Talk:Alfred Russel Wallace

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Alfred Russel Wallace (reviewed version) has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.

Contents 1 Make Wallace Line separate article 2 Same fella as A.R. Wallace 3 Vaccination A Delusion 4 Add external link 5 What did he do beside dying? 6 Mock GAC review 7 GA review 8 frog image 9 Featured Article?

[edit] Make Wallace Line separate article

I think that the Wallace Line deserves a separate article. I propose to separate out the section in this article and make it the basis of a new article leaving a reference and link to the new article in this article. I will do this within the week unless anyone has strong objections. Oska 01:58, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC funky chickens .. why can I change his text ? :/ unsmart Separation now completed after no objections were raised. Oska 09:00, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Same fella as A.R. Wallace

[edit] Vaccination A Delusion

I removed the Publications section with this link, but now I'm unsure. (External link deleted to placate spam filter) This actually looks like it was written by Wallace. What to do? Awolf002 18:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I believe that it was an actual publication of his. The link was removed because it was part of the website whale.to, an RfC on which can be found on Talk:MMR vaccine. I'm reinserting the text without the link for now pending RfC. InvictaHOG 18:38, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I agree. However a full citation of the title/publication is needed, so no other "bold" editor removes it again. Let me add that. Awolf002 19:05, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I have the book, and about 10 photocopies of it as well, also this earlier work. (External link deleted to placate spam filter) I can send anyone a copy if they want one. As

to InvictaHOG deletion of not only link but book, the real reason is his allopathic suppression of works critical to allopathic vaccination, and the best reason he can come up with so far is ad hominem. He has taken it upon himself to remove all links to my website where I have numerous anti-vaccination books such as this one by Wallace. I have been adding pages such as [National Anti-Vaccination League], Archie Kalokerinos, and so on. john 10:31, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

His texts are at http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/writings.htm which is a very suitable place for them and to link to. Midgley 00:37, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually I am rather amazed that the current version of this article has no material at all not only on Wallace's opposition to mandatory small pox vaccination but also on his long running campaign in support of spiritualism or his belief in clairvoyance and phrenology. Nor is there anything about his radical political beliefs (which were closely tied with his anti-vaccination campaign). It is as if the article on Newton omitted his interest in alchemy or his biblical scholarship and heretical views on the Trinity. In fact it might be even odder since Newton kept his alchemical researches relatively quiet and his more unconventional religious views even quieter, where as Wallace went out of his way to engage in public debate on both vaccination and spiritualism. One thing I notice from studying the history of this article is that Vsmith removed an extensive anti-vaccination quote with the comment that it was not sourced and that it lacked context. There is nothing wrong with the quote. It is from the pamphlet 'Vaccination a Delusion: Its Penal Enforcement a Crime: Proved by the Official Evidence in the Reports of the Royal Comission' published by Wallace in 1898 and most of it is reproduced on page 434 of Slotten's recent Wallace biography, 'The Heretic in Darwin's Court'. Vsmith probably had a valid point about the lack of context for the quote. In general I think this article needs a lot of work and I think I will make a new year's resolution to make improving it my next Wikipedia project :) Rusty Cashman 09:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

postscript to my comment. The anti-spam filter is preventing me from saving my comment. I am going to delete all the external links on this page to see if I can get it to save. I will come back and try adding them back in one by one until I find the problem. Rusty Cashman 09:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I think I have completed most of the changes I am going to make to this article and I think I have addressed all the issues in this comment. In the end I did not restore the quote that Vsmith deleted. Instead I added a paragraph that discussed Wallace's role in the smallpox vaccination controversy. The deleted quote can be found in the source I cite. If someone else wants to add it back in so be it. At leaset it will have some context now, and I think the article as whole does more justice to Wallace who was both an important and complex figure. After I have made a few more changes I will ask the project biography folks to rerate the page. I don't think it is a start level article anymore. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rusty Cashman (talk • contribs) 09:06, 14 January 2007.

Your revisions look good. The discussion of the smallpox controversy is far better than an unsourced, contextless quote. I've learned from your work, didn't know much about Wallace before, thanks - Vsmith 11:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add external link

Please add a link to <http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/>, which is editing and publishing all of the correspondence of Charles Darwin. Alfred Russel Wallace was a significant correspondent of Darwin. Eadp 15:33, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What did he do beside dying?

The opening text makes it sound like he is best known for dying in his sleep! Felsenst 06:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Insertion. One of the processes by which articles evolve. Needs some transposons too. I have moved that bit, hopefully where it belongs. cheers Shyamal 07:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mock GAC review

I can't pass this article, as the nominator of this article has passed an article that I nominated, and that would Look Bad.

Lead is too dense - split it up into 3 or so paragraphs.

Also, later on in the article, the text can get too dense. Could conform to Template:Biography closer. Early life needs inline citations. In some places, the tone is off - "the riddle of the origin of species" for eg. - reads like a 19th C science experiment. (too romantic) Article should technically be written in British English. Could also do with a copyedit. (use of commas) Sometimes, sentences are too long "He had come to this belief because of a natural and life-long inclination in favor of radical ideas in politics, religion and science,[2] and because he had been profoundly influenced by Robert Chambers work Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a work of popular science published in 1844 that advocated an evolutionary origin for the solar system, the earth, and living things. " One sentence, one idea. Direct quotes need inline citation. Needs more detail on his conversion to spiritualism.

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[?]
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• Please reorder/rename the last few sections to follow guidelines at Wikipedia:Guide to layout.^[?]
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You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Malkinann 23:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the valuable input, I will try and address these issues over the next few days. Though I must say I think the whole British/American English consistency thing is more trouble than it is worth :) I do appreciate your style comments and I will do my best to address them. Rusty Cashman 01:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

If you ever want to get it to FA, someone will get their knickers in a knot about it. If you want to be a cheeky bugger, you could ask for a translation?  ;) It also needs more detail on his death. I've added an infobox that could use filling out.-Malkinann 03:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

With the addition of a paragraph on his conversion to spiritualism I believe all of the comments in this mock review have been addressed. Thanks again for the feeback Rusty Cashman 22:03, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA review

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is well written.

   a (prose): b (structure): c (MoS): d (jargon):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (inline citations): c (reliable): d (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

5. It is stable.

   

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

   a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

7. Overall:

   a Pass/Fail:

That's a pass, methinks. Orginisation is a little odd, putting the section on his marriage way out of chronological order, and leaving no place outside the introduction to mention his death, but on the whole, it actually does work well, teasing out all the different aspects of his life into coherent sections. For FA, I'd be inclined to add more on his legacy. Adam Cuerden ^talk 11:38, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the review and the comments. I agree with you about the missing separate section on his death. I am working on some text for it now and when I have it ready I will restore the section. I will also see if there isn't a better place for the marriage section. Hopefully I can make the article structure a little more standard as I would like to persue A ratings in both history of science and biography.Rusty Cashman 00:29, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Congrats to all those editors who brought this article up to GA status. I haven't done much but I have been monitoring its progress. I've traveled through Maluku and have read both 'The Malay Archipelago' and also Tim Severrins book ('In search of Wallace'?) but my memory of both is a bit vague to have made contributions. One of the most fascinating characters of South East Asian history. Well done Merbabu 00:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] frog image

This is interesting...compare the frog from the Malay Archipelago image to the flying frog from Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur. That species is credited to Wallace, but it's interesting that it's actually based on that illustration as well--ragesoss 16:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC):

I agree. The two figures are extremely similar and it does look like one was derived from the other. It is probably not all that surprising however. Haeckel surely would have been familar with the Malay Archipelago and we all know scientific images tend to have long lives of their own. For example, Haeckel's notorious embryos. Rusty Cashman 03:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Article?

Do you think that the article is ready to become a featured article? Tomer T 00:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)