User talk:Atc47b

Giovanna Sestini
Welcome to Wikipedia and many thanks for creating this article! As you can see, I've moved your draft into article space where you can continue to work on it if you wish. You are now an auto-confirmed user, so if you wish, feel free to create future articles directly rather than going through Articles for Creation. Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 07:44, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

John Theophilus Desaguliers
Thanks for the considerable effort you have made to improve this article. It reads better, and is better organised. Unfortunately, it now contains no inline citations, which the Wikipedia Manual of Style insists on, which makes your hard work a candidate for immediate reversion. If you could add a few inline references, we would at least be back to our previous state. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 12:45, 14 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your kind words on my Desaguliers efforts. I take your point about references. To be honest, I have to say that several of those in the original article were a bit on the “light” side from my perspective. For example:


 * “2. Fellows of the Royal Society - D. The Royal Society. Retrieved 2005-02-12. This PDF document also contains birth and death dates.”


 * How does one find that reference? Why put in a retrieval date when the source is missing?  Why include only a list of past Fellows, even if their birth and death dates are listed, when a reference to the Sackler Archive on the Royal Society website tells you so much more, and substantiates the biography very much more comprehensively (and not just for Desaguliers, of course)?  I felt that that one, and some others too, were not worth re-introducing on the page.  You will see that I have now put in the Sackler Archive as a reference.


 * I had already incorporated some of the original references as Further Reading because I think this could give the interested reader a more round picture. For example
 * the original said as a reference:


 * “4. Priestley, Joseph, The history and present state of electricity, J. Dodsley, London, 1767. Page 66. Retrieved 29 May 2011.”


 * I have put within Further Reading:


 * “Priestley, Joseph (1769), The History and Present State of Electricity: With Original Experiments (Google eBook), pp 61-67; accessed 12 May 2014”


 * I will aim is to put in references to some other aspects of the write-up (along the lines of the Sackler entry), but it will take me time, especially as I shall be away quite a lot in the coming days.


 * You mention your interest in freemasonry. In the course of researching the life of Desaguliers over many years I feel that I have learned a great deal from several eminent masonic researchers, including some members of QC, both here and abroad. However, if you have some specific reference ideas for JTD in this field I would very much welcome them.


 * Finally, I would be interested on your thoughts on JTD entries in other languages, which I see even includes Basque! The French one is particularly good but the others vary considerably and in some cases are little more than stubs.  Are there any clues on who wrote them, and does it make any sense to try to contact the authors, or would I be better advised to leave well alone?
 * --Atc47b (talk) 09:59, 15 May 2014 (UTC)


 * You are quite right about the original references. The whole article needed a thorough overhaul. I'll try and make time to sift through the refs and rescue what can be rescued.


 * My own work on Desaguliers is pretty much original research, and inadmissible in a Wikipedia article - although it would not be controversial in France. I can show that the first documented Francophone lodge was Desagulier's baby, and the balance of probability tells me that the form of blue lodge masonry practiced in France was invented by some combination of Desaguliers/Payne/Anderson. This was the Moderns rite, far from universally practiced in that Grand Lodge, and buried during the 1813 union, but not before it became the standard rite on the Continent. I have no high hopes of referencing this soon, but there are a couple of French authors who occasionally throw out this sort of gem as a footnote (Bernheim and Naudon). The bulk of recent French masonic literature is philosophical rather than hard research.


 * The French Wikipedia piece also interests me. It states that Desaguliers senior had the Huguenot church in Swallow Street. This was later sold and became the Scottish Presbyterian church of James Anderson, a link between Desaguliers and Anderson I haven't seen mentioned. I haven't been able to reference the Swallow Street link, and that paragraph in fr.wiki isn't referenced. There is probably a tool for finding editors responsible, I usually pick my way through the edit history. Whether they will respond to queries is pot luck.


 * Hope this helps. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 22:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC)