Talk:John Crosfield

Rewrite

I have completely revised, rewritten and extended the entry for John Crosfield, my father, based on his own writings, letters and personal information. As Executor to my father's Will, I also have access to all his personal documents, including birth, marriage and death certificates, letters of appointment by employers, membership certificates and much correspondence. My three siblings and three former managers of Crosfield Electronics (Mr Jim Salmon, former Managing Director CEL, Lars Janneryd, former Deputy Managing Director CEL and mr Victor Parsons, former Managing Director Crosfield Business Machines) have reviewed the entry and given their written approval. Richard crosfield (talk) 09:16, 7 September 2012 (UTC)Richard crosfield

Thanks for you efforts but you may need to read our guideline on conflict of interest as you have declared a connection with the subject. Also note that you cant use letters and personal information to write wikipedia articles as they are not reliable sources, you need to use only published information. MilborneOne (talk) 13:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I know that Wikipedia has had many problems with conflict of interest. And I have read 'conflict of interest'. I have 1)disclosed my relationship to the entry, 2)disclosed all sources of information and contrasted them with other people who knew him professionally and 3) I think you will agree that I am not promoting myself and that the tone of the entry is neutral. I do not have any monetary interest in this entry nor in 'promoting' my father's name. I think one should assume good faith (first principle of Wikipedia). Of course, anyone is free to correct the entry or add any comments they wish. I do not regard it as my property. Rather, it is the best entry to date (the original entry was a stub and managed to misspell his surname!). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard crosfield (talk • contribs) 10:05, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Here's my two cents. There's no doubt in my mind that you are editing in good faith. However, as for your sources... that's a tricky bit. I have searched through some archived discussions and the consensus is that personal correspondence is unpublished material, and therefore not a reliable source. The books are a different matter, since they are published material, although I couldn't find any detail on the publisher. I think a third opinion might help here as to clarify whether the books your father authored would be considered a valid primary source. --Drm310 (talk) 21:20, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

3O Request: Hello! I'm responding to the third opinion request as an uninvolved editor. My role is to assist in resolving the dispute. The third opinion process is informal and nonbinding. @Richard. Thank you for your interest in contributing to this article, and your hard work on expanding it. The use of the primary source, the autobiography, is perfectly fine and within policy as long as it's not used to assert a claim that could be interpreted as controversial or not neutral. The use of unpublished sources is not encouraged, like personal letters, because unpublished sources are difficult for other editors to verify. Unpublished sources cannot be checked by other editors for factual accuracy, inviting the temptation for abuse, which is why Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research. I believe that your edits have been made in good faith, but the article should be restricted to published sources.--SGCM (talk) 22:09, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I've added some additional templates to the top of the page. They aren't meant to be a badge of shame, but rather attract the attention of other editors whose expertise can help improve the article. In addition, I've rewritten the first two references to utilize the {{cite book}} template, which standardizes the formatting in the References section. Since you aren't citing specific pages in the Recollections book, I've made that a "named" reference. To reuse it in later statements, all you need to do is put <ref name="recollections" /> at the end of the statement. In the reference section it will make links up to the multiple marker points. Hope this helps. --Drm310 (talk) 22:34, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I've done a few more fixups to the article. I created proper headings to make the table of contents appear. I also added the Person infobox to the top. I even learned how to cite one book repeatedly with different page numbers! I hope this will inspire others to continue making improvements. --Drm310 (talk) 03:06, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to those contributors who have added the table of contents etcetera to this entry, and who have brought Wikipedia guidelines to my attention. 1) I have removed the 3 letters cited in the text. 2) I have replaced ibid with reference titles. 3) Copies of The Crosfield Family, The Cadbury Family and Recollections are available at the 6 Deposit Libraries in the UK and Ireland in accordance with the legislation ruling at publication date plus Friends Library, Friends House, Euston Rd. London. The original stub cited an entry in the Old Leightonian written by one Richard Crosfield (the Editor asked me to write it). The first addition to the stub cited an obituary submitted by Jim Salmon (a former colleague of Crosfield), who sent it previously to me for my comments. The Wikipedia stub was brought to my attention by a relative, who suggested I do what the stub requested - improve the entry. As I have no interest in continuing this debate, I would suggest that you remove the entire entry or change it to suit your requirements. In any event, I would suggest that you remove the disfiguring 'badge of shame', which can only reflect badly on Wikipedia and with which I would rather not be associated. Richard crosfield (talk) 11:02, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

The article is a vast improvement, and something we can work with over the years to improve still further. The tags are important, they are part of the process, I have removed the "ibid" tag and also the "Wikify" (although there is in truth a little more work to be done there). The others will be removed in due course and should not be considered a negative, many hundreds of thousands of articles have some issue tagged for further work.

It is important that we have articles for people like Crosfield - even apart from his war work, his industrial work was important, and we tended, particularly in the UK and particularly in the twentieth century, not to appreciate many of these people. As a result Wikipeida's coverage of the UK business and industrial sector has been very poor in the past, though it has improved somewhat of late.

Thank you for your work on this article. Rich Farmbrough, 20:53, 13 September 2012 (UTC).

Someone has changed the references, many of which have been lost. Why? Can they be recuperated? Thanks Richard crosfield (talk) 07:39, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

No references have been lost. I condensed the references to the Crosfield Family and Recollections books using a different notation. Because those were instances of citing one book repeatedly with different page numbers, I used the syntax found here: Help:Footnotes#Citing one book repeatedly with different page numbers. Now, instead of an arm-long list of citations, it's nice and compact. --Drm310 (talk) 15:08, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation Richard crosfield (talk) 09:32, 30 September 2012 (UTC)