User talk:Archimedes~enwikiquote/Archive 1

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Welcome[edit]

Hi, welcome to English Wikiquote.

Enjoy! Cirt (talk) 00:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How does this sort of issue get resolved ?[edit]

The following text was cut/ pasted from the Winston Churchill page :


  • It is the habit of the boa constrictor to besmear the body of his victim with a foul slime before he devours it; and there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the belief that their enemy are utterly and hopelessly vile… This may be very comforting to philanthropic persons at home; but when an army in the field becomes imbued with the idea that the enemy are vermin who cumber the earth, instances of barbarity may very easily be the outcome. This unmeasured condemnation is moreover as unjust as it is dangerous and unnecessary.
    • This statement was originally posted with a claim that it had been made in a speech to the House of Commons about Horatio Kitchener's destruction of the tomb of Muhammad Ahmad, but with no date provided, or as yet determinable. It has also been cited in at least one place as having come from The River War vol. ii., p. 394, but such passages do not occur in the 1902 edition available from Project Gutenberg. In that edition the destruction of the tomb is mentioned as occurring in Battle of Omdurman without much comment. It seems to be a statement that might be made about attitudes in almost any war, but as yet no definite citation has been provided.


I note that this question was raised back in August of 2005 ; it still is unresolved. I am reasonably sure that the citation of The River War Volume II p. 394 is correct, and will add supporting arguments and material here as I have time to do so.

--Archimedes 22:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From the Talk:Winston Churchill page, section Restoring a (mostly) chronological order :

In the process of editing I could not find a definite source or date for the following quotation. It is an interesting statement, but without a citation to a particular work, or a date for a traceable speech, I felt that it does not yet belong in the sourced section, and I moved it to the attributed section, with comments:

  • It is the habit of the boa constrictor to besmear the body of his victim with a foul slime before he devours it; and there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the belief that their enemy are utterly and hopelessly vile… This may be very comforting to philanthropic persons at home; but when an army in the field becomes imbued with the idea that the enemy are vermin who cumber the earth, instances of barbarity may very easily be the outcome. This unmeasured condemnation is moreover as unjust as it is dangerous and unnecessary.
    • This statement was originally posted with a claim that it had been made in a speech to the House of Commons on Horatio Kitchener's destruction of the tomb of Muhammad Ahmad, but with no date provided, or as yet determinable. It has also been cited in at least one incident as having come from The River War vol. ii., p. 394, but such passages do not occur in the 1902 edition available from Project Gutenberg. In that edition the destruction of the tomb is mentioned as occurring in Battle of Omdurman without much comment. It seems to be a statement that might be made about attitudes in almost any war, but as yet no definite citation has been provided.

That's it for now... ~ Achilles 16:14, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

From the Wikipedia article for The River War :

The River War was Churchill's second published book after The Story of the Malakand Field Force, and originally filled two volumes with over 1000 pages in 1899. The River War was subsequently abridged to one volume in 1902.

The unabridged version contains many illustrations with drawings, photogravures, and colored maps. It also contains vivid narratives of personal adventures of the author, his views on British expansionism, passages of deep reflection about the requirements of a civilized government, criticism of military and political leaders and religion. The first edition was reviewed by The Times, which described it as containing material sufficient for two good books and one bad one, with the bad one being the more interesting.

About the British attitude to war: " ... there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the belief that their enemy are utterly and hopelessly vile. To this end the Dervishes, from the Mahdi and the Khalifa downwards, have been loaded with every variety of abuse and charged with all conceivable crimes. This may be very comforting to philanthropic persons at home; but when an army in the field becomes imbued with the idea that that the enemy are vermin who cumber the earth, instances of barbarity may easily be the outcome. This unmeasured condemnation is moreover as unjust as it is dangerous and unnecessary... We are told that the British and Egyptian armies entered Omdurman to free the people from the Khalifa's yoke. Never were rescuers more unwelcome."

[Reference tag] cite book|author= Peter de Menddelssohn| title=The Age of Churchill: Heritage and Adventure 1874-1911 |publisher= Thames and Hudson |place=London |year=1961 | page=132}} Mendelssohn quotes The River War, Vol. II, pp. 394-395. [close Reference tag]

1902 abridged, one-volume edition : In 1902 Churchill had become a member of parliament. It was thought that the commentary about some of the people mentioned had better be excised in a revised edition. The book was thus edited down to one single volume, removing approximately one third of the total.

Much of the removed content included passages where Churchill recounted his own experiences, as he had done in other works, such as The Story of the Malakand Field Force. This removal gave the revised book a somewhat different feel to these others, and to its original form. Other removals included discussions on the ethics of warfare and Churchill's own opinions of events. The revised book was described as an authoritative history of the war. [ref]Peter de Menddelssohn (1961). The Age of Churchill: Heritage and Adventure 1874-1911. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 133. [/ref]

The book was republished numerous times over the twentieth century, with increasing amounts of excisions.

Sources:

  • Winston S. Churchill (1899). The River War (first edition, two volumes). London: Longmans, Green & Co.. 


Compare the quote from the Wikiquote article to the quote from the Wikipedia article; also note the citation information from the Wikipedia article.

--Archimedes 23:46, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reply[edit]

Might be best to have this discussion on the talk page of the article itself. Cirt (talk) 04:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Signature[edit]

Go into preferences, then to the tab for user profile, and in the box for signature, insert this code: 

[[User:Archimedes|Archimedes]] ([[User talk:Archimedes|talk]])

and click the box Raw signatures (without automatic link).

that should do it. Cirt (talk) 17:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sample Question for Winston Churchill[edit]

I note that the following quote is not on the Winston Churchill page (though one can trip over it at numerous, numerous Internet sites) :

All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; Justice; Honour; Duty; Mercy; Hope.

I searched a bit for source information on this quote, and found the following :

United Europe Meeting, Albert Hall, May 14, 1947. Cited in Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, by Winston Churchill et. al. (ed. Langworth), PublicAffairs (2008), ISBN 1586486381, 9781586486389 ; p. 26

Link :

http://books.google.com/books?id=xR0zayMIpMoC&pg=PA26&dq=All+great+things+are+simple,+and+many+can+be+expressed+in+single+words:+freedom,+justice,+honor,+duty,+mercy,+hope.%22#PPA26,M1

Given that the Churchill page is already enormous, I am interested in knowing what info a minimum citation entry should contain, and in what format. Particularly, is there a standard method for setting up an entry for this type of reference so that the same book can be used as a cite for a number of different quotes? Archimedes (talk) 01:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As an individual citation, I would format this as:
  • United Europe Meeting, Albert Hall, 14 May 1947; cited in Richard Langworth (ed.), Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, PublicAffairs, 2008, ISBN 1586486381, p. 26
The usual approach for multiple quotations from a work is to put them in a separate section. One can use a short title as the section header and, if there is no corresponding Wikipedia article on the work to link to, provide bibliographic details at the top of the section. However, this approach may not work well for works by others (or as in this case, a book of quotations) if it does not fit the chronological arrangement of the article.
Normally we avoid references in footnotes, but if you want to include more than a few quotes from this work then it may be appropriate here. In that case I would the cite the quote briefly as
  • United Europe Meeting, Albert Hall, 14 May 1947; cited in Churchill by Himself, p. 26
... and use a ref tag for the details. (Do you know how to use these tags?) Others may disagree with this approach, and saving one line is at each citation is not such a big deal.
I do not usually include links to BoogleBooks (though I use it a lot), but if you want to you can format it as [1] at the end of a citation without taking up a lot of space. ~ Ningauble 02:54, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ningauble: the ref tag sounds like it could be what I want, since I might wish to refer to the same book numerous times, but I do not know how to use them, & have not yet been able to find any info about them in the Help items. Can you tell me where to find an explanation? ( BTW, I included the GoogleBooks link solely for you to look at if desired ; I did not think to use it as a reference in the Wiki article itself. ) Thanks. Archimedes (talk) 15:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's help pages are the best resource for using wikimarkup, as we have not duplicated the information here at Wikiquote. In this case, Help:Footnotes should cover what you need.
  • Caveat #1: While help about how wikimarkup works applies to all Wikimedia wikis (subject to differences in software versions for some advanced features), style guidelines, policies, and procedures are project specific, so Wikipedia help pages that address these areas are not generally applicable here.
  • Caveat #2: As mentioned above, footnotes are not Wikiquote's standard style. I have very rarely used them myself, and half of the time someone has come after and "cleaned up" by converting to the standard format despite ensuing redundancies.
A couple other handy starting places in Wikipedia help are: Wikipedia:Cheatsheet and WP:MARKUP. ~ Ningauble 17:27, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Last addition to Churchill page[edit]

Ningauble: I see a new addition to the Winston Churchill page, at the end of the WWII section, which you flagged as needing a citation. This one: "Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think." I don't know who put this quote there; the user has only an IP address, & I question whether this is a valid quote, though I have not checked it yet. FYI. p.s. Also FYI: the other quotes you flagged as needing cites, unlike the one above, have been there for a while; they were already on this page when I first began making my edits, to the best of my recollection. (I agree they need to have better source info, FWIW. But I'm fairly sure the quotes are valid. I know I've seen info on at least a couple, more or less in passing.) Archimedes (talk) 20:20, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed the new addition in the Recent Changes log, which I monitor fairly regularly. (Virtually every edit to a "major figure" gets a quick glance to check for vandalism.) I tagged it, and other items in the section, in the hope that someone knowledgeable, such as yourself, might take an interest in tracking down citations. There were indeed several preexisting inadequately cited quotes. Improving citations is an ongoing process, and aspirations for quality are increasing as Wikiquote matures. Your good work here is appreciated. ~ Ningauble 22:30, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I italicized a title, and while I was there I removed some unnecessary colons. (I have been chastised for using "exotic punctuation" myself, and am trying to reform.) ~ Ningauble 23:27, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Archimedes. I replied to your question on my talk page. ~ Ningauble 14:43, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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