Person talk:Robert Carter (1)

Conversion

Nice job of merging the version at Person:Robert "King" Carter (1). However, its probably not a good idea to add the text of "A Brief Life of Robert Carter Transcribed and Edited by Edmund Berkeley, Jr."

I've had conversations with Berkeley about the longevity of the academic website on which its been placed. As I recall, his sense is that it will be preserved there after his retirement, but he's not certain whether that's "in perpetuity". I don't know that he intends to issue a formal publication of the work, and the academic site may be the only place it exists, or will ever exist.

His work is so authoritative that it would be nice to preserve it here. However, while he gives the title as "transcribed and edited by", this is actually Berkeley's own work, and stiull within copyright. Its probably too long to consider its inclusion here as justified under fair use provisions. While I think his brief bio is useful for the readers to be aware of, I think making it available here is violates his copyright on the work. So, I'll remove the text and replace it with a pointer back to his original. I've used the bio for much of the content of the original article, but if there's something in Berkeley's text that you think needs to be preserved directly, it would probably be better to incorporate the information in the introduction discussion. Q 08:25, 6 March 2010 (EST)

WP blurb [6 March 2010]

I'm sympathetic to being less than enamored with WP links. However. Right now, there is no indication of why this man was considered important until you're halfway down the page. The intro WP blurb accomplishes that, with links to other content, no less. This kind of information does not belong in the middle of a page. I'm not going to start an edit war by moving it back, but I think it would improve the page to summarize who King Carter was up front - with original content or WP, whatever, but WP is certainly easier and faster.--Amelia 19:56, 6 March 2010 (EST)

I thank you for that observation. Your point about Carter's significance is well taken, and I'll work to revise the text accordingly. Insertion of the WP template articles is effective at transferring information, but presents an unexceptably ugly appearance. Integrating the information is a better approach.

Personally, I think using the text of the WP articles is something of a crutch; in particular, they're an easy way out for writing an article, but the focus of WP is not genealogy. genealogy may be present in WP articles, but in general the perspective of the authors of those articles is historical, not genealogical. I suspect in somecases, that they would not be able to recognize good genealogical work from bad. For some, genealogy is a matter of copying existing work, and there's no research involved. In those cases, Wikipedia probably works quite well, as you are not allowed to include original research in WP articles. Makes it easy to not do original work. Some of us try for more than that. I'll occassionally make use of WP information myself, but normally stream the information into the text, and go back to their original sources to verify the information. (I didn't add these WP blurbs). That can be time consumeing, so I don't usually make heavy use of WP. This appears to be an exception because of King Carters historical and social importance in Colonial Virginia. Q 20:10, 6 March 2010 (EST)