel's life - his taking part at Clarendon is trivia. He didn't take part in the wider efforts around Becket - he pretty much stayed in his diocese and dealt with issues there. So, again, the addition of this factoid just looks like spam - it doesn't actually fit into the actual events of Nigel's life. If we were writing a full book-length biography of Nigel's life, where every move he made and every charter he signed was detailed, yes, Clarendon would probably need to be covered. But we're not writing a book-length biography of Nigel, we're writing an encyclopedia article. A good way to judge how important this information is to Nigel is to see how often Nigel is mentioned in biographies of Becket. I don't have Duggan - but I do have Barlow's biography of Becket. The index to this work shows two mentions of Nigel (pages 50 and 168). For comparison - Manuel I, the Byzantine Emperor gets one mention in the book (page 199). No one would suggest that we would need to mention Manuel's minor bit in the Becket Controversy in his article on Wikipedia - so unless the mentions of Nigel are extensive, we shouldn't mention Nigel in connection to the BC either. And looking at the two mentions - page 50 is actually concerning events prior to the BC - it has to deal with Henry appointing Nigel to sort out the treasury in the 1150s, not in relation to Clarendon. Page 168 in Barlow's book is merely a mention that Nigel died in May 1169 and that Ely was one of the dioceses that remained vacant for a while after this because of the BC. It's clear that Nigel played no part in the BC. Barlow doesn't mention the fact that Nigel signed the Constitutions, so since we don't interpret documents, we follow the secondary sources and do not mention that fact in Nigel's article.

The problems are similar with Hilary of Chichester. Again, you're trying to source "Further, in January 1164, Hilary was also present at the Council of Clarendon, at which the Constitutions of Clarendon were produced and the bishops forced to agree to them." to the actual constitutions and Duggan's book. But you don't cite a specific page number for Duggan's book. We have again the issues of not conforming the citation style to the one already in use in the article (it's pretty glaring because again, this is a featured article.). Here, at least, Hilary is a bit player in the BC, but we already mention in the article the much more important bits that he was part of embassies. Note that we already use Barlow's Thomas Becket as a source here, where I've pulled out the important bits as they concern Hilary. Barlow describes the Council of Clarendon on pages 98-100. Hilary isn't mentioned on those pages, so Barlow doesn't consider Hilary's attendance at the council to be particularly important. This is, thus, a matter of WP:UNDUE. We follow the sources, the secondary sources. Barlow doesn't make a big deal of Hilary being at the council (and as an aside, portrays the situation as much more nuanced than "the bishops forced to agree to them") so we don't make a big deal of Hilary being at the council.

If I sound cranky ... it's because past history shows that people coming into Wikipedia to edit because of a class don't stick around. It's very rare that anyone who is required to edit based on a class will stick around and keep editing. And what happens is that those of us who edit here have to clean up after the mess. Very few classes actually understand that Wikipedia is different than historical research. Few of those classes try to understand the different culture and norms on Wikipedia. Instead, they barge in, edit, mess things up, and then leave. It's all very tiring. I've been here over 10 years. I've got over 100,000 edits on Wikipedia. I happen to have studied this period (the Anglo-Norman and Angevin period) in university and took some graduate classes, so I actually do understand what historical research is. And I know that it's nothing like Wikipedia editing. I actually feel bad for the people taking the classes that are required to edit on Wikipedia because it's just plain wrong to expect someone's grades to be based on something that is so much different than anything else they are going to do with their classes. And in this case - why the heck is someone who is specializing in Italian late medieval period messing around with English high medieval history? Have you read widely in the topic area? Do you know the various sides of the controversies? Do you have all the various books? At the least, I would expect the use of Barlow's various works on English ecclesiastical history, plus Knowles' works on the subjects. Becket's like a cottage industry in his own right - trying to master the sources to do it justice is a daunting task. It's one reason I've not gotten around to actually working on Becket's article on Wikipedia - I'm still assembling the sources and digesting them. I have concerns with someone editing in the area without having a good grasp of the sources needed or the background. It would be like me deciding to start editing in the late medieval Italian period - I just don't have the knowledge to not cause more problems than I would solve. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:49, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Talk pages...

Further to customs and norms on Wikipedia. Read Help:Talk pages, specifically WP:THREAD. When replying to someone's comment on a talk page (whether article talk page or user talk page), it's common courtesy to indent your reply under their reply - this helps keep comments in order. So here where you are replying to me, you should indent your comment with two colons to make it clear that you're replying to my comment. And when you make a reply on a talk page, it's common courtesy to add an edit summary. Edit summaries are not just for articles, but everywhere. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:54, 5 April 2018 (UTC)