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I'd be grateful if someone could provide a transcript from the cited 1876 edition of the Oxford University Calendar so that the content can be verified. It turns out that some other content in that section was improperly sourced and thus the entire thing needs investigation- Sitush (talk) 18:31, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if the Oxford University Calendar is available online, but here is another source for verifying data on all ICS officers of the nineteenth century and the first five years of the twentieth century: Great Britain India Office, The India List and India Office List, 1905, (India Office, Great Britain, Published by Harrison, 1905). Authors writing on De will have to decide if this book is adequate or not for verifying the claim made in the article on De, that he studied in the Oxford and joined the ICS in the mid-1870s, but this is all I can suggest online. In any case, the latest editing on De has been satisfactory. Thanks for that.Bikramjit De (talk) 20:29, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The source does not have to be online. It is just that of those sources that are online, various problems have been found that that raises doubts about how offline sources may have been misused. Hence my request for a transcript - someone might, for example, have access to a library that has the Calendar.
I'm aware of the 1905 list but it probably does not have the level of detail that the Calendar would have. So, the list becomes a last resort. - Sitush (talk) 20:43, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
P.S.: The section on his career says: "He then joined the ICS." My great grandfather joined the ICS in 1873 and served a probation period of 1 year in England before going up to Oxford. He finished his stint at Oxford in 1875, coming out to India at the end of that year. So, he did not join the ICS after passing through Oxford. He joined the ICS before going up to Oxford, coming out to India to formally take up his posting in Arrah in Behar after Oxford. This was the rule then. All ICS men had to serve out a probation period. After the Indian Institute was founded in the early 1880s the probationers had to go to through the Indian Institute. I don't know from exactly when the Indian Institute became the hub of probationary ICS officers. These are some factual suggestions, which you may find useful. It is up to you to include all this or parts of it.Bikramjit De (talk) 21:58, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop providing "factual suggestions" without providing reliable sources to support them. They are useless for us and a waste of both your time and ours. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:47, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was pointing out what to a historian may seem an imprecise statement. No ICS officer ever joined the ICS after going up to Oxford. Oxford was the training ground for ICS men. So one went up to Oxford and then joined the ICS. Any way, this is a minor detail, as is being repeatedly pointed out to me, which may or may not need correction. If an editor feels he doesn't have the time to correct this line, then he/she can ignore it. I was just pointing to an imprecision which, if corrected, would have looked nice. After all biographical or autobiographical pieces are historical pieces too, and as a trained historian one does feel like recommending changes that are acceptable to the history profession at large.Bikramjit De (talk) 23:23, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you wish to write things that are acceptable to the history profession at large then you are probably better writing a paper and posting it on some other website. You have been repeatedly told that here we can only say that which is verifiable, and our audience profile extends some way beyond historians. Dealing with your consistent inability to work within our policies and guidelines is consuming vast amounts of the time offered by several other volunteer contributors and it has to stop. - Sitush (talk) 01:52, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
