Talk:Theodore A. Parker III

Comment

Great effort, but reads a bit like a memorial - should be easy to fix. SP-KP 20:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I did another edit, but I probably made it more like a memorial. What are you objecting to? Is there information that's excessive, or is the problem the tone? Or, as I don't need to tell you, feel free to edit it yourself. —JerryFriedman 21:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi. The tone is the problem, primarily. Somewhat gushy. If you need specific examples, let me know SP-KP 21:57, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree with SP-KP. First few paragraphs are good, but then it goes into this storytelling style. eg: Parker recognized that... etc. Needs to be formal and encyclopedic. Just the facts. cmh 04:52, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Some specific examples

As requested, some examples:

Thank you!

• In the first paragraph "Many considered him the best birder and field ornithologist ever" - can you give a source for this

Zimmer: "Ted was widely considered the finest field birder / ornithologist that the world had ever seen." I toned it down slightly (which is not to say that it couldn't be toned down more).

• Third paragraph "Parker recognized that bird identification there" - are you saying he was the first person to recognise this? If so, can we have a source?

Zimmer: "Voice, microhabitat, and behavior are the keys in neotropical forests, and Ted was not only the first to recognize this (his seminal paper on foliage-gleaner identification that appeared in the April 1979 issue of Continental Birdlife should be required reading for all students of tropical birding), but also honed his discrimination of these essential cues to a finer degree than anyone else. He was whole levels ahead of the rest of us in his understanding of birds, and was the first one to point out gaps in his own understanding." (Gosh, I hope this is fair use.)

So maybe I should have said he was the first to recognize it, but I didn't quite trust Zimmer that far. While writing a memorial to a friend, you could forget that someone else was doing the same thing at the same time. Now that you mention it, though, I'll put it in with an "according to Zimmer".

• Third paragraph "he worked a good deal out for himself" - I think this could be written in a less gushy way

I can't imagine how, but go for it.

• Third paragraph "He seems to have known..." is an opinion

The evidence follows in the article. Maybe you're saying that I could have presented the stories and let readers draw the conclusion. I see nothing wrong, though, with stating a conclusion explicitly to make it clear how amazing something is.

• Fifth paragraph "Parker generally didn't shoot birds for study, a normal method of field ornithology" looks like implied criticism?

Well, it's a fact (if we trust Stap), and it's unusual. I don't object to collecting specimens, and I tried to reflect that NPOV. By the way, did you take it to criticize other ornithologists for being killers or Parker for letting them do the dirty work?

• Sixth paragraph "Parker willingly shared his knowledge with others" sounds fawning

Not like the versions of that statement in the memorials I used as sources.

Hopefully that gives you a flavour of the kinds of thing that need improvement? This isn't an exhaustive list.

I hate to say it after the work you did to make that list, but it doesn't give me the flavor. The bits you object to look to me like straightforward statements of documented facts.

Also, I'd agree with the previous posting that the story-like nature of the article detracts from its encyclopaedic potential; there are lots of ways in which the information can be arranged, some are more suited to encyclopaedias than others - I'd suggest thinking what other possibilities there are other than chronological order (e.g. order of importance, or thematic order would both be better, IMO) SP-KP 18:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

In fact, the order is rather thematic: Parker's bio, identification skills, methods, other ornithological knowledge, contributions. However, it departs from that by combining Parker's conservation work with the end of his bio. Is that part of your feeling that its more like a memorial than an encyclopedia article?

Also, though neither you nor cmh say so explicitly, I wonder whether you both think that anecdotes about amazing feats don't belong in encyclopedia biographies. If so, I disagree completely.

Anyway, I'm planning to give this one more shot (at some point) according to my own ideas, but I don't think I can revise it according to yours (SP-KP and cmh), especially since I admit I don't understand them fully. As I said, you're welcome to work on it, and to encourage you, I'll brag that I've never reverted anything except blatant vandalism and I'm good at saying good-bye to my writing to reach a consensus or for any other good reason. —JerryFriedman 21:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi again. I feel that this is a useful & productive exchange of views. I think I need to point out though that I'm not trying to push my own views specifically, but to try to help you understand where community consensus is on the issues I've raised (or, at least, my understanding of where community consensus is). I think one thing that might help make this look less like a "story" is to put some structure into the article by means of headings. Although you say that the order is thematic, I'm not clear on whether that is just coincidence. Another idea is to put in a good article lead summarising (a) what the article covers and (b) why it deserves to be in Wikipedia. The sources above are good - they just need to be in the article itself. My feeling is that the article would stand up better if each potentially arguable statement was presented in terms of facts (X said Y) rather than interpretations. Nothing wrong with interpretations of course but as it stands the article read like a set of interpretations, rather than a set of facts which are then followed with interpretations, if that makes sense (I'm not feeling in the most lucid frame of mind tonight, sorry!). I'm loth to wade in and start making wholesale edits because as a general rule, I feel it's more productive to help other editors understand where I'm coming from so that they "get" what they need to do (and as a result are more likely to take away the learning points to apply to other articles). If this isn't helping, I guess we might need to take this a section at a time - no problem with that, if you think that would be a good way to tackle the issue. SP-KP 23:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I'll get back to this next week. —JerryFriedman 00:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I tried again. However, I have some comments on what you wrote above.

Community consensus—I guess there is one. Your main criticism (that I know of) seems to be that I paraphrased interpretations from my sources instead of giving quotations or in-text citations, and WP:CITE recommends this only if the references are "general references and authoritative overviews of a subject (such as textbooks and review articles)." I think that's going a little too far, but I guess it's the rule. (As a search of random articles will indicate, it's far from a consensus of editors.)

The structure might just be coincidence—I don't get that. It seems to me that if the structure works, whether it was coincidence or not doesn't matter (and the same if the structure doesn't work).

A good lead—that's exactly what I was trying to provide.

You choosing not to edit (so far)—As a teacher, I admire your goal and to some extent your methods. However, I think more specific guidance earlier would have helped me. It doesn't matter whether the ideas are yours and cmh's or everyone's; I can't follow them if I don't know what they are.

To give you an example (and vent), I found it annoying that you put a clean-up tag on the article when the majority, I suspect the vast majority, of articles need a clean-up more than this one did. I don't think that's a productive way of getting improvements. How would you have liked it if I had removed the tag, made a comment in the discussion section to the effect of what I just said, and waited for you to learn from me how to handle this situation better?

Anyway, you can decide whether your latest comments helped, and if not, I'm happy to work on the article one section at a time. —JerryFriedman 19:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Improved

I think this article is much improved. It is certainly much better than many others on WP. I am removing the tag. -- cmh 00:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! (Including for checking back.) I must say, though, that reading Daniel Janzen gave me more of an appreciation for what you and SP-KP waswere objecting to, so I may revisit this article at some point with raised consciousness. —JerryFriedman 00:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)