Talk:Mary Aldis (science writer)

A fact from Mary Aldis (science writer) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 February 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that "noted controversialist" Mary Aldis (depicted) tried to get Auckland City Council to stop a woman being fired from a cannon in 1887?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/February. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mary Aldis (scientific author).

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Renaming and tagging

Just a note, @Czar: to note how offensive I find your renaming and tagging of this article. There is no naming convention per Category:British science writers. A quick look at its subcategory, Category:English science writers, finds at least as many (author) as (writer) DABs. Nor is the fact of a category's naming binding on the DABs used for article titles, not least where the subject may appear in multiple categories. Next, tagging an article having 48 references with {{Unreliable sources}}, without indicating which sources are unreliable, is just plain vandalism. Together, the two show great disrespect to your fellow editors. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:50, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies, @Tagishsimon. This article was previously disambiguated Mary Aldis (scientific author), which is not used on any other article as a disambiguating term. I looked for what I thought to be the standard as the guidelines recommended. In Category:British science writers, there are four biographies that use "science writer". I'll note that "author" or "writer" would have worked, as you mentioned, save for the other, pre-existing Mary Aldis article, which I moved to Mary Aldis (playwright) (per a request on that talk page) and who was also an author/writer, hence the extra disambiguation of "science writer". If you see a better convention, you're welcome to move it, but you have not said why this causes you offense.

As an established editor, you know that the number of references in an article is not necessarily an indicator of anything in particular. Drive-by tags can be removed just as simply as they are added, if you object, but I would think that the issue is straightforward enough from the links in the tag. In particular Find a Grave is user-generated and unreliable and suffolkartists.co.uk does not show any hallmarks of editorial control or fact-checking.

Relatedly, he section on "Campaign for social reform" is largely (almost entirely?) reliant on citing the numerous letters to the editor she sent (and her responses). This reliance on primary sources to compose a section is original research. This is material we'd expect a secondary source to analyze for us, rather than us making analytic conclusions like "Her views often received outraged anonymous responses", "Other responses were fairer", "On 24 April 1885 Aldis began what would be a long career of letter-writing" (how do you know this was the beginning or was just the first in this archive?) Claims like these are why we rely on secondary sources as an encyclopedia. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 23:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Czar, Thank you for describing your issue with the refs. I've replaced the findagrave reference with the reference to the cemetery database from the local council instead (the information is the same). I'll try to find something more reliable for the artists.

With respect to the social reform section, I take your point about original research. Certainly not all the references are primary sources, some are contemporary newspaper reports about the controversies she was part of, but it is probably hard to see which is which. However your comments prompted me to find a copy of a book that describes in much greater details Mary's activities both in England and in New Zealand, so I will rewrite this section accordingly. DrThneed (talk) 08:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Amkgp (talk) 06:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

Newspaper cartoon of Aldis published in 1897

... that in 1887 “noted controversialist” Mary Aldis (depicted) tried to get Auckland City Council to stop a woman being fired from a cannon? Source: "Mrs Mary Steadman Aldis, wife of Professor Aldis, has appealed to the City Council to stop the performances of Delo, the woman fired from a cannon at the City Hall."Otago Daily Times 22 Jan 1887, via PapersPast "Information was received by the mail of the death of Mrs Mary Steadman Aldis, wife of Professor Aldis, late of Auckland. She was a noted controversialist, and an opponent of the CD. Act" Christchurch Star, 12 August 1897
- ALT1:... that Mary Aldis (depicted) was told by a Presbyterian minister “Mrs. Aldis, all the bad men in Auckland hate you”? Source: "One Presbyterian minister commented at the time, "Mrs. Aldis, all the bad men in Auckland hate you."" Royal Society of New Zealand 150 women in 150 words 2017 profile on Mary Aldis

Reviewed: Kyra Nichols
Comment: Article moved from user space 10 January (NZ time).

Created by DrThneed (talk). Self-nominated at 03:25, 10 January 2021 (UTC).[reply]

(not a review) Welcome to DYK, DrThneed. I bolded and linked the subject for you, now at Mary Aldis (science writer). It also needs the hooks connected by some (pictured) to the image. Mandarax, move-miracle please? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:57, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 07:57, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The article is long enough and new enough. I assume good faith on the references that I can't access. A QPQ has been completed. Both hooks are directly cited and the promoter can choose the hook. SL93 (talk) 02:29, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aldis's views

Hi DrThneed thanks for this article. Just wondering... "and a Presbyterian minister was reported to have said "Mrs. Aldis, all the bad men in Auckland hate you"" - isn't that actually applauding her? The cite (within the cite) has "A lead once given, others rallied to their support. The day came when a good Presbyterian minister said, "Mrs. Aldis, all the bad men in Auckland hate you."'" So move the Presbyterian minister's quote to after "In contrast"? JennyOz (talk) 12:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

JennyOz, thanks, I think you're right, I will take another look. DrThneed (talk) 01:15, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DrThneed, Thanks for tweaking. JennyOz (talk) 08:04, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The "cartoon"

Am curious as to why the cartoon's caption is not included as part of the Infobox graphic.

Plus, to what is the 'stated' caption referring to? 2600:8800:785:9400:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 23:38, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The caption isn't included because I took the image from the National Library website and that is how they have cropped it, you would have to ask them why. It's only now that you ask that I see it is also available on PapersPast with the caption included. Is there any reason you think it would be better with the caption as part of the image instead? My instinct is generally that it's better to have text that is searchable (which I assume infobox captions are), but I have no strong feelings about the matter.

Wrt what the caption refers to, I did not find a source that discussed it and so any connection between the cartoon and other events would be speculation. If I find a source that does explain I will be sure to add it.DrThneed (talk) 01:14, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]