Talk:The Spirit of the Age

British English
Yes, British English is certainly justifiable here. Please forgive my Americanisms, Celuici. Pure force of habit. I appreciate your translating them into what is evidently your native dialect. :-) --Alan W (talk) 05:02, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Quote formatting
Did you read MOS:BQ in the Manual of Style? It explicitly calls out your usage of pull quotes as wrong: "Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the cquote template)."

Emphasis is already applied by the formatting of the quote. Additionally, even if you were doing that for stylistic effect, that wasn't a reason to wholesale revert as italicization of quotes is still wrong too, per MOS:NOITALQUOTE.

Lastly, the way you're implementing these quotes is quite confusing and nonstandard, with your own commentary interspersed. It is generally accepted style in all publications to put editorial comments in square brackets (strangely, in the Mr. Knowles quote you do both). But you reverted this clarification as well.

Reverting all improvements to an article, even the ones you don't disagree with (such as my use of the emphasis template or closing the  tag) comes off as overly asserting ownership of an article. Opencooper (talk) 19:17, 3 April 2019 (UTC)


 * And I ask you in return, did you read my comment, a very extensive and explicit one, in my reversion? I normally would not have done a mass reversion like that. Except I feel strongly that in this case it was entirely justified. My comment was: "The quotes in question are 'pull quotes', not 'blockquotes'. I didn't want the giant stylized quotes that at least one template provides, but in this kind of quote, the quotation marks are acceptable and emphasize that it is a notable quotation from the work being discussed."


 * I just looked at your latest set of changes. Now, that is more reasonable. The fact is, I am sure we are both making changes in good faith. If you had only posted a notice on the article talk page before making your changes in mass fashion, we could have discussed it first and achieved a reasonable compromise. It is only because you made all those changes at once before discussing them that I in turn reverted them all at once. Well, we have ended up where we should have now, anyway. My main point was that in pull quotes, quotations are justified in a way they are not in blockquotes. I entirely agree they shouldn't be surrounding blockquotes. In pull quotes, well the situation is not the same. And now that I see your point, about italics not being appropriate for pull quotes, well, though I don't feel they are so bad in this context, I am, as I say, entirely willing to accept that as a reasonable compromise. --Alan W (talk) 01:18, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I meant to add that what you quote from MOS:BQ, even though it refers to quotations as used in cquote template, is talking about, again, blockquotes. Not pull quotes. Doesn't apply here. And please, just on the basis of this one action, don't accuse me of trying assert ownership. Making a mass change as you did without first discussing it on the talk page is not exactly exemplary behavior either. But I don't mean to end on a sour note. From the looks of it, we are both reasonable people and, as I said, I think we have come to a reasonable compromise here. --Alan W (talk) 01:24, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm familiar with pull quotes, and understood that you were going with a more subdued form of them. Still, it doesn't change that the quotes are already off to the side and have a prominent background, which already distinguishes them enough. Whether they're pull quotes or not is irrelevant (also "pull quote" as used in publishing refers to a quotation of something that's already in the article as a way to draw attention to the story, something Wikipedia clearly wouldn't want to emulate). But we can agree to disagree on that front.


 * If I had to create a petition before making any edits someone out there could possibly disagree with, I'd never get anywhere. Being bold is a thing (of course with the implied corollary "but not reckless"), as well as the Bold–Revert–Discuss cycle. Sorry for my tone, I've just had bad experiences in the past with primary authors of articles opposing all changes, regardless of their merit, because they like things the way they are. You're pretty reasonable though and I shouldn't have made accusations. Happy editing. :) Opencooper (talk) 02:26, 4 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Well, looks like we just were both participants in a Bold–Revert–Discuss cycle, though till you mentioned that I hadn't thought of it that way. Yes, I've had my own bad experiences in my fifteen years here, such as editors acting as though Wikipedia's being the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means it's the encyclopedia that anyone can edit any which way that happens to feel right at the moment. Not that I would accuse you of going that far. We may agree to disagree about some things, but I think we do agree that we are both reasonable people. That in itself makes my editing here that much happier. Happy editing to you, too! :-) --Alan W (talk) 03:27, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually, while we're complaining of poor Alan's quotations, I'll chime in to say I think the wider ones are a tad too wide. They look like they're 50% of the page width, and limiting them to 25–30% would be better except in exceptional circumstances. Regarding the other issues I'll just mention that 1) the MoS is advisory and itself even cautions against attempting to "enforce" its rules, and 2) the MoS reflects a very particular set of preferences regarding formatting of quotes and use of typographic features (it doesn't like them) with which reasonable people may absolutely disagree. Boldly diving in on a well-developed article with an existing internally-consistent style with "MoS compliance" type changes is generally a bad idea. BRD as an approach works well for many things, but CON is fundamental to the project: taking the time to raise such issues on the talk page first will generally work out better in such situations. --Xover (talk) 04:21, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

"Very Long" Tag
I disagree with the application of the "very long" tag. The article is about a single book. No one is forced to read the whole thing, and most might just want to read the lead. But to split it into more than one article to me makes no more sense than splitting the article on Shakespeare's Hamlet into separate articles for each act. --Alan W (talk) 03:47, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * The current article is nearly double the maximum size outlined at WP:TOOBIG. It also has considerable portions of content on the biographies of essay subjects which could be removed from here, as an easy first step. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:17, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * If you read any of those sections closely, you will see that they are not just the biographies of the essay subjects but explanations of Hazlitt's impressions of the thinking, and so on, of those subjects, with plenty of citations of reliable sources, and so on. The biographical parts were integrated so that readers would immediately know the significance of Hazlitt's thinking on his subjects, and they would not have to jump back and forth between here and other articles. That would make this article harder, not easier, to read. For anyone interested in just the biographies of the subjects, there are the "See also" tags I placed at the heads of those sections.
 * Your tag has got me thinking about this, certainly, and I can understand why you placed it there. I'm still not sure there would be much point to breaking out any of the sections of the article into separate sections, in the case of this particular article. Yes, I was aware of WP:TOOBIG, but that is a Wikipedia guideline, not a mandatory rule, like WP:RS, etc. To me, everything here is closely tied together. Still, now that you have brought this up, I am letting this all "cook" in my mind for a while, and let's see if anyone else contributes any thoughts to the discussion. --Alan W (talk) 05:55, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

It is too long. I came here to find out a brief summary of the book, not a detailed analysis of what was in it. If I wanted a detailed analysis, I would not be looking on Wikipedia for one--regardless of how well-cited it may be. Each person discussed should have no more than 1-2 sentences and a link to an article about that person. People consult encyclopedias to get a brief idea about something. This book's "summary" would probably fill 10 printed pages for a book that is only 240 pages long. Write the articles for each person mentioned in the book separately, link to them from here, and let the people reading this decide if they want to learn more about each person by clicking on those links or if they just want to learn about this book. There are 13 paragraphs in the Wiki summary for the entire play of Hamlet; that summarizing section includes three pictures, and no quotes--despite the numerous well-known quotes from Hamlet that are witty, short, and well-written. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play at 330 pages. That means Hazlitt's entire book is about 2/3 the size of Hamlet and written by a lesser known author. In this article there are currently 10 paragraphs for the summary of Bentham alone (the equivalent of one chapter, or if it were a play, one act). Bentham's summary also includes two pictures and numerous quotes. The citations throughout this article are solely from one source-Hazlitt's book. There are, in some cases, quotes from Hazlitt's work that are entire paragraphs--something that is borderline plagiarism. In general, it is acceptable to briefly quote someone, not copy their entire work, as has been done here. Paragraph-long quotes should always be used sparingly, but they are abundant in this article. For a book of this size by such an unknown, one quote would be sufficient. Finally, as the article only copies Hazlitt's impressions of the people, any supporting articles about those individuals need to be better researched and well-rounded. Again, if a person wants to find out what Hazlitt thought, they can read his book. 2601:245:C100:5E5C:5DE2:1734:F53C:56E0 (talk) 00:08, 19 November 2023 (UTC)


 * That this is too long I freely admit is debatable. I don't deny that. But I object to your accusation of plagiarism. Quotes attributed to their sources and not claimed as one's own are not plagiarism. Also, the very fact that Hazlitt is not that well known is precisely why I let this article grow as much as it did; I had hoped to entice more Wikipedia readers to delve into the original, which is freely available online. Finally, it is not true that the citations are only from Hazlitt's own book. There are plenty of quotes from his critics, too. "If a person wants to find out what Hazlitt thought, they can read his book." Well, by showing how much of interest there is in this book, my objective was to get readers to pick up that very book themselves and read more. --Alan W (talk) 02:33, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * No more than 15-20% of an essay should be quotations. See for example, https://www.monmouth.edu/resources-for-writers/documents/mla-direct-quotations.pdf/#:~:text=A%20general%20rule%20of%20thumb,summary%20or%20paraphrase%2C%20do%20so and https://the-bac.edu/Documents/Departments/Academic%20Support/Practice/Writing%20Tip%20Sheets/Paraphrasing.pdf If this book was not in public domain and if Wikipedia had not sought permission from the copyright-holder for reprinting so much of it, yes, this article could be flagged for plagiarism, and it is doubtful it could be copyrighted as written--even though it was recently written. See https://marist.libanswers.com/faq/325202#:~:text=You%20can%20plagiarize%20by%20re,portion%20and%20cite%20it%20properly Here is another good source on permissions and plagiarism, which is why I say it is borderline plagiarism--anyone can quote as much as s/he would like without permission from a public domain book, but s/he still would not be able to claim the work as his/her own (i.e. this article contains so much of someone else's work the U.S. Copyright Office would reject any request  submitted to them for copyrighting the article as a whole): https://stevelaube.com/how-much-can-i-quote-from-another-source-without-permission/
 * You also have copied directly without citations from other Wikipedia articles. ("Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social and legislative reformer..." is the exact same way Bentham's Wiki reads. And, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was a poet, philosopher, literary critic, and theologian who was a major force behind the Romantic movement in England..." is only slightly changed from Coleridge's Wiki.) Even though it is all Wikipedia, it is still self-plagiarism and violates Wikipedia rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copying_text_from_other_sources#:~:text=Yes%2C%20you%20can%20copy%20parts,original%20author%20is%20properly%20attributed.
 * It is not the job of an encyclopedia to get readers interested in a specific, unknown book. It's purpose is to give an overview of the subject. Book reviews, whose sole purpose is usually to entice others to read the original, are less than 2000 words: https://wendybelcher.com/writing-advice/how-to-write-book-review/#:~:text=Book%20reviews%20are%20usually%20600,words%20without%20getting%20bogged%20down
 * https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/book_reviews.html
 * https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-book-review/
 * The summary of this book could easily be put into two sentences:
 * Hazlitt's book is a series of essays about 23 of his contemporaries, some the modern reader would be more familiar with like Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, and Sir Walter Scott; and others that would be less familiar such as Sir James Mackintosh, Thomas Robert Malthus, and William Gifford. The essays detail the few things Hazlitt likes about these men, but they are primarily are written to criticize the great many things he does not like about them.
 * At this point, at least two people agree this article is too long. I have now provided you with outside sources that support my claims. Just as those consulting this page are probably unfamiliar with this book, few people who are familiar with War and Peace or Hamlet would consult the Wiki on those subjects. Neither of those articles have hundreds of paragraphs summarizing them--and I would be willing to bet the people writing those had just as much passion and desire to get others to read the books as what you have for this one. If you wish to further debate, please cite sources that support your view. 2601:245:C100:5E5C:6557:6830:C39A:46F3 (talk) 08:13, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I can cite sources. Like this one: Copying text from other sources. It's perfectly clear that the quotations I include, even if they could be cut shorter, are not plagiarism. Many of the sources you cite have to do with book reviews, periodical articles, material that is itself copyrighted so it can be sold for profit. I make no money from what I do here, nor do I claim to have written what I clearly show are Hazlitt's words. This is not a book review, so your citations are irrelevant.
 * Also, I reverted that last tag prepended to the article because that is irrelevant to nonfiction. I have no objection to the original "too long" tag. Why? Because I would be happy if someone—I would happily work with him or her—were to figure out how to rework the longer parts of the article so they are shorter, and yet still convey an understanding of what Hazlitt was writing, make it clear how this book is what it is, its particular character, which is all I mean by making the article interesting. Otherwise, why read any encyclopedia article? I am not attempting to "entice" the reader the way a book review would. Someone maybe studying the English Romantic period might want a clear idea of what the book is about, how it was received by others, what later critics thought of it. The summary of the book you give not only fails to convey this, it injects your own opinion ("they are primarily are written to criticize the great many things he does not like about them"), without supporting citations. It is what you would write that would violate Wikipedia's strictest rules.
 * You wrote, "at least two people agree this article is too long". But you are the only one who makes accusations of "borderline" plagiarism. Whatever that is. Something either is plagiarism or is it is not.
 * Also, please note that the original "too long" tag says merely that this article "may be too long ... ." Not even that it definitely is. I'm certainly happy to work with anyone who has constructive ideas to make this better while condensing it to a reasonable extent. However, no one but you has made accusations of plagiarism or suggested that the lead section consist of words like those you offer as an example, which violate Wikipedia's policies. --Alan W (talk) 05:33, 22 November 2023 (UTC)