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I saw this article when it was the featured article on October 31, 2013. I raise an issue about the accuracy of article, because it contains a patent error. This is probably a problem with the underlying source material rather than the article itself, but it is nonetheless a patent error.
The article states that the coven of the Pendle witches met on April 6, 1612, and that the date was Good Friday. Although it is true that April 6, 1612 was a Friday on the Gregorian calendar, it was not Good Friday but two weeks before Good Friday. In addition, Great Britain was using the Julian calendar in 1612, not the Gregorian calendar. April 6, 1612 was not Good Friday on the Julian calendar, either; it was not even a Friday. Good Friday of 1612 was April 20 on the Gregorian calendar and April 10 on the Julian calendar. That can be verified by entering the Gregorian dates into the Wolfram Alpha math engine and examining the Julian calendar and Hebrew calendar dates that coincide. In addition, I checked a 1611 prayer book which has an Easter table that verifies the Julian calendar date for Good Friday as given above. (A Google search for prayer books and missals from that period should links to PDFs of source materials that can verify this fact.)
The error in the date of the convening of the supposed Pendle witch coven may call other details of the story into question. -- Bob ( Bob99 ( talk) 14:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC))
The opening states that the tower was the site of the most famous witch trial. However, a similar sentence lower down states that the tower was where the coven met, which makes much more sense, especially if the Malkin Tower was pulled down by locals after the trial. It's unlikely that the courthouse would have been destroyed. Mahuna2 ( talk) 15:52, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Right now, on my screen, the article says [[Category:]] at the top. Can't find what causes it; purging hasn't helped. Drmies ( talk) 20:18, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Why in the world would you need a TOC for an article that is only four sections long? Is it really necessary in this case? The reader can scroll down, can't they? Epicgenius( give him tirade • check out damage) 14:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
After a closer look, I've concluded that the article is only 10–12 paragraphs long. This is a relatively short article compared to other articles (like Pi, Gangnam Style, or Futurama). In such articles (with over 20 paragraphs) it might be appropriate to add a TOC. However, when the article is, on the most part, short (like this one), it's easier to add __NOTOC__. Epicgenius( give him tirade • check out damage) 19:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Currently the article reads:
"The name Malkin has several possible derivations: it was a familiar form of the female names Mary or Maud, and a term for a poor or shabby woman;[2] the similar mawkin was a word used to describe a lower-class woman or slut.[3]"
Putting aside that the toponymy section was clearly written by someone without a background in historical linguistics background (the writing style and wording give this away), here the non-neutral term "slut" is used without qualification. This is a major problem. By not providing qualification or appropriate mark up (either quotation marks derived directly form the author or apostrophes to signify 'semantic value'), the term here is used as if it is simply a fact of life, and not the moral judgment that it was. This is not neutral.
Attempts to fix this have been aggressively reverted by Eric Corbett ( talk · contribs), who went as far as reverting—at times without edit summary—four times in a 24 hour window ( 1, 2, 3, 4). His other edit summaries in the history section of this talk page reveal a similar aggressive stance to other changes to the article.
This article is currently locked down to Corbett's preferred version and non-administrators cannot edit it. Very convenient for Corbett, but unfortunate for the reader. :bloodofox: ( talk) 15:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
"Putting aside that the toponymy section was clearly written by someone without a background in historical linguistics background (the writing style and wording give this away) ...clearly gives you away as a pompous you-know-what. A background in a background? What's that supposed to mean? Look up the word mawkin in a decent dictionary and let us know if the word slut is in quotes. Eric Corbett 15:09, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
So, the question is - should slut appear as "slut" or slut? Discuss this, not contributors or their abilities/background/histories etc. Bencherlite Talk 15:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The word slut is colloquial, perjorative and carries with it moralistic judgment, hence it is not especially encyclopedic. Would it be better to use promiscuous? Candleabracadabra ( talk) 16:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I mentioned on Bloodofox's talk page that what matters is what the source says. That source is not available online; I don't know who brought the word into the article but I have to assume good faith in that they properly represented what the book says. I pointed out also that the word may well be deemed problematic (but this is no reason to go on a witch hunt, of course); any rephrasing of it, however, will have to be done with the book in hand because context is everything here. Drmies ( talk) 16:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The suggestion that we use the descriptor slut because that's the word used in a book from 1989 seems misguided. As an unattributed designation it is colloquial and perjorative, hence unencyclopedic. It at least needs qualifications or explanation. Even Wikipedia's entry on slut notes that the term is perjorative. The comparison to other impartial language is apt here. We avoid the terms negro, kink, kiki, fag etc. for similar reasons. Candleabracadabra ( talk) 16:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm finding the fact that Bloodofox is being allowed to make these repeated personal attacks to be rather interesting. For the record, I don't recall ever having read the Catlow book being used a source, I didn't write that section of the article anyway, and I did in fact study linguistics as part of my psychology degree. Eric Corbett 17:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Alright, for the sake of this article and as suggested above, let's try to keep this discussion entirely on article content and not inter-Wikipedia politics. So far we've had two users voicing support in changing the wording and two users making an unclear stance. Can we get some reasons for or against applying quotation marks or apostrophes to the usage of the word slut here? :bloodofox: ( talk) 18:26, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I think the pejorative nature of the term is irrelevant. The problem is that the word is unclear. Slut means whore. That is not the meaning intended. DrKiernan ( talk) 19:53, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
At the same time, though (and this is where we need to get back to the source, and possibly the source of the source), the article says (and again, I take that to come from the source) "a lower-class woman or slut". Now, the OED's first/oldest definition for "slut" is "A woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern." There's nothing sexist about that, though one could charge classism of course, in that any bourgeois person typically thinks of the lower class as dirty (at least that's what my mother taught me). That particular meaning, attested from 1402 on, jives perfectly with "lower-class woman". But the question for our readership is how many people are aware of that meaning for the word--I simply don't believe that it's the modern standard meaning, or what most people understand when they hear "slut". In other words, it is easily misunderstood, as this entire discussion proves (attributing good faith to the person who first objected). As such, one might consider removing it altogether, if the source, the source's source, and the context suggest that "lower-class woman" covers the meaning sufficiently. Or, again, one might add a modifier ("scare quotes" is pejorative, dear Colonel), if one thinks that the context is that of sexual impropriety--certainly in the case of witches that's a possibility, since sexual looseness was often ascribed to them.
That's a lot of words for one word, I realize that. Probably too many. But I wanted to be thorough enough, especially since I find myself siding with an editor who I believe has not brought forth very good arguments or acted in a very collaborative manner as befits this project and particularly this very-well written and well-scrutinized article. Forgive me for bolding the one sentence that might otherwise get lost in these paragraphs of mine (and I note that--edit conflict--another editor might well agree with me). Believe me, I'm not going to (edit) war over its inclusion or exclusion. Drmies ( talk) 04:00, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Surely they were the "Southerns" family? If Demdike was the name used by the family, then the indication that this was applied to Elizabeth because she was mistrusted or feared is inaccurate. Or were they known collectively as the Demdikes? Was do the court records indicate?
Amandajm ( talk) 04:52, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I'd been working on another part of a book on Wikisource called Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c. with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract on the Lancashire Witches, when I read this article by chance from the main page. The "Rare Tract" mentioned (thought by the editors to have been written before the Pendle Witches were executed in 1612) is primarily about these witches, and at the start mentions "Some time since, lived one Mother Cuthbert, in a little hovel at the bottom of a hill, called Wood and Mountain Hill [Pendle], in Lancashire."
I see this isn't mentioned in the article, nor at Pendle witches, but if anyone considers it worth adding I wouldn't mind helping to proofread it. ‑‑ xensyria T 16:58, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Consensus is the Archaeology Data Service source should not be added. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:21, 15 July 2016 (UTC) |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
We currently have a link to a BBC news story reporting "'Witch's cottage' unearthed near Pendle Hill, Lancashire" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-16066680 though that report does not make the claim that the site excavated in 2011 is a possible candidate for Malkin Tower as the WP article claims. The news report does make a link to witches and mentions remains of a cat being found in the excavation. The report of that excavation, available here http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/greylit/details.cfm?id=17362 make no mention either of witches or of the discovery of remains of a cat. In the interest of balance that should be included here but a user has removed it, first on the ground that it "doesn't look like the same site", secondly with the comment "so", and now with a personal attack ("try not to be such an idiot in the future"). Perhaps USER:Eric Corbett Could explain his reasoning? And maybe have a look at WP:CIVIL too Ghughesarch ( talk) 16:31, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
As the old saying goes, " absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Just because an archaeology report doesn't list something, I don't think that can be considered proof that something does not exist. Certainly, BBC News is generally considered a reliable enough source to show that there is at least speculation, and the article makes it clear that is a potential candidate, not definitive proof. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
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Malkin Tower article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
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Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Malkin Tower is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 31, 2013. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
A
fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
August 27, 2012. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that on Good Friday, 6 April 1612,
Malkin Tower was alleged to be the location of a
witches' coven? | |||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I saw this article when it was the featured article on October 31, 2013. I raise an issue about the accuracy of article, because it contains a patent error. This is probably a problem with the underlying source material rather than the article itself, but it is nonetheless a patent error.
The article states that the coven of the Pendle witches met on April 6, 1612, and that the date was Good Friday. Although it is true that April 6, 1612 was a Friday on the Gregorian calendar, it was not Good Friday but two weeks before Good Friday. In addition, Great Britain was using the Julian calendar in 1612, not the Gregorian calendar. April 6, 1612 was not Good Friday on the Julian calendar, either; it was not even a Friday. Good Friday of 1612 was April 20 on the Gregorian calendar and April 10 on the Julian calendar. That can be verified by entering the Gregorian dates into the Wolfram Alpha math engine and examining the Julian calendar and Hebrew calendar dates that coincide. In addition, I checked a 1611 prayer book which has an Easter table that verifies the Julian calendar date for Good Friday as given above. (A Google search for prayer books and missals from that period should links to PDFs of source materials that can verify this fact.)
The error in the date of the convening of the supposed Pendle witch coven may call other details of the story into question. -- Bob ( Bob99 ( talk) 14:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC))
The opening states that the tower was the site of the most famous witch trial. However, a similar sentence lower down states that the tower was where the coven met, which makes much more sense, especially if the Malkin Tower was pulled down by locals after the trial. It's unlikely that the courthouse would have been destroyed. Mahuna2 ( talk) 15:52, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Right now, on my screen, the article says [[Category:]] at the top. Can't find what causes it; purging hasn't helped. Drmies ( talk) 20:18, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Why in the world would you need a TOC for an article that is only four sections long? Is it really necessary in this case? The reader can scroll down, can't they? Epicgenius( give him tirade • check out damage) 14:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
After a closer look, I've concluded that the article is only 10–12 paragraphs long. This is a relatively short article compared to other articles (like Pi, Gangnam Style, or Futurama). In such articles (with over 20 paragraphs) it might be appropriate to add a TOC. However, when the article is, on the most part, short (like this one), it's easier to add __NOTOC__. Epicgenius( give him tirade • check out damage) 19:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Currently the article reads:
"The name Malkin has several possible derivations: it was a familiar form of the female names Mary or Maud, and a term for a poor or shabby woman;[2] the similar mawkin was a word used to describe a lower-class woman or slut.[3]"
Putting aside that the toponymy section was clearly written by someone without a background in historical linguistics background (the writing style and wording give this away), here the non-neutral term "slut" is used without qualification. This is a major problem. By not providing qualification or appropriate mark up (either quotation marks derived directly form the author or apostrophes to signify 'semantic value'), the term here is used as if it is simply a fact of life, and not the moral judgment that it was. This is not neutral.
Attempts to fix this have been aggressively reverted by Eric Corbett ( talk · contribs), who went as far as reverting—at times without edit summary—four times in a 24 hour window ( 1, 2, 3, 4). His other edit summaries in the history section of this talk page reveal a similar aggressive stance to other changes to the article.
This article is currently locked down to Corbett's preferred version and non-administrators cannot edit it. Very convenient for Corbett, but unfortunate for the reader. :bloodofox: ( talk) 15:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
"Putting aside that the toponymy section was clearly written by someone without a background in historical linguistics background (the writing style and wording give this away) ...clearly gives you away as a pompous you-know-what. A background in a background? What's that supposed to mean? Look up the word mawkin in a decent dictionary and let us know if the word slut is in quotes. Eric Corbett 15:09, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
So, the question is - should slut appear as "slut" or slut? Discuss this, not contributors or their abilities/background/histories etc. Bencherlite Talk 15:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The word slut is colloquial, perjorative and carries with it moralistic judgment, hence it is not especially encyclopedic. Would it be better to use promiscuous? Candleabracadabra ( talk) 16:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I mentioned on Bloodofox's talk page that what matters is what the source says. That source is not available online; I don't know who brought the word into the article but I have to assume good faith in that they properly represented what the book says. I pointed out also that the word may well be deemed problematic (but this is no reason to go on a witch hunt, of course); any rephrasing of it, however, will have to be done with the book in hand because context is everything here. Drmies ( talk) 16:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The suggestion that we use the descriptor slut because that's the word used in a book from 1989 seems misguided. As an unattributed designation it is colloquial and perjorative, hence unencyclopedic. It at least needs qualifications or explanation. Even Wikipedia's entry on slut notes that the term is perjorative. The comparison to other impartial language is apt here. We avoid the terms negro, kink, kiki, fag etc. for similar reasons. Candleabracadabra ( talk) 16:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm finding the fact that Bloodofox is being allowed to make these repeated personal attacks to be rather interesting. For the record, I don't recall ever having read the Catlow book being used a source, I didn't write that section of the article anyway, and I did in fact study linguistics as part of my psychology degree. Eric Corbett 17:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Alright, for the sake of this article and as suggested above, let's try to keep this discussion entirely on article content and not inter-Wikipedia politics. So far we've had two users voicing support in changing the wording and two users making an unclear stance. Can we get some reasons for or against applying quotation marks or apostrophes to the usage of the word slut here? :bloodofox: ( talk) 18:26, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I think the pejorative nature of the term is irrelevant. The problem is that the word is unclear. Slut means whore. That is not the meaning intended. DrKiernan ( talk) 19:53, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
At the same time, though (and this is where we need to get back to the source, and possibly the source of the source), the article says (and again, I take that to come from the source) "a lower-class woman or slut". Now, the OED's first/oldest definition for "slut" is "A woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern." There's nothing sexist about that, though one could charge classism of course, in that any bourgeois person typically thinks of the lower class as dirty (at least that's what my mother taught me). That particular meaning, attested from 1402 on, jives perfectly with "lower-class woman". But the question for our readership is how many people are aware of that meaning for the word--I simply don't believe that it's the modern standard meaning, or what most people understand when they hear "slut". In other words, it is easily misunderstood, as this entire discussion proves (attributing good faith to the person who first objected). As such, one might consider removing it altogether, if the source, the source's source, and the context suggest that "lower-class woman" covers the meaning sufficiently. Or, again, one might add a modifier ("scare quotes" is pejorative, dear Colonel), if one thinks that the context is that of sexual impropriety--certainly in the case of witches that's a possibility, since sexual looseness was often ascribed to them.
That's a lot of words for one word, I realize that. Probably too many. But I wanted to be thorough enough, especially since I find myself siding with an editor who I believe has not brought forth very good arguments or acted in a very collaborative manner as befits this project and particularly this very-well written and well-scrutinized article. Forgive me for bolding the one sentence that might otherwise get lost in these paragraphs of mine (and I note that--edit conflict--another editor might well agree with me). Believe me, I'm not going to (edit) war over its inclusion or exclusion. Drmies ( talk) 04:00, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Surely they were the "Southerns" family? If Demdike was the name used by the family, then the indication that this was applied to Elizabeth because she was mistrusted or feared is inaccurate. Or were they known collectively as the Demdikes? Was do the court records indicate?
Amandajm ( talk) 04:52, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I'd been working on another part of a book on Wikisource called Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c. with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract on the Lancashire Witches, when I read this article by chance from the main page. The "Rare Tract" mentioned (thought by the editors to have been written before the Pendle Witches were executed in 1612) is primarily about these witches, and at the start mentions "Some time since, lived one Mother Cuthbert, in a little hovel at the bottom of a hill, called Wood and Mountain Hill [Pendle], in Lancashire."
I see this isn't mentioned in the article, nor at Pendle witches, but if anyone considers it worth adding I wouldn't mind helping to proofread it. ‑‑ xensyria T 16:58, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Consensus is the Archaeology Data Service source should not be added. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:21, 15 July 2016 (UTC) |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
We currently have a link to a BBC news story reporting "'Witch's cottage' unearthed near Pendle Hill, Lancashire" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-16066680 though that report does not make the claim that the site excavated in 2011 is a possible candidate for Malkin Tower as the WP article claims. The news report does make a link to witches and mentions remains of a cat being found in the excavation. The report of that excavation, available here http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/greylit/details.cfm?id=17362 make no mention either of witches or of the discovery of remains of a cat. In the interest of balance that should be included here but a user has removed it, first on the ground that it "doesn't look like the same site", secondly with the comment "so", and now with a personal attack ("try not to be such an idiot in the future"). Perhaps USER:Eric Corbett Could explain his reasoning? And maybe have a look at WP:CIVIL too Ghughesarch ( talk) 16:31, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
As the old saying goes, " absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Just because an archaeology report doesn't list something, I don't think that can be considered proof that something does not exist. Certainly, BBC News is generally considered a reliable enough source to show that there is at least speculation, and the article makes it clear that is a potential candidate, not definitive proof. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
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