Talk:William White

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Readablity is 66%.MySweetMelissa (talk) 20:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Article content, and working with administrators

If this article is under construction, please tag it as such. Otherwise, there is no reason other editors should not make changes. Also, the fact that administrators have "accepted" parts of it does not mean that no one may change it. Your statement to the contrary borders on ownership.

Here are the reasons for the changes I made:

• Some changes I made were to simplify wording. These included changing words and phrases such as "perished" and "previously".
• In the section "The Mayflower Voyage": only the first sentence was about William White. The rest was generic information about the voyage that was not tied back to White, plus a sentence about John Turner. To keep the article on topic, I removed some of that and combined this section with the following one.
• There was a lot of detail about White's descendants. Wikipedia, especially Simple English Wikipedia, is not a repository for that kind of detail, so I simplified it.
• There was a lot of detail about Susanna's second husband and their life. That had nothing to do with William White, so I removed a lot of it. Maybe we need an article about Susanna or Winslow for that.

The changes I made were to keep the article simple and on topic. I would be interested to know where you disagree with my reasons. I will wait a reasonable amount of time for a reply from you before I redo the changes I made. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:28, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

When you gutted the article, you gave no SWP guidelines or reasons. I will try to answer your concerns here:

An Administrator has determined the wording and the length of the Mayflower voyage paragraph in all articles. It condenses the two paragraphs previously there to five very important lines. That version revised and written by him is now in all of the articles. It is important to the articles as it shaped American history in general and the Mayflower passengers lives and deaths in particular. Thos four to five lines explains many events which directly affected the person of the article. The history of the article subject is incoherent and incomplete without it.

I have now removed the information that is only about Edward Winslow and agree they were excesssive.

I have no objection to the condensing of Susanna's children with Winslow. Since one of them becomes a Governor in a few years, they are mentioned. I have re-linked him.

The White children are notable because they are they White children and because two of them were Mayflower passengers, making them notable in their own right. They have their own articles. One of them fought in King Philip's War an important historical event and one of the first confrontations with the hostile Native Americans living in that area.

The two words you "simplified" are there in the article.

I have asked an administrator his opinion and he will comment further when he is ready. Thanks MySweetMelissa (talk) 19:01, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Sadly (for me) administrators generally have no special powers or rights over other editors. Our symbol is a broom which shows perhaps that we just clean up after others. Auntofsix is a very experienced editor, and is the "living expert" on categories. --Peterdownunder (talk) 22:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup

There is some stuff that you could remove to simplify and improve. You do not need to name the source in the article unless it is really important. Also you could contract some description. You also have Peregine born twice! Once on the Mayflower and again at Plymouth Sound. Also at the end of the section two sentences together imply that Winslow's wife needed to die! "Winslows wife had died several weeks before. This was necessary to care for the women and children." I think you meant to write he needed a wife to care for the children. I will add some suggestions below a bit later today--Peterdownunder (talk) 22:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your help and advice. Poor Mrs. Winslow! I really did that section badly. Actually it was "she" that needed a husband since Winslow had no children at that time. I have looked and looked and could not find where I ever said that Peregrine was born at Plymouth sound. That is not even a location but I will continue to look for that. He was born on the Mayflower ship while it was docked in the Harbor and the men who were able were going to land to explore for a place where they could settle. I will work on it some tonight and finish tomorrow morning if that is OK. Have been on since 5:30 this morning.MySweetMelissa (talk) 22:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I have made quite a few changes, to be more chronological and less genealogical. Some genealogical info that was not specific to William White has been removed, for example who Judith Vassals parents were and where they were born. I have also used templates to clean up the references. Many of the article's problems come from the original enWiki articles which really need to cleaned up as well.--Peterdownunder (talk) 08:20, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Good changes, Peter. Some of them are much like the ones I made that were reverted. The next time a non-admin dares to make changes Melissa doesn't like, I hope she will be more considerate and ask for an explanation before reverting and accusing the editor of "gutting". It's hard to explain some changes in an edit summary. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Auntof6, your changes were nothing like Peters and the edit summary you gave was not the least helpful and was derogatory in nature. Peter explained exactly what I did wrong and I will continue to follow his helpful and instructive advice one of my very good mentors. I also did not edit any of your remarks as you said in an edit summary, but you did edit my talk page remarks to an earlier version. MySweetMelissa (talk) 12:41, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Then we disagree. I didn't mean anything I said to be derogatory. I do tend to be terse, and I know that that sometimes gives offense. As for your edits to my comments, please look at this series of edits where you were the only editor. Among other things, you removed part of what I said and removed formatting. When I put my entry back the way it had been I did accidentally remove some of your edits, but I caught it and fixed it right away. --Auntof6 (talk) 13:08, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it seems I did do that and I must apologize. I am still learning editing and had no intention of abridging your talk page remarks work as I am sure you did not intend to do the same to mine. I will be more careful in the future. Informational edit summaries are most helpful as they teach a willing editor how to become better at their work. Terse edit summaries tend to serve no useful purpose and make for bad feelings and repeated erros before one is able to figure out what they have actually done incorrectly. I hope to work with you in the future when I am more experienced.MySweetMelissa (talk) 13:11, 18 June 2013 (UTC)