Talk:Turkish Baths, Lincoln Place

New category urgently needed

I am fairly new to the inner workings of Wikipedia. Does anyone know how to easily and quickly create a new category 'Victorian Turkish baths'. This page is only one of the many which need it as the Lincoln Place baths were not a 'public baths' in the accepted meaning of the term, and they were certainly not a 'hammam'. It is over two years since wikipedia split its 'Turkish baths' pages into two, ie, 'Hammam' and 'Victorian Turkish bath', which latter page is currently being extensively revised (see its talk page for further details).

What is actually needed is a new super category 'Hot-air baths' into which 'Hammam', 'Victorian Turkish bath', Sauna, Banya, and related baths, eg, Irish, Japanese, American Indian, etc, could be included.

How does one go about this? Ishpoloni (talk) 11:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

DIA reference in article

With regard to the latest addition of the DIA reference in the infobox, I have again removed it. I'm wondering why this should be included when when all the information in the infobox is already included in the Dublin Builder and Galavan book references. The Dictionary of Irish Architects may well be "rarely wrong" but unfortunately "rarely" does not mean "never". So here are a couple of errors on the page the reference refers us to, which has been retrieved by searching under WORKS:

A. The building selected was: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, LINCOLN PLACE, TURKISH BATHS.

Immediately under the building is the name BARTER, RICHARD [2] which is linked to the page on Mr Richard Barter in the searchable section of biographies. While there is nothing wrong with the description of the building (and I have not checked all the references in the paragraph) the link to the architect Mr Barter leads to incorrect information. (Incidentally, a better description of Mr Barter would have been Sculptor, architect, and musician.) Mention of Strickland's A Dictionary of Irish Artists is immediately followed by the statement "Richard Barter, the eldest son of RICHARD BARTER [1]" almost as if this was stated by Strickland. And it is not correct. He was not the son of the first Dr Barter; he was only Dr Barter's namesake. This is clearly stated in Strickland, "…about 1853 [Mr Barter] settled at St. Anne's Hill, Blarney, near…his namesake Dr. Barter" (p.46) and also, "Dr Barter…invited his namesake to St. Ann'e Hill", in Thomas Crosbie's 'Necrology: Richard Barter, Sculptor' in Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, Ser. 2 (1896) p.86.

The DIA entry then continues, "[Richard Barter] is said to have designed - that is to say to have been responsible for the external appearance of - the Turkish Baths in Lincoln Place, Dublin, and elsewhere." First, the comment "is said to have designed" immediately throws doubt upon his being the architect, though this is stated in at least ten contemporary sources. Second, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to substantiate any suggestion that Barter was not responsible for the design of the whole building. Ironically, both the following references specifically indicate that Barter was the architect, and the second of these, the letter to the Irish Times, was from Richard H Bushe, JP, a long-standing friend of Dr Barter who actually lived on the premises of the bath and was its lessee.

B. Reverting to the second part of the page retrieved by searching under WORKS:

Sir John Benson played no part whatsoever in the design of the Lincoln Place baths. His inclusion on this page is the result of an incorrect interpretation of the Dublin Builder article cited. This is in an introductory paragraph reporting on a lecture on Turkish baths given by Dr Haughton. It mentions specially constructed new Turkish bath buildings, referring first to those at Lincoln Place, and then to those at Bray: "The introduction of the 'Oriental Hot-air Bath' into Ireland, and more especially the recent project of new buildings to be specially constructed for the purpose at Lincoln-place, Dublin, and subsequently at Bray——as designed by Sir John Benson for Mr. Dargan——having caused a considerable amount of interest, and curious inquiry respecting their principle, we subjoin the following extracts from a valuabie paper read by Dr. Haughton at the Royal Dublin Society…"

The word "subsequently" and the em dashes clearly indicate that Benson's work refers only to Bray. The link to Benson retrieves his biography, on which page the words "Lincoln Place" do not appear. But they do appear in the searchable section WORKS. Here we find the original misinterpreted partial quote, and this seems to have been automatically copied to the entry under buildings which we find when following the DIA reference on our Wikipedia article. Even should this not be sufficient to satisfy, no other source has so far been found to indicate that Benson was involved in the design of Lincoln Place.

I have removed the DIA reference because it seems to me that it is not good practice to include a reference which includes an incorrect statement, together with links which lead to further incorrect statements, especially when there are other perfectly acceptable sources.

Since references have now come under scrutiny it might be appropriate to ask why the statements "The bath attendants wore red dressing gowns and Turkish slippers" and "the Baths served 90 bathers a day for the first 4 years of operation." are sourced to Hugh Orams's newspaper article (albeit an interesting and well-written one). He does not provide the sources of these statements as is required by Wikipedia's guidelines. I have replaced it with the two original sources, and hope this is in order. Ishpoloni (talk) 01:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

This isn't a discussion piece on Turkish baths more generally, nor is it a social network, the Dictionary of Irish Architects is the most authoritative source by a considerable distance in Irish architecture. You have learned about a few Irish buildings and done some minor wiki edits, I have made thousands of edits and hundreds of pages on hundreds of Dublin buildings including other ones which involved these architects, builders and surrounding streets. I am not "learning as I go" and it isn't a pet project. This isn't your personal blog. If you don't know something then leave it out entirely do not have a stab in the dark on it. If you want to edit it then go ahead and edit it but don't assume the other editor is coming at it blind and don't delete the most authoritative source which contains accurate information widely cited by academics. Do not delete a citation because you feel other information in the source (which hasn't been cited) isn't to your liking.Financefactz (talk) 09:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I am so sorry that I appear to have offended you. That was certainly not my intention, but I thought it was more constructive to explain why I was deleting references instead of just arrogantly deleting them with a one line indication, on the basis that it might help anyone wishing to revert them. No-one is here disputing the authority of the DIA, but we all make mistakes. I have the greatest respect for that ground-breaking work, and and over the past decade or so have been in productive (on both sides) correspondence with its founder (who sadly died a couple of weeks ago) and others on its staff. And I certainly had not the slightest intention to doubt your clearly evident expertise on Dublin buildings and their architects and hope that in future you will provide entries for some of the other Irish-Roman (Victorian Turkish) baths. Any expertise I may have is related to something like 700+ bath buildings which I have researched, of which less than a score are in Ireland, and Mr Richard Barter is the only architect working in Ireland that I have tried to find out about. I respect anyone who has contributed as much as you have to Wikipedia and agree that my addition of a section on hammams in Azerbaijan is a minor edit, but it's a bit crushing to feel that my article on Victorian Turkish baths is put into that category. I certainly do not consider that any article I contribute to is my personal blog. However, I'm too old to get upset about such things and look forward to continuing with occasional minor edits in the hope that I don't upset anyone else. I also hope we can still feel free to amend each other's edits if necessary—but, lesson learned—I will not go into long explanations again. Best wishes Ishpoloni (talk) 12:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Mr vs. Dr

The edit comment for this change reads "Absolutely essential to retain Mr here because of constant confusion with the Dr." I disagree that this is necessary as long as we way "the unrelated Richard Barter". For that matter, neither "Dr Richard Barter" nor "Mr Richard Barter" are wikipedia style (see MOS:DOCTOR). Unlike the New York Times (for example), we say X and not Mr X on second mention. It would be better to say "the physician Richard Barter, a proponent of hydrotherapy". There are other cases where the same name is used by two distinct people and we can't differentiate them by title, for example the cousins Panos Panay (technology executive) (MBA) and Panos Panay (music executive) (BM); or Chris Anderson (entrepreneur) (MA Oxon?) and Chris Anderson (writer) (BSc). --Macrakis (talk) 21:38, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean that you personally had been there before, but it has been discussed before. Too often in wikipedia people seem to be more concerned with rules than making things easier for the reader. All my proposals in the encyclopaedia are made with "make things absolutely clear" and "make using the article easier for the reader". As long as you make it absolutely clear for anyone reading quickly and then intending to quote it, I'm never going to disagree. I've recently seen an editor give as their source a newspaper article misquoting what I had written elsewhere! Ishpoloni (talk) 21:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Not sure where it was discussed before, but anyway.... The point is that Wikipedia style does not refer to people as "Mr X". I certainly agree that we should write in such a way as to avoid confusion, but (a) I would argue that this approach doesn't work and (b) simply saying "the unrelated X" suffices. It doesn't work because I suspect that many people will not even notice that one is Mr and the other is Dr. Saying that one is "Richard Barter, a physician who advocated for hydrotherapy" and the other is "The unrelated sculptor and architect" seems quite clear. That said, they may not be in fact unrelated -- perhaps they are third cousins? -- where your wording "namesake" may be more technically accurate but I suspect less clear to many readers. Maybe "of the same name" would do? --Macrakis (talk) 22:30, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

We know more about this subject than the average reader; that is why I act, as instructed in the guidelines, boldly, by maintaining that these additional clarifications are necessary despite the rules you quote. Dr is essential because Barter was first and foremost a practising hydropathist, and at that time most hydropathists were considered as 'quacks' and were specifically not allowed to call themselves Dr. It's a good job I didn't mention that Dr Barter's establishments were carried on by his eldest son Mr (later Sir) Richard Barter.

I can't go through every detail like this. Clearly Wikipedia is not for me as one who is concerned only to get clear verifiable factual histories into Wikipedia. I'm now resigned to let people change what they want. I will no longer argue. Best wishes, Ishpoloni (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2024 (UTC)