Talk:Richard Clement Moody

Query "First Lieutenant Governor"
Moody was not the first Governor of the Colony of British Columbia. Is there some authority for the idea that he was the first Lieutenant Governor? He was the first surveyor general according to Morton (see cite I have added in the article) but his work does not attribute the role of Lieutenant Governor. See List of Governors of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. I have changed the reference to refer to Surveyor General. I could well be wrong, but I do not think that in the time of the colonies there was a Lieutenant Governor. -- KenWalker | Talk 02:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I've got a citation in for it now. It seems to be more of a dignified title than anything else though: Moody had the authority to act in Douglas's absence, but he wasn't willing to be a dick about it (and Douglas was), so he never really excersised his authority as Lt. Gov. Stevecudmore 18:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * He definitely had the title, though its meaning was "Deputy Governor" as opposed to the viceregal nature of later provincial L-G's. A few others had it too, Trutch for example 9before he was provincail L-G, I think under Seymour....).  His other jobs, i.e. Surveyor-General, local Cmdr of the Royal Engineers etc, were teh titles that proscribed his duties.  L-G was a backup position in case there was a question fo succession if Douglas kicked off somehow.....btw The Royal Engineers in British Columbia needs its own article, the main RE article is UK-based and modern in nature; somewhere recently I saw that they were referred to as the "Columbia Detachment" I think; came up in readings that had to do with Palmer and Mayne.....there's a good RE site a friend of mine has built, I'll come back with the links....Skookum1 (talk) 14:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Biography assessment rating comment
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- KenWalker | Talk 20:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Richard or Richards?
I seem to recall sources saying "Richards Clement Moody"...the only online source here seems to be Ormsby in the Canadian biography online cite (which sometimes gets things wrong).....does this sound familiar? I'll check around, I'm sure I've seen it.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:25, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Trivia re his wife's ancestors
Anyone see any reason we need to discuss his wife's ancestors 7 and more generations back? Even if this were sourced (which it currently isn't) I don't think it belongs i the article. Meters (talk) 04:06, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
 * And 17 generations back, source to an unverifiable reference is even worse. Meters (talk) 07:12, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

It is not unsourced content: I have provided a source. If you continue to be delete sourced material, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. It has been reported that (User:Meters) appears to be creating an artificial consensus against this matter by creating a false conversation by writing without signing in, on account 50.37.126.124, and writing on his named own account. Wikipedia has been alerted and his case is pending investigation. He has also been reported for disruptive editing by another user. The fact that he does not accept a source does not mean that it does not qualify. In reply to his comment amount 17 generations, it is notable information given the nature of the individuals involved, which would be of great interest to those reading the article.(Hamlet94 (talk) 19:34, 15 November 2016 (UTC)).
 * User:Hamlet94 It is considered a personal attack to accuse an editor of socking without evidence. You have made no such report. Please remove the above accusation immediately.
 * The material is improperly sourced because the reliability of the source has been challenged. You have chosen not to provide sufficient information to allow other editors to evaluate the source, so it cannot be used. Meters (talk) 00:59, 16 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Please leave this out until consensus has been reached. The new source is being discussed at Talk:Richard Stanley Hawks Moody.
 * I'm still waiting for you to retract or delete your multiple unsubstantiated accusations of socking and false claims that you have opened an SPI. Meters (talk) 03:44, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

The source I originally cited for this information is authoritative but I have now added another source that conforms to all Wikipedia criteria for reliable sources and shall be to the satisfaction of all editors. The printed books: 'The Plantagenet roll of the blood royal: being a complete table of all the descendants now living of Edward III, King of England'. Mary Boyd, the mother of Moody's wife, Mary Hawks, is mentioned by name. There are hundreds of articles regarding individuals that note the descent of the subject from notable individuals who lived numerous generations previously. If the individuals whose antecedence were extensive were non-notable, the mention would be irrelevant. This is not the case: we are speaking of descent from a King of England. Public interest in this lineage has been sufficient to warrant the publication of hundreds of books specifically regarding the topic - including the 'Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal' series that has run into multiple volumes over the past 110 years. Therefore, it belongs in the article.(Hamlet94 (talk) 04:27, 18 November 2016 (UTC)).


 * The account of Richard Clement Moody in Dictionary of Canadian Biography is almost 4000 words long. It gives his birth place and date, his education, career, death and how his life is viewed in context.  However, the author does not think that the ancestry of his wife is relevant beyond the generation of her father.  Even if the material was supported by the cited source (it's not) including it would still be WP:UNDUE unless biographical accounts of Richard Clement Moody, like that found in DCB, have thought it important enough to include.  50.37.123.34 (talk) 07:34, 18 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, "Mary Boyd, the mother of Moody's wife, Mary Hawks, is mentioned by name". Where is this?  I find her nowhere in the cited book (at least the volume cited on the Richard Stanley Hawks Moody Talk page - there you mention William Boyd, but the William Boyd in the book is the son-in-law of Edward Hawks, not an ancestor).  Generic interest in royal ancestry is an insufficient justification, the same for it appearing on other pages.  Do the biographers of Richard Clement Moody describe his wife's ancestry in this level of detail? 50.37.123.34 (talk) 08:25, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

First, on another page, IP 50.37.118.217 stated that 'Published sources provide the basis for [the] evaluation [of the interest of a topic to the public]. I provided a published account. I'm sure that both Ormsby and the authors of other biographies and studies would have included the Edward III information if they had known about it - it's that special, after all. Mary Boyd is mentioned in several of the pieces about Richard Clement and several about the Hawks family. The Boyd and Moody families intermarried for generations. There is also the important connection with Benedictus Marwood Kelly, with whom Moody worked and lived for a time, who, via, Mary Boyd, was a relative. Mary Moody was an important figure in the Empire and especially British Columbia, and has been important in subsequent studies of it, as the article on Richard Clement makes apparent. Her family were an prominent industrial dynasty and there is an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Article specifically on her family. However, the Blood Royal source has been revealed to have a missing part - Part II mentioned on Table XXX, but which is nowhere in the work to be found - that is imperative to this proof, so we cannot use it anyway.(Hamlet94 (talk) 17:24, 18 November 2016 (UTC)).


 * You did not provide a published account of the facts you are trying to add, nor of the weight given it. In saying that the authors of all of the biographies would have included this information had they only known about it is a supposition, and is irrelevant.  That they didn't include this information is what is relevant.  As I said on the other Talk page, such descents are not special: millions of people descend from Edward III.   Modern historians and biographers almost never mention such descents, as they are more interested in putting the person's life into context rather than providing such remote connections that would have had no bearing, that is simply a curiosity.  Only if their descent played a documented role in their actions at the time is it usually included.  Your explanation comes off like it was a near-run thing, that the source would have been valid if only Part II had been published, and if only all those biographers had known about the descent they would have included the information so that's almost as good as them actually having stated it, but the facts are that you cited a source that does not contain the information it was cited to support based on what you thought it would contain and not what it actually contains, and that biographers have made no mention of the royal descent.  50.37.123.34 (talk) 18:05, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Wife's claim to distant royal ancestry is not noteworthy
The most recent edit summary adding this ephemera says that the source is a biographical account. This is a patent lie. The cited source is a set of charts, and in its entirety, what it says about Robert Clement Moody is the following - "=Captain Richard Clement Moody, Royal Engineers". This is not a biographical account of Moody nor of his wife - just a pedigree that happens to mention him. Any mention of this connection is giving WP:UNDUE weight to it - just because you find something in a book does not justify it being on a Wikipedia page. Material must be verfiable, yes, but it also must be pertinent, rather than the results of whatever whims strike an editor. The guide for this is how the subject is covered in secondary sources. Thus we need a (recent) secondary source that thinks this 500-year genealogical game of connect the dots merits mention. (As an aside, we don't live in the 1850s any more. There was a time when it was a standard practice of British historiography to established someone's social standing by saying who the most recent king they descended from was, but now, 150 years later, that is no longer the practice of historians.)  Agricolae (talk) 19:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. I will also remove it also, pending a discussion by the IP adding it. Meters (talk) 20:03, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

-- To Agricolae (talk) There are no whims. Your assertion that the info is 'ephemera' is your affective (subjective) opinion. Read the first sentence on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing#Distinguished_from_productive_editing. This will not do for a reason for deletion. Sources do not have to be biographies: sources are simply required to state the information that has been added, which, as you have conceded, the source does. We are here to build an encyclopedia - not delete all material that we find personally objectionable.
 * : The source mentions the information about the subject, whom it mentions by name. Therefore, the information is both verifiable and without original research. It mentions the subject by name in relation to the matter in question: how can it be 'impertinent?'. We are here to build an encyclopedia. Read WP:HERE.
 * : The assertion of Agricolae that the matter is 'ephemera', based on a unsubstantiable self-profession of personal historiographical authority will not suffice as a reason for the deletion. We are here to build an encyclopedia: The deletion of Agricolae is WP:VAND, viz. an action contrary to the project's purpose: it is 'the wanton removal of encyclopedic content', based on the assumed acceptance of an unsubstantiable claim of superior personal authority, and constitutes 'a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia'.
 * : Nor is there any WP:UNDUE weight. Agricolae's assertion 'any mention of this connection is giving WP:UNDUE weight to it', in relation to one short sentence at the end of a paragraph is, frankly, laughable: and its use is a symptom of his failure to find a superior reason for his desired deletion of the appropriate material. I trust that other editors shall notice this. It appears that Agricolae does not understand the word 'undue'.
 * : Therefore, the matter cannot be considered to be 'impertinent' or 'undue weight' except by an individual set on wilful calumniation and subject to a determination to contravene the project's purpose, as noted on WP:HERE.

If you delete the information again, you may be reported for vandalism: WP:VAND

2A02:C7D:607F:3500:8110:A42:EED8:2319 (talk) 20:46, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Find for me a modern account of Richard Clement Moody that thinks it is relevant that his wife had such a descent from a person 500 years before (a characteristic she shared with a significant proportion of her social class, by the way) and we will have something to talk about. 'Building an encyclopedia' is not the same as 'decorating an article with every piece of information found in print'.  Biographies need to have an appropriate focus and give appropriate weight in deciding what aspects of a person's life are noteworthy and merit inclusion, and what aspects, however curious one might find them, fall short of that bar.  There are places on the internet where the goal is to compile and celebrate such genealogies.  Wikipedia is not that place.  If you think this item is noteworthy enough to be included, make your case by explaining why, but it needs to be more than just 'I found his name in a 160 year old genealogy book' coupled with accusations of policy violations.  Agricolae (talk) 22:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

-- To Agricolae The point is that you cannot demonstrate the irrelevance of the material. Wikipedia is based on a constructive principle. You assert that that material is irrelevant, but, to warrant exclusion, you need to demonstrate that the inclusion is contrary to Wikipedia's polices. Wikipedia is based on a constructive principle: it is not for editors to delete information, coherent with the policies, that they (affectively/subjectively) deem to be irrelevant and attempt to justify with a fantastical claim of historiographical authority. Wikipedia defines vandalism as 'editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia, in a variety of languages, presenting the sum of all human knowledge': this editing includes 'The wanton removal of encyclopedic content [...] 'without any regard to our core content policies of neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), verifiability and no original research', which Wikipedia described as 'a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia'. This is exactly what Agricolae has done. You might require a 'modern account [of his wife] that thinks it is relevant', but Wikipedia, which seeks "the sum of all human knowledge" for its "encyclopedic content" and aims to be the "most comprehensive" encyclopedia "ever written", does not. The information that I added, in my last edit, was neutral in point of view, verifiable with a source, relevant to the subject, whom the source names in person, and included no original research. It was one short sentence in length and therefore obviously invulnerable to the charge of 'undue weight'. Therefore, the deletion of the material, and its source, by Agricolae or Meters, is contrary to the project's purpose and is WP:VAND. There is no basis, in Wikipedia's policies. for the exclusion of the material that I added in my last edit. 2A02:C7D:607F:3500:18D5:E5AA:59AA:E22F (talk) 12:47, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * That material is small in size does not make its inclusion any less UNDUE - we take our lead from secondary sources about the subject, not passing reference. Also see WP:NOTGENEALOGY - "Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic" and it does not provide greater understanding of Richard Moody to know that his wife's mother's father's mother's mother's father's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's father's mother's father's father's mother's father's mother's mother's mother's father's father happened to be king 500 years before.
 * There is a procedure on Wikipedia for reporting vandalism. Either do so or quit making the accusation. Agricolae (talk) 15:05, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

-- Agricolae. If you had read the source, you would know that the link you mention above is not the most direct and is one of several.2A02:C7D:607F:3500:C9CA:3637:D44E:31F3 (talk) 08:55, 19 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Oh, you think I made up that string of relationships without looking at it? ('reading' is sort of an overblown description given that the whole pamphlet amounts to a handful of genealogical charts, with no text).  That I am now told I didn't choose the 'right' one - I don't even know what 'most direct' is supposed to mean, as if you could have an indirect descent - just serves to highlight how this whole thing represents one editor's arbitrary choices.  For that matter, if being found in a book means we have to include it, why aren't we highlighting her descent from Richard Tonge of Eklysall or any, indeed all, of the 100+ other ancestors who also appear this pamphlet, all likewise part of the 'sum of all human knowledge'?  Because part of the role of being an editor is to be selective, to determine what is most noteworthy and what is incidental, rather than just creating a magpie collection of anything shiny we happen to stumble across.  We take our lead from sources like the DCB, which rather than naming some bloke 20 generations back, restricts itself to naming Mary's father.  Agricolae (talk) 13:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Does he need to have all those prefixes before his name?
Is there a reason that it's there?

Respectfully, Thanoscar21 (talk) 22:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)