Talk:Josephine Butler

message: :I will reply to the main points made above about the boxs overall....as the POV in not helping our readers...in fact making it harder on all. 
***Infobox occupies a precious 'real estate': top of the article
****No info in the top corner is leaving info out of one of the most looked at places on a page .... F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content -  -Eye Tracking Web Usability Study Reveals the “Golden Triangle”
*****It may be so for high screen resolution. Even with this, when infobox is  seven feet long it eats 20-30% of several sckeenpages. 
***Infobox does not really contain information important for understanding person's notability. Yes, DOB, spouse, terms in office are basic info, but it is not the first thing I want to learn about the person
****Notability is inherent by the article being there...basic info may not be the first thing you want to see but what about others?
***** Yes, what about others? Did one eved conduct research?
***Wikipedia is not wiktionary, it is not wikidata either
****As per our purpose here...we should accommodate other sites and software that want to help facilitate the spread of knowledge. We are not here to gain readership or force people to read our articles by suppressing information to other websites or search engines.
*****Nothing is to be suppressed, rather seamlessly integrated. If wikidata were decent, I would gladly have used it to answer queries such as "How many feminists were born in 1890?"
***Information density, "bang per buck", is much lower in the infobox compared to plain text.
****Not about impact... not all want to or can consume information in the same manner nor do all have the same comprehension of English to do so.
*****Sorry, I was unclear. I was talking about the amount of information per article area. Yes, people have different ways of comprehension. We have "Simple Wikipedia". Heck, why don't we create "Manga wikipedia"? But I don't see how infobox helps in comprehension of things other than trivia. And information density is critical exactly for people who have limited access to this information simply because usually they are the ones who have limited computer resources as well.
***Due to rigid format many infoboxes are a battlefield, with battles often resolved by numerous footnotes, which make them even uglier
****Way of the mark here...our goals are to collect information on all branches of knowledge and to disseminated that information around the world and sources is the best way to do that...who care if they look a bit odd....they help facilitate information.
*****Sorry, I was unclear. I am not against footnotes used as references. I was talking about footnotes of plain text squeezed into infoboxes to alleviate the rigid format... and to make the infobox pretty as dry cactus. (Same problem when some editors try to squeeze half of the article into image captions)
***Yes, some infoboxes are useful (IMO), such as geographical ones: in geography I indeed want to know all these "where/how much/when"; it is essential info, but for a person the essential info is what the person has done, not when he/she/xe/they died.
****Again assuming what is best for our readers and what they want to see.... what about non-english readers looking for facts let alone tibits for  other language wikis to use.
*****I don't think that non-English users are desperate about DOB of J.Butler any more than English ones. EVen so, where is the solid proof?
To sum up.....forcing readers to gain  knowledge only in context (read the lead), thus not giving them a choice on how to get said information is simply not the best way to do things.  Some people  dont have access to unlimited internet/data thus a browser search may be all they can do to get some info. Goggle, Britannica and many other places have adopted this format that has worked so well here because they understand  most will never read the article.................so to accommodate this fact we made boxes in the top right corner so people can scan info and we hope they then will  read the article. They have been studying this fact for years.... even way back in 1997 before Wikipedia only 79% of web users scan rather than read .....thus we made boxes when articles got to big....again why because many here understand how people use the internet. Want to keep readers or make them read your great articles...spoon feed them some basics (like current age) and maybe just maybe they will read on.....no tibits of info here...on they go somewhere else to find it.-- Moxy (talk) 23:02, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I pinged you because I mentioned your name. You caused a "flash mob", involuntarily. I had only one simple question on this page which has not been answered: "Structured information was removed with the edit summary "removing bloat", - where is the misunderstanding that leads to "structured information=bloat"?" (In other words: IF you (not you, Cassianto, any you) feel you have to remove something others created, can you show some respect, and some reason for your revert in the edit summary?) - I enjoy Marilyn Monroe today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:39, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: As per the above, improvement is sometimes removal of bloat, sometimes addition of text. Edit summaries are often neither here nor there: "improving article" would also have been appropriate. – SchroCat (talk) 07:42, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I admit that I sometimes regret that - unlike the rest of Wikipedia - I can't change edit summaries later. I try to word them with clarity (for example mention infobox, or ibox) and not to label something negatively. I think you could find a better way (than "bloat") of saying that you think something is excessive, which doesn't make it excessive in the eyes of others. Sorry, "improving article" is too general, - it could go with any good-faith-edit, but doesn't help finding a specific improvement when looking up an article's history. "Revert infobox" would be a neutral and precise summary, - leave it to others to see if that's an improvement. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:09, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I think I'll stick with my accurate summaries as they are. – SchroCat (talk) 08:57, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think "bloat" is not a neutral way to express anything, - we seem to speak different languages, I won't waste more time here. Interesting also that you blame a user of beginning an edit war (a user who only restored the stable version before the discussion) in , and by now we have five. Not my style. - When you ask the community (Beethoven, Mary, mother of Jesus) you see a different approach, friendly also to readers who know less English. This Butler article is not present in many languages, so readers around the globe will have to turn to English: they are served better by structured information than by prose. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:15, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Then next time I will not use "bloat". "Cutting useless rubbish" will have to do. - SchroCat (talk) 12:29, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

text: So basically headed down the same path as the other article ...no consensus  for change  here either.  -- Moxy (talk) 01:03, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There was no consensus when it was added either. CassiantoTalk 21:16, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

text: And no need for Moxy to try and control the agenda, or try and pre-judge the consensus here: so far I have seen only one 'pro' comment that actually addresses this IB, rather than general POV about IBs in general and that some people like them. This isn't a vote, and weight of argument will win out over weight of votes–especially on an article that is an alien one to most who have come to this talk page in the last few days, driven only by the agenda of attempting to own the top right corner of all articles. – SchroCat (talk) 21:29, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

text: Its so cute you guys back each-other up even when someone says the wrong thing...got to give you guys credit for always being there for one and other.  -- Moxy (talk) 21:49, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Who's wrong?  Or is it your desperate attempt to get the last word? CassiantoTalk 22:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

text: WP:DEADHORSE. CassiantoTalk 21:42, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

text: Yep, that train left some time ago. – SchroCat (talk) 21:53, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-arbitrary break 1 

message: Regarding the ridiculous situation with naming and this reversion in particular, it seems people are—perhaps willfully—entirely misunderstanding how the English language works.
The sentence "" refers to someone whose surname at the time of writing is Butler. To say "" is to refer to an entirely different person, someone whose name, right now, in 2018, is Grey. Yes, when Butler was young, her name was Grey—but it's not now, when this encyclopedia is being written She is known to history as Josephine Butler.
Is this really so difficult to understand?? I'm aghast that anyone intelligent enough to be reading and editing an article that is of such high quality would be so ill-read as to not understand how language works in this regard. I apologise for dredging this issue up again, but I really felt as if I had to comment. I shan't edit this article again, but I do hope this issue doesn't become pervasive: it, along with many other associated problems, will be the death of the whole project. — Hugh (talk) 23:35, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: You seem to miss that it doesn't say "Grey" but "She" which hopefully is fair. - We had enough questioning of intelligence, no? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:41, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  My point, , is that beginning that sentence with “Butler” is perfectly correct. — Hugh (talk) 06:22, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I try to avoid terms such as "perfectly correct", very generally so. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:12, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "She wasn't Butler when she grew up" 

message: Human trafficking was not a term used during Butler's time. Applying a modern legal definition to an advocate is beyond imprecise and completely inaccurate. Further, conflation of "human trafficking" and "slave trade" is incorrect. The conflation of those terms was an intentional decision why white advocates to co-opt abolitionist movement spaces to apply to the sex trade, specifically to white women in the sex trades. 2601:14D:4D80:A180:5435:48BD:204D:96E2 (talk) 21:08, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your comments. The term is one used by the reliable sources used - including works such as The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women. This is how WP works - by taking the very best sources and displaying their information. It is not a place to right great wrongs, no matter how strongly felt those beliefs are held (and I have a certain sympathy for your viewpoint here). If you have something that says that Butler wasn't involved in the battle to stop human trafficking, then let's see it - we can add it to the article as a counterpoint, but without that, we have to reflect what the sources say. Thanks again for coming here, and I'd welcome any further input you have. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 21:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trafficking was not a term used at the time, the definition is incorrect