Talk:St. Albans Psalter

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Is is not "one of the best examples of English Romanesque manuscript painting" It may be one of the most important or interesting, but not "best".

Why bother to say "it is a major English illuminated manuscript" -- if it were not major it would not have a page devoted to it on Wikipedia. What does "major" mean, anyway? It's so vague as to be meaningless.

There is a significant difference between "text" and "writing". "Text" refers to content, "writing" refers to the way it is written. They should not be confused.

"computational" does not mean the same things as "computistical". You'll see the difference if you google each word!


 * A Wikipedia article is an article, not a catalogue entry. You need to give some context, and also to reformat and restyle the article. Do it your own way, but do it, or others will. Johnbod 15:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Apologies if I am being dumb, but I undid some revisions to indicate that I had chosen my original words carefully, and that the revisions were not an improvement. Then my undoing was undone! What's the point of that? WP currently has a worse article than the version several recensions ago.


 * If I may make a few comments here:


 * Computational vs. computistical - After taking PeterKidd's advice and googleing computistical, It seems to me to be a very precise term with a very narrow meaning, so much so that borders on jargon. As such it probably should not be used without definition. Since it is used only once it would be best to replace it a phrase that means the same thing. Otherwise, editors unaware of the precise term will continue to switch it to computational and readers will miss an important nuance.
 * The article should state that this is an illuminated manuscript, with a wikilink in the first sentence. If I have my way, and enough time, every illuminated manuscript will have an article here, not just the major ones. (We already have some articles on realtive minor manuscripts.)
 * "Best" probably has some NPOV issues, "important" (with suitable reference) is a good substitute.
 * As I have stated elsewhere the difference between "text", "script" and "manuscript" and other terms is important. However the term "five physically separable parts" is confusing to me. Surely these items cannot be separated without destroying the binding of the book. Perhaps "sections" would be a term.
 * Peter, if you would "sign" you posts to talk pages (but not article pages) by putting four tildes at the end of your comments thus: ~, the wiki software will fill in you signiature and an time stamp, then we will know who we are talking to. Dsmdgold 17:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Dsmdgold: thanks for your thoughtful and clear comments. You will doubtless have realised that I am an inexperienced WP editor! PeterKidd 23:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree that the word "computistical" may not be familiar to everyone, but it should certainly be familiar to anyone who knows about MSS such as the one in question, and I would hope that contributors would look up words and concepts that they are ignorant of rather than simply replacing an edit that someone else, potentially more knowledgeable, has deliberately undone. A link to the WP article on "computus" would have been a much more constructive edit.
 * I agree that the use of a standard term like "illuminated manuscript" can be helpful, but I don't think that the use of subjective value-judgements such as "major" or "best" are helpful.
 * I can see how the word/concept "separable" might confuse some people. To explain: the book is made up of discrete sections that could be physically separated from one another, because they were produced as physically distinct entities. In the case of the present MS this is a key concept, because scholars argue endlessly about which order the parts were made, whether they are in their original intended sequence, and so on. (As it happens, the manuscript was removed from its binding last year, so every bifolium is currently separable in that sense!)
 * A general point is that I assume that users are capable of following links to further information if they don't understand something: surely WP cannot expect to explain EVERYTHING, on the assumption that the readers will know nothing, and will be unwilling to follow a link to get an answer to their questions?

There were in fact very few useful and precise general links, working properly, for them to follow in the last version before I started adding them. You have to follow links like miniature to see where they go, and then disambiguate as necessary. As you do more you will get to know what links there are. If you are asking whether we can assume that all the readership knows that a "manuscript Psalter" is an illuminated manuscript, the answer is no. And of course it might not be. Equally we cannot assume that they know a 12th century manuscript is likely to be illuminated in a Romanesque style. You will notice Aberdeen also get this information in early in their introduction, where I also notice that they seem to agree with me that: "The book is important because of its outstanding illuminations, particularly the miniatures painted by the so-called Alexis Master, which are among the finest examples of English Romanesque painting..." Johnbod 23:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I understand that adding links to good-quality websites and WP articles is useful, but I was objecting to the mistaken attempts to 'improve' the wording of the article without fully understanding it. You're right, of course, that not every 12th-century MS is illuminated, but the Category 'Illuminated Manuscripts' was added back in May, before your edits. And I am not disagreeing that the manuscript is important--it is arguably one of the most important of the 12th century--but I still think it is unhelpful to just call it "important" without saying why: if your edit had been something like "it is important partly because it contains the earliest surviving example of French literature" or "it is important partly because it contains numerous iconographic innovations" I would have had no objection! (To me "important" is like "big": it all depends on what you are comparing it with). On another point, the Aberdeen website contains LOTS AND LOTS of errors, and its main author has even published a more recent book with contradictory opinions. This is a classic example of why I think we should not take things off the web and put them in WP, unless we have sufficient personal knowledge to be able to assess the relative reliability of different print and online sources. PeterKidd 00:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * My major concern in that very quick edit was to add or correct links; I see I did this to 9. I also added some context and rephrased the lead to fit the key links of illuminated manuscript and Romanesque in. Believe me, both of those should be there, in the first sentences. Like dms, I think "computistical" is too obscure a word to use without explanation, whereas "computational", which can't be called wrong given the context of the calendar was given, was fine.  If you don't like the wording, change it, but you need to understand that any contribution you make will be "wikified" eventually along similar lines, unless it already matches the WP style. Johnbod 00:24, 5 July 2007 (UTC)