User:Mhoulden

Suppose I'd best put something here. My name is Marcus Houlden and I live in Horsforth in Leeds. Outside Wikipedia I own and maintain the NukeSoft website, including the popular MS-DOS Reference. I can also be found on Usenet, especially in the uk.* hierarchy.

My interests (and Wikipedia contributions) tend to include computing, music, politics, and local affairs, especially covering West Yorkshire. I was responsible for a major rewrite of the article on Hebden Bridge, a small town in West Yorkshire where I used to live.

101 Dalmations

Way back in November of 2006, you apparently added a list of locations to the article The Hundred and One Dalmatians. I quite liked the list, but someone came along and is insisting that it be removed because it is original research. If you are still interested in this list, could you provide some additional detail about where the information comes from? It is original research or simply a compilation of stated locations in the novel? Lighthope (talk) 05:04, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It was a mixture. The book was very specific about locations such as Regents Park and St John's Wood, to the point where you can just about trace the route out of London with an old road map (I've got one here from 1974) although a children's novel isn't going going to give detailed directions and I think it was written before road numbering was widely used. The bridge into Sudbury is also specifically mentioned and there's only one road that goes that way (currently numbered as the A131 and A134, and formerly the route of the A11). I'm not sure if this would be classed as original research as all I was doing there was summarizing it as "in location X event Y took place". Dympling is pretty obviously fictitious and most of the references I can find online are actually taken from my original list. The village of Shimpling isn't too far from Sudbury but positively identifying it as where Dodie Smith had in mind isn't possible. I also have a source for the address of where the Dearlys lived: http://www.storybookengland.com/authors.php?form_id=3420686064. Some details were also taken from The Starlight Barking. I think the list could generally be put back, but probably more in a different form so it doesn't look like original research (which on the whole it isn't). mh. (talk) 11:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

This one is a tough call. Unless either the book or it's sequel specifically state their locations, any extrapolation has to be considered OR. Like I said, I really like the list, but it may be a fight to keep it there unless there is no OR to it. Lighthope (talk) 21:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)