Talk:Shepard's Citations

dulled the partisan language

I took out some of the self-flattery -- the page looked like it was given a facelift by someone in the Lexis Nexis marketing department. Suggest we all keep it on our Watchlists for a while. Agradman ^talk/_contribs 03:51, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

• ahhh, never mind -- looking at the History, the flattery was all from longtime editors, no partisan hacks involved. Still, I prefer the article to be more factual. Agradman ^talk/_contribs 03:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Huh? The edits you removed were factual. Keep in mind this article may be read by non-lawyers who have no idea why online Shepardizing was such a major advance in legal practice. That's why my edit emphasized "plain English," because that's much more convenient than deciphering those cryptic codes which the old paper Shepard's booklets use. I've looked at some of those booklets out of curiosity and was horrified by how generations of lawyers had to put up with that craziness before it was all computerized by Lexis.--Coolcaesar (talk) 17:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, I agree with you ... as a current law student I wasn't immediately aware of the historic dominance of Shepard's Citations, until I did some more reading. I made some further additions to the article.
• Now I understand why you emphasized "plain English": i.e. to compare the print vs. online versions. When I first read it, I thought it was intended to boost the Lexis online citator compared to the competitors' online citator! If you can restore the comment in a way that doesn't have that effect, I won't complain. Cheers. Agradman ^talk/_contribs 18:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem. But you might want to consider studying Nolo's Legal Research book if it hasn't already been assigned to you (if your legal research or lawyering skills instructor failed to assign that book, they're either crazy or incompetent). It explains a lot of basic things like this. You need to be able to pick up on these kinds of quirky and annoying little details to minimize the generation gap when you graduate and start working with 40, 50, and 60-year-old lawyers (who will very often be the people who own the firm). Keep in mind that most lawyers over age 55 did Shepardizing and case retrieval the old-fashioned way up until the late 1980s, when Lexis and Westlaw began to expand from the big firms into all corners of legal practice. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Jurisdiction

Is it worth noting somewhere in the article which jurisdiction(s) this covers? I don't have access to it, but I'm assuming it covers only US law, or does it extend to any other systems? --Duke (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Sherardising Hatnote

User:L.tak inexplicably reverted my revert of User:DocWatson42's edit on 5 April 2019.

The edit makes no sense because the terms Shepardizing and Sherardising are not identical either visually or aurally and involve completely unrelated subjects. There is nothing to disambiguate. The purported relationship is an entirely trivial pun, in violation of this part of Wikipedia:Hatnote: "When notes feature a trivial detail or use of a term, or links to overly specific and tendentious material, they are unwarranted."

It's nearly as trivial and as frivolous, as for example, inserting hatnotes linking Umbrella and Beretta because Rihanna is famous for pronouncing one word like the other, as Cobra Starship pointed out on TRL. Another comparable example would be cross-linking English and Engrish. Again, we just don't do that (go look at those articles) because it's trivial and frivolous, even though they sound alike and even though the relationship between those two articles is much stronger than in this case (since they are both about language).

Another example of where both users' logic is going when taken to its logically (irrational) conclusion would involve one of the most notorious puns on South Park. Yes, City Wok. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:19, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Apart from the reductio ad absurdum above, my revert had to do with the apparent deduction from you coolcaesar that Docwatson was suffering from dyslexia. That may also have been a personal attack. That violates our core policies (regarding good faith and no personal attacks). As that seems to be a pattern for you (see your talk page) I decided to revert pending more content related -and free of decease/personal attack related- edit summaries. I have no strong opinion on the hatnote however: there is something to say for the confusion, there is also something to say for the argument that those two are quite far apart. We don't seem to have a standard test for that... L.tak (talk) 07:56, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

To all: For the full context, including my reasoning for adding the hatnotes, please see User talk:Coolcaesar#Regarding your reversion of my recent edits. —DocWatson42 (talk) 07:59, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

And your point? --Coolcaesar (talk) 23:52, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Also, dyslexia is a learning disability often characterized by letter transpositions. Treating an innocent question based on an obvious inference as a personal attack is itself insulting to those with learning disabilities (insofar as one chose to read my inquiry as derogatory) and indicates a failure to assume good faith on L.tak's part. --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:16, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

The question, as poised in that context, did not come across as innocent. —DocWatson42 (talk) 15:39, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

And I respectfully disagree. But that's probably because people who work in the life and health sciences are specifically trained to not regard diagnoses as insulting. Although I chose to not follow that path, three generations of my family have. I am related to more healthcare providers by blood or marriage than I can count on both hands. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:27, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

• Interpersonal disputes aside, I agree that the hatnote is unnecessary, and should be removed. bd2412 T 16:14, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

What about the the "Shepardizing" redirect? Perhaps a {{Redirect}} hatnote? I.e., "Shepardizing redirects here. For plating of metal on metal, see Sherardising." — Preceding unsigned comment added by DocWatson42 (talk • contribs) 05:23, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Yup. The prior hatnote didn't make clear why it was appropriate, but I think it is based on the redirect Shepardizing and the plausible one-letter typo of Sheradizing for that redirect. Note using US -izing spelling for both; it's the more likely of the two typos as between "Sheradizing" and "Sheradising", and listing just one is sufficient. edit: [1] TJRC (talk) 22:25, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

So do we have consensus to move forward with reverting User:DocWatson42's edit? If I don't hear anything, I am going to revert that edit again.

And if you still didn't get the City Wok joke, go search for South Park clips on YouTube. Yes, the point I was making is that cross-linking the articles is that frivolous. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I support TJRC's solution from their prior edit, and would still prefer to keep hatnotes in both articles. —DocWatson42 (talk) 07:00, 1 August 2019 (UTC)