User talk:Ealdgyth/Archive 33

Bede
Man, someone asks you for a citation and you just go into overdrive. Very impressive. Not thinking of getting back to this, are you? I'm neck deep in radiocarbon dating at the moment but could find a little time to help if you wanted to go back to this one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:43, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Nah, I'm not that interested. I really need to work on Harold Godwinson and some other long delayed projects. Got Battle of Hastings at FAC too... Ealdgyth - Talk 18:57, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

WikiCup 2013 July newsletter
We're halfway through this year's penultimate round, and the competition is moving along well. Pool A's currently leads overall, while Pool B's  is second. Both leaders are WikiCup veterans, and both have already scored over 600 points this month. If the round were to end today,, with 274 points, would be the lowest-scoring participant to make it through. This indicates that participants will need a score comparable to last year's (573, the highest ever) to qualify for the final. The high scores this year are a testament both to the quality of participants and to the increased focus on significant content (eligible for bonus points) in this year's competition. So far this round, both Sasata and have made up over half of their score through bonus points, with, for example, high importance FA koala earning Sasata a total of 440 points (from a multiplier of 4.4) and high-importance GA sea earning Cwmhiraeth a total of 216 points (from a multiplier of 7.2). Other articles on important topics submitted this round include a featured article on the Norman conquest of England by, and good articles on Nobel laureate in literature Henryk Sienkiewicz, Nobel laureate in physics Hans Bethe, and the noted Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryū. These articles are by, and Sturmvogel_66 respectively.

Other than that, there is not much to report! If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 23:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

DYK RfC

 * As a listed GA participant, you are invited to contribute to a formal Request for Comment on the question of whether Good Articles should be eligible to appear in the Did You Know? slot in future. Please see the proposal on its subpage here, or on the main DYK talk page. To add the discussion to your watchlist, click this link. Thank you in advance. Gilderien Chat&#124;Contributions 03:11, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Daniel, Bishop of Rochester or Selsey?
Hi! Me again. You created two bishop articles, but it seems to appear they are the same person. The second edition (1961) of the Handbook of British Chronology has Daniel (bishop) as bishop of Rochester between 951 and 955 (page 248) and Daniel of Selsey as bishop of Selsey around 955 (page 253). Also the Bishop of Rochester article says Daniel (bishop) was Bishop of Rochester or Selsey. I don't have copy of the second edition so I can't say anything further, I'm just quoting what the articles say. But I do have a copy of the third edition (1986, reprinted 2003) which doesn't mention either of them. In the Rochester list in the third edition has Beorhsige followed by Ælfstan, and in the Selsey list has Brihtheld followed by Eadhelm. At the moment the Bishop of Rochester and the Bishop of Selsey articles lists them. Should both articles deleted? Or one merged to the other and keep them listed in each table of bishops? Or leave things as it is with two articles? I'm not sure what should be done. Scrivener-uki (talk) 16:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's been on my radar for a bit, and I haven't figured out a good solution either. I think it's probably best to remove both, honestly. Handbook is our guiding light, so to speak, for pre-Conquest bishops. Wish someone would do a Fasti for pre-1066! Ealdgyth - Talk 18:20, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've redirected Daniel of Selsey to Daniel (bishop) and edited that latter article. I had thought of having both articles to be deleted, but considering the trouble with Articles for deletion/Alric, I decided instead to redirect one and edited the other. Scrivener-uki (talk) 21:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Works for me. I'd forgotten that AfD, although I knew we'd had issues with some of the same sort of thing, which was one reason I hadn't done much with the problem yet! Ealdgyth - Talk 21:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Æthelbert of York
The article Æthelbert of York you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needed to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass, otherwise it will fail. See Talk:Æthelbert of York for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by GA bot, on behalf of Miyagawa -- 22:26, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

To do...
Featured article candidates/Peasants' Revolt/archive1. Soon. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:51, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Since I'm greedy ...
Anyone have this? Ealdgyth - Talk 22:45, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Emailed to you. Dudley Miles (talk) 23:25, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! See User:Nev1 I'm working on Flambard! Ealdgyth - Talk 23:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well as long as you're not going to disappear off the face of Wikipedia once Flambard's done, that's great news. Nev1 (talk) 09:35, 7 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Anyone have access to this citation? (Yes, that indeed is Classical Greek subject matter ...) Ealdgyth - Talk 20:02, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

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Roger Norreis
Background and early career
 * "Once Norreis reached the king, he was converted to Baldwin's side by the archbishop, perhaps because of Baldwin's appointment of Norreis as the cellarer of Christ Church." I think the chronology is important here. Did Baldwain appoint Norreis during the negotiations as a sort of bribe, or had he appointed Norreis some time earlier?
 * Baldwin appointed him after Norreis had arrived at the king's court. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)


 * "They also captured and held Norreis in custody, telling others that he was sick." Who are these others?
 * royal messengers and presumably any other persons who inquired about Norreis. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Notes Eric  Corbett  13:07, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * "Norreis was a native of northern England, and was probably of Norse origin.[a][2]" vs. "... nor dispose of the monasteries property without the consent of his subordinates.[20][e]" I've seen reviewers at FAC complain about notes not being consistently either at the beginning of the citations or after them.
 * Either works for me. I kinda lean towards after the citations, but it's obviously not a big deal to me. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it's pretty much good to go now, although I'd bet a pound to a penny that someone will complain that the lead is too short, which I think it is. Eric  Corbett  16:07, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Any ideas of what to add? And I've hunted and hunted for suitable pictures, been utterly unable to find anything. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:30, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * With your permission I'll maybe add another paragraph and you can see what you think. Eric   Corbett  18:17, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine. I didn't add anything to the lead with the expansion I did prior to the final FA push, so it's probably lacking a bit. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:18, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm done. Eric   Corbett  21:02, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

(I just wanted to try out the new thanks thingie. Can't believe I missed that!) Eric   Corbett  00:21, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Left you a message...
...on the Peasants Revolt page. If you'd ever seen the state of my house, you'd probably have guessed this would happen... In the meantime, I've taken a stab at Henry III of England - turned out to be quite challenging, given the length of his reign. I'd be interested in your thoughts! Hchc2009 (talk) 09:04, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

WP:FOUR RFC
There are two WP:RFCs at WP:FOUR. The first is to conflate issues so as to keep people from expressing meaningful opinions. The second, by me, is claimed to be less than neutral by proponents of the first. Please look at the second one, which I think is much better.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:26, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Input would be appreciated (Otto I)
Hello Ealdgyth, could i ask you for your opinion on the current state of Otto I? It's my favorite pet article, and i could really use some input from an experienced editor of history-related topics. I have trimmed a lot of essayish content already and tried to strengthen the article structure and referencing (still more to do), and had some GOCE improvements. If you have some time and find that topic interesting, i'd greatly appreciate any suggestions and pointers for possible weaknesses and future improvements - i eventually plan to try for GA after some more references, but won't rush it. GermanJoe (talk) 13:12, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I'll try to look at the article this afternoon. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:52, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Did you have time to look at the Otto article yet? Just curious, what you think about it. GermanJoe (talk) 09:16, 18 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I haven't had much chance, sorry. RL is kicking my butt. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:31, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Revert question
Hi, why did you revert my addition to Battle of Hastings saying that it was unsourced? The article that I linked has numerous references, notes, and external links at the bottom of the article. --Pine✉ 04:46, 21 August 2013 (UTC)


 * That's not enough though. The item itself should be sourced in the article its added to. Also - this is a featured article - the standards are higher for sourcing. It needs to be a high quality source for information to be included. THe fact that there are reenactments of the battle doesn't really tell us much about the battle itself. Most big name battles are reenacted at some point. The standard for inclusion of such trivia is whether it tells us important information about the actual subject of the article. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:13, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what policies or guidelines would lead to that conclusion. If anything, they encourage the opposite. WP:SCOPE says "Use the most general scope for each article you can. Since Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, it's supposed to summarise essentially all knowledge. Hence accidental or deliberate choice of a limited scope for an article can make notable information disappear from the encyclopedia entirely, or make it highly inaccessible. Since the primary purpose of the Wikipedia is to be a useful reference work, narrow article scopes are to be avoided." Also, I'm not aware of any policy or guideline that discourages adding useful information to featured articles unless the information has a reference that meets FAC standards. On the contrary, WP:BOLD says "The Wikipedia community encourages users to be bold when updating the encyclopedia", and the Featured article notification on the Battle of Hastings talk page says, "Battle of Hastings is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so." If you are concerned about referencing relevant factual material that is added to an article after it has passed FAC it seems from these statements that generally the best thing to do is add the relevant reference or attach a CN tag instead of deleting it. I am reverting your deletion although I will add at least one reference to address your concern about referencing. --Pine✉ 06:52, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm so glad that you can quote all sorts of alphabet soup links at me. I'd like to point out that adding information that isn't referenced is also subject to deletion. There is no requirement for any editor to add references for unsourced information - it's not my job to clean up after editors who should know better. And I've removed the picture - it was way undue for the mention as well as being of pretty poor quality. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:16, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hey Pine, I think you've overlooked WP:BURDEN and WP:UNDUE and WP:CAREFUL among others, and WP:SCOPE is neither a policy nor a guideline. (Sorry for the additional soup, E). Nikkimaria (talk) 02:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * As I said above, the best thing to have done if you were concerned about the lack of an in-line citation (which I wasn't because I didn't think it was likely to be challenged as unverifiable due to the references available in the wikilinked article) would be for you to have attached a CN tag or added the reference from the wikilinked article. That would have been easy to do and would serve our readers much better than deleting valuable information. WP:BURDEN is easily met with the references in the linked article. As for the photo, it's not a great quality photo but neither is File:Battle_Flat_-_geograph.org.uk_-_285158.jpg which is already included in the article, and I'm not sure what WP:UNDUE weight the new photo has, I think it's a valuable addition for our readers but I'm interested in knowing more specifically what WP:UNDUE problem you see with it. The reenactment is not a minor event with twenty people, it's an annual event with thousands of participants and I think that's significant information for the reader. --Pine✉  06:29, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In terms of actual discussion in the article - it's undue weight to give that much space to a picture of something that gets one line in the article. In terms of the actual importance of the battle - the fact that people reenact it is really very much trivia. Adding a picture just makes it undue weight on that trivial information. As for what you think I should have done - that's what your choice of what to do. After working my butt off to try and get the article to FA status - I chose differently. It's a valid choice - and you're not a newbie so you can't accuse me of biting you. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * WRT the picture I'll agree to disagree and I'll leave it out, at least for now. WRT what you should have done, I think I've said my opinion enough already and I'm going to leave it at that. I'll leave this discussion for now, but feel free to ping me through Echo if you'd like to talk further. For what it's worth, aside from the disagreement about the reenactment, I like what I've read in the rest of the article and I'm glad that you got it to FA. I can see that was a lot of work. --Pine✉ 05:28, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Thoroughbred
I am going to re-make my changes to Thoroughbred with cited references. Since what is in the article is uncited, that will place a higher burden on any reversion you might entertain. 68.174.97.122 (talk) 14:18, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, the information IS sourced in the article, just not in the lead, which is where you made your changes. See Thoroughbred where "The Thoroughbred is a distinct breed of horse, although people sometimes refer to a purebred horse of any breed as a thoroughbred. The term for any horse or other animal derived from a single breed line is purebred." is sourced. Leads do not need to be cited if the information is in the body of the article with a source. Your edits changed the lead to read differently than the sourced information in the body. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:25, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Every day, in every way ...
... this place gets worse and worse. Eric   Corbett  20:44, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, I had the fun with Thoroughbred this morning, and then the usual fun and games at Guy Fawkes and to cap it all off, the perpetual whinging about the lead image at Middle Ages cropped up again... I would much rather have been adding content but... Ealdgyth - Talk 22:19, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I saw that the lead image nonsense had been resurrected on the Middle Ages talk page, but Guy Fawkes had dropped off my watch list following my user name change, so I didn't see that. I've had my own travails on Ned Painter, over what the 1904 DNB says and what the 2004 ODNB says about his birth date. Every day a new argument. Eric   Corbett  22:35, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I hate the fact that people think the DNB is as reliable as the ODNB. There is just no way ... if the DNB conflicts with the ODNB, the ODNB should be considered reliable and to have superceded the DNB. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:55, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * We need to do up some sort of "relentless march of the trolls" page now that Bish had WP:WADR deleted.  Montanabw (talk) 18:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

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Million Award
The Million Award is a new initiative to recognize the editors of Wikipedia's most-read content; you can read more about the award and its possible tiers (Quarter Million Award, Half Million Award, and Million Award) at Million Award. You're also welcome to display this userbox:

If I've made any error in this listing, please don't hesitate to correct it; if for any reason you don't feel you deserve it, please don't hesitate to remove it; if you know of any other editor who merits one of these awards, please don't hesitate to give it; if you yourself deserve another award from any of the three tiers, please don't hesitate to take it! Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:59, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

WikiCup 2013 August newsletter
This year's final is upon us. Our final eight, in order of last round's score, are:
 * , a WikiCup newcomer who has contributed on topics of military history and physics, including a number of high-importance topics. Good articles have made up the bulk of his points, but he has also scored a great deal of bonus points. He has the second highest score overall so far, with more than 3000 points accumulated.
 * , another WikiCup veteran who reached the finals in 2012, 2011 and 2010. He writes on a variety of topics including botany, mycology and astronomy, and has claimed the highest or joint highest number of featured articles every round so far this year. He has the third highest score overall, with just under 3000 points accumulated.
 * , 2012 WikiCup champion, who writes mostly on marine biology. She has also contributed to high-importance topics, seeing huge numbers of bonus points for high-importance featured and good articles. Previous rounds have seen her scoring the most bonus points, with scoring spread across did you knows, good articles and featured articles.
 * , a WikiCup veteran who finished in second place in 2012, and competed as early as 2009. He writes articles on biology, especially mycology, and has scored highly for a number of collaborations at featured article candidates.
 * , the winner of the 2010 competition. His contributions mostly concern Naval history, and he has scored a very large number of points for good articles and good article reviews in every round. He is the highest scorer overall this year, with over 3500 points in total.
 * , who is competing in the WikiCup for the second time, though this will be her first time in the final. A regular at FAC, she is mostly interested in British medieval history, and has scored very highly for some top-importance featured articles on the topic.
 * , a finalist in 2012 and 2011. He writes on a broad variety of topics, with many of this year's points coming from good articles about Star Trek. Good articles make up the bulk of his points, and he had the most good articles back in round 2; he was also the highest scorer for DYK in rounds 1 and 2.
 * 1) has previously been involved with the WikiCup, but hasn't participated for a number of years. He scores mostly from restoration work leading to featured picture credits, but has also done some article writing and reviewing.

We say goodbye to eight great participants who did not qualify for the final:, , , , , , ,. Having made it to this stage is still an excellent achievement, and you can leave with your heads held high. We hope to see you all again next year. Signups are now open for the 2014 WikiCup, which will begin on 1 January. All Wikipedians, whatever their interest or level of experience, are warmly invited to participate in next year's competition.

This last month has seen some incredible contributions; for instance, Cwmhiraeth's Starfish and Ealdgyth's Battle of Hastings—two highly important, highly viewed pages—made it to featured article status. It would be all too easy to focus solely on these stunning achievements at the expense of those participants working in lower-scoring areas, when in fact all WikiCup participants are doing excellent work. A mention of everything done is impossible, but here are a few: Last round saw the completion of several good topics (on the 1958, 1959 and 1962 Atlantic hurricane seasons) to which 12george1 had contributed. Calvin999 saw "S&M" (song), on which he has been working for several years, through to featured article status on its tenth try. Figureskatingfan continued towards her goal of a broad featured/good topic on Maya Angelou, with two featured and four good articles. ThaddeusB contributed significantly to over 20 articles which appeared on the main page's "in the news" section. Adam Cuerden continued to restore a large number of historical images, resulting in over a dozen FP credits this round alone. The WikiCup is not just about top-importance featured articles, and the work of all of these users is worthy of commendation.

Finally, the usual notices: If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 06:13, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Half million award
Just saw this one in the WikiCup newsletter, and am happy to present you with another of these already:

Cheers, and thanks for all you do, Khazar2 (talk) 12:11, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry that these are coming piecemeal, but Montanabw pointed out to me that I owe you two more of these:


 * I won't overload your talk page further with these, but please feel free to let me know if there are any others I've missed, or simply claim them. Congrats again on the terrific body of work you continue to assemble here... -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Neil Loring
I've always been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, including his Sir Nigel books. When I discovered recently that Conan Doyle had based the character of Sir Nigel on the 14th-century knight Neil Loring I decided to take a look at his article, which has been utterly defaced by requests for citation. What pisses me off about that kind of thing is that there's a perfectly good ODNB article on Loring, freely available to pretty much anyone in the UK who can read. Eric  Corbett  17:11, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * But didn't you know it's a lot more fun and less work to just tag things, and annoy other people while the mad tagger does no actual work and just sits around with his thumb up his... well, anyway... that sort of thing...! :-P   Montanabw (talk) 18:00, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * This tagging business really gets on my tits. Not only is it lazy, but it's often stupid. Who cares if an article is a so-called orphan for instance? Isn't the important thing that it exists to be linked to from external sites, not other WP entries? Eric   Corbett  18:11, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * All true. It would have a point if there was any probability of someone fixing the issue in response to a tag, but we know that for the last several years the chances of that are pretty low. For "more citations needed" tags in particular, the randomly chosen tagged article seems no worse than the randomly chosen untagged article. Johnbod (talk) 21:33, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks to me like there were citations but someone did a number on them and edited them out somehow... Ealdgyth - Talk 21:45, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't looked at the article history, so you may well be right. But I'm going to fix Sir Neil Loring; it's surely the least we can do to his memory. Eric   Corbett  21:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I often come across tags that are four or five years old, as I'm sure you do as well. What the Hell is the point of a tag that nobody gives a monkey's arse about, as they obviously don't since nobody addresses the reason for the tag? Why not just fix it? Or if you can't fix it why not just shut the fuck up? Eric   Corbett  21:58, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I've found this a useful way to blow off steam on that account:

Montanabw (talk) 17:23, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool update
Hey Ealdgyth. I'm contacting you because you're involved in the Article Feedback Tool in some way, either as a previous newsletter recipient or as an active user of the system. As you might have heard, a user recently anonymously disabled the feedback tool on 2,000 pages. We were unable to track or prevent this due to the lack of logging feature in AFT5. We're deeply sorry for this, as we know that quite a few users found the software very useful, and were using it on their articles.

We've now re-released the software, with the addition of a logging feature and restrictions on the ability to disable. Obviously, we're not going to automatically re-enable it on each article—we don't want to create a situation where it was enabled by users who have now moved on, and feedback would sit there unattended—but if you're interested in enabling it for your articles, it's pretty simple to do. Just go to the article you want to enable it on, click the "request feedback" link in the toolbox in the sidebar, and AFT5 will be enabled for that article.

Again, we're very sorry about this issue; hopefully it'll be smooth sailing after this :). If you have any questions, just drop them at the talkpage. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) 22:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter - February 2013
Date to archive Ealdgyth - Talk 00:01, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Longchamp
I made two errors on the correction to Longchamp's page and am sorry for both. Would like your opinion on the correction I was intending. The Stephen Devereux indicated in your source has a documented wife, Isabel de Cantilupe. The genealogy from 1897 indicates that his father, Walter Devereux, married Cecelia de Longchamp, and there is support for this. The question is does this fall under original research. In Stephen Devereux's charter to Lyonshall he identifies his wife, Isabel, and the widow Cecelia both. Upon Stephen's death, Isabel is cited by writ of the King to retain her dower rights. Cecelia also has multiple entries in the Curia Regis Rolls in the time period following Walter Devereux's death (1198) involving Devereux estates, and defense of her dower right. One entry has the defending party claiming his right by inheritance through his mother and counters that Cecelia's claim is only by marriage right. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arcussenilis (talk • contribs) 23:22, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The source that is currently in the article is from a modern study of the family of the Longchamps - this supercedes the 1897 genealogy. You need to show modern sources for this information - modern secondary sources. Besides this article on Longchamp's family - there is no mention of a sister Cecilia in William Longchamp's Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry, which mentions all his other siblings. I note that the footnote you added also has the phrase "Genealogy contributed by Lord Hereford" - which makes me very suspicious. Using 100+ year old genealogies is a very bad idea. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:14, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Middle Ages TFA
See my explanation at Talk:Middle Ages - I thought I would try using five pictures, one randomly selected each time the page loads, instead of just picking one. I hope it works on a technical basis; I also hope it means that you and those others involved in discussions about what should be the appropriate lead image can all feel that at least one of the pictures is a suitable choice for the main page... BencherliteTalk 15:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Main Page appearance: Middle Ages
This is a note to let the main editors of Middle Ages know that the article will be appearing as today's featured article on September 12, 2013. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. If you prefer that the article appear as TFA on a different date, or not at all, please ask. You can view the TFA blurb at Today's featured article/September 12, 2013. If it needs tweaking, or if it needs rewording to match improvements to the article between now and its main page appearance, please edit it, following the instructions at Today's featured article/requests/instructions. The blurb as it stands now is below:

The Middle Ages of European history lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and barbarian invaders formed new kingdoms. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire covering much of Western Europe; the Carolingian Empire endured until the 9th century. During the High Middle Ages, which began after AD 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase. Western European Christians attempted to regain control of the Holy Land in the Crusades. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of universities. The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, and the architecture of Gothic cathedrals are among the outstanding achievements of this period. The Late Middle Ages was marked by famine, plague, and war; between 1347 and 1350, the Black Death killed about a third of Europeans. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, leading to the early modern period.

Images used in this blurb:

This list of images only shows on this subpage and will not show up on the main page, for example. DO NOT remove the "noinclude" tags! UcuchaBot (talk) 23:01, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sooooo thrilled. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:29, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I bet you are. At least it's semi-protected (what a great idea, full marks to the admin who did that, I say...) And, besides, those conversations on the talk page about which photo to use as the lead image have rather died down... BencherliteTalk 23:38, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, joys. So it can be on the main page and I can hear all sorts of whines about it. And everyone can insert their favorite bit of mistaken history into the article.. (sighs). I think sometimes I write FAs notwithstanding the fact that they have to go on the main page sometime... That's an idea, maybe I should write on porn stars to avoid the issue... Ealdgyth - Talk 23:42, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Any porn star article you get to TFA I will put straight onto the main page. You and I can go out in a blaze of glory! BencherliteTalk 23:46, 5 September 2013 (UTC)


 * LOL. One thing I would suggest (maybe you do this already?)  is to do an edit just before the onslaught hits (perhaps the day before) that is clearly labeled something in the edit summary like "Stable edited version of [date]" and so those of us who help patrol the page can, if needed, keep reverting to a "clean" version should the intervening edits get too confusing. If you see something useful to keep, we can look for the last Eadlgyth edit and go by the edit summary if it's a vandal revert or a blessing for a useful addition(?)... While good contributions occasionally occur on TFA day, if there are any, they can have diffs posted at talk to work in the following day...  Is that a useful idea?   Montanabw (talk) 16:42, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think so. Stable version could also be put on the talk page and / or an oldid for the TFA in the article history. BencherliteTalk 18:31, 6 September 2013 (UTC)


 * (Groan) and an excellent idea, puns notwithstanding! LOL!   Montanabw (talk) 21:09, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Matilda...
...right, onto the Empress next... :) Hchc2009 (talk) 17:17, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

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