Talk:Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

characteristicks
The original name of the book was characteristicks, with a "k".--Stanzilla (talk) 18:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Concerns about proper attribution
I just read this entry all the way through and found it to be delightfully quaint in style. But this raised for me the question of whether it was all actually written by a modern-day Wikipedian, or taken from some old source. I searched for the line "and hence the agreeable feeling with which, notwithstanding all their false taste and their tiresome digressions, they impress the modern reader" in Google books and as you can see, a substantial portion of this article is lifted directly from the 1894 Encyclopedia Britannica.

Now, as this work is clearly long since out of copyright, there is no legal problem here, but there is an ethical problem. While we do have a single footnote to Britannica, to my mind that is not enough. I am unclear at this moment as to what our standard "best practice" is regarding the use of material from old works, so I am not doing anything right away. But soon I think I will add a note saying that much of the article is modified from that work. Is that the right thing to do?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
 * We have a standard template for this, called 1911; since that is the edition of EB actually referenced, it fits the case. (Much of the 11th edition as actually material written for the 9th or 10th.) Most articles on subjects which were adequately covered then could use one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:24, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I added that, although it looks a bit ugly where I put it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:46, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Leclerc
The article said that Shaftesbury had an intellectual friendship with Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. But this must be wrong, because that Leclerc was eight years old when Shaftesbury died. The reference must be to Jean Leclerc, the editor of a series of annual journals called Encyclopédies, theologian, and editor of the works of Erasmus. Indeed Hans Bots, in the article I have referenced, sets out quite specific interactions between the two. • Mdecoursey (talk) 03:44, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

"Assessment" section has serious issues with encyclopedic tone and NPOV, and relies too much on one source.
The section only cites one source: "Fowler 1911". And it seems like the section has made no attempt to extract the facts and filter out the opinion, or even to write in an encyclopedic tone. Rather, it seems to entirely retain the tone and opinions of its one source, rather than conform to the neutral-toned and purely-factual standards of an encyclopedia. For example: "As an earnest student, and ardent lover of liberty, an enthusiast in the cause of virtue, and a man of unblemished life and untiring beneficence, Shaftesbury probably had no superior in his generation." This type of value judgment has no place in an encyclopedia, unless as a direct quote ("X notable and relevant person said Y opinion about subject"), in which case it becomes a fact (But even then, its use may or may not be appropriate). 2600:1015:B123:DEBE:CC58:3CAA:F382:2611 (talk) 02:03, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
 * On further examination, the whole article seems to have tone issues, not just that section 2600:1015:B123:DEBE:CC58:3CAA:F382:2611 (talk) 02:13, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Britannica text
I have worked over the article, replacing or removing much of the 1911 Britannica text. There are at least a dozen modern references that have been added. No doubt the remaining EB references could do with further attention, but I have removed the "update" template since the old text no longer dominates the article. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:52, 23 February 2020 (UTC)