Talk:Harold Fraser-Simson

Perhaps excessive zeal?

I am in awe and some admiration of Ssilvers's dedication to the quest for high standards of verifiability of the content of this encyclopedia. The number of his contributions is quite amazing given how limiting some find the constraints of 24/7 to be. And he is correct that facts should or must have reference to their source. But we have a point of difference. Ssilvers appears to believe in "must" where I would settle for "should" ...

Ssilvers has deleted information -- remarkably promptly -- on the ground that it was unreferenced. His observation was correct -- it was unreferenced. But I suggest that if every atom of unreferenced information were deleted from Wikipedia, there would be little of Wikipedia left.

The matter at issue here is whether (Fraser-)Simson's name was simple or compound. I shall collate and type in the supporting references (which, briefly, are his census 1911 entry under his other occupation, the registry index to his marriage in 1919 to Cicely Devenish, his death certificate and his probate index), and restore the information which Ssilvers has seen fit to dismiss and delete as unreliable. Wyresider (talk) 20:24, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

LATER ...

Well -- I have to concede that the pedantry of which I implicitly accused Ssilvers (and of which I have myself been accused in the past) has justified itself! On closer inspection, my evidence of census return, marriage registry and death stand, but Ssilvers retrieves his case at the last one, the probate ... while my search vehicle, ancestry.co.uk, has the thing indexed under simple Simson, on examining the page in the original document more closely, I see "Fraser hyphen" on the line above the line starting "Simpson". So I have restored my original text but adjusted in recognition of the ambiguity (and with the references, of course).

(OK, Ssilvers was right this time, and the article is better for it ... but I stand by my point that if every unreferenced piece of info were deleted, then for good or for ill, there wouldn't be much left!) Wyresider (talk) 23:09, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's excessive. When Wikipedia was young, say, in its first five years, people did not insist on in-line references or in the type of rigorous referencing the we usually ask for nowadays. Therefore, a lot of the older information does not have in-line cites, and some of it is unreferenced. I don't go around deleting unreferenced info, unless it comes to my attention or the article is on my watchlist -- if something is important, I often try to find the references myself. But when you add NEW information to the encyclopedia, it should be referenced. WP:V is very clear that if the information is questionable in any way, it MUST be referenced. This way, the quality of the encyclopedia will continually improve. Especially where, as here, you have a fairly good-quality article, it would be a shame to let it degrade by letting in new unreferenced info. In any case, thanks for finding the refs for this. It's probably too much information now, in fact. I moved it all to a footnote that immediately follows where we give his name with the hyphen. Happy editing. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Your point is well made and I accept it. Wyresider (talk) 09:10, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

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