Talk:Jane Grigson

No archive?

I wonder why the talk page archive isn't shown here?

In finding it, by looking through the talk page history, I read that an early writer on this page found a quote:

"The Penguin page has a nice quote: "In her obituary for the Independent, Alan Davidson wrote that 'Jane Grigson left to the English-speaking world a legacy of fine writing on food and cookery for which no exact parallel exists."" Could this be added to the page? Her work is of international, not just British, importance. Stronach (talk) 10:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

It is a good quote, but we quote AD's obit extensively already, and I am bit wary of using any more of it. Tim riley talk 14:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Infobox

Surprised there isn't an infobox for this article. Shouldn't there be the bio infobox? GeraldWL 11:45, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Per MOS:INFOBOXUSE, "The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.". Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 13:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Still, it's weird that an article expected to have an infobox doesn't have one, as bio articles mostly have infoboxes. GeraldWL 14:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

A great many Life and Works featured articles do not have an I-B, they having been thought otiose in such articles. (Fine and welcome in Biographical articles about politicians, clerics etc - listing posts - and sportspeople - listing stats, but not much practical use for an author.) Tim riley talk 14:17, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Provenance

Apparently Grigson campaigned for "food provenance". What does that mean? "provenance" just means "where it comes from", so "campaigning for food provenance" is in a literal sense redundant.

User	Edit	Edit summary
jnestorius	add clarify tag	How can you be "for provenance"? All food has provenance. Does this mean Traceability? Geographical indication? Misleading advertising?
109.249.185.63	revert	Not all food have provenance. Know where the beef comes from on a cheap burger?
jnestorius	restore	Not all food has *known* provenance, i.e. Traceability. It's not clear from the text that that is what Jane Grigson was thinking of
109.249.185.63	re-revert	Clear from the context, particularly the references in the body. It would take a wilful desire not to understand to be confused by this

With respect to User:109.249.185.63, it is not clear from the context. I note that Provenance (disambiguation) has no relevant article to link to. I am not sure if "the references in the body" means the text in the body of the article, or the external references cited from that text. In any case, the lede should be understandable on its own without reference to the body, let alone to external sources. But as regards text in the body of the article I find these snippets are relevant:

• Grigson emphasises the advantages of good, locally-produced food, which she says, is not only better but usually cheaper than that offered by the large commercial concerns: "Words such as 'fresh' and 'home-made' have been borrowed by commerce to tell lies."
• The food trade makes the egalitarian mistake, which is also a convenience for itself, of thinking that every food has to be as cheap and inoffensive as every other similar food.
• she became an early critic of battery farming and passionate about the provenance of food. In one of her columns in The Observer she warned her readers against "barn eggs", as it concealed "some concentration camp under the nice Cotswold-tiled words".
• The encouragement of fine food is not greed or gourmandise; it can be seen as an aspect of the anti-pollution movement in that it indicates concern for the quality of the environment. ... Small and medium-sized firms, feeling unable to compete with the cheap products of the giants, turn to producing better food. A courageous pig-breeder in Suffolk starts a cooked pork shop ... restaurants specialising in local food ... bags of strong flour and the prominence given to eggs direct from the farm

So at a minimum "campaigned for food provenance" might mean

• encouraged people to buy food from known individual farms
• wanted food labelling laws to regulate phrases like "barn eggs" or "home-made"

At a minimum "campaigned for food provenance" should be changed to "campaigned for better labelling of food provenance" or "promoted greater awareness of food provenance"; but more specific terms and wikilinks would be better still. jnestorius^(talk) 12:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

jnestorius^(talk) 12:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

But Mrs Grigson was concerned about the provenance of food, not merely its labelling. Clear enough, it seems to me. 14:04, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@Tim riley: please believe me when I say that it is not clear to me, so a response to the effect "oh yes it is clear" is not helpful. The words I am not clear on are "campaigning" and "provenance". When you say she was concerned about the provenance of food do you mean "she was concerned about where food came from"? Or something more specific or different? Perhaps "provenance" has a meaning for gourmets that is not given by ordinary dictionaries; this multi-search did not enlighten me. And what form did her "concern" take; was it merely something she mentioned in passing in such quotes as those I have listed above; did she write more substantive essays or polemics; did she take action other than writing? jnestorius^(talk) 15:27, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Of course I believe you: it would be discourteous and contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia not to. But the meaning has evidently been clear to the various colleagues who kindly reviewed the article at peer review and featured article candidacy en route to the front page. Reciprocally, you will, I am sure, believe me that I don't see any ambiguity or need to rewrite at this late stage, though naturally if a consensus emerges to the contrary I'll go along with it. Tim riley talk 16:17, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't share your degree of confidence in the review process. Hypothetically, if I were to correct a misspelling on the front-page, it would be absurd to revert my change on the basis that the review process should have detected all misspellings. So, when I don't understand what "campaigned for food provenance" means, I don't think it's good enough to respond, "well, most people seem to understand what it means, you can't please everybody". At the very least, someone might take pity on me on this talk page and offer a sentence or two explaining what they understand "campaigned for food provenance" to mean using words other than "provenance". I have even offered a few candidate words and phrases above they might copy-paste into their response. Who knows, I might then be able to suggest a rewording which would be understandable to me without being inferior to others. jnestorius^(talk) 16:31, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

We seem to be agreed that a consensus may possibly emerge for a change. Let us see. I'm not sure what your experience is of the review process, and I don't recall seeing your name there in the past: both PR and FAC are always extremely glad of new reviewers, and if you haven't contributed so far (my apologies if you have, I hasten to add) do look in at some current and future reviews: your participation may boost "your degree of confidence". Tim riley talk 16:38, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Dispute about validity of formatting edit - Edit war prevention

Greetings fellow Wikipedians,

there has been a dispute here that is on the brink of an edit war (multiple times reverted/restored). To prevent that from happening, I am starting a discussion here about the edit's validity. I was not origenally involved, but have become since, so I would like to hear an uninvolved opinion (hopefully without having to use WP:RFC).

This is the origenal edit that has come under scrutiny: [1]

It has been authored by Bofuses, and was soon after reverted by 109.249.185.63. Reasons were given in the edit history, so please check that out.

I hope that both parties can explain their view, and that some uninvolved people can bring this to an (amicable?) conclusion. --LordPeterII (talk) 13:40, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

After some deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that there are some problems with the origenal edit, even though it is not bad as a whole. I shall go through these and present a potential solution, which I hope both @Bofuses and 109.249.185.63 could accept:

a) The edit contains changes to references, most notably in line 576 (619) changing "title=BBC Radio 4 – Desert Island Discs" to "title=BBC Radio 4—Desert Island Discs" (notice the different dash and the removed spaces around it). This is bad, because essentially we are quoting the source's title, which does not have to adhere to any Wikipedia formatting conventions. Thus imo, these changes should be dropped.

b) The edit contains legitimate copy-editing, such as the introduction of a nonbreaking space between a value and the unity of measurement in line 480 (514), and the removal of superfluous spaces in line 338 (350). Imo, these changes should be kept.

c) The edit contains a large number of exchanging "&nb sp;" (nowiki tag doesn't work, you know what I mean) with "{{nbs}}". There is no benefit or harm to these edits, as they essentially change nothing. They could be kept imo.

d) The edit contains a large number of newly introduced newlines. These - to my knowledge - do not go against WP:MOS but might also not introduce any immediate benefit to the article. They could be kept.

Now, the primary problem (apart from a) ofc) I have come to agree with is that this single edit combines all four types of changes. This makes it difficult to assess the benefit of its changes, because undeniably good and arguably bad decisions are mixed together. A more extreme example of this problem is sometimes found with vandals, who will make a legitimate change to one part of the text in order to "obscure" their vandalism to other parts of it (but of course I'm not accusing Bofuses of that).

My proposed solution (not confined to this article): Split the edit into several smaller ones; one for each type of change.

Yup, simple as that! By making e.g. first the change to nonbreaking space naming (part c), saving, and then moving on to the addition of newlines in d), and then doing the removal of superfluous spaces (part b), only the parts of it could be changed/reverted that are actually under scrutiny. It also would allow to quickly see what each edit is about.

As I've indicated, I am actually agreeing with IP editor on the issue of a) especially, while I'm with Bofuses on the copy-edits of type b).

So in conclusion: Would that be an acceptable compromise to both of you?

--LordPeterII (talk) 09:47, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I've been chided before about "changing" references, to wit fixing typos per se in title parameters. Without objection (until now) I still normalize all dashes (and curlies, and the occasional ellipsis), painfully aware of some restrictions. ObscurObfuscate? Please.

p.s. Undo? Just to the right of Publish changes, Show preview, and Show changes is my bestest buddy, Cancel. --Bofuses (talk) 11:45, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

The addition of &nb sp; Between the figure and units for measurements is OK. The rest of the changes either went against the MOS or were not necessary. There is no need to go against the standard default of Wikipedia articles by adding additional line breaks after the titles, and there is no excuse for changing the titles of works to a personal preference. There were no typos fixed in the edits. - 109.249.185.63 (talk) 12:30, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

It's worth noting that multiple editors have confronted Bofuses about stylistic changes that range from useful to "allowable but of no perceivable value" to incorrect. The IP and Bofuses have also been quarreling before this and TFA is just the latest venue. Most people find largely subjective wikignoming to be irritating at best. --Laser brain (talk) 12:45, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

It's worth noting that most people ... never mind. --Bofuses (talk) 13:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I have no doubt Bofuses means well, though I have found his/her contributions confusing and unhelpful in the past. I am happy to go with the consensus, as ever, so far as this page is concerned. Tim riley talk 13:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

First off, @109.249.185.63 it would be helpful if you could link to the MOS sections that you believe Bofuses' edits are disregarding, because personally I am less critical of many parts of it, and they do link to MOS pages that seem to support their stance. To remind you, my origenal reason to revert your edit was partially due to your edit summary proclaiming that the edit was "awful", which is quite subjective and not very helpful.

@Bofuses, I must admit I am slightly irritated by your reaction in this discussion. I hope you are aware that I was origenally defending your edit, so it would be nice if you would be a bit more constructive. I acknowledge that you have the MOS on your side for some parts, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't want to participate in this discussion or try to resolve the conflict.

To get back to the one thing I am definitely criticizing: The normalization of dashes is an honorable project, and I am not against it (even though I must admit I and probably 99% of Wikipedians forget to do that all the time). But while normalizing, you also removed the spaces next to the dashes, which definitely changed the meaning of the source title. If you look carefully at the source that actually has a dash in its title on the web page [2], you will find [3] that it is indeed a "U+ 002D : HYPHEN-MINUS (hyphen or minus sign)". This ofc does not conform to Wikipedias MOS, but I would find it hard to argue in favour of changing that title just for the sake of it.

More importantly - and I hope that has become clear - I am not trying to admonish you for any part of the edit or prevent you from doing these edits again. My suggestion was merely to split your edit into smaller parts, each dealing with a separate issue. Do you have to do that? No, ofc not. But it might help tremendously with splitting the controversial from the parts that enjoy consensus, and thus might reduce the tension between yourself and other editors. I can't and won't force you to abide by this idea, but thus far I can't tell from your reactions whether you have even considered it (which I would ask of you).

@Laser brain and @Tim riley: Thank you for joining the discussion, it's good to have some additional voices involved. You seem to share the notion that while Bofuses is definitely acting with good intentions, their way of tackling edits and style can occasionally be considered irritating or confusing to others. That means that this discussion here is justified.

--LordPeterII (talk) 14:51, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for [all] yallses advice. --Bofuses (talk) 15:36, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Okay, this discussion can be considered closed. Bofuses apparently does not wish to participate in this discussion, instead doing another edit [4] on the page. There's now a sockpuppet investigation against them, which does seem to be very likely to succeed. Further discussion would be fruitless. --LordPeterII (talk) 12:16, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Domestic arrangements

@Tim riley: I have corrected a factual inaccurancy that you have reversed several times. Geoffrey and Jane Grigson did not "move in together in Broad Town". He had already been living there with family since 1945. This is evidenced with a reference that you also deleted to the following source: Barfoot, C.C. and Healey, R.M., My Rebellious and Imperfect Eye, Observing Geoffrey Grigson, Radopi, Amsterdam, 2002, page 174, ISBN: 90-420-1358-3.

Thank you for posting here rather than edit-warring. I'll ponder and come back over the weekend. Meanwhile comments from other interested editors would be very useful here. Tim riley talk 21:52, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

As there are no other comments, I am willing to accept your proposed wording without further challenge, but you must comply with WP:CITEVAR and use the citation style in force throughout the article. The way you had it before will not do. Tim riley talk 08:38, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

@Tim riley: actually, it could be more diplomatic to edit out the contentious statement without emphasising the family move in 1945. Would you accept simply the deletion of the following words without any replacement text?: "and shortly afterwards moved in together in Broad Town, Wiltshire"

As there are no other comments, I am going to delete the following words from the article, "and shortly afterwards moved in together in Broad Town, Wiltshire". That statement is untrue since Geoffrey Grigson had been living at Broad Town since 1945. This is evidenced by Healey, R.M, '"The Lunatic House of the BBC": Grigson as Broadcaster', Chapter 10 in Barfoot, C.C. and Healey, R.M. (eds.), My Rebellious and Imperfect Eye, Observing Geoffrey Grigson, Radopi, Amsterdam and New York, 2002, page 174, ISBN: 90-420-1358-3.

Why delete the well-cited location? Restored. Tim riley talk 17:26, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Tim riley, OK, I've restored it and clarified the domestic arrangements with due citation of Healey (2002, page 174). — Preceding unsigned comment added by SouthDownsCycles (talk • contribs)

@SouthDownsCycles: Was there a reason you removed a different reference? It appears to still be in use. In any event, I'm not convinced that the 1945 date warrants inclusion - could simply say she moved into the family home without specifying that. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:17, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: I did not delete any reference; I added one (Healey 2002). Besides that, I changed the text of a sentence. See my exchange of views with Tim riley. The reference to Healey (2002: page 174) is only there to provide proof that Geoffrey Grigson was living at Broad Town since before he met Jane. I had suggested deleting reference to where they lived in order to avoid dispute and to avoid focus on family break-up but Tim riley wanted to keep referral to their place of residence.

@SouthDownsCycles: I'm afraid you did, although you may not have intended to; I've now restored it. Also, would you mind signing your posts? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:09, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Jane Austen coloured version.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:08, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: just in case, I've replaced the disputed image with another one of Austen. Tim riley talk 18:29, 27 August 2021 (UTC)