Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Advanced editor tools

Firstly let me sort of answer the RFC question by saying that the complexity of wikitext is a bit 'over-done', but it does have good results, and this is a general problem with all wikipages over time. I have a different perspective, as I have watched (and occasionally edited) this article since 2007, so I have seen it grow over time. I havent found it to be more off putting to other articles. When compared to articles which use {{cite .. }} blocks inside paragraphs, such as Genie (feral child), most parts of this article's wikitext is much better. My annoyance with this article is that a lot of the 'notes' could/should be incorporated into the prose of this article, or the prose of other related articles, and that would simplify the wikitext. And most of the inline comments should be moved to Talk:Phineas Gage/to do.

I use the WP:gadget User:Cacycle/wikEd, and IMO the wikitext looks quite nice in that editor.

However for shits and giggles I tried the gadget Syntax highlighter, which is 'lighter', and it gives up after 50 seconds. That isnt unusual - it doesnt work on many large articles, but it seems appropriate to use that tool as a yardstick for whether this articles wikitext is too complicated given its prose size.

I see user:Iridescent saying it is "virtually incomprehensible" in WP:VisualEditor, but I couldnt immediately see which part of the article renders that badly in VisualEditor. It could be VisualEditor appears worse in some browsers. For me, using Firefox, it loads quite quickly in VisualEditor, and it looks "ok", and I see some VisualEditor edits which didnt break the wikitext, but there is room for improvement. There are 'too many' new line characters and template icons in VE - they are distracting. I suspect that with a little effort we can find ways to make this better in VE, without degrading the rendered result. e.g. I have replaced et{{nbsp}}el.}} with {{nowrap|et al.}} in this edit, and it looks like VE handles {{nowrap}} nicely instead of showing a template icon, and I believe that the rendered page is identical. While using {{nowrap}} adds more curly brackets, my gut feeling is that nowrap is easier for a newbie to understand. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:49, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

You're right -- et{nbsp}al. is rendered in VE with the little puzzle icon, but {nowrap|et al.} is rendered silently in VE. However,   is also "silent", so perhaps we should simply put that in place of all the {nbsp}s, instead of substituting {nowrap} as you suggest. (You may or may not be right about {nowrap} being more intuitive, but using it everywhere nbsp is currently used makes for some pretty awkward markup, and in the end I think we'd be worse off. On the other hand, VE allows you to unknowingly delete   -- and most other special characters like that -- while on the other hand templates are harder to delete accidentally, but that's an unsolved problem in VE we'll just have to live with.) Thoughts?

Meanwhile, I think you're right that a number of <! -- comments are overdue to either be handled or moved to the todo list. (Some, of course, are meant to be in the source permanently.) I'll start taking a look now. In the meantime if we we can agree that changing {nbsp} to &nbsp; is the right approach, I'll go ahead and do that too. EEng (talk) 02:47, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Doesnt MOS recommend using templates over HTML entites like  ? Or am I remembering incorrectly? I am guessing that VE fails on {{nbsp}} (which is used on a neat million pages?) because it uses Lua modules. I quickly looked in the bug tracker for any clues, but couldnt see anything. I like how VE handles {{nowrap}} for cases like et al., as it is a single unit of text and should be deleted as a single unit. But I dont object to &nbsp;, especially when only one is needed between two words. If there are too many in a row, the resulting never-ending-characters in the wikitext create a eye-sore. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:40, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

MOS is patchy on advice about markup. However, I'm pretty sure it never specifically prefers templates over html -- usually its examples use html only, or sometimes html and templates on an equal footing -- MOS:ELLIPSIS is typical, and WP:MOSNUM#Non-breaking_spaces tries to hint at the various possibilities, then links to a coupla pages giving conflicting and confusing advice about controlling linebreaks.

I think you're right about nbsp and Lua -- that would explain why VE doesn't fail on e.g. {mdash}. (It doesn't excuse it though -- it's amazing how completely mismanaged the VE effort has been.) I'll wait a bit more for comment from others before converting the {nbsp}s to &nbsp;.

EEng (talk) 07:51, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

I've moved the 'end <foo>' comments within the relevant template invocation to hide them from VisualEditor, and it is now starting to look quite good in VisualEditor.

It still has some 'carriage return' icons, which IMO are worth removing if only to better support VisualEditor, so that editors scared by the wikitext have a flawless experience using VisualEditor. I havent touched those as they are not particularly annoying, and you may have other ideas.

Another problem is that VE shows the entire "Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage.." paragraph as a single {shy} template block, which can be edited using the template editor, but .. yuk! Not sure what is the solution for that. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:03, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

I guess you saw that I went ahead with the {nbsp} --> &nbsp; replacement.

Moving the "end <foo>" comments into the templates was brilliant. The little carriage-return thingees are another mystery -- it makes no sense that VE does anything but treat them as a space, since their effect is exactly the same. In source editing these extra linebreaks are to help the eye find the end of {efn} and so on, but since we also have the hidden comments that do the same thing, and since they (i.e. the linebreaks) are causing this clutter in VE, I've removed them.

EEng (talk) 09:28, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

The carriage-return thingees are needed so that VE (and its users) dont unintentionally modify whitespace in an article, which may annoy source editors who use the line-based diffs to follow changes to the article. Thanks for removing the carriage-returns in the wikitext; I appreciate you compromising on that, at the expense of the wikitext being more 'dense' and some might argue the loss of whitespace makes the wikitext also more complicated. But I believe it is a good concession if it means real newbies can easily fiddle with the article prose using VisualEditor.

I've tested EEng's last revision with Syntax highlighter, and it works !! It looks like a few simple changes over the last few days have had a very good result on the complexity of the wikitext.

I have also removed the {shy} on the "Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage.." paragraph. Feedback on that, or other alternatives?

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:01, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

As WikEd, syntax highlighter and VisualEditor all now work quite well, perhaps we can turn our attention two other editing gadgets available in the preferences: Wikipedia:RefToolbar & User:ProveIt GT. I have not tried either of them before, but have enabled them to become familiar with how they work on other articles. Has anyone else tried those tools on this article? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:02, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

I've never used those two tools (and am having trouble getting them to work on my browser) but if someone has comments on them in this context I'd be glad to hear it. EEng (talk) 01:52, 21 October 2015 (UTC) P.S. to Jvdb: Thanks for all your help improving the article in the past months!

Like a hole in the head

Resolved

Le Poisson de Trypto and I are trying to perfect the text describing the exit area, in laymen's terms. We've run through...

(a) Continuing upward outside the upper jaw and possibly fracturing the cheekbone, it passed behind the left eye, through the left side of the brain, and out the top of the head through the frontal bone of the skull.

(b) Continuing upward [etc etc] and out the top of the head

(c) Continuing upward [etc etc] and out the top of the head, leaving a hole in the frontal bone of the skull.

Before we do anything else, I'd like to suggest

(c') Continuing upward [etc etc] and out the top of the head, through the frontal bone of the skull.

because I think the reader's innate shrewdness will allow him to conclude, without being told, that a hole would result.

Now, in changing (b) to (c), Tfish's comment was "The problem is that the frontal bone is not the same thing as the top of the head". I don't think though, that it's critical that a link always be completely congruent to the text it's behind. In this case, I wonder if this might not be good:

(d) Continuing upward [etc etc] and out the forward top of the head.

(This is the same as (b) but changing "top" to "forward top".) This way, the last part of the sentence continues the structure of the earlier parts (laymen's language in text, technical link behind). And although it's true that "frontal bone" <> "top of head" (or even, as in (d), "forward top of head") I think that the reader will easily see what's meant by the combination of the text "forward top" with the adjacent image; the link allows the more technically minded reader to see the bone involved (even though that bone is much larger than the exit region -- I don't see any way to fix that).

I know this seems like a lot of fuss but my knowledge of anatomy is nil, and if I'm making some blunder I'd like to understand. What do you think, Mr. T? EEng (talk) 07:13, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, whatever else, no one should ever accuse you of not being attentive to details! I admit to getting quite a smile out of reading this. At this point, I say "I pity the fool! In one fish's opinion, the best version is c':

Continuing upward outside the upper jaw and possibly fracturing the cheekbone, it passed behind the left eye, through the left side of the brain, and out the top of the head through the frontal bone of the skull.

That said, I'll confess that I'm pretty sure that it is also a, so maybe I'm a bit biased there. You are quite right that we don't need to tell the reader that there was a hole. (My thinking at the time of my c edit was that the page has several images in which the hole is prominent, so maybe it would be good to say that, but you are correct that it's wasting words on the obvious.) However, I dislike the phrase "forward top of the head", and it is only made worse by linking it Easter-egg style to frontal bone. A bone is not a surface of the head. And, given the prominence of that exit hole in the rest of the story, I really do like telling our readers which bone they are seeing in all those pictures of the skull. (This is what you get for asking for help, so now you know why I told you to be afraid! ) If we were in a med school anatomy class, one would say "frontal superior aspect of the head" (or, for extra credit, "rostro-frontal aspect of the head" or even "rostro-ventral aspect of the head"). Impressive! Tryptofish pats own back. But, as you say, we are writing, instead, for lay readers. But a "forward top" is kludgy language in any case (cf "backward top", which sounds like a children's toy spinning the wrong way). I suppose that we could belabor the point, along the lines of "top of the head, near the front", but that's probably too much. So my advice would be to go with a/c'. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:21, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure no one wants a hole in the head Easter-egg style. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:50, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I make one edit to the page, and I'm already fried. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Lol, Tryppy, we're all rolling in the aisles. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:21, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Making me a trippy egghead. --Poisson Tryppy (talk) 20:03, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I didn't like to say anything... especially with that User:EEngRooster about. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:15, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

• Oh wait, you're right -- (c') is (a), except for a comma I guess. The anatomy of the iron's path is one aspect of Gage I've always had a hard time getting my head around because of my lack of training in anatomy, which is why I've been so eager to solicit the opinions of my esteemed fellow editors. I defer to your judgment, agreeing that forward top (best I could think of) is awkward. But one other thing. Since we say out the top of the head, won't the reader know (via that innate shrewdness I mentioned earlier) that the skull is involved? So howzabout

(e) Continuing upward outside the upper jaw and possibly fracturing the cheekbone, it passed behind the left eye, through the left side of the brain, and out the top of the head through the frontal bone.

-- ? EEng (talk) 06:17, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

There might be another frontal bone somewhere else in the body. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:33, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a fraught situation. "No, nurse, I meant the other frontal bone!" More seriously, since we said "out the top of the head", wouldn't this problem come up only if there's another frontal bone in the head? EEng (talk) 22:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Not sure why this is suddenly such a bone of contention. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:03, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Me neither, Martin. I just changed it to "and out the top of the skull through the frontal bone", and I hope that puts this fraught discussion to rest. (I trust that our shrewd reader can figure out that going out of the skull also means going out of the head, unless they are out of their mind.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:14, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

DYK ... that in many of the pubs of Newport and Cardiff "SA" is short for Skull Attack? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:19, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Brains Brewery! I wish that I had called my lab that! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:22, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• Returning to Planet Earth, the fish's final version is perfect, IMO. EEng (talk) 02:18, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks so much! I'm glad. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:10, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

• Postscript: With the addition of a new "rotating brain" image, further finishing touches have been put to the description of the path, and IMO we've really got something the reasonably informed reader can understand well -- a longstanding gap in the article finally addressed. Thanks to Le Trypto de Fishto, and of course Martin for bringing the coffee and doughnuts. EEng (talk) 13:42, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Phrenology image

Resolved

I have just updated the arrows in the Phrenology image (it has only taken about six months and two reminders from EEng). You might have to refresh the page to see the change. I'll take this opportunity to wish EEng and all page watchers a Happy Christmas and good New Year. --Mirokado (talk) 23:10, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

And to you too! As for the image, I like the positioning of the arrows. However, on my display, the word "changes", as a label for the arrows, is not visible on the page. If I remove the "upright" parameter for the thumbnail (display the image at its "native" size), then I see it correctly. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:21, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

The word didn't show for me (though the curvy arrows did) until I clicked through to the description page, then back. But now it seems to be there permanently. Weird-weird-weird. And thanks, Mirokado. EEng (talk) 02:18, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

• Wait a second... it happened again... the word wasn't there and then it was. Mirokado, what witchcraft be this??? If you need to rework something, I'd be just as happy if you simply omit the word and leave the arrows. The point is to help the reader find the three areas -- any comment can be in the caption. EEng (talk) 03:07, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I've no idea what is going on, but don't worry: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (Alphonse Karr). I have purged every related page I can think of, perhaps that will stabilise things. --Mirokado (talk) 14:31, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Fortunately, it looks fine for me today. If through some irrational process of phrenology it disappears again, I think that changing the "upright" parameter in the thumbnail might work. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this was an issue of the caching of the various thumbnail sizeS. Fiddling with the upright probably forced a cache update as a side effect, but doesn't actuly have anything to do directly with the problem. EEng (talk) 19:50, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Feeling the bumps on my head, I'm pretty sure that's correct. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:52, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

• Been all fine since I purged my browser cache. Pretty clear this was just caching. Thanks once again to Mirokado. EEng (talk) 16:45, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Placement of "Factors favoring Gage's survival" section

This has probably been discussed before and I just don't remember, but just in case...

I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to relocate the "Factors favoring Gage's survival", so that it wouldn't be a lone section at the end of the page. Perhaps it could be lowered one header level, and placed between "Extent of brain damage" and "First-hand reports of mental changes". To my way of thinking, it makes sense to discuss why Gage survived directly after discussing the extent of his injuries. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:42, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

The sections currently run like this:

• 1-2. Life + Death/exhumation (2100 + 400 = 2500 words)
• 3. Brain damage and mental changes (2000)
• 4. Theoretical use and misuse (800)
• 5. Portraits (300)
• 6. Early medical attitudes (800)
• 7. Factors favoring Gage's survival (1000)

If I understand, you propose inserting 7 as a new subsection of 3 (maybe renaming 3 Injuries and mental changes or Survival and mental changes etc.). I agree such a change gives a more logical order (it could also go just after Phineas_Gage#Convalescence) but I don't think it would best serves most of our readers. Here's why...

Sections 1 and 2 pretty much have to go first, because without them the rest of the sections make no sense. I put sections 3 and 4 next because they're by far the most prominent subtopics -- many sources mention this stuff even if they don't tell you anything at all about Gage himself or his life, and I think they're what most readers most want.

The rest (5,6,7) are standalones in the sense that nothing in them is needed by any of the other sections (including one another), so they can go in any order, and each is kind of a side topic. Right now they're in the order short, visual, and fun to long, wordy, and less fun.

Again, your proposed order is the most logical, and would make perfect sense for a textbook, where we expect the reader read and absorb all the material. But I think the current sequence is better because under it, if the reader quits at any point he's still got the most essential stuff. Section 7 is quite long, and inserting it into 3 would be a big interruption just at the the point, I think, where the reader would otherwise be getting to "the good part". This is my thinking, anyway.

BTW, at one point I considered breaking off the Phineas_Gage#Extent_of_brain_damage section into a section of its own (another "standalone") but it's so short (250 words) and so closely connected to mental changes that I thought it best to leave it. (It also has good visuals re path of iron.) EEng (talk) 16:42, 16 January 2016 (UTC) P.S. Thanks for you good wishes a few days ago. I had a CAT scan and -- good news -- no cats. For a more thorough workup they'll next do a more general PET scan, which of course can detect any puppies, gerbils, goldfish canaries and so on that may be present as well. EEng (talk) 16:42, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I see what you mean. It's not something where I feel strongly. I looked again at the page, trying to see if there could be another placement, that would retain some of the "logic", but with less interruption of "getting to the good part". One possibility would be simply to put it at the end of Section 3 (as 3.5). On the plus side, it would not be interrupting the rest of Section 3 that way. On the minus side, it would interrupt the transition from 3.4 (exaggeration) to Section 4 (misuse). If that minus side is a deal killer for you, that's OK with me. But I kind of like it, so please consider it seriously, because it really does fit better there, and the reader eager to get to the "good stuff" can be expected to skip over the last part of a section if it looks boring. The way it is now, I feel like, after finishing with Gage's medical treatment early on the page, we suddenly circle back to it at the end, and it just feels weird. Oh my goodness, you have really been going through the wringer! I predict that they'll find an iron rod. Actually, with all the strange invertebrates that I keep in my saltwater aquarium, I like to joke that I have some pet sponges, so maybe that's what they'll find. Anyway, good luck! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:21, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for moving it! I just changed the header level to make it a subsection (revert if you disagree). I don't think that there is any problem with Section 3 remaining "Brain damage and mental changes", because injuries outside the brain and adjacent structures would have been unlikely to play that much of a role in survival, so the overall Section 3 header still applies. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:14, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

You're right about interrupting the transition from Exaggeration to Theoretical misuse, but (as you also say) there's a natural affinity between Brain damage and Survival. On the whole I think it will work better having Survival at ==-level section instead of ===-subsection, because when it's a === that one section becomes huge -- 3000 words, bigger than Life + Death combined (2500 words). But lets see how this feels for a few weeks. EEng (talk) 22:15, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Luck-pushing section-swapping

OK, now I'm doubtless pushing my luck, but here goes! Looking at the page now, how about swapping the positions of 5. Portraits and 6. Early medical attitudes (so that Portraits would instead come after, at the end)? That way, there is a nice progression from theoretical use to medical attitudes, each of which is a different aspect of how "experts" formed opinions about it. And the portraits make for a rather nice note to end on. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:34, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm off to my MRI (no kidding), talk to you later. EEng (talk) 22:15, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Your suggestion would end the article

• 4. Theoretical use and misuse
• 5. Early medical attitudes
• 6. Portraits.

But lying in the MRI (BANG! CLUNK! BZZZZZT! THWAP!) I had a brainwave, which luckily did not mess up the image. Anyway, my idea was

• 4. Early medical attitudes
• 5. Theoretical use and misuse
• 6. Portraits.

This way, we have the natural transition from "Early" (mid-19th C) to "Theoretical" (mid-19th to 20th) to portraits (21st C). Take a look: [1].

EEng 09:39, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

You should have got the hospital staff to retarget the scan. The world has lost the opportunity to research brain activity while pondering Phineas' injuries. Would there be sympathetic activation of the damaged areas? Would they try to shut down in self-defence? --Mirokado (talk) 11:18, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, EEng! I think the way that you did it was even better than my idea. (I had hesitated to suggest that, because I was concerned about that "good stuff" issue.) But I think this is great.

My goodness, you and I suddenly seem to be agreeing so much about this page! How nice. Perhaps they gave you some sort of "medication" to, umm, calm you down before the MRI? If so, do keep taking it! At least now you know that there are no iron rods in you, because, if there had been, the magnet in the MRI, well, squoosh! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:59, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

You seem surprised, but I've always felt we worked well together, putting aside (a) your markup Luddism and (b) that you take to extremes the precept, "Listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story".

I'm still inclined to promote 3.5 Factors favoring Gage's survival from === to ==, because as things are Section 3 is very, very long; though related to 3 Brain damage, 3.5 is really of a different kind; and if we promote 3.5 to == we'll have the full chronological sequence Survival then Early attitudes then Theoretical, then Portraits. But let's just leave it a while and see how the current format feels.

Before the MRI: "Any piercings? Tattoos? Artificial limbs? Penile implant? Breast implants?" I said, "Breast implants???". The technician said, "Since Caitlyn Jenner we ask everyone all the questions." No medication was involved; I found the entire experience most interesting and pleasant, and in fact I almost fell asleep.

EEng 07:43, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Speaking of pushing one's luck, please do not be so quick to assume that I will not resume my Luddite tendencies. I intend to pursue them again, quite seriously, after your spine has regained its previous spiny-ness. You've had an unusually lengthy respite from my more dull and ignorant side, but that won't last forever.

Anyway, I don't think I've ever seen any rules or guidelines about the word counts of page sections, so I don't think that the length of Section 3 is a problem.

Tattoos? WTF?? Are tattoos magnetic? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:25, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I fear you misunderstood me. I wasn't implying that you are dull and/or ignorant, merely that you overindulge the dull and ignorant, long past the point where it should be apparent they're unable to contribute usefully in a given situation. If your Luddism flairs up again, we'll get you the best treatment available‍—‌you're that important to us.

I suspect the concern about tattoos is that they sometimes incorporate a variety of materials (think: prison) which, metallic or not, could induce artifacts in the image.

EEng 01:09, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

No worries. I really did understand that you weren't saying that about me. I just extended it to myself, of my own fishy accord. For now, all that I want is Wiki-peace, so I don't expect any flair ups anytime soon. WP:There is no deadline, and happy editing! --Tryptofish (talk) 19:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Race to the bottom

Flare

Flair

See right and left. EEng 20:39, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I got scared when I saw your edit summary! ;-) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:03, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

It's been happening more and more in my declining years -- substituting homonyms. EEng 21:28, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I guess we are all declining! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Requesting that Martinevans123 now drag this discussion to new depths. EEng 22:04, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Just catching the sun before battle commences once again.....

You're not getting your hands on my flares! Scanner or no scanner! They're sacred to the memory of my troubled teenage years. A Van Sent MRI 123 (talk) 22:23, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Martinevans, "A Man Inverts"

You never disappoint, "A Man Inverts" (see left). EEng 00:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

This discussion hit bottom a long time ago! --Tryptofish (talk) 00:24, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Not until I point out that the anagrams of Tryptofish, though starting promisingly with Trophy Fits, descends through Frothy Spit before reaching Prof. Shitty. EEng 00:55, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yikes, about that last one! I wonder if any of my students ever referred to me as that behind my back. (Oh, and grammatically, that's "descend", not "descends". shitty laughter) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:06, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry -- anagrammatical error. EEng 01:13, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Not fair

Not fare

Not fare, not fair! Only four letters in your username. The only anagram I came up with is Gene, as in The Selfish Gene. (I, on the other hand, am the shellfish gene.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:38, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Section-opening quotations

An edit summary asked for comments about the boxed quotation at the top of the Skepticism section. On the one hand, I do like the use of such quotes "to draw the reader in". On the other hand, this particular instance looks unattractive to me, because the boxed quote is displayed to the right of another quote, that is indented in the text. Perhaps a solution would be for the boxed quote to be centered on the page, instead of aligned to the right. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm glad you like the the general idea, though fear some will object -- MOS:BLOCKQUOTE says

Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{pull quote}} a.k.a. {{cquote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged.

(I used a colored background just to show my rebellious nature.) Now, I think the real reason for this discouragement is what's said at WP:LONGQUOTE:

As a matter of style, quote boxes should generally be avoided as they draw special attention to the opinion of one source, and present that opinion as though Wikipedia endorses it. Such emphasis on one quote violates NPOV. All quotes should be treated the same.

If that's the concern (and it's a valid one) that still shouldn't prevent boxing historic quotes having no controversy attached to them.

You'll notice that the captions of some of the article's images are designed for similar effect (usually by starting the caption with a quotation) and that's endorsed at WP:CAPTIONS#Drawing_the_reader_into_the_article:

The caption should lead the reader into the article. For example, in History of the Peerage, a caption for Image:William I of England.jpg might say "William of Normandy overthrew the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, bringing a new style of government." Then the reader gets curious about that new form of government and reads text to learn what it is.

I really don't see why a boxed quote (which is really no different from a caption, just without the image) shouldn't be used the same way.

Anyway, in the current version [2] two of the boxquotes (the "moral man" limerick, and the "very small amount" quote) are clearly OK, but one ("modern commen­ta­tors") is maybe borderline. (I'd argue that we're well past questioning that "many modern commentators exaggerate" etc., but I can see that this might not be obvious to the casual observer.) So I've moved "modern commentators" back into the text, and put a new quote (19th c) in its place in the box [3].

As to the layout, I completely agree with you -- the box looks bad when adjacent to a blockquote. I tried centering the quote at the top of the section but then it looks like a banner headline, though maybe this can be salvaged by tinkering with the width etc. Since you like the general idea of quote boxes, there are a couple more I want to add and maybe in the process of doing that some bright idea will occur to me.

EEng 08:11, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

This is getting way above my competency level, so I have zero advice (other than a facetious recommendation of Template:Quotefarm). --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, you're certainly competent to give your opinion of different formatting approaches. But if you've changed your mind about the quotes drawing the reader in etc., please say so now. Otherwise I'll add some more (probably too many) after which we can evaluate which ones are worth keeping. But I don't want to go ahead if you've changed your mind about their appropriateness. When some roving enforcer shows up to say all articles have to look alike, I want to be able to point to this discussion and say, "Hah! Even Frothy Spits likes them -- and you know how hard to please he is!". EEng 00:58, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Then, facetiousness aside, I approve (in principle) of quotes at the beginnings of sections to draw readers in. But I disapprove of doing it in every section, or most sections. And I disapprove of having more quotes than text, or of having too many quotes. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:33, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Bring Me the Head, belated response

I just took a quick look over the edit history, and realized that an edit summary had asked me what I thought about the cartoon showing the accident. Having just seen it now, I'm responding belatedly. I like the idea of including the image, because it vividly shows "in popular culture". But I disagree with its placement on the page, paired with the image about tamping. It makes the tamping image seem less serious and attention-worthy, and it's a peculiar stage in the reading of the page to encounter something humorous – after all, the injury itself was no laughing matter. So: my advice would be to relocate it to the section about "Exaggeration and distortion of mental changes". It fits well with the theme of how a lot of popular accounts got the facts wrong, and it would provide an image in a rather wordy section that does not yet have one. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

---

Hmmm. I don't see it as humorous, though certainly rather than being clinical it has what one might call a "light touch". The reason I put it in the accident section is that I actually think it's quite accurate on where the iron entered and exited. So I think it helps the reader understand, because there's nothing else available showing that, just the disembodied-fleshless-skull images from Ratiu's and van Horn's papers (seen here at left). The crew's reactions, and Gage being blown into the air, are of course fanciful, but that doesn't bother me.

You're right, though, that the Distortion/Exaggeration section is strangely bereft of images in this otherwise image-rich article. Just to see how it looks I've moved "Bring Me" there. Take a look. EEng 23:46, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

---

Thanks. I like the change. I understand your reasoning for the previous placement, but I suspect that the typical Wikipedia reader would assume that the image is not really reliable for the exact anatomy/trajectory, and thus would not take from it what you intended. It goes well with all the exaggerations, etc. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:52, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

It just crossed my mind that you could crop the image to just show his head, from the bottom to the top of the spike, and that could potentially illustrate the trajectory. I'm not really in favor of doing that, but I guess it's an option. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:56, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Actually, maybe not. I just looked closely at the image, enlarging it as much as I could, and it sort of makes it look like the spike is passing under his facial skin, but not through the skull. It's subjective, in the eye of the beholder. I really think it's better in the realm of pop culture and exaggerations. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:01, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

---

Wow, we're really seeing this differently. I was just about to say that one thing I realize I don't like about the new placement is that it implies "Bring Me the Head" is an example of exaggeration/distortion. It's not -- it's far more accurate than any attempt at comprehensive presentation I can remember, other than Kean's. I'm even thinking about using it at an upcoming seminar for high school students.

I kind of see what you mean about close examination of the face. You're right one might see it as first as kind of burrowing under the dermis, but when you look at the depicted entry and exit points I think it's clear the path goes behind the eye. Back when it was next to the other, scientific, images, there could be no mistake about that and I think they complimented one another nicely. Anyway, let's sleep on it for a week or more, and maybe others will chime in. EEng 00:35, 23 August 2016 (UTC) P.S. Full disclosure: I was asked to review it just before publication for factual accuracy, and suggested a handful of minor changes, but even before that it was impressively accurate. I did miss one little thing though -- drat. I wish I could send you a copy but I promised to only send it to Macmillan, at least for now -- sorry. It was later that the idea struck me to use this panel in the article, and I got them to release it.

In any case, I think that pairing it with the tamping image has the unintended effect of distracting from the tamping image. You asked for my opinion, and (eventually) you got it. (I keep this page on my watchlist, but I don't pay close attention, so if you want my opinion on something, you'll likely get a quicker response by pinging me.) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:01, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

No deadline, so we can afford to stew on it awhile. What we have to balance is the misleading implication that we're deprecating the work (if it's in Distortion section), vs. the distraction/lack of anatomic precision (if it's in the Accident section). EEng 03:26, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Inpopcult

I'd like to suggest an idea that occurred to me. Perhaps you could create a new page section, about how Gage and his accident were presented in popular culture. I'm sure there were various popularizations in the decades after his accident, and there have of course been accounts written for children. It might make an interesting addition to the page, and of course it would be an ideal location for the image. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought of that. The problem is that the idea of a popcult section has been on my mind for years but I just don't think there's enough material worth mentioning. 19th-c presentations of Gage outside medical/scientific literature were pretty much limited to phrenological writings (which the article already covers) and now and then something in an armchair musing on the brain, soul, mind, etc. e.g. [4]; but all were very limited and not much different from the scientific presentations -- distorted one way or another according to what doctrinal axe the author was grinding (exception: "The Man with a Hole in His Head" was neither phrenological nor short, grinds no axe, and is the only fictional work based on Gage I know of until maybe the 1970s or 1980s). The 20th c wasn't much different, except with the occasional Ripleys and a handful of appearances in books with titles like Yankee Yarns.

Thus the only serious discussion of Gage in popcult (which is, as usual, in Macmillan 2000) is pretty much just the foregoing, mention of the two rock bands named for Gage, and not much else. Since then, and especially since the portraits were discovered, there's been something of an explosion, but there's no RS commentary on that, and even if there was I think it could be pretty much handled in just one or two of my long multiclause sentences. It would make an embarrassingly short section, I fear. EEng 03:10, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

A popcult snippet

• "Video as art" The Irish Times, Mar 6, 1989, p. 8 (describes a bizarre piece of installation art having nothing apparent to do with Gage, but "inspired" by him") EEng 05:02, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I am not making this up

• Phineas Gage – the haberdashery (check out their logo). I spoke with them today and suggested they consider a "Blowout Sale" with "Prices so low your head will explode!" EEng 08:29, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

I see from the bottom of their page that it is copyright 2016 Phineas Gage. I knew that he survived the accident, but this is amazing! Perhaps there is a little bit more of a rationale for a pop culture section. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:00, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

P.S. I knew you were going to put that "shy" into "phrenology"! I was waiting to see how long it would take. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Additional video

Volume rendering of Gage's skull.

I think this video (right) could fit well into the article, but I did not find a good place to put it. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:48, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate your bringing this up. However, to be honest it's not a very good rendering, apparently because it's not from Ratiu's raw CT scans, but rather derived from Ratiu's video (which in turn came from his CT scans). The fact is that this paper's not about Gage, but rather uses Gage as a vehicle to demonstrate a certain technique, and as I said the results aren't that good. And it's so short and fast! So I'm not sure how it would aid the reader's understanding of Gage, esp. given the three modern still images already displayed in the article, plus the "External video". I'm including those four items below to aid this discussion, and pinging Tryptofish and Mirokado for their thoughts. EEng 02:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

External videos
Video reconstruction of tamping iron pass­ing through Gage's skull (Ratiu et al.)

I likewise find that video so short that I have trouble even seeing what it is supposed to show. I agree with EEng that the existing image files are better. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Harvard copyedit

This:

In November 1849 Henry Jacob Bigelow, the Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, brought Gage to Boston and, after satisfying himself that the tamping iron had actually passed through Gage's head, presented him to a meeting of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement and (possibly) to a Harvard Medical School class.

has gotten a bit redundant. An earlier version has read "... to a Medical School class", which is not a style WP uses (the capitalization of a common-noun reference; similarly if someone worked for Santa Clara Community College and later the University of California at Berkeley, we would not write of her anything like "... after she left her Community College position for the University post").

The entire sentence could probably be redone, with further removal of unnecessary capitalization (per MOS:JOBTITLES, "professor of surgery" shouldn't be capitalized except when prefixed to the name):

In November 1849, Henry Jacob Bigelow, professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, brought Gage to Boston and, after satisfying himself that the tamping iron had actually passed through Gage's head, presented Gage to a meeting of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement and (possibly) to his medical class.

This also removes the "the" before the job title, which indicates that HMS only had one surgery professor (possibly true at that time, but we don't know that from the source presented so far).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:23, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, how about...

In November 1849, Henry Jacob Bigelow, the professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, brought Gage to Boston and, after satisfying himself that the tamping iron had actually passed through Gage's head, presented Gagehim to a meeting of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement and (possibly) to histhe medical school class.

It certainly wasn't "his" (Bigelow's) class, and the earlier "a medical school class" was also wrong. It was just "the" Harvard Med School class, simply meaning all the students at the school at the given time, there not being designated stages-of-study (first year, second year, etc.) as you would see today.

As to "the" professor of surgery, Bigelow certainly was the one and only, Harvard Med School being, like most medical schools at the time, a bit of a boutique operation. I'm actually having trouble finding an explicit source on this precise point; it's like trying to find a source explaining that George Washington was the President of the US, not one of many. Nonetheless I've found something that I think just barely passes muster, being from Harvard's own Center for the History of Medicine.

I've installed all this stuff so all can see the new cite, but of course comments from my esteemed fellow editors are most welcome. EEng 07:40, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

My gut reaction was that it should actually be "the Professor of Surgery", capitalized, although trips to MOS always make me cringe (because the issues are often so trivial). But I looked at MOS:JOBTITLES, and I actually do think that capitalization is correct in this case. MOS makes a distinction between "French kings" and the "King of France". Bigelow, here, is like the latter. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:10, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that Professor of Surgery is a title, and should be capitalized. SM registering no objection, I'll reinstall the capitals. EEng 13:37, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

...and now that I've done it, it looks a little strange. Whatever. EEng 13:39, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

The Wonderful World of Wikidata

Over at Gage's Wikidata entry I tried to add the Wikidata equivalent of [[Rock blasting|blaster]] as an occupation, but instead I seem to have added blaster (Q2481679) fictional type of personal laser weapon from Star Wars. Can anyone sort this out? I'm flummoxed. EEng 02:23, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe just change it to "railroad construction"? --Tryptofish (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

It already lists railroad construction foreman and stagecoach driver; I was trying to add blaster as a third entry. Now that's I've inadvertently linked Gage to the Star Wars franchise, I'd be happy just to delete it, but I can't even get it to do that. EEng 03:12, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Woops, I should have actually looked at the entry. Anyway, please check it now, because I think I was able to successfully remove it. At first, it did to me what it probably did to you, which is to refuse to carry out "remove", with an idiotic message about how it's better not to remove it. Then I tried adding a "qualifier", and while it was in that mode, the "remove" function seems to have worked without arguing with me. This was my first edit at Wikidata, and I hope that it will be my last. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, kind sir. So much for my degree in computer science from you-know-where. I feel the same way about Wikidata. It's like a video game -- everything you click pops up with a secret power or Cloak of Secrecy or something. EEng 23:28, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

That would be "kind fish" to you! Yes, sometimes ignorance is bliss. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:35, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Reference formats

I've been trying to follow the still-in-progress edits about various strategies to improve on the displaying of references, and am quite interested. However, I noticed something odd in the page edit history (at least on my browser), that I figured I should point out. Although the current version of the page looks fine, every preceding edit displays the References section very oddly, as though templates cannot be properly parsed. Make a new revision, and the previous properly displaying version becomes improperly displayed. Baffling. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:32, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually, nothing I've been doing changes the appearance of the (current) rendered page, rather I've just been redesigning the template to clean up its syntax and so on retrospectively. In other words, I've changed the order and names of the parameters the template expects, and at the same moment correspondingly changed the article to supply those changed parameters. I wouldn't dare do that except that, to my unutterable astonishment and no doubt yours and Mirokado's, this remains the only article using what is so obviously the best Wikipedia referencing system ever devised by the human mind (or any other mind for that matter) and thus this is the only article that needs to be changed. An unfortunate side effect of that is that earlier versions of the article won't display their ref sections properly, for the reason you gave -- the parms those old versions of the article supply to the templates don't match what the current template expects. (Wikimedia isn't smart enough to match up old versions of articles to the versions of templates in force at that point in time -- that sounds like something that should be easy to do, but in fact there are some theoretical problems with even deciding how that should work.) Maybe that was a bad decision, and as I try to explain it to you I have to admit I'm a little uncomfortable with it, but there it is. EEng 01:44, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, and well-played. Yes, with each passing day I discover more ways in which Wikimedia isn't as smart as I would like it to be. (Come to think of it, with each passing day I discover more ways in which I am not as smart as I would like to be.) As for no doubt mine, I would not in fact give an award for the best referencing system ever devised by the human mind. But this is indeed an article that needs to be changed, which is why I was so interested, and still am. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:39, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

"As for no doubt mine"? EEng 23:53, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

You had said: "and no doubt yours and Mirokado's". That's what I referred to. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:42, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Gotcha. I agree the award could be a bad idea -- could sow jealousy. EEng 21:46, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I was more concerned about sowing hubris. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:58, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Removing "press box" related to irrelevant site-wide template vandalism

I'm reverting this [5] addition of a "press box" referring to a media mention [6] of the article. While I understand it's well-intentioned, it really has nothing to do with article per se. This was an incident of site-wide template vandalism that affected tens of thousands of articles (see Special:Diff/813822899#Background_Image_Vandalism). Nothing in the media piece has anything to do with Gage or the content of the Gage article, and it's a waste of time for editors to click on the box's link thinking they're going to learn something about how the article is viewed by the media. EEng 17:54, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

It's a shame, because for a minute there I was hoping we'd be subpoenaed for the Mueller investigation. EEng 23:03, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Skull image in lead

The iron's path, per Harlow}

The image (to the right) moves the positioning of the TOC on largish screens. Here's what I see. Might it be a good idea to move it to it's relevant section in the article? (I didn't want to prance in here and start moving stuff around). Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:45, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

This is the relevant section: it's there to show the reader immediately what happened to the subject. Any article goes haywire when viewed in a window 60 words wide. We could add {clear left} just before the TOC but all that would do is create even more wasted whitespace. EEng 15:53, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

his desire to return to his family in New Hampshire being "uncontrollable by his friends ... got wet feet and a chill"

The following:

his desire to return to his family in New Hampshire being "uncontrollable by his friends ... got wet feet and a chill"

makes no grammatical sense. Somebody who understands what it's supposed to mean, please fix it. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it does look a bit like some [joining text in square brackets] is missing there. I can guess at what is meant. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:54, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

As can we all, except one of us apparently. I'm sure you join me in eager anticipation of CT's answer below. EEng 12:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Martinevans123: Can you fix it? It's gibberish as it stands. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 12:16, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd really appreciate it if you'd answer my question below. EEng 12:23, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

To put things in context, let's give the whole more of the passage:

While Harlow was absent for a week Gage was "in the street every day except Sunday", his desire to return to his family in New Hampshire being "uncontrollable by his friends ... got wet feet and a chill". He soon developed a fever ...

Now, before we pass on to the question of whether the bit you quoted should be stiltedly recast to fit WP:MISSSNODGRASS' narrow ideas about what constitutes good writing, let me ask you one thing: do you really not "understand what it's supposed to mean"? Really? Be honest now. EEng 12:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

It's obvious - his desire got wet feet and a chill. Often happens, I suspect. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:23, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Grrr. I've still got that nuclear button on my desk, A Man Inverts. I'd still like an answer from CT. EEng 14:49, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

• I'm not willing to further engage with EEng and his insecurities—he's been on attack mode since I disagreed with him in this discussion. Martinevans123, since you say you understand what the text is trying to say, could you please fix it? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:34, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

  As you know, we underlings are only allowed two edits a week on this article by the Gagemeister. So I'll try for next Saturday, if that's ok. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:40, 9 January 2018 (UTC) ....meanwhile, I guess we could all study one of the sources kindly provided?

Without looking at the sources I expect it has something to do with Netflix, no? Though I can't quite work out what sort of sexual activity is implied by "wet feet". ...I hope he clipped his toenails first. nagualdesign 22:52, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

"In June 2016, singer-songwriter Danah released a song titled "Phin and Chill" on GunpowderCloud. The track, produced by Ed Wippy Lion, a member of Vermont pop-transit group Rutland Crew... is a tongue-in-cheek representation of the use of the tamping iron in popular culture." Martinevans123 (talk) 23:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Those things'll go right through you if you're not careful. I think that's why a lot of marital aids have vestigial organs. It's health and safety gone mad! nagualdesign 23:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Martinevans123: I have been going through some the sources—that's how I determined there were commas in quotes that weren't in the sources[7][8]—but dealing with EEng's editwarring and constant attacks has sapped my motivation. Given that he's editwarring over the tag already,[9][10] I don't trust him to "allow" me to attempt to fix it anyways, and I'm not going to get dragged into an editwar. Unless one of the other editors here is willing to fix this mess, I suppose EEng "wins" by attrition, as he did at Sacred Cod (still unfixed). Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Now there's an article that deserves some deep attention, I'm sure. But "chill thy beans", dear Curls, I'm sure someone will suggest a suitable compromise. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I hope so. The best solution would probably be to forego the whole awkward WP:QUOTEFARM style entirely, which makes for tiresome reading. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:19, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Yikes—I just took a stroll through the talkpage archives and edit history. There is no hope for "this mess of an article"^{[B1]:20[H]:4n[M]:43}—one of "the least^{[M]:17,41,90[M10]:643} pleasant reading experiences"^{[B1]:13-14[H]:5​​[M]:25-29​​[17]​​[19]} I've "had on Wikipedia".^{[M]:1,378[M2]:C​​[3]:1347​​[4]:56​​[K2]:abstr} Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:13, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I hear that now and then from people who write articles nobody reads. But opinions vary. EEng 04:31, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Curious how EEng would characterize articles such as history of Japan, ukiyo-e, Maus, etc, as ones "nobody reads"—even more curious is that he would think pageviews justify poor editing. Maybe there's no more to this puzzling behaviour than an overwhelming desire to provoke other editors, which appears to be a motif in his editing history. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:57, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, sorry, three of the literally 300 articles on your "Wikiresume" someone reads, though since you want to press the point, pageviews for those three articles together are roughly the same as this one alone. Pageviews don't "justify bad editing", but they do validate that many eyes are on the article, and that actual (not fanciful) issues are likely to be shaken out. I have no desire to provoke other editors, but I do have contempt for editors who want all articles refashioned according to their personal preferences – the "anodyne consistency" one editor referred to here. EEng 19:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure why EEng is comparing the list of articles I've created to one he bagan to edit five years after it was created, or how EEng's penis-measuring contest is a logical defense of ugly prose. By that logic, Pornography—with seven times the pageviews over its lifetime—must have imerfectible, God-like prose. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

This isn't about "fixing" anything "wrong"; it's just a question of style. I forget the rhetorical term – it's something like an ellipsis, though there's some other more specific word for it – but this kind of switching horses midstream is an established technique, though little used because only occasionally does the opportunity arise to use it for what it's used for, which is to avoid stilted interpolations the reader will readily supply for himself. Sure, we could change it to say

While Harlow was absent for a week Gage was "in the street every day except Sunday", his desire to return to his family in New Hampshire being "uncontrollable by his friends ... [As a result he] got wet feet and a chill". He soon developed a fever ...

but that would dominate the quotation for no reason – the reader easily grasps what's going on without it. You would never do this in straight article text, but the ellipsis already in the quotation presents the opportunity. I did the same thing at Widener Library:

In 1910 a committee of architects termed Gore

unsafe [and] unsuitable for its object ... no amount of tinkering can make it really good ... hopelessly over­crowded ... leaks when there is a heavy rain ... intolerably hot in summer ... books are put in double rows and are not infrequently left lying on top of one another, or actually on the floor ...

With dormitory basements pressed into service as overflow storage for Harvard's 543,000 books, the committee drew up a proposal for replacement of Gore in stages.

Sure, this could be rewritten to read:

In 1910 a committee of architects termed Gore

unsafe [and] unsuitable for its object ... no amount of tinkering can make it really good ... hopelessly over­crowded [and] intolerably hot in summer ...

The committee also noted that Gore "leaks when there is a heavy rain" and that "books are put in double rows and are not infrequently left lying on top of one another, or actually on the floor". With dormitory basements pressed into service as overflow storage for Harvard's 543,000 books, the committee drew up a proposal for replacement of Gore in stages.

– but that would break up a nice passage for no purpose except to satisfy some WP:MISSSNODGRASSian compulsion. If my esteemed fellow editors really feel that a more conventional style will work better, fine, but the idea that the current text is somehow incomprehensible, or "wrong" is nonsense. EEng 00:49, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

And, as already noted but worth repeating, one should always avoid the possibility of breaking up a nice passage for no purpose except to satisfy. nagualdesign 01:26, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

• Comment The missing text in square brackets should be added, as otherwise the sentence is ungrammatical, but guessing at what is meant would be inappropriate as a basis for doing so, even if readers can easily do so. EEng is being disingenuous and violating AGF by accusing CT of "pretending" not to understand. Yes, CT can guess at what is meant as well as the rest of us, but doing so in order to fill out a quotation would be inappropriate; he was not wrong to tag the sentence in question. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:52, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, EEng, please drop the act with the citation of page view statistics as though each one of them is a separate person who has read through the entire article, noticed the grammatical error in the nineteenth paragraph, and decided it was not worth trying to fix -- I am probably five or six of the 7,000,000 people you refer to, and I never noticed the problem. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:57, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Of course he's pretending not to understand. Whether one likes the style or not, it's perfectly obvious that it was Gage who "got wet feet and a chill". As to page views, let's suppose each person returns to the article five or six times, as you did – in fact, let's call it seven. That's 1,000,000 distinct readers. Then let's assume only 1/20 of them read as far as this paragraph. That's still 50,000 distinct readers insufficiently puzzled to inquire or complain.

Anyway, the trouble with all this Miss Snodgrassian hand-wringing is that Harlow, who's being quoted, does exactly the thing you're complaining about:

The atmosphere was cold and damp, the ground wet, and he went without an overcoat and with thin boots; got wet feet and a chill.

Like I said, it's a perfectly acceptable technique, even if a little-used one. (And before you ask, he was writing in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal – what we now call The New England Journal of Medicine.) EEng 19:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

But that was in 1848, exactly 170 years ago? Fashions change, even in academic and professional journals? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:10, 10 January 2018 (UTC) (p.s. I wasn't going to ask)

Good point, but (a) on the whole usage becomes more flexible over time, not less; and (b) it's him I'm quoting. EEng 20:24, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

If it's that critical, could we include the whole sentence? But, I mean, "wet feet and a chill" isn't really medically knife-edge is it? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:56, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I would say "on the whole usage becomes more flexible over time, not less" is an off-topic generality that had nothing to do with the present problem, as our article text ungrammatically distorts the quotation (the subject of "got" is clearly different), but it's not even true. Formal writing in 19th-century English had all sorts of conventions that were perfectly acceptable then but that any right-minded copy editor in 2017 would change. Ctrl+F this for "periodic style". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:52, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Begin interlude

EEng accused me of bad faith over my edits at Sacred Cod, too—after lots of kicking and screaming, he had to issue a public apology at talk:MOS that I was right all along. Does EEng accuse everyone who disagrees with him of bad faith? He sure likes to fight with people on this talk page!

Someone forgot to add "one should be able to parse a sentence" to Miss Snodgrass's List of Lies. On second thought, leave it out—writing is so much easier when there's no rule binding the poor editor to make sense. The rule should be: the longer the penis, the less sense an editor is required to make. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:01, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

If only Sigmund was here. He'd have a field day? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:11, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I wonder what he'd have to say about this obsession with "Miss Snodgrass".^{[M]:1,378[M2]:C​​[3]:1347​​[4]:56​​[K2]:abstr[M]:17,41,90[M10]:643[B1]:13-14[H]:5​​[M]:25-29​​[17]​​[19]}
(check out that "large iron rod‍"!^{[B2][31]:28[M10]:643-4[H]:14[M]:101​​[B1]:22n[36][M]:46-7}) Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:58, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Something to do with cranial trauma, I expect. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:04, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

• CT, I've never accused you of bad faith, unless you count my post a bit above wherein I asserted that you had pretended not to understand what the passage under discussion was meant to say, which you obviously had been doing.
• I did not "have to" issue an apology, but nonetheless I did, because that's what I do when I've sown confusion or caused inconvenience, even inadvertently. Good advice.
• What I said in that apology, which you have so thoughtfully linked, is that

  (a) I had misread the guideline; and

  (b) I was glad to see that there was discussion ongoing to correct the poor presentation which had misled me (along with many other editors, who had many times reinforced my misreading).

I said nothing about you being right because

(1) no one cares about that; and

(2) since you press the point, you were wrong about the most important point, which is that many people do, in fact, misunderstand LQ because of its poor presentation.

But really, can you take your anger elsewhere? – because

(α) you've been fulminating on Talk:MOS, on my talk page, and now here for several days, and you're frightening the horses; and

(β) this is an article talk page, for discussing possible changes to the article; you said above that you didn't want to participate in that, so if you must keep bleating please do it on my talk page, though I'd rather you didn't do that either.

EEng 01:30, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

"CT, I've never accused you of bad faith, [except for when I did]".^{[B2][31]:28[M10]:643-4[H]:14[M]:101​​[B1]:22n[36][M]:46-7[M]:1,378[M2]:C​​[3]:1347​​[4]:56​​[K2]:abstr[M]:17,41,90[M10]:643[B1]:13-14[H]:5​​[M]:25-29​​[17]​​[19]}

"... many people do, in fact, misunderstand LQ because of its poor presentation ..."—EEng has yet to demonstrate that this applies very widely at all (the discussion at talk:MoS was unanimous against his interpretation—but at least he's no longer asserting "most people"). But here we're talking about fixing this piece of garbage prose in Phineas Gage, which has nothing to do with LQ. Of course, EEng'll go off about LQ, pageviews, etc. again—anything but about how to fix the garbage prose. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:52, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

That discussion is below. This section is for you to rant and me to gently correct you. EEng 02:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Do I detect the very faintest suggestion of animosity between you two? I fear it may be getting in the way of finding a solution here. Perhaps you could both take a step back and let other "less involved" editors find a solution? Martinevans123 (talk) 10:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Scroll down and you'll see I've already disengaged; scroll up and you'll see I've been asking someone else to handle this all along. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 12:25, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I applaud your sense of perspective. Perhaps this interlude could be hatted, lest folks think you or EEng bear some kind of slight grudge? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:31, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Resuming discussion

OK, Martin, where were we? Ah yes... Well, if we include the entire sentence we have

While Harlow was absent for a week Gage was "in the street every day except Sunday", his desire to return to his family in New Hampshire being "uncontrollable by his friends ... The atmosphere was cold and damp, the ground wet, and he went without an overcoat and with thin boots; got wet feet and a chill." He soon developed a fever ...

which would be just as "ungrammatical" (according to Miss Snodgrass) as before. EEng 01:30, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Just what the fuck did "Miss Snodgrass" do to EEng? If her "thing" is readable prose, then I'm afraid I have to take her side. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:57, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

You seem upset. EEng 02:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

You seem pleased. Why not just write prose that gets to the point? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:23, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm pleased discussion is able to proceed despite your ranting. EEng 02:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

"despite [my] ranting [about some 'Miss Snodgrass']" <-- fixed that for you. The text, anyways—I wouldn't pretend to fix the underlying issues.

I hope Martin or someone else will be able to solve the problem, and I hope it takes fewer than another 14 archive pages of EEng sneering and kicking up drahmah over people trying to fix the mess of an article he constructed from other people's words.

I'm giving you the last word, EEng—apparently you have some idea of what that should mean. Just skip fucking with the indenting when you post your next witty comeback. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:09, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Anyway, Martin, you see what I mean about including the full sentence (aside from the fact that all that detail about the weather and the coat and the boots probably [oops, left this word out before: don't] help the reader much)? EEng 16:24, 11 January 2018 (UTC) Added missing word 18:50, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I quite like the weather and the coat and the thin boots, as I think they make the meaning much clearer. Alternatively, I'd be happy to see the quote truncated after "uncontrollable by his friends...". But I'd also be happy to see suggestions from other editors. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:37, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I concur with Martin that the details of the weather, coat and boots should be included; they put the chill in context and make it clear that his becoming ill was as a result of inappropriate clothing, not infection relating to his injury. On the broader WP:QUOTEFARM issue, I'd say this article is an exceptional case. Gage is noteworthy not so much for his injury, but for the manner in which he became a minor figure in popular culture, and as such it makes sense to include more reactions of his contemporaries, and descriptions of him by those who met him, to put the later semi-mythical literary construct of 20th-century pop-psych books in context. (The alternative approach with topics like this of separate articles for "verified facts about the person" and "popular perceptions of the person and how they came to be believed"—as we do with figures as varied as Vincent van Gogh, the Zodiac Killer, Nikola Tesla and Benjamin Franklin—would also be viable, although it has the unfortunate side-effect of tending to make the parent biography rather dry and boring.) ‑ Iridescent 16:58, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Arid Desicant, you've put the situation very succinctly. I'm happy to better emphasize the cause of the fever, but in the interests of brevity I wonder if we can just add the apparel but let the reader realize for himself that the weather wasn't sunny and warm:

While Harlow was absent for a week Gage was "in the street every day except Sunday", his desire to return to his family in New Hampshire being "uncontrollable by his friends ... he went without an overcoat and with thin boots; got wet feet and a chill." He soon developed a fever [etc etc]

Thoughts? EEng 18:50, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

No objection. But let's see what "Erect Dis In" has to say. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:57, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Let's hope he brings some dry wit to bear. EEng 19:00, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

"cringe".... I now feel suitably cretinised. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:17, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Iridescent: while I obviously disagree about the nauseous QUOTEFARM style, as well as many other editorial choices that degrade the article's reading experience, the goal of the discussion—the only goal of the discussion—is to have a single broken passage fixed. All the drahmah has erupted from an attempt to obstruct fixing this single broken passage. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

• There being no further relevant comment, I'll go ahead and install that last proposal. EEng 16:06, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Initial treatment (oz to gm)

I'm not sure if the conversion comes from sources, but 1.0 oz is generally rounded to 28 g. Ward20 (talk) 05:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

The source says,

a portion of the brain, an ounce or more, which protruded, was removed

and this is rendered in the article as

removed ... an ounce [30 g] of protruding brain

The source is giving a very rough estimate, of course. Then there's fluid ounce vs. avoirdupois ounce; given that brain is mostly water, they're off by "only" about 5% under their modern US definitions (a fluid ounce, which is probably what the source means, would be about 29.5g of water) but historically they're all over the map. So it seems overprecise to convert to 28g, which is why I gave the round 30g. At the same time we don't want to confuse schoolchildren, I suppose, but I don't know what else to do.

I thought about saying simply "a small amount of brain" but, speaking for myself, I don't want even an ounce of my brain removed (that would be about 2-3%) so I'm not sure that's a good way to go either. Thoughts?

Glad to see you back, Ward20. Things have been so quiet around here lately. EEng 08:23, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

What? You thnk I'm loud? Just kidding. Maybe put it in quotes with (sic) to indicate it comes from the source but may be different than current convention? Ward20 (talk) 11:48, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

If by "it comes from the source" you mean the gram value comes from the source, no it doesn't -- the source is as quoted above; but perhaps I misunderstand you. In the meantime, how about this [11]? That way, it's clear everything's rough. I hesitated to suggest that because I've gotten flak about "too many quotes", but anyway what do you think? (I meant to propose it here first but while composing in situ I unthinkingly went ahead and saved.) EEng 14:14, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

If the source only says "an ounce or more", my advice would be to just say "approximately an ounce" on the page (or "about an ounce"). As long as it's approximate, then it doesn't have to matter whether it's fluid ounces or any other kind, and that passage from the source makes it sound like it wasn't measured precisely anyway. (And if you ever change your mind about having some of your brain removed, just let me know, and I'll change your mind.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:46, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

There's no question of it being anything more than a very rough estimate, though for whatever reason Harlow (he's the source) makes clear it's on the high side of one ounce, so it seems to me using the source's original "an ounce or more" makes more sense than "approximately an ounce". (As noted, there's about a 5% difference between a fluid ounce of water and a "mass" ounce, modulo shifting definitions over time and geography -- but none of that matters given the roughness of the original "ounce or more".) That leaves us with the question of how to render it in grams. Since various interpretations of "ounce" give us 28g or 29.5g, I figure when we fold in the "or more" we arrive very comfortably at a round 30g. Thus, ""an ounce or more" (30 g). EEng 19:23, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

What I was trying to say is that there is no need for WP to say anything about grams. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:25, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

I'd agree that any kind of conversion here is being overprecise. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:30, 15 September 2018 (UTC) EEng, had you considered going DIY at all? ... you can always stop to check the scales.

Yep, I would agree that we can only be as precise as the original source. Anything else would veer into OR territory. I love this article! Simon Adler (talk) 19:39, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Concur using "an ounce or more" and removing the gram conversion seems best. Ward20 (talk) 19:51, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Wait a second ... if we say anything at all using an English/US measurement, for metricated readers we have to give some indication of what that means; that's basic. However, we could sidestep the whole problem by saying a quantity of protruding brain (which also avoids the problem with "a small amount", discussed near the top of this thread). As the wise man said, an ounce of imprecision saves a ton of explanation. Readers hungry for more detail can consult the source. EEng 20:50, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Perfect solution. A quantity. I'm for that. Simon Adler (talk) 20:56, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Years in the crucible have taught me reflexes for jumping out worthy of an Olympic gymnast. EEng 22:04, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Well I'm not that hungry for 170-year-old New Hampshire cortex, thanks. Chianti or no Chianti. But just "a quantity"?? That could be practically any amount?? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:03, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that's true. How about "a piece"? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

We don't know it was a single piece (and it probably wasn't). EEng 21:34, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Pity it wasn't a piece of mind. A portion? A small amount? Some? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:41, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

A dollop? [12] Simon Adler (talk) 21:46, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

An appetizer-sized portion? No, never mind. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Why do I get all the nuts? EEng 21:58, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

So tempting. Sigh, I'll be good. Ward20 (talk) 22:21, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, if that will get EEng to go along with it, "a quantity" is a good solution. (But I have to be quarrelsome about the need to convert between metric and real measurements in every case. Wow, I looked over the page, and those conversions are all over the place. But you missed one: "30 miles away" in the Convalescence section. And I see two places where US currency is mentioned, "Admittance 12 1/2 cents" and "$1000 for a few pebbles", so I demand – demand! – conversion into Euros, and correction for inflation. ) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

By default, in general we're supposed to provide a conversion every time (MOS:CONVERSIONS -- and this would not be considered a science-related article). Thanks for pointing out the 30 miles. I also inflated the 12-1/2 cents, which to my surprise comes out a very sensible $4 today; the $1000 isn't worth inflating, since the reader only needs to understand it as orders of magnitude more than a few pebbles would be worth, which he will without help. (I actually don't buy the significance Harlow places the on the story of Gage rejecting the $1000 offer. I could imagine someone rejecting the offer because it's so too-good-to-be-true high.) EEng 21:51, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm impressed. I wasn't really serious about the money part of it, but that's nice. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:59, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

(e/c) Well it's true if they can be that arsed they can check the source. But you are bound to get drive-by taggers with or and other distractions. We could put in an inline note I s'pose saying the source only gives this description. Fried brain sandwich Martin. I will raise you a spleen. Simon Adler (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

I dare not say that I see your spleen and raise you a... --Tryptofish (talk) 21:14, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Let's just be grateful he didn't lose "about a pint of blood." Martinevans123 (talk) 21:15, 15 September 2018 (UTC) ...but cheers, Simon! mmmm.... women with brains!

They were a quid for four in sainsburys on special so I bought some last week. But they scare me. Simon Adler (talk) 21:33, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, because of different definitions of oz and "or more", the value might be more than 28g, so the 30g value is kind of rounding up to approximate. How about stating ("28g or more") which is accurate, descriptive, and doesn't make the conversion unusual? Ward20 (talk) 22:40, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

It still suggests a level of precision not appropriate. It's quite a perplexing situation, which is why I'm for sidestepping as mentioned #somewhere in the above nutso thread. EEng 22:52, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

A radical suggestion

A radical suggestion this, but could we not get away with "a portion of the brain, an ounce or more" in quotes? Martinevans123 (talk) 08:43, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

In other words, just let the linked article tell the reader that this is an ambiguous small unit? I like it. It avoids the problem of selecting a gram value, yet preserves the maximum information from the source. I'd word it like this:

Harlow shaved the scalp around the region of the tamping iron's exit, then removed coagulated blood, small bone fragments, and "an ounce or more" of protruding brain.

What think others of this radical idea? EEng 15:01, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

• Yes that would be a great solution. Just an additional thought. We must avoid the conversion into grams thing, because further down the sources quote 'half a cupful' of pus. It is starting to sound like a recipe. We are getting into Great British Bake Off territory. Ohh errr. Simon Adler (talk) 15:41, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Now that's where you should get all the nuts. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:57, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

[13]. EEng 20:10, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Are those your buns? I really didn't need to see them. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

From the Department Of That Explains It: "We wanted to modernize the presentation of Chinese dim sum to ignite people's visual senses and attract younger generation to dine out with their grannies." Simon Adler (talk) 20:17, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

• You people are nuts. A loose noose (talk) 09:38, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

  Watch out folks. There's a noose, loose, aboot this hoose.... Lordmartins11 (talk) 10:49, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

  Vamoose! EEng 18:56, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Similar case in 2019

On April 10, 2019, there was a similar accident in India: Indian construction worker impaled through the head by an iron rod. He survived.. --Phrontis (talk) 12:52, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Strange to say, survival of transcranial penetrating injuries are no longer all that unusual, for example [14][15][16], though Gage is still at the top of the heap in terms of the diameter of the visitor and the gross amount of brain substance destroyed. But he'd be just one more name on a list if it weren't for the extensive (and mostly hyperbolic) reporting of his mental changes. EEng 14:32, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Question about 2nd paragraph

Why the "—‌" after the first reference, and making the whole paragraph one long sentence? It's not unreadable by any means, but it make it more cumbersome, for me anyway. Ward20 (talk) 02:16, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

And no, I didn't read the discussion above before I posted this. LOL. Ward20 (talk) 02:22, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Well Ward20! As I live and breathe! How the hell are you? For those playing along at home, the sentence in question is

Long known as the "American Crowbar Case"‍—‌once termed "the case which more than all others is cal­cu­lated to excite our wonder, impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our phys­i­o­log­i­cal doctrines"—‌Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain, par­tic­u­larly debate on cerebral local­i­za­tion,​​ and was perhaps the first case to suggest the brain's role in deter­min­ing per­son­al­ity, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific mental changes.

It's one sentence so that the first two ideas (Crowbar Case, case more than all others...) lead into the third (influenced 19th-century discussion) by showing how prominent the case was. We could write instead ...

Long known as the "American Crowbar Case"‍, and once termed "the case which more than all others is cal­cu­lated to excite our wonder, impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our phys­i­o­log­i­cal doctrines", Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain [etc etc].

... but then the two and s confuses things and the structure is obscured. EEng 12:02, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi EEng, thanks for the explanation. I forgot to reply when I read it the first time, sorry. It is on my watchlist and I pop in to read the article now and then to see the progress. Looking good. Ward20 (talk) 21:05, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Mobile accessibility problem

The in-line citation style here (using capital letters) does not seem to work on mobile view, as nothing happens when tapping on one. — Goszei (talk) 07:12, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Weird, because if you click and hold, it opens the page again in a new window and jumps to the right place. Why it won't jump to the right place in the original window is a mystery. But of course the click-to-jump functionality is icing; the reader can easily scroll down and find the ref in the reflist (or use ctrl-F). EEng 08:45, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Some thoughts about layout

I know EEng likes tweaking the details of page appearance, so I thought I'd pass this along, with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about, and may very well be getting it all wrong. Anyway, from discussions elsewhere (principally at Talk:Sissinghurst Castle Garden#Suggestions), I been starting to learn some things I didn't know before, about formatting page layout in order to improve accessibility on narrow-screen devices and for persons with visual disabilities. It might perhaps be of interest to apply some of that here (if it hasn't been done already, in which case please disregard this message!). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:42, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Skimming that thread the two topics seem to be WP:LQ and WP:SANDWICH. LQ I have never understood and leave to others to adjust as needed. SANDWICH is interesting. Some people interpret the verboten SANDWICH as being two images opposite each other, with text in between them, at all ever. My interpretation is that SANDWICHing means two images opposite each other, with text in between them, where the column width available for text is overly narrow and so unsightly. So what constitutes overly narrow? Well, a little above SANDWICH is the recommendation that upright=1.8 should usually be the largest value for images floated beside text. Obviously that's to leave sufficient width for text. Now, it seems to me that if one image of width 1.8 leaves enough width, then two images of widths (say) 0.9 and 0.9 would also leave enough width. That's the general principle I've used, though in actual execution there are some additional details and at two or three points I think the article ends up with a sum of 2.0. I'd be interested to know if there's any particular point that looks unsightly to you. EEng 02:41, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

To answer your question, no, nothing looks unsightly to me. And I really don't have any strong feelings about any of it. My impression is that if one were to look at a page on a phone, rather than on a computer monitor, using the mobile view, one might encounter sandwiching issues that were never apparent on a wider screen. I figured I'd pass that along just in case you might be interested, but I'm certainly not looking to have you do anything in particular. (As for LQ, my posting here was motivated more by the image layout issues and not so much by that. In the event that you ever do get interested in LQ, I explain it brilliantly in the discussion that I linked. And you can logically quote me on that.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:08, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I actually do now and then check the mobile view, on a phone, and see no squeezes. I'm sorry, but LQ I will never understand. It seems to be congenital. EEng 16:15, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

World's longest sentence

Regarding the opening sentence of the lead (which is also the opening paragraph), which is:

Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life‍—‌effects sufficiently profound (for a time at least) that friends saw him as "no longer Gage."

This is an uncomfortably long sentence. I've now attempted two ways of splitting it into two shorter sentences, both reverted. My most recent proposal was:

Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman who improbably survived an accident in which a large iron rod was driven through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe. The injury had reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life‍—‌effects sufficiently profound (for a time at least) that friends saw him as "no longer Gage".

This contains all of the same information but in a more readable state. There's no downside!

Note that I removed the "remembered for..." detail because it's superfluous. Wikipedia subjects have to be notable (ie "remembered") by definition. If a detail is not notable, we don't include it. If a subject is not notable, they don't get an article at all.

This was reverted, with this edit summary:

What are you talking about? The fact that each article subject must be notable does not negate that the reader will want to know what the source of that notability is

Come on! That's not a problem that exists. Readers don't scour articles thinking "OK, I see here that Thriller is the bestselling album of all time, but there isn't a sentence literally saying it's notable so I'm confused". I think it's pretty clear from the paragraph what Gage is remembered for.

As for this:

per MOS:FIRST, "For topics notable for only one reason, this reason should usually be given in the first sentence"

This isn't license to create uncomfortably long sentences - there's nothing inherently noble about cramming as much information as possible into a single sentence for its own sake, especially when we can cover it in fewer words by splitting it. And besides, my first sentence does say he suffered a crazy brain injury, which is part of why he's notable. Popcornfud (talk) 19:07, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Measuring things to ensure they fit a universal law of acceptability is not always useful. The point about this sentence is that it reads well and is not confusing. It doesn't need fixing. Johnuniq (talk) 22:21, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Johnuniq, I've always considered you a gentleman and a scholar. EEng 22:51, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Johnuniq, I don't think it reads well. Popcornfud (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

You're skipping my earlier edit summary:

It's long because the source of his fame is complex. It's not just his survival that he's remembered for, but rather his survival AND the mental changes (in fact, primarily the mental changes). And in fact, it's not the mental changes per se, but rather the exaggerated reports of the mental changes. Your change loses that.

(And I've always considered you a gentleman and a scholar too, Pfud.) EEng 22:51, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

But my second edit - the one I quoted again above- should fix that concern, because it skips the need to say what he's "remembered for" entirely.

Unless you're sticking to "It's long because the source of his fame is complex." Really? It's our job, in writing an encyclopaedia, to explain complex things simply and concisely. I'm proposing that, if this idea is complicated to explain, we do it in two sentences instead of one, which is hardly radical. Popcornfud (talk) 23:01, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. EEng 23:34, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

And naturally my response is: this can be simpler.

I feel like you're not actually addressing any of my points here, EEng. Popcornfud (talk) 23:44, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

My edit summary above does address it. The first sentence is supposed to give the reason for notability, so we cannot (as you propose) skip the need to say what he's "remembered for" entirely ("remembered for" being a less stuffy way of saying "notable"). Unlike Thriller, Gage's notability doesn't stem from a whole pile of things (best seller, Grammys, Album of the Year, etc etc etc) but something very narrow: not from (a) his accident, not from (b) the facts of the sequelae of his accident, but from (c) the stories told about the sequelae of his accident (which are different from the facts). But there's no way to talk about (c) without talking about (b), which in turn requires describing (a) first. He is remembered for the reports, and there's no way out of saying that because if you simply state, flatly, that there were reports, the reader won't understand that that is the reason he's notable.

I realize you find this one sentence overlong, but that's a stylistic judgment – it's not somehow wrong (and in particular it is not, as you've said, a run-on). It's just unusually long, but then there's a lot that's unusual about this article -- I refer you to Talk:Phineas_Gage/Archive_2#Great_article!. EEng 03:11, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Can't agree. As I said before, no one, with my version, will wonder "But I don't understand what he's notable for." No one. It is absolutely clear. I see no upside in making such a monstrously long sentence, and no downside in my version. Popcornfud (talk) 10:01, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh but you were right, btw, that I didn't know what a run-on sentence is. That's something a copyeditor should know. Whoops. Popcornfud (talk) 11:28, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Of course I'm right. (Click here.) In your version, how will the reader know that the "reported effects" are part of the source (indeed the primary source) of his notability, instead of just a summary fact about him? EEng 13:33, 31 March 2020 (UTC) P.S. If you don't like Phineas' lead, you will most certainly not enjoy those in Lionel_de_Jersey_Harvard, Widener_Library, Memorial_Hall_(Harvard_University), Sacred_Cod, and Eleanor_Elkins_Widener.

how will the reader know that the "reported effects" are part of the source (indeed the primary source) of his notability? You're optimising for a need that doesn't exist. The reader doesn't need to be literally told what is notable/memorable about a subject. They don't sort through facts thinking, but I must be told which one of these individual facts is the reason they are notable, I am lost without this.

If you must explain this, I urge you to find some other way to split the sentence, because it's a chore to read. You said "it's a complex sentence because this is a complex idea" - God knows how long the sentences at Nasa are, then. No - if it's a complex idea, maybe it should be covered in more than one sentence. There's no bonus multiplier triggered by cramming as much information into a single sentence as possible, and it's our job as encyclopaedia writers is to explain complex ideas plainly.

Anyway, it's clear this conversation is a dead end, so I'll leave it there to return to some other work I'm supposed to be finishing.

None of those other leads you linked to are pretty - the first one in particular is bizarre. Someone really loves dashes. Popcornfud (talk) 14:57, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Me. Still friends? EEng 15:59, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm taking that as a yes. EEng 02:37, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

(Mostly wretched) podcasts

I just can't let this get forgotten about:

• https://www.owltail.com/people/5HK8l-phineas-gage/appearances

"Poor Historians Podcast" and "Words R Hard" are kinda giveaways? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:45, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Cite tag

User:Jonesey95 and User:EEng: according to https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-author-20110809/the-cite-element.html all Wikipedia citation templates are misusing the cite tag when they wrap a whole citation in it. The cite tag is intended to be used only for the title of a cited work and not for the rest of the citation. It seems to me pointless to define it in that way; why do we need a separate tag for that and not for any other component of a citation? But that's how they define it. In any case, this means that the problem is not in the rma template, and that attacking rma templates as if they are the problem is missing the point. Probably the correct fix is to change {{wikicite}} (where the cite tag in rma comes from), all the other citation templates, and all the templates that make links to citation templates, to use some html tag other than cite (difficulty: sometimes citation templates are used as block-level things and sometimes they are used as inline-text level things, so it's not clear which of span or div to use). But in the meantime, removing correct uses of rma is problematic because it breaks the links from the footnotes to those citations, and doesn't help much with the much-more-widespread use of the html cite tag on Wikipedia, so it seems to me to be the kind of gnomery that gives gnomes a bad name and should not be done. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:58, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

You took the words right out of my mouth. EEng 06:05, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

See User talk:EEng#Tag syntax problems at Phineas_Gage for an explanation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:00, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

But let's keep the discussion here. You're not addressing my point there, and D.E.'s point above, which is that this isn't peculiar to {rma}, which simply calls {wikicite}. This appears to need to be fixed at a more fundamental level not related to this article and not related to {rma}. EEng 15:14, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I think the discussion might be best to have at Template talk:Rma, since the problem is not with this article, but with that template (or with {{wikicite}}, which it calls, possibly contrary to that template's documentation). Let's try to fix it there. Sorry for so many forked discussions; we'll get it in the right place soon. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:58, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Jonesey95 you're not listening. The problem is NOT with rma. It is with webcite and with all the citation templates. Rma is merely one of many minor users of webcite, and webcite is only a small part of the non-spec usage of the cite tag. So moving the discussion to rma is not helpful. If you really think that the non-spec usage of the cite tag is a problem that is actually important to fix, I suggest that (1) you figure out a technical way of making everything work BEFORE bringing it to wider attention, and (2) you start at Help talk:Citation Style 1 where there is a much more centralized discussion of most of the affected citation templates. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:43, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Redux

EEng, David Eppstein: I came to this page because it showed up with Stripped tags lint errors in Article namespace, and it also had missing end tags. Unaware of Jonesey95's good work (unfortunately reverted) to fix these lint errors, I fixed them myself in a slightly different way. Along came EEng, who reverted my fix with edit summary "Ridiculous gnoming. We've been through this before -- see Talk:Phineas_Gage#Cite_tag".

From the edit summary, EEng shows a lack of appreciation of the efforts of numerous Wikipedians in eradicating lint errors. This effort is not ridiculous gnoming. It serves to ensure that Wikipedia displays correctly now and in the future. Browsers can probably deal with stripped tags by ignoring them, but the existence of a stripped tag suggests the possibility of an intended but omitted opening tag ... who knows where, exactly. Browsers can sometimes deal with missing end tags by making rule-based guesses about where to place the end tag, but sometimes the browser can't guess or makes wrong guesses and we get pages with strange font size, color, or other enhancements that leak to the end of the page. So it is incumbent on Wikipedians to support efforts to eradicate lint errors, no matter how minor, and no matter how minimal they may affect the page appearance right now. Even if the missing end tags and stripped tags for <cite> on Phineas Gage are limited in appearance and scope and can't affect any other part of the page, it is good practice to fix them.

Looking back at Revision of 18:07, 27 October 2021 by Jonesey95 of Phineas Gage, which was the first revision to correct the lint errors, I see minor display changes in §References M2, L, and L2. To me those changes are of no importance whatsoever, and I don't understand why it was reverted. EEng, since you are defending lint errors, the burden is on you to explain why the minor display changes in §References M2, L, and L2 caused by Jonesey's edit of 18:07, 27 October 2021 are not acceptable. Or, if the problem is not in the display but in the markup, then explain why the markup is not OK. And if you have such an explanation, you also need to explain why Jonesey's second solution offered at 13:56, 28 October 2021‎, is also not acceptable, and why my solution, offered at 07:55, 18 November 2021‎, is not acceptable.

Please don't bring up irrelevant reasons:

• "Wikipedia citation templates are misusing the cite tag": this is not about disagreements between Wikipedia and the rest of the world about how <cite> is supposed to work, it is about the much narrower issue that the linter detects lint errors that can be eliminated in any of at least 3 different ways.
• "Ridiculous gnoming": Don't condemn the work of dedicated Wikipedians in bringing Wikipedia into compliance with HTML5.
• "I don't like it"

Looking forward to your thoughts. —Anomalocaris (talk) 22:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

My thoughts are that you are reaching for false justifications for these reversions instead of paying any attention to the actual justification: the ran and rma templates work together to cause ran-footnotes in the article to be linked to rma-delimited content elsewhere, with the link causing the browser to scroll to the content and highlight it. Your "fixes" break this linking, by highlighting only a subset of the content that is supposed to be highlighted. And for what? Because a script somewhere is unhappy? Reader experience should take a much higher priority than that. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:10, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with David on this. A script will only show there's an issue because it met the criteria of the Lint error scripts. The more critical issue here is the rma and citing tags. The Lint issues would be dealt concurrent to this. – The Grid (talk) 23:56, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

David Eppstein: Thank you for your reply. When I click, for example, superscripted M2, what's highlighted in all versions (Jonesey's 2 versions, my version, and the linty versions) is (with external links stripped out)

—— (2012). "The Phineas Gage Information Page". The University of Akron. Retrieved 2016-05-16. Includes:

(In case it makes any difference, I am using Windows 10 and Mozilla Firefox, and my Skin is Monobook). So I don't see any difference there. However, when mousing over superscripted reference links M2, L, L2 in Jonesey95's 2 versions, the popup reference is smaller than in the linty version. But when mousing over those same superscripted reference links in the revision by Anomalocaris at 07:55, 18 November 2021, the popup references appear to be, except for minor formatting changes, the same as the linty version I was editing. Please explain what is not acceptable about my version. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:50, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I see, your fix is to make everything inside rma be a single paragraph with line breaks, rather than to move stuff outside the rma. It does link correctly. The difference is that now it isn't a bulleted list; it's just a paragraph. I don't have a strong opinion on that part, but probably EEng does. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:16, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

My strong opinion is that Jonesey95 has now fixed the problem by actually fixing the problem [17]. That's good gnoming. Rushing to compromise what our readers see because someone can't sleep at night knowing there's a lint error is the ridiculous gmoning referred to in my edit summary complained about by Anomalocaris. EEng 19:29, 19 November 2021 (UTC) P.S. Note for A.: you can't just paste timestamps from revision histories into a discussion post without including the UTC offset, because if you do those in other timezones will see the wrong timestamp and won't know what you're talking about.

I have been unfailingly polite in this discussion and I will continue in this manner. I encourage Wikipedians to avoid language such as "ridiculous gmoning" (or gnoming) in an edit summary of a reversion, or in this discussion, deprecating the tireless efforts of a body of Wikipedians in cleaning up Wikipedia. I came to Phineas Gage because it was listed at Stripped tags and as I have done in thousands of other articles, I made a good-faith lint fix, not anticipating any unfortunate side-effects. If a particular clean-up has unfortunate side-effects, I urge an edit summary something like, "Unfortunately lintfix messed up reference links; see discussion at Talk:Phineas Gage#Cite tag." At this point, thanks to User:Jonesey95's fix of {{Rma}}, I can't easily compare all the contending versions as they appeared before Jonesey95's fix. But I do believe that my revision was and still would be an improvement, because the L2 references are all unbulleted. The L2 references should be in parallel structure, either all bulleted or all unbulleted. —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:46, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Polite wasting of people's time is still wasting people's time. I shudder to think what you've done to all those other thousands of articles where no one's watching, or where the watchers assume (mistakenly) that you'd only make this technical "fix" (introduced by an edit summary very few edits have the background to understand) if didn't mess up what the reader sees. You're churning watchlists wasting the time of productive editors, and – as we've seen – sometimes degrading articles, for miniscule (or, quite possibly, zero) benefit.

I challenge you to exhibit a single problem currently caused by these lint "errors". The problems you project are entirely speculative. Here would be a great approach: run the report, wait a year, run the report again, then give your attention only to those articles that are on both reports. There's so much constant change on Wikipedia that there's a good chance whatever was triggering the report isn't there after a year, or someone will have fixed an errant template (as Jonesy did here), or an asteroid might have struck earth and none of this will matter anymore. I'm serious. None of these errors is a problem now, and there's a good chance it will all sort itself out without your ministrations. You pretend to yourself you're doing something useful, but you're not.

It's bad enough that (I'll say it again) you're churning watchlists and wasting people's time for miniscule benefit, but when you're called on it you waste even more of others' time arguing about it. At User_talk:Anomalocaris#Deleting_comments_on_other_people's_talk_pages you invested huge effort, and (again) wasted others' time pretending that a Help: page is a policy or guideline, and (incorrectly) asserting that WP:TPO only applies to article talk pages, not user talk pages. You seem to lack judgment and perspective.

I wish L2 could have a fully consistent presentation of its members, but the first member presents a special problem: it can either be run in on the same line at the L2 itself (and thereby be somewhat different from the remaining items), or start on a separate line just like the rest, but leaving an big blank line of whitespace after the L2. After looking at both I judged the former looked better. Anyway, that's orthogonal to the issue at hand.

EEng 23:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC) P.S. That's the polite version. If you want me to switch to impolite mode just give the word and I'll be happy to oblige.

There are plenty of Linter errors that cause display differences, many of them larger than this example. Other Linter errors indicate problems that the current parser is covering up by hacking around them with some post-processing. Those workarounds have slowly been removed from the MediaWiki software, causing the syntax errors to result in undesirable rendering of pages. Unfortunately for us gnomes, most Linter fixes at present do not result in a change to the rendered page, so it can be challenging for non-technical editors to see any improvements; we are future-proofing pages so that they will not break when the workarounds for invalid syntax of various kinds are eventually removed. Think of us as vehicle safety inspectors, checking to make sure that all of a vehicle's safety equipment works; nobody sees the crashes we prevent, but they do exist in a parallel future where we haven't done this work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:54, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm all for fixing lint that causes problems, but you're essentially predicting that sooner or later all lint errors will definitely cause a problem, and I'm afraid I'll need to see an expert opinion before I buy into that. David is a professor of computer science, and I started my engineering career before there there was such a thing as lint, so you can skip the explanations aimed at the non-technical. EEng 00:24, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Straight talk about lint errors

Responding to some of EEng's points:

• "I shudder to think what you've done to all those other thousands of articles where no one's watching ..."

As I said before, since Jonesey95 fixed {{Rma}}, I can't easily compare the revisions of Phineas Gage, but I'm under the impression that I didn't hurt it, because at 07:16, 19 November 2021 (UTC), David Eppstein acknowledged that my solution didn't mess up the intra-page linking, and this was before Jonesey95 fixed {{Rma}} at 14:28, 19 November 2021‎ (UTC). However, even if my edit did result in a bad change in that article, I am confident that very few of my edits elsewhere have bad side effects, and I believe that most of those edits that did have bad side-effects were caught quickly by myself or another editor.

• "introduced by an edit summary very few edits have the background to understand"

My edit summary for my edit of Phineas Gage was {{Rma}} can't wrap multiple blocks, including bullet points; avoid {{cite}} postscript.

1. {{Rma}} can't wrap multiple blocks, including bullet points For users who don't know the distinction between inline and block-level elements, I give the example of bullet points. At the time I made the edit, {{Rma}} could not wrap multiple blocks, including bullet points, without causing lint errors, and I came up with a workaround that solved the lint error.
2. avoid {{cite}} postscript I took this article out of Category:CS1 maint: postscript. You reverted and put it back in.

If my edit caused any side-effect, I am sorry, but please don't allege that I write inscrutable edit summaries.

• "You're churning watchlists wasting the time of productive editors"

I strongly believe that nearly all of my edits are beneficial, and my edit summaries are beneficial also, both because I detail what I did and because when editors see edit summaries like properly close table (|}) they may think, "I should be careful to make sure I always close tables; when I edit a table I shouldn't carelessly remove the closing markup." At least I hope they do. I consider edit summaries like advertising slogans. By repetition, I hope users learn to avoid the mistakes I'm fixing. For what it's worth, I receive about one notification per day thanking me for my edit of an article or other page. Much less often do I receive negative feedback.

• "I challenge you to exhibit a single problem currently caused by these lint 'errors'.... None of these errors is a problem now."

1. Table tag that should be deleted sometimes results in bizarre results, such as entire sections appearing nested inside a table.
2. Multiline table in list usually results in an indent leak to the end of the page.
3. Multiple unclosed formatting tags often results in a formatting tag extending way beyond the intended scope, sometimes to the end of the page. Markup such as <small>This is small<small> can result in everything after it appearing double small.
4. Self-closed tags can also be associated with leaks; markup such as <small>This is small<small/> can result in everything after it appearing small.
5. Unclosed quote in heading can result in the entire page displaying bold or italic.
6. Fostered content usually results in something that is marked up somewhere between the open and close of a table displaying above the table. If this display is desired, the fostered content markup should be moved out of the table.
7. Links in links never display well. A wikilink inside an external link aborts the external link. See what happens when you use [http://google.com This is [[Google]]'s search page].
8. Missing end tag can cause leaks to the end of the page.

The above lint errors usually, or at least often, cause display problems. Even if a lint error doesn't cause a display problem, it is often a sign of markup in need of attention. For example, the stripped tag </small> might mean that an editor intended something to be small but carelessly omitted the opening tag. A bogus file option might be a misspelling (including capitalization), such as using Left for left, or leaving out the alt= of an alt tag.

• ":At User_talk:Anomalocaris#Deleting_comments_on_other_people's_talk_pages you invested huge effort, and (again) wasted others' time pretending ... , and (incorrectly) asserting .... You seem to lack judgment and perspective."

I don't think it's fair, in a discussion about reversions to Phineas Gage that became a discussion on fixing lint errors, to go digging into my user talk page, look for disputes, find one, and then say, in effect, "you were involved in a dispute, and you wouldn't give up, so you're bad." (This isn't what you said, but that's the meaning I draw from it.)

1. In that discussion, I disagree with your characterization that I pretended anything or that I incorrectly asserted anything, except that, in that discussion, I did learn that the Wikipedia definition of vandalism is narrower than I had understood before. We're not born knowing everything. When it was point out, I acknowledged my error.
2. When editors have disputes, they are likely to put more effort into things they care about. I was shocked that any Wikipedian would think it is a good idea to edit another user's user talk page and delete a third party's comments, absent something truly harmful such as a threat or a BLP violation. When other editors defended the practice, I felt compelled to explain as strongly and clearly as possible why I think it's a bad idea. I still think it's a terrible idea, and I hope I never have to have that discussion again.
3. Please don't continue this discussion by saying, "but you did pretend" or "but you did incorrectly assert".... Just drop it.
4. I certainly will not go digging into your user page archives or contribution history to find eyebrow-raising behavior on your part. Let's stick to the topic and not go digging for evidence that other editors are bad.

• "I started my engineering career before there there was such a thing as lint ..."

The C program Lint was written in 1978; lint as a concern of software developers is over 40 years old.

Two final points:

1. Usually, when I edit a Wikipedia page for any reason, I give it a serious treatment. I may not catch everything, but I look for and fix a variety of things. So even if a lint fix doesn't actually change the display and the lint error didn't affect the display, in most cases I've made one or more other useful changes.
2. We lint fixers go to Outstanding linter errors on enwiki to identify lint fixing tasks. Right now, there are just 23 bogus file options in the article space. That's because Jonesey95 led an effort to eliminate this type of error, and because this was done, this type of error is manageable and continues to stay small. Similarly, the number of stripped tags in the article namespace is getting close to zero, which gave me the incentive to fix Phineas Gage. If my fix caused problems, again I'm sorry, but please don't make me wrong for being part of a campaign to get rid of one of the last few lint errors of its type. Zeroing out this cell of lint errors will be a good thing.

Cheers, Anomalocaris (talk) 07:53, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Blah blah blah blah. Blah. Blah blah blah.

• You still haven't exhibited a single actual problem caused by wrapping multiple blocks. You're just conjecturing.
• I didn't go "digging" in your talk page; your huge wall of text there (much like the one above) jumps right out. You did pretend that a Help: page is a guideline, and did assert (incorrectly) that WP:TPO doesn't apply to user talk pages (and based on the above you're still clinging to that). You have a severe IDHT problem.
• It is very kind of you to inform me that the original Lint was written in 1978, but as it happens I was there. I really know what I'm talking about.

I'm sure much of what you do is useful, but in this case you're just wasting people's time to no benefit, and you need to learn to tell the difference. EEng 15:26, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Straight talk about knowing your limitations

I've just about had it with you, Anomalocaris [18] [19]. This is what I meant when I said you lack judgement and waste others' time. What could possibly have made you think you could just fuck around with stuff you clearly know nothing about? Get a clue. EEng 07:22, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Dear EEng: Thank you for asking me why I made my last edit. In my Preferences, I have checked the box for "Show hidden categories". Before my last edit, Phineas Gage was in two hidden categories of interest to me, viz: Category:CS1: long volume value and Category:CS1 maint: postscript. My edit of 00:31, 25 November 2021 had edit summary (avoid {{cite}} postscript, see Category:CS1 maint: postscript; |series=New Series; but I don't see any evidence that the refs from ''The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal'' are New Series. Breaking that down:

1. Category:CS1 maint: postscript explains, "This is a tracking category for CS1 citation templates that use |postscript=....; for any cs1|2 template that uses |postscript= with an assigned value that is more than one character (keyword none in cs1 templates excepted). Help:Citation Style 1#Display options further explains, "postscript: Controls the closing punctuation for a citation; defaults to a period (.); for no terminating punctuation, specify |postscript=none.... Additional text or templates beyond the terminating punctuation may generate an error message." Because of these instructions, I routinely fix templated citations, moving postscripts longer than a single character out of the template. I've done this many times, and this is the first time I can recall that anyone has asked about it.
2. Category:CS1: long volume value explains, "This is a tracking category for CS1 citations that use a value of |volume= longer than four characters and not wholly numeric or uppercase roman numerals. No error or maintenance message is displayed. No changes are required to remove pages from this category, but some values of |volume= may fit better in other parameters." I determined that Phineas Gage was in this category because of the markup |volume=20 n.s., |volume=1 n.s., and twice |volume=3 n.s.. I examined the source reference for the article by Henry Jacob Bigelow in American Journal of the Medical Sciences, and determined that n.s. stood for "New Series", so I removed n.s. from the volume and inserted |series=New Series. Then I examined the three references in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal and didn't locate anything about New Series, so I removed the n.s. from the volume. However, I realized there was a significant possibility that these items might really be New Series, so I made a point of saying in the edit summary that I had removed the New Series indicators, so that another editor with more familiarity with The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal would put the New Series indications back in if they were needed. As it happens, that editor was you. Thank you for putting the New Series indicators back in.

This is the way Wikipedia is supposed to work. Sometimes editors make changes that are part right and part wrong, and other editors come along and fix things again. Thanks to my edit, |postscript=, |volume= and |series= are used correctly. Thanks to your correction of my edit, the New Series indicators I erroneously removed but flagged in the edit summary were put back, in the correct parameter. Cheers! —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:15, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

You changed three factually correct (if imperfectly formatted) citations into factually incorrect citations by dropping the n.s. [20], now pleading that you examined the three references in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal and didn't locate anything about New Series. But your "examination" apparently did not include looking at the title page [21], which means you're not competent to be tampering with stuff like this. The fact that I happened to be watching to correct your screwup (and do some other stuff while I was at it) is irrelevant; it's not OK to make random changes to an article hoping someone else will fix what you break. Since David Eppstein participated in this thread earlier, I'm pinging him on the chance he has some advice on how you can be a better editor. EEng 06:49, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that berating clueless editors about their cluelessness doesn't usually work to make them better, but it at least has the advantage of leaving a trail so that measures can be taken to stop it if necessary. Maybe it would help to be more positive. Anomalocaris: It was very thoughtful of you to try to clean up the references in the article; thanks! I am also impressed that you noticed that you were making a mistake by removing "New Series", and that you took the effort to make it easier for other editors to notice that your edit was bad and revert it by alerting them to the mistake you were making. However, asking other editors to revert all your edits in this way had the unfortunate side effect that the positive parts of your edits also got reverted alongside the mistakes. In future, you might make your edits even more constructive by putting the mistakes and the positive parts into separate edits so that, when you get reverted again, some of the work you have done might not be totally wasted. Wouldn't that be so much nicer? Or even, I hesitate to suggest this, but when you are making a mistake, and recognize that you are making a mistake, maybe save even more of other editors' time by not saving that edit and not making them take the time to revert it? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Deaf ears, apparently. EEng 01:33, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Prose difficulty

First off, this article is great and I wish more articles were like it in tone. But I see that people have raised concerns over prose difficulty before, and it doesn't seem to have changed much. The long sentences and frequent parenthetical sentences confuse me at times. This is especially concerning in the lead, since we're supposed to write a level down. Is there a good reason to keep it this way? Cheers, Ovinus (talk) 11:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

— Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). Afterthoughts]

Hi, Ovinus, and sorry I overlooked your post until now. If you don't mind my saying, I'm very glad for your perspective because (from your user page) you're in high school, and I know Gage is a popular topic in certain high school courses. I just ran the article through one of those automated scorers and got a Flesch grade level of 10; on the other hand, I ran just the lead through, and got (no kidding) grade 22 (whatever that means). But let's put the lead aside for now (though see prior thread). I'd be interested if you could pick three sentences/passages from the article proper which you found difficult and we can talk about them. Like all writers I'm married to my own prose; but I'm not completely opposed to divorce. EEng 03:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Haha yes, I actually learned about it a few months ago in my AP Psychology class! In general, I think the prose of the article itself is fine and relatively straightforward to parse, which agrees with your automated assessment. The parenthetical sentences are unusual, and I think could be used more sparingly, but the lead is of more concern given the "level down" guideline.

The following sentence induces fear:

Long known as the "American Crowbar Case"‍—‌once termed "the case which more than all others is cal­cu­lated to excite our wonder, impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our phys­i­o­log­i­cal doctrines"—‌Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain, par­tic­u­larly debate on cerebral local­i­za­tion,​​ and was perhaps the first case to suggest the brain's role in deter­min­ing per­son­al­ity, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific mental changes.

I suggest it be split up into two sentences, and the given quote shortened:

Long known as the "American Crowbar Case"‍—‌once termed "the case which more than all others is cal­cu­lated to excite our wonder"—‌Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain, par­tic­u­larly debate on cerebral local­i­za­tion.​​ He was perhaps the first case to suggest the brain's role in deter­min­ing per­son­al­ity, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific mental changes.

My rationale for shortening the quote is that "impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our phys­i­o­log­i­cal doctrines" is pretty difficult mid-19th century language, which a lot of readers wouldn't understand. It's a pretty quote—including it in the article body is certainly justified—but its inclusion in this sentence leads to a very long phrase set off by dashes.

Another scary sentence:

Despite this celebrity, the body of established fact about Gage and what he was like (whether before or after his injury) is small, which has allowed "the fitting of almost any theory [desired] to the small number of facts we have"—‌Gage acting as a "Rorschach inkblot" in which proponents of various conflicting theories of the brain all saw support for their views.

I'd suggest:

Despite his prominence, there is little established fact about Gage and his behavior before or after the injury, which has allowed "the fitting of almost any theory [desired] to the small number of facts we have". Gage acted as a sort of "Rorschach inkblot" in which proponents of various conflicting theories of the brain all saw support for their views.

I find this a bit easier to read. I was neutral on the "Rorschach inkblot" metaphor, but given that this is probably often read by psychology students, I think it's worthwhile. It made me smile, anyway. Pinging EEng. Ovinus (talk) 21:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I've been distracted but don't want to lose this thread. Sort of pinging myself. EEng 01:09, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Ditto. BTW, I'm wondering if we should change this article to use tamping iron pronouns. Tryptofish, Levivich -- what think you? EEng 03:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, since you asked, tamp on. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

A surprising reassessment

Was discussing Gage for a psychology class last week and remembered this article. So I gave it another read, and I must say: I really like it, probably because I've become inured to drier articles and articles so dense with mostly irrelevant names that I barely remember anything. Good stuff, and I'm somewhat inspired for my future work. In particular, a liberal use of footnotes satisfies both my deletionist tendency to compact information and my desire for extra info for interested readers. Ovinus (talk) 02:28, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Good! Gooooood! Another conversion to the dark side! EEng

Inclusion of full birth and death dates in opening-sentence parenthetical

With apologies for the delay (I hadn't noticed the last reversion), I'm reverting again the change [22] from

Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman ...

to

Phineas P. Gage (c. July 9, 1823 – May 21, 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman ...

because there's a substantial list of reasons that this change is a detriment to the reader's experience, and nothing at all has been offered to explain how it benefits the reader's experience.

• MOS:BIRTHDATE explicitly contemplates the opening sentence giving years only, when full dates are given elsewhere (and full dates are indeed given in the infobox)
• As mentioned in MOS:BIRTHDATE, the function of the birth-death information is to provide context -- in what period did the subject live? Naked years do that admirably: "Hmmm. 1823 to 1860. Mid-19th-century America. Got it."
• Certainly full birth and death dates should be given somewhere in the article, as a matter of record. But how in the world do we help the reader by telling him first thing -- literally two words into the article -- that the subject was born on, specifically, July 9, 1823 (if indeed he was -- see below)? Or that he died on, specifically, May 21, 1860? In all seriousness, unless the reader's an astrologer and wants to cast the subject's horoscope, this is the absolutely most useless piece of information we could supply at that point, and including it in the opening squanders our most elusive resource -- reader attention -- for categorically zero benefit.
• And, as it happens, c. July 9, 1823 is an incorrect characterization of Gage's birthdate.What we know is that one source reports July 9 as his birthdate, but without itself giving a source; the date is uncertain, and could be completely wrong. That completely different from saying it's "around" July 9. If we're going to have a parenthetical with full dates, it will have to say

  Phineas P. Gage (July 9, 1823 (date uncertain) – May 21, 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman ...

or something like that, which would be completely stupid.

Against this, the "reasons" offered for including full dates (in the lead -- to repeat, they're already in the infobox) have been:

• "please review other articles" [23]
• "No good reason not to give dates. Seems pretty standard" [24]
• "I think it's reasonable to give full dates here, given that it's a detailed page" [25]
• "giving dates seems pretty standard" [26]

None of these say anything about how the reader is served by inclusion of this clutter in the article's opening, but merely assert that all articles should look alike -- the weakest of all possible arguments, and characteristic of editors who make the changes they want to the page according to their preconceived notions of what should be, and then flit off to their next victim, without ever considering whether the page really needed the change they made, or whether the change improved the article at all ... Their editing is an off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all proposition, premised on the idea that what improves one article, or one type of article, will automatically improve every other article or type of article ... [27].

John F. Kennedy's article makes an interesting contrast. For reasons that are surely obvious, a fair chunk of readers coming to that article actually do want to know right off (and possibly only) the date of his death. Full dates certainly belong in the opening of thatarticle.

Pending anyone explaining how full dates in the lead benefit the reader, I've reverted to the longstanding format. EEng 05:50, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

OK. Thank you for the detailed explanation. When I made the edit that I made, all that I had seen was:

• "full birthdates are useless clutter in the lead" [28]
• "Making all articles look alike is the weakest of all possible arguments, and this has been discussed several times. Full dates two words into the article are preposterously useless clutter. See MOS:BIRTHDATE." [29]

Pending anyone giving the far more thoughtful explanation that you have now given here, it looked to me like you were editing against consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:46, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I didn't mean to include you among the editors who make the changes they want to the page according to their preconceived notions etc etc, but on the other hand I didn't want to omit your edit summary from the list I gave, lest someone accuse me of understating the support for the view opposing mine (misguided though it is). I figured you'd forgive me. EEng 05:43, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

No worries. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:18, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Good. So we settled the first line of the article. Only 887 lines to go! EEng 21:27, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Headnote

Should the headnote read

This article is about the man who survived an iron bar passing through his head

as EEng has reverted it back to and is the status quo, or should it read

This article is about the brain injury survivor

as I would prefer it. I believe the current version is strangely long and detailed. The succinct descriptor used in the short description is more than adequate to quickly describe the person before moving on to the next sentence For the UK musical band, see Phinius Gage. Any extra text than is needed is just clutter before you get to the real point of the header. Since I have been reverted and it seems clear we won't agree on this, I'm looking for anyone else's opinion on the subject so we can reach a consensus. Cerebral726 (talk) 19:07, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

As I said in my edit summary, the purpose of the headnote is to help readers determine quickly whether they've arrived at the right page. In my (very extensive, sadly) experience discussing Gage with all kinds of people, I can say with confidence that laymen think of Gage (whom they remember from Psychology 101) as "that guy who had the thing go through his head", not "that guy with a brain injury". Obviously, after a moment's thought one realizes that they're probably the same person, but the point is to use a description most people will recognize immediately without having to think about it.

Notice that the WP:SHORTDESC, which serves a different purpose, is appropriately American brain injury survivor (1823–1860). EEng 20:38, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

As a fan of the article: the current note could be more succinct, but the proposed one isn't ideal to me. When I hear "brain injury", I don't think "iron bar through head", I think car stagecoach crash or a bad fall or something else not involving a hole in the skull. I'm not sure, but maybe "head trauma" sounds better? It seems tough to come up with a more descriptive short phrase that isn't somewhat crass. Matma Rex talk 21:20, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with EEng that this page is about a person who had something very distinctive happen to him, as opposed to being about a patient who went through a particular medical experience. So "the man who survived an iron bar passing through his head" matches with the page contents just fine for me, and the alternatives that have been suggested seem inferior to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree that a brief description of the incident is more distinctive, and therefore better as a distinguisher, than "head injury survivor". But "the man who survived an iron bar passing through his head" does seem a bit long. We could possibly shorten it a little, to "the survivor of an iron bar through the head". —David Eppstein (talk) 21:54, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't feel too strongly, as long as we retain the key ideas of bar-through-head. However, I can't help pointing out that DE's suggestion just above cuts a mere 2 words from the current wording, but at the same time is distinctly less vivid and direct -- kind of medical sounding [30]. EEng 06:23, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

It's merely a hatnote. Its job should be to let readers figure out quickly whether they are in the right place and if not to redirect them. Brevity helps. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Like I said, I don't feel strongly as long as bar-through-head is in there. EEng 09:15, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

I am fine with "the survivor of an iron bar through the head" as well. Cerebral726 (talk) 12:52, 15 September 2023 (UTC)