Talk:Mary Aldis (science writer)

Renaming and tagging
Just a note, to note how offensive I find your renaming and tagging of this article. There is no naming convention per Category:British science writers. A quick look at its subcategory, Category:English science writers, finds at least as many (author) as (writer) DABs. Nor is the fact of a category's naming binding on the DABs used for article titles, not least where the subject may appear in multiple categories. Next, tagging an article having 48 references with Unreliable sources, without indicating which sources are unreliable, is just plain vandalism. Together, the two show great disrespect to your fellow editors. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:50, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * My apologies, . This article was previously disambiguated Mary Aldis (scientific author), which is not used on any other article as a disambiguating term. I looked for what I thought to be the standard as the guidelines recommended. In Category:British science writers, there are four biographies that use "science writer". I'll note that "author" or "writer" would have worked, as you mentioned, save for the other, pre-existing Mary Aldis article, which I moved to Mary Aldis (playwright) (per a request on that talk page) and who was also an author/writer, hence the extra disambiguation of "science writer". If you see a better convention, you're welcome to move it, but you have not said why this causes you offense.
 * As an established editor, you know that the number of references in an article is not necessarily an indicator of anything in particular. Drive-by tags can be removed just as simply as they are added, if you object, but I would think that the issue is straightforward enough from the links in the tag. In particular Find a Grave is user-generated and unreliable and suffolkartists.co.uk does not show any hallmarks of editorial control or fact-checking.
 * Relatedly, he section on "Campaign for social reform" is largely (almost entirely?) reliant on citing the numerous letters to the editor she sent (and her responses). This reliance on primary sources to compose a section is original research. This is material we'd expect a secondary source to analyze for us, rather than us making analytic conclusions like "Her views often received outraged anonymous responses", "Other responses were fairer", "On 24 April 1885 Aldis began what would be a long career of letter-writing" (how do you know this was the beginning or was just the first in this archive?) Claims like these are why we rely on secondary sources as an encyclopedia. (not watching, please )  czar  23:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , Thank you for describing your issue with the refs. I've replaced the findagrave reference with the reference to the cemetery database from the local council instead (the information is the same). I'll try to find something more reliable for the artists.
 * With respect to the social reform section, I take your point about original research. Certainly not all the references are primary sources, some are contemporary newspaper reports about the controversies she was part of, but it is probably hard to see which is which. However your comments prompted me to find a copy of a book that describes in much greater details Mary's activities both in England and in New Zealand, so I will rewrite this section accordingly. DrThneed (talk) 08:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Aldis's views
Hi thanks for this article. Just wondering... "and a Presbyterian minister was reported to have said "Mrs. Aldis, all the bad men in Auckland hate you"" - isn't that actually applauding her? The cite (within the cite) has "A lead once given, others rallied to their support. The day came when a good Presbyterian minister said, "Mrs. Aldis, all the bad men in Auckland hate you."'" So move the Presbyterian minister's quote to after "In contrast"? JennyOz (talk) 12:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks, I think you're right, I will take another look. DrThneed (talk) 01:15, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Thanks for tweaking. JennyOz (talk) 08:04, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

The "cartoon"
Am curious as to why the cartoon's caption is not included as part of the Infobox graphic.

Plus, to what is the 'stated' caption referring to? 2600:8800:785:9400:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 23:38, 8 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The caption isn't included because I took the image from the National Library website and that is how they have cropped it, you would have to ask them why. It's only now that you ask that I see it is also available on PapersPast with the caption included. Is there any reason you think it would be better with the caption as part of the image instead? My instinct is generally that it's better to have text that is searchable (which I assume infobox captions are), but I have no strong feelings about the matter.


 * Wrt what the caption refers to, I did not find a source that discussed it and so any connection between the cartoon and other events would be speculation. If I find a source that does explain I will be sure to add it.DrThneed (talk) 01:14, 9 February 2021 (UTC)