User talk:SteveLHarris/Sandbox1

Mr. Harris,

I cleaned up your Wiki code a little although I don't have all your sources, so you will have to include all of them where I indicated "NEEDS A SOURCE". Take heart please that I am not shouting using all caps here, but sometimes little notes to oneself in the code are nearly impossible to see, so all caps helps.


 * I took out "important" from the first sentence because that violates Wikipedia's weasel words rule. If the subject is important enough to have an article, that is enough to deem it important so you don't have to state that a subject is important.
 * The term "pioneer author" is unclear. It could mean someone who is a pioneer in the realm of writing, or someone who writes about pioneers. Either way, maybe it's too early in the first sentence to make this distinction. Readers will get that Balch was a writer without "pioneer", so I would remove it to avoid confusion.
 * I don't understand this sentence, in particular what I bolded: "Each day he rowed to work, labored a ten-hour day breaking rock, then rowed back to write far into the night, completing Wallulah, an early version of the Bridge of the Gods."
 * I don't understand this sentence: "Influenced by Klickitat legend, The Bridge of the Gods evokes a mythological past, but the physical existence of a land form across the Columbia is confirmed by contemporary geologists." It might help if you can add a single sentence to explain the premise of The Bridge of the Gods.

Remember, encyclopedia writing is completely no-frills. Explain what is necessary with a few words as you can. Get the point across without affect. Do not praise or vilify your subject yourself. Instead, allow your sources to do that in quotations and include the citation. Gear the article to an audience composed of reasonably intelligent 11th graders who have never heard of any of the topics you're writing about.

Feel free to respond below. Again, a great start. I look forward to working with you over the next week or so. I'll check in once a day here on this page to answer questions and help with your editing where necessary.

Dear Guide,

76.4.163.49 (talk) 23:04, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Mr. Harris,

Again, good work.

There's a technological divide on Wikipedia for many scholars who have published in paper journals, such as yourself, and you might find it a bit maddening. I completely understand. Once you get one system down pretty well, it's frustrating to be forced to learn another system. The ease of editing Wikipedia forbids the use of [1][2] and [3] without hyperlinks (the blue text you can click on) to the citation, and Ibid, because someone may come along after you and add or remove information, or put it in different order, making the numbering you've done and any Ibids irrelevant and ultimately confusing to readers.

Since I don't have your sources, I'm concerned I might misnumber one of the citations. I sort of tried to do this with the sentence in the lead that starts "Balch died of tuberculosis..." But I'm not sure what I put after that sentence is the correct source. You'll have to check what I did to make sure I put the right source behind that sentence.

From here on out, to avoid this confusion, you can cite the source by doing this:

"Balch died of tuberculosis at 29 years old. During his life he wrestled with constant poverty, a lack of formal education, and the paradoxical isolation of the frontier wilderness whose scenery he extolled.(Harris, Stephen L. (PUBLICATION DATE). "Frederic Homer Balch and the Romance of Oregon History," Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 97, No. 4, pp. 390-427.)"

I can come along behind you and format the citations properly. That might be the best way to ensure the citation matches the material cited. Otherwise, if I guessed what source is supposed to match the citation [1] for example, and formatted what I thought was right but got it wrong, you would have to figure out what the real source is and it would be just that much more confusing for you. Imagine if there were 15 citations that I formatted but got the matching all wrong. Imagine if there were 200 or more!

So, it's no big thing for me to format your citations in the manner I suggested. In fact, it might be the easiest for us both.

Other tips for now:


 * Let the Notes section be for information the reader might find interesting but not directly relevant to Balch's life, like the info about Sir Walter Scott.


 * Let the References section be for citations from the sources. Page number spans from books, citations for articles, websites, etc.


 * The Bibliography section will be the list of book-length sources.

Again, you've got a good-looking article so far. I look forward to seeing how it shapes up. 76.4.163.49 (talk) 22:19, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Again, apologies for being so technologically impaired, but should I hit the "insert" button when I add new footnote sources? Have wasted a lot of time this morning finding my way wandering about sandboxes & talk, before finding out how to enter a question on this page. Have work persons coming to the house this morning & may be called away from editing. Also, does the "publish" button have the effect of the "save" button? Steve


 * I am not sure why sometimes Wikipedia buttons say "Publish changes" and other times "Save changes". This must be something they changed after I stopped editing here.


 * For now, just type your source next to the sentence you want cited. Once I get a sense of how many sources you'll be using, and from how many different authors, I can assist you in using the insert buttons for references if we need them. 76.4.163.49 (talk) 21:11, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Citations, etc.
Hi, Mr. Harris. I went through and fixed most of your citations. A few notes follow:

Here's a weird standard for citing journal articles vs. books on Wikipedia: you only need to include the page range for journal articles, not the exact page you found a particular quote or fact. But for book length sources, you need to include the exact page number(s) for what you're citing. I found the page range for Richard W. Etulain's article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly and fixed the page range in the citations. I could NOT find the page range numbers for Delia Coon's article, however. But I found a full citation for Patrick Pringle's discussion of the Bonneville Slide, on his Centralia College publications list. I changed both. I hope these changes are accurate to what is being cited.

I cleaned up the Notes section, taking all the citations and book-length sources out. There was a leftover citation: Powers, p. 326. See also letter from Gertrude Balch Ingalls (undated, postmarked Sept. 15, 1902, Manuscript 794, John B. Horner Collection, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon. Was there info on p. 326 in Powers that you have not yet included?

I also removed this magazine article authored by you from the Bibliography section: Harris, Stephen L., "Frederic Homer Balch," Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History (Fall, 1989), pp. 17-21. It was listed in the bibliography, but not yet used as a citation. Was there info you planned to include from this source?

Some of the sources in the Bibliography section need ISBN numbers. I indicated where with all caps "ISBN NEEDED".

That's it for formatting issues. On to some nitpicky language issues:

In the paragraph in the Writing Career section that begins "Balch planned to make The Bridge of the Gods..." there are two problematic sentences toward the end with regard to citing sources:


 * "Perhaps Genevieve's most vivid figure" is something a scholar should assert, not Wikipedia itself. Because you are writing the article, you are narrating Wikipedia, so to speak, so the narrative voice in these articles needs to be completely neutral. You can change this to "According to Scholar Bob X, the Indian Princess Winnemah is perhaps Genevieve's most vivid figure..." You can certainly cite your own work, saying, "According to historian Stephen Harris..." and then include a source at the end of the sentence from an article you wrote that basically says Winnemah is a well-crafted, vivid character. Right now, that info is cited to Balch himself, who I'm guessing didn't call his own character vivid within his fictional work.


 * Similarly, the sentence reading "For the historian, Genevieve is a treasure trove of Northwest social life and attitudes, including racism and prejudice." is cited to Balch himself. I'm assuming Balch did not call his own work a treasure trove of Northwest social life and attitudes in Genevieve, a fictional work. He might have demonstrated this, but a scholar needs to say, in similar wording, why Genevieve is so culturally or historically valuable. And that scholar's opinion, including if it's your opinion previously published, can be cited next to these page ranges in Balch's Genevieve.


 * The sentence reading "Named for an Indian leader who later conducted a mid-century war against whites, the book mixes fictional and credible historical characters in both Alaska and Oregon." has this citation after: "A rough draft in Balch's almost illegible scrawl is preserved in the museum of the Hood River Historical Society." This will certainly need a more accurate citation so someone can come along and find it. I don't know what to search for (I tried "kenasket rough draft hood river historical society" with no luck), or I'd try to find it myself.


 * Towards the end of the paragraph that begins "Powers also edited Memaloose..." there are two sentences about "How a Camas Prairie Girl Saw the World". One sentence is cited to you as the author of a journal article, the second is cited to Balch as the author of the short story, but both citations use the same publication. Is the short story also published in the journal article? If not, change the short story citation to one showing where you found the short story published. It can be the first time it was published or the most recently published. It doesn't matter.

I think that's about it for now. I added two NEEDS A SOURCE clues for the Death and Legacy sections. I assume you're still working on those, so those clues are just simple reminders to include source citations before the article is placed in live Wikipedia space so general readers can access it.

I have some other questions about language that might need further clarification, but those aren't really important right now. Once we get through the hard slog of figuring out all the citations and sources, we can tackle general copy editing issues. I've visited Oregon and Washington, but I am not overly familiar with its history, and really not its geologic history or how that history might relate to Native American beliefs, so maybe I'm a good copy editor here, filling in for the proverbial intelligent 11th grader from Australia or South Africa who understands English but not the finer details of local culture.

Great work! Well done. 76.4.163.49 (talk) 14:52, 13 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Wow! You have done so much work, far exceeding technical help. I'm particularly impressed that you even looked up several sources,such as Etulain's piece for the OHQ, & finding even ISBN numbers for source books.  I've added various info. that you asked for, including source footnotes for the death & legacy paragraphs, and attempted to rephrase sentences that you indicated need clarification.  One example of the latter that I'm puzzled about concerns  Balch's going to work after his father was shipped back to Indiana:  I'm unsure what you judge unclear & ask for what part of the sentence you see as requiring rephrasing.


 * Also, in crediting Genevieve as a treasure trove of social attitudes in 19th century PNW, I intended to say that Balch's novel recorded customs of the day, a valuable resource for historians. I cite the pages where he discusses racial prejudice, among other blind spots of folks along the river.  Perhaps I can phrase this concept more comprehensibly.


 * This writer has said so often that he's grateful, but you deserve more than mere thanks.


 * Meanwhile, the MGH people keep sending me a host of emails dealing with electronic editing, which raises multiple obstacles for this (not-quite) Luddite.

--Steve — Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveLHarris (talk • contribs) 22:03, 13 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hey, Mr. Harris.


 * More formatting of your citations. No problems there.


 * The templates that convert miles to kilometers or feet to meters do it automatically. You don't have to include the values that need converting, or round up.


 * As for some of the clarifications, this sentence:


 * "Each day he rowed to work, labored a ten-hour day breaking rock, then rowed back to the Lyle farm, writing far into the night and completing Wallulah, an early version of The Bridge of the Gods that focused exclusively on prehistoric Indians." I think the problem was a lack of punctuation. Without italics, I didn't know what "Wallulah" meant. It makes much more sense with proper punctuation. I think it's ok now.


 * This paragraph:


 * The Bridge of the Gods incorporates Klickitat tribal legends, asserting that a causeway once spanned the Columbia and twenty-first century geologists affirm the physical reality of a former landform across the river. In the 1400s, a huge landslide — the Bonneville Slide — totally dammed the river, forming a barrier 200–300 feet (61–91 m) high and permitting indigenous peoples to travel across the river without getting their moccasins wet. To the region's native inhabitants, the natural causeway was "tomanowos," a superhuman creation. The Columbia eventually breached the landslide, but large basaltic slabs may have remained in place to allow tribes to continue crossing. Perhaps by coincidence, Balch set the causeway's collapse close to 1700 CE, the year that the most recent Cascadia subduction zone earthquake convulsed the Pacific Northwest.


 * I understand Balch has a limited oeuvre because of his short life, but it would not be amiss to include more detail about his most important work. The article might be helped with a few sentences or even another paragraph to describe what the novel is about, how it's structured, and why it's so important to Balch's life or early Pacific Northwest literature. The previous paragraph summarizes the novel as a tale of of a missionary crossing the continent. How does the main character end up in Oregon? Does he decide to stay there, and is that decision significant to the plot? Was the decision made for him by forces beyond his control? He crossed the continent, so were other indigenous mythologies included in the novel, or does it center on Klickitat lore only? Is the book a full novel or more a collection of short stories or tales about missionaries and local Indians, connected by a loose or even nonexistent plot?


 * Is "tomanowos" included in The Bridge of the Gods? Is it relevant to the premise of the novel? Obviously I've not read the book, but that's who you're writing for: people who have never heard of Balch or his novels.


 * The paragraph makes it clear that Balch included Native mythology or lore in the novel, but it's not very clear why the geology is important to Balch's life, or his work on The Bridge of the Gods. This paragraph seems to overemphasize issues related to geology, but I'm not sure the info about geology needs to be removed, just that more detail should be added to make clear to readers that Balch was wise enough to listen to Klickitat lore and see some truth in it, which was later confirmed by scientific evidence. As the paragraph stands now, it's almost all centered on geology and little on literature or Balch's groundbreaking writing or influence.


 * I know you've read Ann's article. I also wrote the articles for Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Palmetto Leaves. Douglas' article you might find interesting because it's about an author, and it describes her most influential work, Everglades, River of Grass, as you are doing in this article, writing about Balch and describing his most influential work in The Bridge of the Gods. Though Balch may be less well-known, you may still have enough source material to expand the single paragraph about The Bridge of the Gods into a more substantial section, maybe two or more paragraphs. Palmetto Leaves may be interesting to you because it was published closer to when Balch was writing, and it's a collection of letters and stories with no real plot. The article describes how the book was eventually structured and published. Maybe both articles might give some insight about how to present the information to general readers. 76.4.163.49 (talk) 20:28, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

You are a tremendous help and guide. As I said before, mere thanks are inadequate.


 * You're absolutely correct about expanding commentary on Bridge of the Gods to show why Balch deserves an honored place in the literary pantheon of the Pacific Northwest. I'll do it, as well as tie in his belief that the historicity of the tomanowos landform was (to Balch) an authentic  component of the Indian legend.  Part of the problem in this article is that I'm trying to keep it short, but you're right that the reader deserves coherent explanations (obviously).


 * Also a problem: Attempting to do two jobs simultaneously and I'm not doing either one well.  This writer has looming over him a major project--revising and updating an over 500-page college textbook for McGraw-Hill that requires a steep technical learning curve (as said earlier, I've never been required to rewrite electronically, but editors are now requiring it).


 * It will be a few days before I can return to the Balch entry, and I will flesh out the topics that you mentioned. Steve


 * Take your time. It's all good. I'll check back every once in a while to see your progress. 76.4.163.49 (talk) 14:20, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Copy edits
Hi, Mr. Harris.

Good work on the additions. Some issues are made much clearer.

I put a clarify tag behind "Willamette tribe" because I want to link this article to the relevant culture, but Wikipedia isn't helping me figure out the name these people call themselves. There's a tiny article for Clackamas people and another for Multnomah people. I don't know which article is correct, or even if it's another name entirely. Help.

Is a potlatch an event where a chief or other wealthy person would hold a huge feast and expect nothing in return, or something in return from his guests? Did you mean to say without here: "in which a host beggars himself distributing gifts with the expectation of reciprocity"?

Do you think it would be clearer to readers to refer to The Bridge of the Gods as romantic literature, or romanticism, as opposed to a "romance"? You included a note saying there's a difference between what scholars consider a novel of that era and what we consider a romance, but I wonder if the note is really necessary if the sentence is reworded.

I put three more "NEEDS A SOURCE" clues in the paragraphs you added.

So far, you've got a great article here. It looks like it's nearly ready to be placed on "live" Wikipedia so anyone can access it. By the way, it's possible that you can "promote" your article a bit by getting posted to Wikipedia'a main page in the "Did You Know" section, which is reserved for new articles or ones that have been expanded greatly. If that's something you're interested in, I can help you do that. Let me know your thoughts. 76.4.163.49 (talk) 22:35, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Dear Editor,

Today I drove our mutual friend Ann to lunch, and we had (as always w. Ann) great conversation & a delicious lunch (at least on my part), although she planned on going to dinner that evening with her daughter, Inga, and in anticipation of that event she ate lightly. Wish I could be that restrained.

Glad that you think the piece on Balch is almost ready to send out to the tender mercies of the Wickipedia reviewers. The Willamette tribe was concentrated in what later became the Multnomah County. It's the smallest of Oregon counties and metropolitan Portland largely fills it. In Robert Ruby's & John Brown's A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest, a brief entry on "Willamette Valley Confederates Tribe" states merely that the remnants of various tribes signed an 1855 treaty with the U.S.  I don't mention it in discussing Balch's Bridge, but in the last section he describes the diseases that decimated the Willamette people, long before the Anglo-American settlers arrived. The curse of the bridge's fall was the predestined destruction of the Willamettes. Even in his day, few existed.

Balch subtitled his book a "Romance of Indian Oregon," his fiction like "a torn leaf from some old romance." I think the distinction between the realistic novel and the distant, ineffable romance should be preserved. "Romantic literature," like Romantic poetry, is misleading because it implies that a romantic feeling or attitude on the writer's part, not the transcendental work produced. Perhaps I'm madly wrong, but I vote to have the note retained.

Yes, I forgot to note the pages in the WSU Press edition of Bridge. Yes again, I'd like to boost the Balch article by posting it on the main page--& I must rely again on your help in order to do this.

When I lunched with Ann today, I emphasized what a gracious and helpful guide and Wickipedia mentor you are, truly in the spirit of the season.

--Steve

Hello again,

I added the footnotes you suggested (nos. 14, 15, 16), mostly from the Balch Bridge, but also from Richard Chase American Novel. Not sure what you meant by "clarification needed" on the sentence about the natural bridge being "tomanowos." Steve SteveLHarris (talk) 18:57, 24 December 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveLHarris (talk • contribs) 01:59, 20 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello again, and apologies for the delay. The holiday season has taken up a lot of my time. I hope you had a good tranquil Christmas full of fine food and drink.


 * To work now:


 * Just to be clear, regarding my points from December 18 above:
 * You're confirming "Willamette tribe" in the article can be linked to Multnomah people? In general, Wikipedia will defer to the name people call themselves, despite any previous names bestowed to them by historians or other writers. Once your article is posted to "live space" someone may come along and make that change for you.
 * The way you have described a potlatch doesn't make sense unless you meant to use "without" instead of "with" in this sentence: Balch utilizes the protagonist's consciousness to describe authoritatively native dress, diet, lodging, and social habits such as gambling and potlatches, in which a host beggars himself distributing gifts with the expectation of reciprocity. Can you address this?
 * Have you checked out the Wikipedia article on Romanticism? It's difficult for me to judge if The Bridge of the Gods falls within the Romanticism definition because I've not read the novel, but much of what you described in the article seems to be related to Romanticism. I don't feel very strongly about this. It's just something that occurred to me while reading the article. You seem to be interested in not linking it or calling it Romanticism. That's fine with me. Someone else may come along and ask the same question, FYI.


 * Other than clearing up these issues, the article seems to be ready to post to "live space". Do you anticipate any more additions to the text or sources before that happens?


 * If not, here's how to post it: You'll need to open two tabs in your web browser: one for Wikipedia in general, and the other for your Sandbox. Your Sandbox tab should have the Balch article open for editing, so click "Edit" at the top of the article. In the general Wikipedia tab, search for "Frederic Balch" in the normal Wikipedia search bar. No article will come back, of course, but a red link will. The red link means there's no article there. Click on the red link. There will be a tab at the top of the page that says "article" and it will be red. Click it. If you know how to copy and paste text, copy the text with all the code and paste it into the red link space and "Publish page". There's your article in live space, for better or worse.


 * If you're not sure how to copy and paste, make sure your Sandbox article is open for editing. Take your mouse and highlight ALL the text and code from top to bottom. Right click with your mouse and select "Copy". Go to the other tab with the red linked empty article space and right click and select "Paste". Then click the "Publish page" button.


 * If you are hopelessly lost by now, let me know and I'll post it myself.


 * Almost immediately, other Wikipedia editors will begin making minor changes to your article. Which, I should clarify, is no longer yours, but Wikipedia's. A few will come in to add categories to Balch's article to make it easier for people to search and find it. Some others will come in to add relevant editing groups to the talk page, like those who monitor topics about Oregon, authors, books, etc. Some editors may come in and change other things, like spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. It probably won't happen a lot because Balch is a more obscure topic. The articles that get a lot of views get changed more often. Some of these changes other editors make to Balch's article will make sense. Some will definitely not. You have to decide when to fight some changes and when to sit back and let others change your baby. You can revert someone else's changes, just as they can revert yours. The general rule is to discuss changes on the article talk page if you and another user get into a change-revert-re-revert pattern. This is the less pleasant part of informing the world of your favorite topics.


 * If you're interested in creating a "Did You Know" fact from your article to appear on the main page once your article has been posted to "live space", you can find the instructions at Template_talk:Did_you_know under the first subheading "Instructions".


 * Those instructions are new to me. They changed from when I edited here regularly, so you know as much about nominating your article for "Did You Know" as I do. If you get confused I completely understand. Wikipedia directions seem difficult sometimes. I'll do my best to help, but you may have to go this one alone or find someone who works at "Did You Know" to help you.


 * Let me know if you have questions. Best of luck! 76.4.163.49 (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Dear Guide and Mentor,

Your humble servant expected you to have better items on your agenda, like celebrating the holiday season. I trust you've experienced a happy & healthy beginning to 2018.

The request for clarifications are helpful, and I've tried to revise the remaining difficulties on the Balch entry, rephrasing the potlatch problem and also the "tomanowos" issue. At the time Balch wrote, in the late 1880s, the realistic novel was different from the "romance," and I think we ought to maintain the distinction, so I'd keep note 2 as is. The Willamette tribe that inhabited the upper Willamette Valley is no more, and there was a recently published journal article defending the historicity of Chief Multnomah. Balch gives a plausible fictional reason for the tribe's extinction (the smallpox germs permeating the bales of silk in Wallulah's lodge), and you're right concluding that "Multnoman's people" is equivalent to the vanished W. tribe.

After your crystal-clear directions, I'm reluctant to admit how impaired your correspondent is--but if you can post the article, he'll be forever grateful. Thank you.

As for wrestling with the "Did you Know" Wickipedia feature, I'll give it a try (but without hopes of success).

--Steve SteveLHarris (talk) 23:04, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Mr. Harris,

Wikipedia now has an article on Frederic Balch. You can click that link and check it out. Or just search for Frederic Balch in Wikipedia's main search bar.

There's a tab at the top of that article that says "watch". If you click that tab, you can see each time it's changed when you log on to Wikipedia and click on the link at the top of the website that says "watchlist". That will also allow you to watch the article's talk page, where people who have questions about the article can post them.

Best of luck with any "Did You Know" actions you might take.

As we're pretty much done with constructing the Balch article, I won't be checking in here again. You are welcome to do whatever you wish with this space: delete the article draft and these comments, write another article, keep it... whatever you want to do. If you have questions, you can email me. If working on Wikipedia was as easy as helping you format the citations here and craft this article, I might have stuck around longer. I hope you found it somewhat easy too. 76.4.163.49 (talk) 15:48, 4 January 2018 (UTC)