Talk:Herbert Sullivan

Date of marriage

Apropos of recent conflicting dates, 1923 is the right one. See The Times, 7 April 1923, p. 13: "The engagement is announced between Herbert Sullivan and Elena Margarita, daughter of Edmund Walden Vincent of West Hill, St Leonards-on-Sea." How do we know that's the correct Herbert Sullivan? Well, after his death the widow of our Herbert Sullivan remarried, and we know from The Gilbert and Sullivan Journal and Leslie Baily's The Gilbert and Sullivan Book, 1966 ed, London: Spring Books. ISBN 0-500-13046-9 - acknowledgements page) that she became Mrs Bashford. Here's the announcement in The Times (5 Dec 1929, p. 17): A marriage has been arranged ... between P F R Bashford, Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and Elena Margarita, née Vincent, widow of Herbert Sullivan. Tim riley (talk) 09:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Aircraft crash

@Ssilvers: - Re your edit summary, I agree that it probably isn't important in his life or career, BUT, it is a verified fact that he witnessed the event, and called for assistance. The article is short as it is. I added the event not only to assist in increasing the length of the article a bit, but also entirely in accordance with the WP:BTW guideline. The aircrash article is in need of links to it, but it proved pretty hard to make them in the first place, so I'm not in favour of losing one. Mjroots (talk) 19:00, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to the Talk page. It strikes me that the air crash article is not notable (not everything that is reported in the newspaper is encyclopedic, per WP:NOT), but that is not my concern. I believe that mentioning it in this article is unencyclopedic, and I don't think that it is acceptable to do so merely in order to bolster the survivability of the other article or to add filler to this article. More interesting to me was the suggestion that Sullivan may have owned a yacht. But, this is only my opinion. I hope that others will comment, as you raise a worthwhile question. -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:20, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I've not looked into the yacht, but there is a possible article there. As to the aircrash article, early aircrashes are under-represented. I probably should have included that this was the first major civil accident to befall the Farman Goliath. This will be rectified. Mjroots (talk) 19:33, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I sympathise with the need to dodge the NO LINKS police, and I'd be happy to give this matter a passing mention here: in an ideal world I'd footnote the info, I think, but I don't think it so irrelevant to HS's life as to be an intrusion – it shows he had a yacht, at all events. If it stays, it would be a kindness if the citation style fitted in with the rest of the article. Tim riley talk 19:37, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, just realised that this article doesn't use {{Cite newspaper The Times}} for referencing The Times. No objection here to falling in with the established practice for a ref, should the info get reinstated. Mjroots (talk) 19:53, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Will my revision do? Tim riley talk 22:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, Tim. Mjroots (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:DISINFOBOX

Hello! Please do not add an infobox to this article. Throughout the articles within the scope of WikiProject G&S, the consensus has been not to have infoboxes. As you probably know, the use of infoboxes in WP articles is optional. The Manual of Style says: "Whether to include an infobox ... and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article." See also WP:DISINFOBOX. While sports and politician bios can benefit from infoboxes, most articles, as here, do not. Here are some reasons why I disagree with including an infobox in this article: (1) The box emphasizes unimportant factoids, and all the facts it presents are stripped of context and lacking nuance, whereas the WP:LEAD section emphasizes and contextualizes the most important facts. (2) The most important points about the article are discussed in the Lead, so the box is redundant. (3) It takes up valuable space at the top of the article and hampers the layout and impact of the Lead. (4) Frequent errors creep into infoboxes, as updates are made to the articles but not reflected in the redundant info in the box, and they tend to draw more vandalism and fancruft than other parts of articles. (5) The infobox template creates a lot of code near the top of the edit screen that discourages new editors from editing the article. (6) It discourages readers from reading the article. (7) It distracts editors from focusing on the content of the article. Instead of improving the article, they spend time working on this repetitive feature and its coding and formatting. All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:06, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

In which case it would be helpful if all affected articles stated this, either by an <!--edit note--> or by a page notice visible on editing a page. I was only trying to improve the article! Mjroots (talk) 20:09, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Oppose infobox in this article. The box added by Mjroots is utterly absurd. I cannot see any reason why this article should have one. Cassianto^Talk 20:11, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose infobox. No infobox is required here as we do not use them on the G&S Project. I refer to all the previous discussions about this as to why they are not useful. Jack1956 (talk) 20:13, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, I get that, but it would be useful to inform other editors of the fact! Mjroots (talk) 20:22, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Now there is a talk page item here showing the consensus, so any editor who adds an infobox would not only be ignoring the guideline, but also failing to check the Talk page. I don't think we should add hidden comments all over articles just to remind people to do the right thing. As a thought experiment: why not inform all editors when you have decided that you *do* want to use an infobox in an article by an edit note or by a page notice? The fact that there is no infobox serves as notice that the editors who have worked on the article thus far have not considered an infobox helpful. The assumption that an infobox ought to be used is contrary to the guideline. -- 20:35, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• I too am against an IB for this article, but would like to thank Mjroots for his/her conciliatory and colleaguely responses. Tim riley talk 21:31, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, thank you, Mjroots, for your calm and reasoned discussion of these issues. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:38, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose IB. As per the above, and just for the record. There is little of merit in the IB that isn't better put in the lead. - SchroCat (talk) 09:03, 4 September 2015 (UTC)