Talk:Men's Toilet, Russell Street, Toowoomba

Recent Edit

Hey The Drover's Wife, just wondering why my edits weren't an improvement? I split it up into sections, summarised information which wasn't necessary, removed bias, and added sourced information. JoshMuirWikipedia (talk) 14:06, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

It replaced perfectly good prose with far shorter and far less well written prose ("Original plans for the toilet, while are unsigned..."), while deleting correct attribution. The division was odd to say the least ("production" before "original design"). It's a classic case of editing to make one's mark on an article, while not actually improving it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:19, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my prose isn't that up to scratch, I'm pretty tired, it's been a long week for me. However, I still feel that the idea was there, and that the section is quite long and should be cut into subheadings. Also, would you really say things such as "The street facade of the urinal is certainly handsome enough to suit an urban beauty program. Indeed, this secondary role of urban design may explain why the toilet has quite such a delightful facade." is really appropriate? At this point that question wasn't rhetorical. Also, at least include the update I gave on the thing, where the article leaves off it was torn down in 2013 when it was rebuilt a year ago.JoshMuirWikipedia (talk) 14:25, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Josh! Judging from the comment you wrote and removed from my talk page, I think you are wrongly thinking that I am writing these words. In fact, they come direct from the heritage register (which I negotiated to be CC-BY licensed so we could use the text directly -- see the Attribution statement under the References section). I do some minor rewording to deal with phrases that are written from a very Queensland-centric perspective, e.g. "this state" -> Queensland or "the Commonwealth" -> "Australian Government" to make the article intelligible to the non-Queensland/Australian reader but not a lot more. I am inclined to agree with you that the "delightful facade" text (everything in that para after the quote from Dr Price) is a bit over-the-top. It probably would suffice to say something about Price's desire for urban beauty may explain why the toilet has a decorative facade. My own writing style tends to be very dry. Kerry (talk) 15:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Just another comment though about process. Doing big rearrangements of text (as you did in a single edit) creates a problem for the reviewer as to whether anything has been quietly deleted or added in the process (a sneaky trick that is sometimes used by the unscrupulous editor). This is what the reviewer sees for your edit [1] - yikes, it's hard to see what's still there, what's new and what's old. I find it is better to do large edits of that nature as a series of smaller edits which can be individually far more easily reviewed to see what is going on. If reviewers are doubtful about what's being done to an article (the risk with big changes done at one), there's a tendency to revert pending a discussion (as per WP:BRD), which is of course what is happening now. I am glad you are interested in some of the Qld Heritage property articles; we could use more people interested in such topics. Kerry (talk) 15:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)