User talk:Albert Lewis

 Hi Albert Lewis, and Welcome to Wikipedia!  Welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you enjoy the encyclopedia and want to stay. As a first step, you may wish to read the Introduction.

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 Good luck, and have fun. Rrburke(talk) 21:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Poor Man's Bible.
Hi Albert Lewis!

I checked on Poor Man's Bible and found your edits. It's not the right place for them.

If we are going to have a paragraph on the ancient and 19th century attitudes to glass conservation, then we also need a paragraph on fresco conservation, wood conservation, stone, metal etc etc etc... all in an article which is really about how the bible is conveyed in pictorial form. Not the right place, OK?

The article is already very long, and very tightly structured. It is not a general article about materials used in churches.

There is another article called Stained glass. Your edits would be more appropriate there. But that article is already very long. And stained glass conservation is an enormous subject and you only slightly touched on it.

Can I suggest that you start a separate article on stained glass conservation

I would also like to make the point that the ancient technique of repairing windows by simply adding more lead to mend the breaks is the only thing that has allowed many ancient windows to survive more-or-less intact. The "aesthetic" notion that extra lead looked messy and stains and discolouration were "unsightly" robbed the world of a vast amount of glass during the 19th century. I do not know what Violett le Duc's policy on stained glass was, but his replacement of stonework was ruthless.

I have a strong interest in stained glass coservation and have personally battled restorers over the notion that a cracked face ought to be repainted rather than repaired. If this attitude had prevailed in the Middle Ages, then the Five Sisters at York wouldn't be there. the Canterbury Cathedral home site has good information about the absolute travesty that took place there in the 19th century. We are very lucky that any of Canterbury's windows survived in situ because they were systematically sold and replaced by a couple of generation of "retorers". Please don't sing the praises of 19th centruy glass restorers near me!

As far as I can see, the current practice at Canterbury is for very conservative "conservation" which entails much repair, and as little replacement as possible.


 * If you leave a message on a talk page, either personal talk page or an article's dicussion page, then sign it. But don't sign your edits to articles. There is a "history" for each article which shows who made what changes. If you look at any article, you will find that no editors's name appears in it.
 * You will also see, when you edit, that you have a box to write a short description of what you changed. Some changes are marked minor. A minor change is only very minor eg. correction to spelling or fixing a link that doesn't work. You should always state what you did because sometimes vandals blank areas and call it minor.
 * With regard to changing spelling, all US articles are in US English Spelling. All UK, Australian, NZ, Indian etc articles and most European articles use English Spelling. If you change "colour" to "color" and a "-ise" to "-ize", then lots of people get cross.
 * I notice that you made a great number of saves, for one fairly short edit. Check out the Show preview option. It will save you from having to save the same thing lots of times in order to get it right.
 * Practical advice on editting- Read very carefully before you edit. You may have good info to add, but be putting it in the wrong paragraph, or even the wrong article. For example, there are quite a nummbber of articles on stained glass, including one specifically on British 19th century glass, one on the Hardmans, one on Tiffany and another one devoted specifically to the types of glass developed and used by Tiffany's studio, another on architectural glass, one on leadlight and one on Cathedral glass (which is not glass in cathedrals). And that is only some of the range.
 * Problematic edits add real info but do it in the wrong place. Like-
 * "Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. There is much speculation about who the subject of the portrait was. He was a vegetarian all his life and used to buy birds at the markets and set them free. It was left to his pupil Salaino at his death and was later sold for 2,000 francs."

Hope that this is helpful!

--Amandajm 12:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC)