Talk:James Morwood

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Wikipedia-Notability (books)[edit]

In 2013 ‎ Colapeninsula noted (in History): "some of his books meet WP:NBOOK #5 [later changed to #4] through wide educational use". Unfortunately, he made no suggestions as to which books he thought met this classification, although he did add Medea and Other Plays and A Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases (both OUP) to the article.

The most obvious candidate for WP:NBOOK #4 among Morwood's books is The Oxford Latin Course (co-author Maurice Balme), used in many schools and Universities in the UK and North America; only after that would I consider the Latin Dictionary, and probably also the Greek Dictionary.

Which, if any, of Morwood's books merit a separate article is unclear to me - in the case of Dictionaries, I suspect they should be included in the author's article. I refer here to the WP:NBOOK guideline: "In some situations . . . it may be more appropriate to feature material about the book in the author's article rather than creating a separate article for that book."

Does anybody have any views on this? In the meantime, I am researching The Oxford Latin Course for inclusion in the Morwood article.Brymor (talk) 13:12, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No strong views, no. Not from me.

But I suggest the logical sequence would be for you to add a para or six on the book(s) which you think merit it - whether according to "WP:NBOOK #n" or according to your own sound judgement which just might be an even better guide - and then wait for the dust to settle - ie in case anyone wants to add more and better source citations, "correct" your grammar and / or add stuff. After that is the time to decide whether the whole thing has become so indigestible that the book entry (book entries) deserve(s) to be separated out. It's partly a question of sheer bulk - I've seen 30,000 bytes suggested as the point at which it might be a time to consider splitting a wiki entry, though there are plenty of entries way above 100,000 bytes that - at least in my judgement - would be damaged by splitting. It's partly a question of how far the strands cohere and how far they all seem to be competing and shooting off in different directions. But these are judgements for later.

Thanks for the thought trigger. Feel free to disagree and act accordingly. Success. Charles01 (talk) 14:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree, and I posted my first shot at the Oxford Latin Course today on the (co-)author page. Thank you for the link to the Balme obituary, I hadn't seen that.

Could I ask for your technical advice on this section? When there is a list, such as "Cicero, Catullus, Caesar, Vergil, Ovid, Livy," I have deliberately not linked to Wikipedia articles for these historical celebrities, because I think such links can be overdone. What is your view? Brymor (talk) 19:02, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

replied with email Charles01 (talk) 12:53, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To summarise, the WP:NBOOK #4 situation is as follows: The page now includes The Oxford Latin Course and the Oxford World’s Classics Euripides series as two notable publications. I think these are correctly placed on this page, but if they are significantly extended, which may well happen with the Latin Course, then maybe they can be moved out to articles of their own. Brymor (talk) 18:26, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly the decision to leave The Oxford Latin Course on this page has turned out to be correct. To enable users to find it, I have Redirected searches for "Oxford Latin Course" to the appropriate section on this page. As for Oxford World’s Classics Euripides series, I think redirection would be inappropriate, but I am considering a link from the Oxford World’s Classics article. Brymor (talk) 02:11, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Obituaries[edit]

The Guardian obituary (Christopher Tyerman) is already referenced in a note. Two other obituaries were published in mainstream newspapers: The Times (Ed Gorman) and The Telegraph (Stephen Heyworth). Unfortunately, both of these are behind paywalls: what is our policy about linking to such items? I am not entirely happy about it. Brymor (talk) 19:38, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just found this. More broadly, you might care to take three days off in order to read this - clicking on all the links as you go. But all these guidelines are drafted by well intentioned individuals (or teams thereof) such as yourself and I think applied common sense and judgement - applied to the individual situation and the source(s) in question - is frequently as good a guide as you will get from trying to apply generalised rules thought up by people thinking of similar but different examples. My own view is that where there are two sources of approximately equal merit except that one demands money and the other doesn't, you should avoid sending your hapless readers to the one that demands money. If, however, you earn your daily bread as a Financial Times journalist you might take a different view. And you might prefer to quote the Financial Times rather than the Daily Mail, despite the FT hovering behind a paywall, because of the differing reputations of the two. I have no opinion to share on The Times or The Telegraph these days. Fortunately The Guardian, which you mention, does not demand money, though I see that they've taken to asking politely for it, just like that nice Mr Wales on behalf of Wikipedia itself. (And I think you can probably trust Mr. Tyerman.) Regards Charles01 (talk) 20:06, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I hoped you would know the answer! Your second link includes this: Some reliable sources may not be easily accessible. For example, an online source may require payment, and a print-only source may be available only in university libraries. Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. I'll have a think . . . and I like { {subscription required|s} } Brymor (talk) 22:07, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I had indeed wondered "why Belfast?" I'm afraid the screen asked me to register or log in after that, which contravenes quite a lot of what I believe in, but you gave me the choice which was as good - where the Daily Telegraph is concerned - as it was ever going to get. And hrmph. Charles01 (talk) 07:43, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In The Times obituary, Ed Gorman provides several interesting quotations from Richard Curtis. All of these come from an article by Curtis in The Times Literary Supplement (TES - 2015). This article is fully accessible (no paywall), and I have now altered one of the Gorman references to point to it instead. Brymor (talk) 02:50, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy[edit]

@Lajmmoore: I see you have tagged the statement that Morwood "enjoyed a good fight" with "Citation needed". This section is mostly derived from The Times obituary, so that could be cited here (yet again - it is already cited in the following paragraph), but I suggest this is unnecesary: the citation is in the text that follows - the whole section is an example of Morwood enjoying a good fight, and encouraged by The Spectator. Brymor (talk) 03:48, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]