User talk:Chris Roy: Difference between revisions

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Hello Chris, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 03:39, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Chris. Welcome to Wikipedia. Just thought I'd say hi as our paths crossed for the first time at Honorary Citizen of the United States and I wanted to make sure you knew that I knew your edit was an honest (and unsurprising given the way the list is written) mistake and that I didn't think there was any malevent intent on your part... my Summary comment should've been a bit less brief and more welcoming. Hope you enjoy and contribute lots! Pete 23:09, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I appreciate your (unneeded but not unwanted) response here. Your Summary comment was just fine! I look forward to meeting again, but hopefully in a pleasanter context. ;-) Chris Roy 23:57, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi :) Just thought it'd be cute to leave the misspelling on Wikipedia:Proverbs for the next to fix. Its not such a big deal.

And welcome to Wikipedia from me too :) Dysprosia 04:14, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Agreed :-). Chris Roy 04:17, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Trouble is, are we to keep "miscorrecting" the word, and continue the tradition? Chris Roy 04:19, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Don't know. Why not? :) Dysprosia 04:20, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm all for it. :-) Chris Roy 04:23, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Or better yet, we introduce a different mistake each time. Bwahaha! Chris Roy 04:36, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You've done some good work on H.P. Lovecraft for sure, and I sure think the article is quite nice :) Glad to hear you still have more to do for it! Sarge Baldy 23:56, Jan 3, 2004 (UTC)

Hi Chris. Just though I would say hello, since we both seem to have the same hobby: fixing WP misspellings. Keep up the good work!SpellBott 07:30, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi SpellBott! Wish I could operate as quickly as you. :-) Take care. Chris Roy 07:42, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't know where you're from, but Webster recognizes "supercede." Certainly, you're welcome to make these changes unopposed but it might be a bit of a waste of time. I'd like to fix all instances of hyphens and double-hyphens to en-dashes, but that'd just take forever and perhaps more suited to a database query. Kent Wang 07:16, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You make a good point; the latest Merriam-Webster's Collegiate does indeed recognize "supercede" as a legitimate variant of "supersede". Note, however, that other prominent dictionaries do no such thing. See for example the Dictionary.com entry for "supersede", which uses as a source the latest American Heritage Dictionary. No mention is made therein of "supercede" because, until recently (when Merriam-Webster listed it as a variant), "supercede" and its variants have been considered widely to be misspellings. I hold this view. Of course, because "supercede" is thought correct by at least one major dictionary, you are right in saying that I am wrong to condemn "supercede", for my position is arbitrary.

I share your predilection for emdashes. Strangely, though, there seems to be a growing preference, especially in the UK, toward using a single hyphen—spaced on both sides—instead of the usual emdashes or even improvised double-dashes. But this, as you say, is something best left to a machine, especially considering that the distinction isn't that important. :-) For me, the trouble lies in deciding whether to space the emdash on either side ( — ) or to leave it unspaced (—). Anyway, take care. Chris Roy 07:46, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Rereading your note, I see now that you said "en-dashes" and not "em-dashes" (a.k.a. emdashes, em dashes). Well, endashes I can do without, thanks. :-) I was born and raised with the less British emdashes. This is reminiscent of the disparity between American and British spellings: both are correct, but it's best to maintain consistency in an article by favoring the usage of whoever contributed most of the article's content. We can doubtless agree on that. Chris Roy 08:10, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I may be talking only to myself here, but I should note that I've warmed up a bit to en dashes, which have their uses. For example, I've been bold lately and converted instances of '--' and '-' separating unnumbered, unbulleted list items in pages such as Featured articles and the transcluded content on the Main Page to en dashes, because they look better (as well as arguably more appropriate, semantically; see Dash (punctuation)), and because em dashes would take up too much space.

In fact, that last argument — that em dashes hog space — seems to be the main reason they're becoming less popular. Ah, well. At least, considering my recent acceptance of en dashes, I cannot be thought a complete typographic fossil. :-) Chris Roy 04:00, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

WikiCookie

Thank you very much for correcting the page:) Here is your WikiCookie!

May you have Peace Profound, Optim 05:43, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Optim! Chris Roy 11:41, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

DFTT-YHBW-HAND

Fifelfoo feels that his note was of utility. See talk:anarchism, his talk, and my talk archive for more info. Sam Spade 03:24, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Reading Anarchism's talk page (as I should have done earlier), Fifelfoo has a valid point; but to post an idiosyncratic message to the top of an article is unhelpful and inelegant. If anyone wants to repost it, though, I'll stay out of it. :-)

Thanks for explaining the situation to me. Chris Roy 23:59, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree w you (I just didn't feel like removing it myself, so thanx), and no prob, theoretically encyclopedias are all about informing, so it would be swell if we all cheerfully explained stuff to one another whenever we got confused. I guess some people think flames work better, but hey what can ya do? ;) Cheers, Sam Spade 05:38, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Typo

I think when you return to fixing a particular error that is already listed on the page, the old mention should be removed. --Naddy 21:17, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That would cause the page to be less cluttered (and the list is certainly gaining length), but I think there would be some loss in functionality if this were done: for common errors such as "and and", it is useful for the sake of concentrating one's effort on frequent typos to know that certain misspellings have been fixed several times (and possibly in large batches, if the number fixed is noted) and likely need to be fixed again.

An example: Alexandros fixed "and and" on 22 November 2003; I ran the same check on 6 March 2004 (suspecting that it was a common error) and found 28 instances of it. Now, let's say that 100 days from now (about the time length between Alexandros's and my correction) another person reads the list so as to find previous fixes—realizing that if an error pops up a few times, a few more will have arisen a few months later. They would see the fix by Alexandros and the fix by me and be reasonably certain that around 28 more of the error have appeared. Perhaps I'm wrong about this; it would take another few months for situations similar to this to play out.

As some typos (e.g. "recieved", "commerical") are definitely more common than others, it might be a good idea to arrange the list items by subject rather than chronologically. Here's how one segment might look:

and and [replacing the bolding with ===, though, as it doesn't seem to work with the indents]

"and and" Alexandros 15:59, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
"and and" (28 found) Chris Roy 03:12, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This would make it easier to fix common typos as well as easier to tell the other fixers of it, because the two or more "and and"s wouldn't be scattered across the list. Less frequent misspellings (say, ten and under) could be grouped together. Alternatively, or additionally, if someone fixes a typo for the second time, a separate entry could be created for it. Date stamps would be crucial, as well as the approximate number fixed. It would be important to keep this all fairly simple, as a complex system will tend to fail before a simple one.

I assume that your reason for wanting to remove fixes that have been refixed at a later date is to keep the list from growing long to the point that it is too difficult to use effectively. You have a good point, but I'm unwilling to sacrifice (potentially) a lot of use for a little brevity. My own method for reducing clutter is to not list items of which I fix only one instance; doing otherwise would, IMO, lengthen the list and pollute my edit history unnecessarily. Chris Roy 00:44, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

fire department alert

We're having trouble tonight with a vandal, see Wikipedia:Block log. Some suspect it is the same user as User:Bird....if you have any way to help us stop this individual, it would be much appreciated. We are in IRC. Kingturtle 08:24, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Kingturtle. I regret being asleep when the vandalism occurred. Perhaps we should start using pagers... :-) Chris Roy 23:21, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Welcoming committee

Hi. Thanks for joining the welcoming committee. You've done an amazing amount of greeting in the last couple days. We can always use the help. Isomorphic 21:31, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, you might want to keep one eye on the Wikipedia:New user log. It's nice if we personally answer people when they take the time to write a note there. There usually aren't more than one or two a day. Isomorphic 21:35, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello, Isomorphic. Thanks for mentioning the new user log to me—I will certainly make use of it. Chris Roy 10:25, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

634‒5789

I don't think we need to worry about this number ;)

634‒5789 is from the Steve Cropper song, most phone companies refuse to give out the number because for the past decades it's being called many times daily! — Jor (Darkelf) 22:21, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, then! :-) You've got me there. Chris Roy 22:24, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello Chris: By all means, leave the Lovecraft article's punctuation edited any way you want. I edited boldly. On my talk page I have listed some examples of Lovecraft's own writing that follow a similar punctuation style. I am not surprised that he in particular wouldn't have followed this new-fangled "logical" style. FTW 17:57, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Replied on FTW's talk page. Chris Roy 23:55, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Some research shows that Lovecraft himself seems to have been in favor of the "logical" punctuation style. I have found several instances of this punctuation style in The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi. Joshi's many books, I have discovered, have attempted to remain as close as possible to the original manuscripts, so it appears that the originals used that "logical" format as well. FTW 14:31, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Chris. Thanks for being the "duty greeter". I get around to quite a few subjects. Wikipedia is going to give all the others a run for their money, like all Open Source ideas. Power to/of the People, etc. I am finding the updates a little confusing. I need to 'save' often enought that I don't lose or void the connection. The obvious option, though, is to get into a habit of developing content off-line and then doing a cut-and-paste into pages. Cheers, Peter Ellis 23:24, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's often best to write content offline, not only because of the risk of lost connections, but also because the edit box doesn't come close to the average text editor's range of features. Furthermore, if you write offline and then quickly paste into the edit box, edit conflicts are far less likely to occur.

Sure, I am a duty greeter—the responsibility is associated with the Welcoming committee—but this nevertheless necessitates that I enjoy my work. :-) Take care. Chris Roy 04:39, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Chris. I'm looking for advice/info/a HOWTO on how to create my user page in another language (German in my case) and then interlink the two versions. Writing the German is the easy part, it seems! A cookbook or a link is fine. I'm a hardcore unix geek. :-) John Palkovic 16:42, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello again John! As to your question, there is a German Wikipedia where you could create another account for yourself; the software doesn't yet allow using one's original account throughout the various Wikipedia sites. Or do you intend for the German version of your user page to be interlinked with your English page? For that, you'd need to create a subpage of your user page (say, User:John Palkovic/German), which would at first be a redlink, indicating of course that there's no article yet associated with it; you would then click on the link and write the page. See How to start a page for more information as well as alternative methods. I hope this helps.

A Unix geek? Good! Having recently migrated from Windows to GNU/Linux, but retaining Windows in a dual-boot environment for the purpose of enjoying its oft-superior games on occasion :-), I could be described as an enthusiastic Unix neophyte. What flavor would happen to be your preference? Linux, or possibly one of the free BSDs? Chris Roy 19:50, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ah, I read the note on your user page. If your username on de: differs from your current one, that is OK; I assume that this is the case for many Wikipedians operating across multiple languages. If, for example, your username on de.wikipedia.org were 'John Palkovic', you would write the translation in German on de: and then put an external link pointing to it on your en: page. Hope this clarifies things for you. Chris Roy 20:19, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've nominated you for adminship

Chris, you do a great job here on some often-tedious work fixing spelling and grammar errors, and a great job also making new users feel welcome. For these reasons, and because of your generally positive and Wiki-rific attitude, I have nominated you for admin. I hope you will consider accepting the nomination, should the community agree. You are invited to respond at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship regarding your acceptance or rejection of this nomination within the next week. Thanks so much for your work here! Jwrosenzweig 19:58, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I award you this barnstar for your persistent welcoming and friendliness with plenty of new Wikipedians. Merovingian ↕ Talk 06:56, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

What?! Well, then. This does come as a surprise, since I'm rather tired and frazzled at the moment. :-) Thank you, Merovingian, I appreciate it. Hmm... Chris Roy 07:01, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

admin

A concensus has been reached by your peers that you should be an admin. I have made it so. Please review Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list and keep up the great work. Sincerely, Kingturtle 00:05, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi Chris

Many thanks for the very warm welcome and some excellent start-up tips. As a Beginner, it has helped me find my feet – Harisingh

No problem. I'm happy to have been of assistance to you. Chris Roy 00:59, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

dashes

Please leave ASCII dashes as ASCII dashes. Some browsers display them as question marks and they look ugly in edit windows no matter what browser a person is using (needlessly complicating the text - that's why we use wiki in the first place). --mav 09:10, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

<sighs> There goes my brief love affair with specific dash-types. Now I'll have to find some other formatting issue to obsess over. ;-) Chris Roy 11:35, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Just saw your welcoming message on my User Talk page. Thank you! Alan Nicoll 19:26, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Finally realized that I sent my message about the William James page to the wrong person. Apologies... Alan Nicoll 21:08, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to change ([[encyclopaedia]]->[[Encyclopedia|encyclopaedia]]) the redirect works fine. The next thing that will happen is that someone will come along and say "this pipe is unnecessary" and replace it with ([[encyclopedia]]). It is in this way that British spellings are gradually being eroded from Wikipedia. Mintguy (T) 07:11, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. My purpose was to preserve the British spellings while avoiding redirects. We'll see how long this continues. Chris Roy 18:11, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hey Chris, just wanted to say thank you for the welcome note. -- seng-ming tan 10:05, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi Chris, many thanks for the welcome still trying to get to grips with using the service which I think is really quite cool probably made thousands of mistakes but I'm getting better. User:Scraggy4

Thanks for the welcome, Chris....I never thought my first edits would be Charlton Heston and Planet of the Apes...I don't even remember how I got there.. --cherrycola 16:27, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Just another thank you for the welcome note! It was great.Datepalm17 22:27, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi Chris, thanks for the welcome tips and advice :) - --Borj 22:31, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi Chris, Just a quick thank you for restoring the link to my serps site in Googlebombing. Someone is constantly sabotaging it. Many people restore it, but the same user re-edits it daily. Thank you. Serps

Vandalism

Thanks for blocking 81.133.55.168. I generally don't mind helping rv vandalism, but it gets a bit boring when it's the same pages by the same vandal over and over. Niteowlneils 00:10, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Edward VIII

Hi Chris. A very belated thanks for the welcome. I need a favour. I added "and the only one to serve his entire reign as King of Ireland" to the first paragraph of "Edward VIII of the United Kingdom", I can see the change in the revision history, but can't see it on the page.

Is anything there? It might just be my browser has cached the page, and is not clearing.

Thanks Garry garryq 18:37, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Replied on Garry's talk page. Chris Roy 15:53, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I edited at 12:45, 17 Apr 2004 . . Garryq (re-admittance to orders of chivalry/link to governor of Bahamas. Rule as King of Ireland) and 12:44, 17 Apr 2004. It must have been a hardware glitch at my end, I can't even find the MS Words copy of my editing. I'll get round to putting this back on later, I'm working on some larger articles at the moment, writing and reorganising my hometown, and the two dead end links.

Thanks for the help garryq 22:36, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

So, you made the change in one of these edits?

[1]
[2]

It looks to me like the article was blanked in the first edit and restored in the second; this must be due to your computer troubles. I still can't find the phrase "and the only one to serve his entire reign as King of Ireland" anywhere. You'll probably want to re-edit the article, making the appropriate changes. Chris Roy 23:03, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Chris, your welcome was a pleasant surprise. Thank you. Let me make myself useful here. :-). --Selva

Hello

Thankyou for saying hello, your kind welcome is very much appreciated. weda

Need support on an undelete. Talk:Nazism/Seperate-National Socialism I would like your support to undelete this and restore as a proper standing article. Some content was moved to the Nazism article and has been made a redirect. The Nazi article is too long. *National Socialism* was not created by either Mussolini nor Hitler and the history of its development needs to have a seperate article upon it. Please see Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion.WHEELER 18:39, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Welcome back. :) Angela . 14:02, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Angela. I'm just glad no one tried holding a funeral for me. ;-) Chris Roy 02:23, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hello and welcome back!

Dear Chris Roy:

Always is great to have news about you. On March 18, 2004, you was the first person to make me feel comfortable at Wikipedia. Thanks again, and have you a great time. MusiCitizen 12:53, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

Hi MusiCitizen! I'm happy to hear you're enjoying your time here – me too. Chris Roy 12:58, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Kim Jong Il

Deep economic crisis is correct. (So is "a deep economic crisis"). The former is British English, and (IMHO) better grammar. You might want to think these kinds of edits through before you change them. If it's okay with you, I'll change it back... Davejenk1ns 16:22, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't aware of the British convention. You were right in reverting my edit there. Chris Roy 01:39, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

help with disability, contributing, etc.

A question I have is whether there is any type of spell checker available when we are writing. I have a minor (?) mental disability which results in transposing letters when I type. This was diagnosed by medical experts as a coordination problem. I also have auditory processing deficit (basically a delay in interpreting what we hear) and hyper focus, which can be a good thing, as you can get intensely into whatever you are paying attention to. These are all manifestations of adult add, which was diagnosed when I was 42.

To explain briefly, I had career in bus transportation, so I know how to spell "fleet". (duh?). When I type, I can mentally envision F-L-E-E-T, but it will come out as FLETE or something like that. This occurs every thrid to fuifth word on average, like this sentanec e I am typing right now, whcih i will refrain from cleaning up (sorry).

When I manually print, the problem doesn't happen, and for years, at work I had help to do my typing (in the days before computers). I actually spell pretty well, but have to go back over every single word I ever type, even e-mail. Spell checkers on a computer were a godsend for me, and help enormously, although they don't catch it when I make another word by accident or when what I come out with is beyond the suggestions.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. I have tried working off-line in my word processor, but I am trained and used to an outdated one (Lotus Wordpro a.k.a. AmiPro) and it doesn't work very well with wiki formatting. I someday will need to earn MS word like the rest of the world, and have been doing that some. Copying previous work and editing it also is a workaround for me. I tried voice recognition stuff 8-10 years ago before I retired, but the results were poor. Expensive software or equipment is out of the question these days, as I am one of those seniors on a very fixed income.

For my Wikipedia contributions, I am mostly focused on history and people, places and railroads. I have been working on Virginian Railway and several related others items. I also have founded and moderate Yahoo groups, 3 rail and 1 for bus enthusiasts. 2 of my rail groups are very active, and info I have used on wiki has come from many others with hands-on historical backgrounds. Some of our work is used in the Virginia Standards of Learning online stuff for public school here! Here are is the url for the most active group for anyone who may be interested in what we are doing.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/VirginianRailwayEnthusiasts/

I would like to spend more time on composing content and less on cleaning up my bad typing which results. I would appreciate some suggestions, as I am enjoying contributing to Wikipedia!

My email is vgn700@aol.com if anyone wants to write me offline.

Thanks

Yours in Richmond, VA Mark Fisher, aka vaoverland

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 15:07, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

RFC pages on VfD

Should RFC pages be placed on VfD to be deleted? I'm considering removing Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Slrubenstein, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Kenney from WP:VFD. Each of them was listed by CheeseDreams. Your comments on whether I should do this would be appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:28, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Have been fiesty

I've also been several tried by a few people. Anyway, the whole RFCs on VFD thing was a disaster as I didn't realise I'd breached Wiki-protocol. I've started up WP:AN because of it. Thanks for your comments though. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:12, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hello Chris Roy

I would like to wish you a happy new year! MusiCitizen 19:15, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

Re: River Class

Chris:

I'm VERY new, but enthusiastic about Wiki. I performed my first article edit today on the River class patrol vessel today by adding some specifications and commissioning dates.

I based my information on open source web sites, primarily the R.N. and [Haze Gray]. Hope they meet with your approval.

Best regards,

---cman- 17:41, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Spoken articles

So, is that your voice on the Samantha Smith article? I'm glad to see you are contributing to the site this way. However, I think you could revise the reading a little bit - it comes off as rather flat, but then again, that's not uncommon, so I'm not criticizing you necessarily.

Still, I am glad to see the site grow in every way possible. Heck, not every article I've contributed to has been helped out much by my contributions and additions, but every little bit always helps. I hope you continue doing readings of other articles. (Stable ones are obviously the best for this job, due to their relatively unchanging nature, as I'm sure you're aware) --CGally81 00:51, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV - Norfolk Island

G'day Chris Roy,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments on POV in the Norfolk Island article. As the original author, I thought I should reply.

The article arose out of a university essay I wrote on the penal settlements of Norfolk Island. Two of my ancestors were sent there in the early days of the first settlement (she a convict, he a surgeon) and I've always been interested in the topic. I visited in 1995 and saw the remnants of the penal settlement in the present idyllic setting.

I take your point about a point of view being expressed but in all cases I was reflecting what others have said, and trying to paint a picture of what was obviously a pretty grim place. The evidence that has come down to us can all be criticised as being biased - sanitised official reports, sensationalist reminiscences of convicts long after the events described, shock-horror stories of do-gooder clerics or magistrates who made brief visits - but they all (except the official reports) point to the same conclusion. The statements made are mostly derived from other sources: - “incorrigible rogues” - Hazzard, Punishment Short of Death, p.22 - “idle and miserable wretches” - Clark, A History of Australia, Vol 1 p.115 - “only a handful …” my own words, summarising a number of extracts of accounts of convicts read in Hughes, pp.461-66 (Frayne), 471-2 (Knatchbull); Hazzard, Ch.14 (Knatchbull), pp.171-6 (Cook), pp.235-7 (Jeffrey). - “sadist, mental illness” - again my words, but reflecting conclusions of the historians. One of my sources (I'll have to check which) has some discussion about commandant Price's mental condition which appeared to worsen over time (he was eventually murdered in Melbourne, Victoria, by convicts he was supervising).

I would argue that the statements I've made are defensible and supported by the evidence, so I don't really want to sanitise the article by completely removing what amounts to the judgement of history (as distinct from my personal view which of course inappropriate in Wikipedia). I'm happy to make revisions (e.g., “Manning Clark says that …” - he was arguably Australia's greatest historian of the second half of the twentieth century, so his claims certainly carry considerable weight).

Do you think that would suffice?

Dick 22:18, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)