Talk:Hymn Before Action

Spelling
Spell froward or forward ? Tabletop (talk) 11:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Citation
You my recent edit saying "this is not a song. The poem is short enough that it can be reproduced in full without overwhelming the article. Having to look up two stanzas elsewhere is a disservice to our readers." The Wikepedia policies and guidelines on excerpt lengths of this sort are vague by design, so neither of our opinions could possibly be proven correct. So I'll give you the length.

But you seem to imply that because this is not a song, it does not fall under WP:NOTLYRICS. This is just a shortcut to the broader policy statement: "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information", which states for example that "...data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources." And while it is true that "songs" rather than all poems are specifically called out here, the "songs" section links to Do not include the full text of lengthy primary sources (which calls out both verse and prose) for full discussion. I'm not aware of any policy better targeted explicitly to poems which, for example, would prevent us from including the full text of Paradise Lost on its page. Please let me know if you're aware of one. So to my knowledge, the article's subject being a poem, not a song, is not a meaningful distinction here.

But in my view, this was the more trivial part of my edit. The most important part was that I cited the quote, so your reversion has taken the article from compliant to non-compliant with respect to WP:V. I trust you will reinstate this citation, and also my textual tweaks so that the WP text will accurately reflect its cited source. Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 18:38, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


 * By all means, reinstate the citation. My objection was to the removal of two stanzas. We need to use common sense. I agree that we are not here to reproduce long primary sources, but this is no Paradise Lost of hundreds of pages. It is a short poem. Cutting two stanzas does not make the article meaningfully shorter, but it reduces its usefulness to readers.  Sandstein   19:21, 19 January 2020 (UTC)