Talk:Royal S. Copeland

Copeland's responsibility
Why isn't Copeland's responsibility for the current legal status of homeopathy in the USA mentioned? An excellent document can be found here:


 * An Alternative Perspective: Homeopathic Drugs, Royal Copeland, and Federal Drug Regulation - Suzanne White Junod, Ph.D.

About the Author


 * Dr. Junod is an FDA Historian at the FDA History Office, Rockville, Maryland. This article won Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG) Thomson Prize.

Acknowledgments


 * The article is was published in the Food and Drug Law Journal 55:161-183, 2001, and is reproduced with the kind permission of the author and the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy


 * The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments received on earlier drafts from Linda Horton, Peter Barton Hutt, John Parascandola, Naomi Rogers, Linda Suydam, John Swann, and James Harvey Young.

The article is well-referenced and worth using.


 * More about Copeland.

-- Fyslee / talk 02:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Right on, Fyslee...and yet, an anonymous editor continually deletes a notable fact about Copeland as well as a great NPOV reference (this book is NOT simply a pro-homeopathy book; in fact, IMO, it gives a big voice to skeptics...as such, I thought that referencing it was a perfect NPOV). Perhaps you might UNDO him/her next time.  DanaUllmanTalk 05:40, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea, in particular, why the anon editor is claiming that it's an NPOV violation to state that F.D.R. served as Copeland's campaign manager in 1922. In the endnote, I have added another source (see Google Books page view here), a book by Robert Dallek, that also substantiates this -- just so that it's clear beyond a doubt. (I also added the word "honorary" to campaign manager because that's what Dallek claims; not sure if that conflicts with the Robins source.) Ropcat (talk) 07:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Some anon editors (some of whom have been TOR nodes) and now PartyOfFive are editing warring with me trying to insert a reference to a book about FDR, when a book about Copeland (the subject of THIS article) provides greater detail. I don't know why these editors are doing this, especially since the book on Copeland is NPOV and RS. I hope that this editors would stop warring and do their homework.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by DanaUllman (talk • contribs) 23:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The work you are trying to cite is already present in the above reference. If you would take a minute to look, you will see that what you keep insisting on including is damaging the other ref.  I fixed it, but please add the page number where it discusses this fact.  Place it inside of the ref markers, after the publication year.  Baegis (talk) 00:14, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Baegis, please AGF. This is an article on Copeland. I have referenced a book about HIM. You prefer to quote a book about FDR. I say that we can quote them both.  I don't get the problem.  Yes, I see that the Copeland book is also referenced later, but the Copeland book has more than 1 fact in it and is a very good NPOV reference (IF you read this book, you'll be surprised on how "balanced" it is). Unless you give me a good reason here, I will UNDO your deletion of the Copeland reference.  DanaUllmanTalk 02:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I didn't delete the ref; I merely fixed it so this giant pissing match between you and the anons will stop. I refuse to AGF when you can't even see the fact that I fixed the ref (notice there are TWO listed after that fact, as opposed to ONE [two > one]) nor can you put the page number as I asked you to do so.  Man alive, it's like pulling teeth to make any progress on articles you edit!  Baegis (talk) 03:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

"See also" section contents
The "See also" section is being used for things that do not meet the criteria in WP:ALSO.

See also is only for internal links to related Wikipedia articles. The content at present here is six entries, none of which are to Wikipedia articles; and two of which have no links at all, neither internal nor external.

Four of the entries have links to non-Wikipedia URLs. These may be appropriate as "External links" (see WP:EL).

I'm not sure what the intent is behind the other two, which have no links of any kind neither internal nor external.

I've cleaned this up once,, with an edit summary explaining (as best as possible given the size constraints of an edit summary, but the incorrect entries, and more, are being re-added, without explanation.

The editor who is adding these has a pretty good edit history on Wikipedia, so these are obviously good-faith efforts to improve the article. So, rather than get into a revert battle, I'll be hands-off for a day, and direct that editor to this discussion. If we can determine what the objective is in adding these, maybe we can get this straightened out the ones that should be included added in the right way. TJRC (talk) 19:32, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the show of good faith. I overrode an edit conflict to preserve a bunch of manual typing. The article needed better and more extensive sourcing, for which these can now be used. I could have been more fussy about segregating seealso from further reading, but my thrust was simply to capture the sources for eventual use against the uncited statements in the article. Feel free to jump ahead and reformat as you see fit. I'll lay hands off for a while. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:51, 6 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I figured it had to be something like that; you have too good a edit history under your belt for it to have been otherwise.
 * Maybe you can help categorize these... I see five (there may be more) potential types for these six entries:
 * See also (WP:ALSO): This is for other, related, Wikipedia articles; and none seem to meet that criteria.
 * External links (WP:EL): I find some of this guideline hard to understand, but I see it mainly as a non-Wikipedia site on the Internet that adds additional information for the reader, which is not otherwise included in the article. Sometimes we can't include it for copyright reasons, sometimes it's more definitive or exhaustive than we want an encyclopedia article to be, sometimes it's the raw material (like a court filing, or the transcript of a State of the Union address, or the like).  And sometimes, there's good stuff in the EL that ought to be incorporated into the article, at which point it becomes a reference instead, but no one's gotten around to do so yet.
 * Part of WP:EL that I personally disagree with is that generally, once a source is used as a cited reference, it should not also be used as an EL. I disagree with that (but that's my take, not Wikipedia's): I feel that if an external site is particularly useful beyond the point for which it has been used as a reference, it's a worthy EL.  Otherwise, a reader will have no idea that it's a particularly valuable site.
 * Reference: A source (online or not) that is included specifically to support some of the text of the article. Sometimes you see a source cited as a reference with no specific indication of what parts of the article it supports (i.e., not footnoted), and I find that kind of unhelpful.  You can never thereafter tell what parts of the article are well-supported in one of those nonspecific references, and which might just be unsupported and potentially inaccurate.
 * Further reading (WP:FURTHER): This section seems to get debated a lot; I consider it the equivalent of "External links" for non-Internet resources. I personally disfavor it, except in exceptional cases, because, once added to an article, it seems to grow with a list of any book or article about the subject.
 * Refideas (refideas): In addition to these article-based entries, there is also a way of listing potential references that are not used in the article, but might be good ones for other editors to use in the future. This is the refideas template, placed on the talk page.  Its audience is not the reader of the article, but rather other editors who are interested in the subject and may want to look at the reference as part of updating it.  You can see it in use here and here, for example ("The following references may be useful...")
 * From your description above, coupled with an admittedly cursory review of the resources, I'm thinking the ones with actual external links may belong in "External links". The ones without links, not being used to actually support statements in the article, perhaps are best place in a refideas template; that seems consistent with your "eventual use against the uncited statements in the article" characterization.  What do you think? TJRC (talk) 21:24, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds right to me. :-) LeadSongDog come howl!  21:49, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Done! TJRC (talk) 22:03, 6 August 2014 (UTC)