User talk:InteriorMan

Aelred of Rievaulx
Thank you for your edits in the Aelred of Rievaulx article. Wikipedia's rules require that all statements need to be sourced with a "ref" tag (look at the other material in the article) rather than referring to books only by author and date - e.g. "Brown (2010)" - which may be normal procedure in some academic fields, but Wikipedia requires a different method, otherwise someone is almost certain to revert all your edits by declaring them "unsourced". Also, Wikipedia's rules require stating what various authors have said without stating any definite position in Wikipedia's own voice, other than to estimate the scholarly consensus: e.g., rather than saying "X is the case", you need to say "A majority of historians say X is the case" and back that up with a reference which provides evidence from a third-party source (e.g. a historian saying that most of his colleagues believe X to be the case). AgeOfPlantagenet (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed with AgeOfPlantagenet. Note what I said in my edit summary when I reverted. We just report what WP:RS say. Feel free to add what other historians say, and to follow up on existing claims. The LGBT categories may also need to go if it is not certain he was gay. Crossroads -talk- 19:55, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Apologies, I am unfamiliar with wikipedia. I've never edited before, I will do my best to adhere to the correct format. I've just been contributing to a research project on minor Cistercian saints and a colleague of mine showed me the wikipedia article for Aelred. I was perturbed by the grossly inaccurate section on sexuality not supported by recent scholarship, or indeed much scholarship at all. I have a chapter deadline in a book to meet so I cannot devote more time to this currently, but I will come back and reformat Aelred according to Wikipedia's rules. Many thanks for your time.
 * I'm hoping you'll come back to edit the article again. I think you're correct in saying that most historians do not support Boswell's ideas about this, nor about much of anything for that matter, because even gay historians such as Alan Bray debunked most (or all) of Boswell's claims on related subjects. I don't know offhand whether Bray specifically covered the Aelred of Rievaulx issue, but he certainly debunked Boswell's similar ideas (which usually involved redefining medieval phrases which actually have a well-established and undisputed meaning). Right now, the article in question is based almost entirely on Boswell or authors who apparently based their views on Boswell's ideas, which elevates Boswell to a status that he doesn't seem to have among professional historians. So the article clearly needs cleaning up. AgeOfPlantagenet (talk) 14:46, 5 March 2020 (UTC)