User talk:Dsp13

Hello Dsp13, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here.

You'll find an (incomplete) index of our works listed at Works, although for very broad categories like poetry you may wish to look at the categories like Category:Poems instead.

Please take a glance at our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). Most questions and discussions about the community are held at the Scriptorium.

The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page! Yann (talk) 20:25, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for Joining the DNB project.
Hi! You asked or a review, but I think I'll respond with a comment instead.

I originally created the structure of this project merely as a place to store one particular article in preparateion for using it in Wikipedia. my two collegues are much more interested in the actual work of of creating a full DNB. and appear to know a lot more than I do about the DNB itself. I find that you also know more than I do about the DNB.

Unfortunately, the three of us do not even agree on the goals of the project, so I cannot really comment on whether or not you are "doing it right." From a brief look, it appears that you are doing just fine-- Thanks!

My original goal was (I thought) simple: create an exact copy of the original 63-volume DNB, with only those changes that are required to translate into the Wiki medium. I am perfectly happy to add links thta only change the color of the text and to add extra-textual material in the headers and on navigational pages, but that is all I think we should add. However, this is not the vision of my collegues: they prefer to update the texts to later versions. Since they contribute a lot more than I do, I am simply going along with this, so my role is more on the "technical" side, helping with templates and such.

I see nothing wrong with creating multiple instances of an article to capture different real-world version. I do however feel that it is improper to mix these without any indication of actual source version and then call the result the "DNB1900". -Arch dude (talk) 18:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to the DNB
Welcome to the DNB project. I was a little stunned to see that you had found so many errors in the Francis Holyoake article ... but that only proves why its so important to have articles proofread by at least two people.

I'm glad to see that you have started to work on the 1904 errata. This will be a big help in resolving the differences between the editions. Feel free to raise any points that concern you. Eclecticology (talk) 08:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC)


 * WELCOME BACK! Some things have changed, and some things have stayed the same.  We are now have all the volumes in place, though some are pretty average.  Trying to do our transcriptions from the volumes and transclude to the main namespace.  Have DNBset to help undertake the setup. :-) billinghurst (talk) 23:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * DNBSet looks clever, but I'm not sure I quite understand what sort of thing goes in each line. It might be useful to have an example filled out. Dsp13 (talk) 22:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * as per your request .... Template:DNBset billinghurst (talk) 23:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * thanks very much indeed! It's made it much clearer for me, & all very clever stuff! What I find slightly offputting is that there's nowhere to click on Faraday, Michael (DNB00) to get straight to the source text at Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_18.djvu/196 etc. What would be wonderful to my mind would be for the head of the page to read:
 * Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 18, pp. 190-202
 * so that one could click through onto a source page. Aside from the technical templating of this, there is the problem that two different sets of page numbers need to be provided - that printed in the source (here 190ff) and that of the wikisource scan (here 196ff). Dsp13 (talk) 00:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * There is actually a different and cleverer solution to that, see User talk:Billinghurst (Magnus and I talked over linking to the scans when we had the meetup to ourselves, and he raised the same issue. Already been thought of.) But I think that depends on javascript being enabled? Over my head. On the page number front I believe we standardise in most contexts to the numbers on the printed page (I mean in listing articles systematically, as I'm starting to do at Author:Alexander Gordon/DNB; and over at WP on the volume listings). The conversion table to the djvu numberings is a column on WikiProject DNB/Progress. (I will produce a conversion for the 21+1 volumes -> 63+3 volumes in time, too.) Charles Matthews (talk) 20:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

DNB gap
Volume 10, p. 378 is missing, and we have no adequate scan. It has been requested for Portal:Magna Carta, for Gilbert de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford. If you could supply a photocopy at some point, I can do the rest. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:52, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

TUSC token 1737756e1aec41e43849a56eaae54f5e
I am now proud owner of a TUSC account!

Academic query
Do you know where the historian Brett Usher is presently? My reason of asking relates to current discussion of the feedback tool on WP. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:57, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't. He was at the University of Reading, so you could contact the History Dept there to see if they have his contact details. Dsp13 (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/List of Writers
Moving ahead more systematically on identifying authors, now that the biographies are being created. There is general chat on WS:WT DNB. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Arthur Hughes
One of the DNB12 authors, writing Herbert, Auberon Edward William Molyneux (DNB12) and possibly nothing else. Auberon Herbert had a follower Arthur Hughes, who was the nephew of Thomas Hughes, or possibly the son. So I think it is him, and the question is how to place him. This won't be Arthur Hughes (artist), looking at that one's background in the ODNB. There was an archivist Arthur Hughes at the PRO who also doesn't fit. The ODNB on Herbert Spencer mentions "a leader of the English co-operative movement, Arthur Hughes" in 1883, who would fit, however, given that Auberon Herbert had a phase of being impressed by Herbert Spencer. Arthur Hughes the individualist wrote for The Free Life, and had French associates, a trail that leads off to Provence and some people obscure enough not to be in frWP (Pierre Aubry, Henry-Léon Follin) who weren't anarchists but might easily be mistaken. Altogether an odd corner. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:56, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Alumni Oxonienses 1715-1886 completion
There is an announcement on Scriptorium. Of course there is more to do, but the entries can now be found from Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:44, 11 July 2022 (UTC)