Talk:Thomas Sampson

Note to RC Patrollers

This article is about Thomas Sampson (c. 1517-1589), an English Puritan theologian. Not about a wanna-be politician in the UK with the same name. If you know that, it's easy. If you don't, you might make the same mistake as I did: succesfully nominate this article for speedy deletion (per {{db-spam}}) because all it showed was the politician's bio and campaign stuff. That "info" had been pasted on top of the original article, completely replacing it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.
 Channel ®   10:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I've restored the original article again. Will put in an ARV on the obvious COI editor trying to take it over if he continues these actions. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 19:36, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thomassampson (talk · contribs) and 77.96.94.222 (talk · contribs)
--Hu12 (talk) 19:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

He's been reported for the continued vandalism and should be blocked shortly. Meanwhile, just revert any attempts to "replace with the correct article" as vandalism. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 19:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked him for 31 hours, for Disruptive editing and continuing to use Wikipedia for advertising.--Hu12 (talk) 19:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Politicians.... [sigh] I've requested full page protection.  Channel ®   23:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Tagging

"Grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling" - care to be more specific? Charles Matthews (talk) 08:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It needs copyediting. The grammar is rough and the prose doesn't flow well at all with extremely short, choppy sentences throughout. It also needs some checks for basic MoS issues (refs should be after punctuation), and the references need some formatting ({{cite book}} and {{cite web}} would be quite helpful). -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 12:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I dispute the point about grammar. The refs inside punctuation is a convention to show that the reference applies to the phrase closest to it (which is useful). I dislike citation templates. I think you're projecting some personal preferences, here. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

You can dispute the grammar, but the problem is there. Wikipedia has writing guidelines that should to be met, and this article does not. It seems this is not the first time an article who work on has been called on grammar. If you dislike citation templates, fine, but that does not negate the requirement for all references to include specific pieces of information in a certain format, so they either need to be manually updated into the proper format, or citation templates used. You are the main one projecting personal preferences here, that you'd seem to rather let the article stay as is, with issues, rather than continue improving it. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 20:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I never said that:let the article stay as is. I asked for a less scattergun approach. Since I've started about 5000 articles, yes, this isn't my first template. Can we get back to the point? Why not replace the tagging with a more specific one about flow? "Writing guidelines that should to be met" misunderstands completely what the MoS is for, by the way. It is impossible to stop people standardising things there that don't really need to be standardised; but it is quite possible to object to those things being called "issues", indiscriminately. I see I wrote this in about 90 minutes, late at night. The article isn't great, but it does a job. The way to improve it is, in practical terms, to put in some more facts - the skeleton is perfectly good. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:24, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Starting 5000 articles means nothing if they are all stub-start class. How many have you taken to GA? To FA? How many are part of featured topics? Copyediting is the tag for dealing with prose. I can't do anything about the wording. And no, I have no misunderstanding of MoS, as someone who works extensively in GA and FA, the quality of the prose, tone, and grammar are important elements of an article. This skeleton is not perfectly good, it needs its prose worked. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 21:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, well, I see. Let's just disagree? Concision is good, actually; as is fair comment. "Nothing in excess". You should look up WP:STUB, though, since there is nothing there about an essentially complete biography with a dozen academic references being a stub. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's quite interesting to me that Template:Cleanup/doc refers to WP:BETTER (sensibly); and there one can read "Reduce sentences to the essentials. Wordiness does not add credibility to Wikipedia articles." Just so. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:56, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Not really related, but can I presume for this conversation that you will be keeping an eye on this page from now on and will be able to spot and quickly undo and alert ARV if the vandal returns to try and take it over again? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 15:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

If not, I will. I got a history with this page. [wry grin]  Channel ®   00:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Me too [same wry grin] Bencherlite^Talk 00:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)