Talk:Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Untitled
i think his views on government should be seperated out to a seperate section, since he was a philosopher on government, rather than just a preacher

Till he was over seventy he had scarcely known what illness was; but in 1702 he was attacked by the stone.

What does "attacked by the stone" mean?

Rimmkaufman 12:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

It means he really wanted to do drugs, so he got stoned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.92.201.63 (talk) 19:04, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Not related images
I began removing many images which are not pertinent here. This is not a journalistic article needing photos of eveyr character or places mentioned in it. Let's leave photos to the articles related to them, as we have hyperlinks --&#39;&#39;&#39;Attilios&#39;&#39;&#39; (talk) 15:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC) attacked by the stone means he got kidney stones

political assembly?
In the section "Priest at Metz" it first mentions the importance of preaching "in a land where political assemblies were unknown" and then a few sentences later "He also gained political experience through his participation in the local Assembly of the Three Orders." The first statement is obviously exaggerated but I am not an expert on 17th-century French history, so perhaps someone else can clarify and revise? Horatio325 (talk) 16:48, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 19:21, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion
Further reading sections are almost always a bad idea at Wiki since they're uncurated, leaving the lists unhelpful and tending towards bloat and self-promotion. Kindly restore these to the article: once they are being used to verify statements in the text or once they have some terse commentary as to how they are useful or notable.
 * Emile Perreau-Saussine, "Why draw a politics from Scripture ? Bossuet and the divine right of kings", Hebraic Political Studies, Winter 2006, vol. 1 (2), pp. 224–237 (Link)
 * Luc-Normand Tellier, Face aux Colbert : les Le Tellier, Vauban, Turgot ... et l'avènement du libéralisme, Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1987, 816 pages.Etext

These "sources" presumably from the EB11 were listed as "references" despite being entirely unused by the article. If they're still decent sources, kindly restore them once they're being used to verify statements in the text. — Llywelyn II   18:43, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The Bossuet number of the Bibliothèque des bibliographies critiques, compiled by Canon Charles Urbain and published by the Société des Études Historiques (Paris, 1900);
 * M. Rebelliau, Bossuet (Paris, 1900);
 * Gustave Lanson, Bossuet (Paris, 1901);
 * Mrs Sidney Lear, Bossuet, (London, 1874);
 * two studies by Sir J. FitzJames Stephen in the second volume of his Horae Sabbaticae (London, 1892).
 * And will you "kindly" stop removing sourcing information without doing any checking whether it is used or not, or relevant? The assertion that "Further reading sections are almost always a bad idea at Wiki since they're uncurated, leaving the lists unhelpful and tending towards bloat and self-promotion." is massively over-stated - sometimes this is true, but very often not. To know the difference one would actually need to do some investigation, or have subject knowledge. Looking at your contributions, I am getting concerned about your cavalier approach, accompanied by requests to others to "kindly" do the actual legwork you have not bothered to. This is not a constructive attitude. Johnbod (talk) 15:26, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course not. Obnoxious personal remarks to the side, uncurated laundry lists like this are not helpful and provide only the (extremely unhelpful) illusion of sourcing. Further reading lists on well-tended pages like English royalty are perfectly legitimate, although even there they could do better with annotation to explain the contribution being made. I have already improved the article. If others find it worthwhile to do the legwork of examining these sources for value and integrating them into the article, they're more than welcome to do so. The only cavalier approach here is yours, although it doesn't concern me overmuch since I'm sure you'll figure all of this out if you actually think through the question, read what I wrote, or read what you wrote. (One does indeed have to go through these sources one by one—i.e. curate the list—to see if they have any value. That is precisely the problem.)


 * Happy editing. Just remember to keep the WP:readers first and how unhelpful it is to provide the illusion of sourcing where none actually exists. These are not sources until they've actually been used by the article, but you're always welcome to fix that. — Llywelyn II   20:08, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Llyelyn is, of course, wrong about deleting items 'for further reading' in a bibliography; and they do NOT have to be referenced in the text to be useful. He is right, however, about the problem with the article, which is a lack of adequate sourcing in the text itself through references. That is where the effort should go, rather than into deleting items that are apparently not in use. --Vicedomino (talk) 10:52, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Another thought occurs. It isn't always that a reader who seeks more information can get to the work cited in a reference note. Not all Wikipedia readers live in the first world. Having a second or a third resource in a Bibliography may be helpful to users who can't access some material. When LLywellyn says "These are not sources until the've actually been used by the article," he is not speaking as a researcher but as a consumer. Researchers may find a work tremendously useful for their own understanding before they write an article, but choose to annotate specific points with more specific literature. Having their research book or article in a bibliography is honest and useful. It may also encourage others to do more work on the article, on Bossuet, for example, where there is little said about his diocese (to take just one point). --Vicedomino (talk) 17:13, 23 September 2016 (UTC)