User talk:Groundsquirrel13

jutland
with regard to your comment, the initial reaction to Jutland in Britain was horror at the major british defeat. This was followed by a desparate propaganda campaign to explain it wasn't really a defeat. As I probably said somewhere, I have little idea what happened in Germany about the battle over the next few years, but in Britain there was this remarkable campaign by beatty to blame Jellicoe for letting the germans escape. Various people waded in on either side. Public understanding was thoroughly confused by all the contemporary descriptions of the battle which were wrong. So, I would say contrary to your comment the general view of the battle has changed quite a bit over the years, and is still doing so as people are still fitting new facts into the puzzle. But as I say on the page, overall it was a British win.

You have yet to convince me it was even a win on the day for the Germans if the total damage inflicted on each side is taken into account. Lots of things are said about the battle, for instance that it demonstrated the success of Tirpitz' policy of building unsinkable ships, but in fact I am not sure any of the British ships really received enough hits to see how many they could take before sinking from holes. If you have been following the debate, you will have noticed that the british ships sank because of magazine explosions, which didn't happen on German ships. I have yet to satisfy myself why this happened, at least in the sense of whether it was a fundamental design fault of the british ships, or simply careless ammunition handling. But either way, the German success was mainly due to this british flaw. The remarkable thing in some ways is that Lion narrowly survived going the same way. It raises the question for me, which remains unresolved, about how come she was lucky and others were not.

There has been much said over the years about shells falling practically vertically on to ships, or striking at glancing angles. When I first started reading this, I immediately began to puzzle over the ballistics of this issue, which practical consideration of the actual trajectories of shells seems to have gone entirely over the heads of many people over the years. naval guns at the period were designed to shoot practically horizontally and were incapable of being pointed up into the air more than 10-20 degrees in most cases. There was a massive cover up after the battle to disguise major mistakes by many people. I would say, 'on both sides', except perhaps that my detailed knowledge of german actions is lacking. It smacks to me that the public debate over failings of shells and armour was the 'acceptable' explanation of failure, rather than assigning it to incompetent handling of the available equipment. My impression is that Hipper did well, and also locally achieved the tactical victory you suggest. I was just reading some Marder, where he suggested it is commonly held German gunnery started well, but got worse with time. In the actual battlecruiser engagement, Beatty initially managed to mislay his battleships and allowed Hipper to close with him on Hippers terms, hence the German good start. When the battleships finally arrived, German performance deteriorated, hardly surprising since they were now having to dodge shells from an additional enemy. So I remain unconvinced Hipper did anything other than make the best of the situation competently and professionally. Similarly, while Scheer has been lambasted for his unexplained second approach to the british fleet, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. having just written up some of the events of the night, he had a clear plan, knew what he had to do and carried it off well, to escape.

SO despite my assessment that both German admirals did well, they still lost, they knew they lost, and they knew they would lose again in a re-match. In particular, the German battlecruiser fleet which must be the point of first contact with the enemy was now down one more irreplaceable ship to only four, against the nine remaining british battlecruisers and still the five queen elizabeths probably able to act as scouts (probably, because perhaps not quite fast enough to catch Hipper on a full speed run, but they vastly overmatched Hipper's ships). This was a critical loss for the Germans, who had now effectively lost three battlecruisers during the war. The whole war was about battles between unequal forces and whether people accepted or declined battle on those terms. With too small a battlecruiser force, even the option of baiting the enemy and trying to inflict losses through temporary superiority became impossible. The Germans did pretty well to get the rest of the battlecruisers home, but I would say any loss was too much and meant the end of the war for the German fleet. The battle demonstrated that the game was up, and the choice was either to fight to an inevitable steady destruction or stay at home. The germans had the option of attempting to build more battlecruisers and take on the british, but it was apparent this was a losing game and they rightly felt submarines were more usefull.

I come back to the point I was making. Even if the German fleet had engaged in similar future actions with similar success, the result would still have likely been attrition of both sides until only the british remained. So it could have gone german victory+German victory+German victory...=German ultimate loss. Hence my great difficulty in describing the result of Jutland in any way as 'German Victory', because more properly it was another step along the road to defeat. Sandpiper (talk) 01:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi again

I shall first explain that what I ahve done on wiki has been entirely led by what I happen to be interested in outside wiki at the time. A year ago someone gave me a copy of a churchill biography. One of the big crises of his career was the dardanelles fiasco, and I became interested in WW1 naval issues in an attempt to sort out whether I felt he was right or wrong to press the campaign. My conclusion, that he was right but failed to get sufficient support for the scheme in time for it to succeed. It was totally too little too late. By then I had become interested in the naval war generally and moved on from battle to battle, fiddling with articles here as I went. In due course I got to Jutland. First off, I balked at it, because it is a huge article on a very complicated battle. The article here is big and complex for a wiki article, but tiny compared to the total amount written about it, and not just books going over exactly the same ground by different people.

So I am not a historian. As far as I am concerned, if there is an infobox saying result, it should tell me what the result was. ie, how things stood afterwards. This might be done by saying 'win' or 'loss' but I find this very unsatisfactory as it must almost always say virtually nothing about the significance of the win, loss, draw. So we might say 'win', as at Jutland, when while the Germans sank more ships (yes, I agree, of course), by any real measure they lost. So if it just say win, loss etc without explanation, it has to say 'British win'. The relevant wiki article says: ''A strategic victory is a victory that brings long-term advantage to the victor, and disturbs the enemy's ability to wage a war. When a historian speaks of a victory in general, it is usually referring to a strategic victory.'' So, if we say just win or lose in the Jutland result box, then we ought to be referring to the long term result.

It is only since reading here that I have become acquainted with the notion of a strategic or tactical win. This seems to be significantly a wiki invention. Obviously, outsiders acknowledge the distinction, but I don't recall reading this exact phrasing in any of the books on the subject. They explain at length the long term and short term consequences, but they do not split the result exactly this way. As I said before, this may well be because they understand a reader is likely to be confused by a bald statement 'tactical win', strategic loss'. I still have to look up which is which each time, because the words remain a meaningless distinction to me: I would, and do, use tactics and strategy synonymously. This may be a failing on my part, but I'm not thick, and if I confuse the two so must many many others.

I also think that there can not be a totally clear cut division between the two. For example, you dismissed the concept of holding territory in the battle. What exactly counts as a tactical gain or loss? You seem to imply that holding territory does count, because you argue to dismiss it at sea. hardly, control of the sea is a valuable thing to win or lose and an immediate thing as the direct result of a battle. In considering, say, the siege of a town, would it be a tactical defeat to take the town but lose one more man dead than the other side? You havn't addressed these points which I have tried to raise, the problem of comparing lost apples with won oranges.

I placed the current 'British dominance of the north sea maintained', because I think it exactly describes the result of the battle in a minimum number of words. It meaningfully explains what the actual result was. It avoids the issue of arguing the relative value of the lost ships, or the balance of who won what elements of the battle. It does not go into the issue of numerical losses, which is covered by its very own infobox section just below. Why should this entry say the same thing as just below, but less well? Sandpiper (talk) 07:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Edward Coke
While patrolling userpages I found your Coke draft - still working on it? I bought a couple of biographies to expand his article in the same way I've done Lord Denning, Norman Birkett and Lord Mansfield. If you've got the time and want to collaborate over the summer, give me a ping on my talkpage. Thanks, Ironholds (talk) 12:46, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * What I've got at the moment are a couple of biographies of the man written in the 19th century, so really just greater detail on his life is the best I can do. His style, personality, importance and so on all need to be worked in, certainly - I've got a few tidbits in other books that mention his aggressive style of advocacy and his "pedantic" writing style, that sort of thing. I've also got a Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of the Superior Courts of England and Wales, which should be helpful. Ironholds (talk) 23:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Just a note that I'm working on my big rewrite now in my sandbox :). Ironholds (talk) 17:57, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * it'll probably go early life/education/etc, career as a barrister, "political career" divided by monarch and then by major event, writings, legacy. The writings section will be a summary of the articles I plan to write on the Reports and Institutes. Ironholds (talk) 19:48, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Donoghue v Stevenson
I propose we reinstate the original condescensions, instead of the partial summary of "facts" which omits various important averments. You reverted my change without discussion because you claimeit "better to summarize the facts of the case than just quote at length".

In my opinion, the original averments, which are not much longer, are clearly better (more useful) than the summary, because they - raise some important issues in the untried case, such as the opaque glass, the identifying description of the bottle, the fact that it was sealed with a metal cap, and Minchella's (possibly unwholesome) ice-cream - omit irrelevant "facts", (mecessarily, as not averred!) - gives the basis for the important point that no facts were ever established, because of Stevenson's death. - are interesting, only recently available, and not widely reported - are useful material for student exercises on what is probably the most fundamental British case for new law students Jezza (talk) 23:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC) .


 * Well, I disagree with you for a few reasons. First off, Wikipedia is written for a general audience, not just lawyers and law students.  The original averments were written in a dense, legal style that could be difficult or confusing for the average reader.  I think it is much more helpful (and stylish) to summarize the facts in common prose.  If you feel that some important facts have been left out of the current summary, then I think there's an easy solution: you could add them to the summary.


 * As for your points that the averments are "interesting, only recently available, and not widely reported" and are "useful material for student exercises on what is probably the most fundamental British case for new law students", I agree with you. Wikipedia, however, is not the right place to deposit primary source material.  Rather, primary sources should be entered in Wikisource, and a link can be added on the Wikipedia article page.  (See the article on the Petition of Right for an example if you're not familiar with Wikisource.)


 * Perhaps I should have discussed the change before I made it, though in fairness I think it was more your responsibility to discuss your change before making it than it was for me to discuss it before undoing it, since you were the one altering the status quo. Sorry if I gave any offense, though.  I know how annoying it can be to have edits reverted. Groundsquirrel13 (talk) 05:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

MarineMeat (2nd nom)
Hi. I improperly closed the previous AfD, and there is a second AfD going on. Since you commented on the first, maybe you are interested to comment in this one. Thanks. -- Cycl o pia talk  21:52, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Your recent edit of Telescope
I saw your edit, removing a gratuitous "that" and thought to post a quick compliment. People seem to use the word at every opportunity, mostly inappropriately. It is good to have editors who pay attention to such details. Regards. Trilobitealive (talk) 01:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It's nice to see that somebody else is looking out for the minor grammatical details, which can be so important. Groundsquirrel13 (talk) 01:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You're quite welcome! I'm one of the worst transgressors! I once wrote a novel, deleting over 700 "that"s from the first draft. I admire people who can read over an article and catch the mistakes!Trilobitealive (talk) 02:08, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Heho
i guess the discussion at jutland talk becomes a simple OR debatte. I brought this now to the neutral point of view board.Blablaaa (talk) 21:27, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Blablaaa
Hi you obviously have a working knowledge of User:Blablaaa there is a discussion Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Blablaaa you might be interested in commenting on.--Jim Sweeney (talk) 08:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage
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File:Edward Coke.jpg missing description details
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ArbCom elections are now open!
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Oliver St John (pronounced Sinjin)
Hi. In 2008 you seem to have edited the Oliver St John article to say that it was pronounced "Sinjin": https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_St_John&oldid=256772750 In 2015 somebody anonymous changed that to "Sinjun". I heard this in a podcast recently. However, recently somebody else removed that information from article, saying it was useless/unnecessary and unsourced. I personally think that it is totally necessary, and if it is untrue, I think it still needs to be mentioned.

For all we know, the podcast could have gotten the information from wikipedia, or so I don't know if it is a reliable source. Do you have any recollection of where you got the information initially? If this is the wrong place to ask you stuff like this, feel free to delete this so that I don't mess up your talk page.