Talk:Ellen Wilkinson

message: Where did she get the surname "Wilkinson"  from? john k 00:32, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably from her father Richard Wilkinson, in the usual fashion. Why is this even the subject of enquiry? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 07:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

text: The statement is verified: the source is the referenced review article, independent of the book. It probably ought to be retained as a quotation; at the very least it gives an insight into the controversy over her death. Lachrie (talk) 05:10, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: The article is currently the subject of an expansion into a full biography of Wilkinson, based on multiple sources. The first part of the expansion will apear fairly soon; thereafter, progress will be slower, as research continues. I hope to be through by the end of October. Brianboulton (talk) 18:08, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Expansion

message: If her death was not officially ruled a suicide, and probably a majority of informed people do not think it was suicide, then why is the article classified into two suicide categories? -- AnonMoos (talk) 21:05, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Because over-zealous categorisers chose to do so, ignoring the weight of evidence and opinion. I will certainly be looking at the appropriateness of categories, as part of the article's development. Thank you for your interest. Brianboulton (talk) 21:13, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Suicide categories

message: Just a very minor worry that the place of birth is listed as Chorlton-on-Medlock (where I am writing from)   in the text but Ardwick in the little box with information in. My guess would be Chorlton-on-Medlock - but I don't know about old border changes. (Msrasnw (talk) 10:50, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The Vernon biography gives the birthplace as 41 Coral Street, Ardwick, Chorlton-on-Medlock. The part of Coral St in which No. 42 stood is now occupied by Balsam Close – see the link in ref 184. I have made the infobox consistent with the text, but it seems that either Ardwick or Chorlton-on-Medlock would be correct. Brianboulton (talk) 17:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Splendid job on the article! (Msrasnw (talk) 19:15, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Place of Birth - Chorlton-on-Medlock or Ardwick 

message: I saw this was just promoted to FA status and noticed that the level 3 heading Postwar career is indented if the browser window is too wide. It's not a big deal, but I was wondering if there was any way to fix that. Adding a blank line in the wikicode doesn't help; it just makes things worse. And I don't think making the image smaller would help, either. Floating the image to the right does the trick, but that upsets the nice alternation between having images on the left and right that the article has right now. Any ideas? AmericanLemming (talk) 16:20, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Maintaining alternation of images is not in my view a determining point. With the very wide range of screen sizes now in use to access WP pages, it's nearly impossible to find a layout that satisfies all displays, and it may be that your adjustment here, while resolving one problem,  will create another for someone else. But let's see if anyone raises this as an issue. Brianboulton (talk) 23:18, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Postwar career heading 

message: There's now an article about the NJCSR. It seems too much to say that Wilkinson set it up. She belonged to the Parliamentary Committee for Spain; and she visited with other MPs in early 1937 (when the NJCSR already existed). I don't know precisely when the Parliamentary Committee was itself set up. The officers of the NJCSR are known ( and elsewhere); Wilkinson was on the Spanish Medical Aid Committee,  but I've not seen anything to connect her very directly with the NJCSR. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:18, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief]] 

message: Is the "Old Vic Theatre School" mentioned in the 'Illness and death' section the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School? It sounds like it, so might be worth linking. Also, there is an article for the by-election prompted by Wilkinson's death: Jarrow by-election, 1947. Might be worth linking that (in a footnote) and that Labour held the seat (the MP box down the bottom of the article links the by-election article, but gives no indication of the party of her successor)?
:It must have been the Bristol Old Vic school since there isn't another. I have added the link. I don't think it's necessary to extend the article to include the result of the ensuing by-election; her linked successor is named in the table at the end.  Brianboulton (talk) 10:21, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: This was obviously an error. Thanks for spotting it. Brianboulton (talk) 10:21, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

text: I didn't recognise my prose in that unpunctuated sentence, and sure enough I find it's a later add-on. The source doesn't say that the later event was a victory celebration – it seems that both rallies were part of a general campaign for equal women's rights. Wilkinson was very active in this cause, and I don't know why these particular dates were highlighted. Anyway I have trimmed the sentence to a more general statement, and removed the speciific dates. Brianboulton (talk) 10:21, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Couple of comments 

message: During this article's recent appearance as TFA the infobox was greatly expanded. I am sure this was done with good intentions, but the result was an overblown box that went well beyond WP policy concerning the use of infoboxes, which are intended to assist readers by providing "a quick and convenient summary of the key facts about a subject" (per WP:INFOBOX). While perceptions of "key facts" may vary from subject to subject, in biographical articles they may reasonably be considered those which gives an "at-a-glance" summary of the subject's life and career, to be easily absorbed by the casual or impatient reader. Cramming the box with every available detail defeats this worthy object.
For a politician, the key details might be, apart from personal identification: details of  governmental offices held, details of senior party offices (e.g. party chairman), details of elections to national legislative bodies. Sometimes there may be other important details that warrant inclusion as "key". What is clearly not "key" information is the mind-numbingly tedious "preceded by" and "succeeded by" fields entered for every office, major or minor. This information is largely irrelevant, useless and distracting – how important, for eaxmple, is it to know who preceded or succeeded Ms Wilkinson in the junior ministerial office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Pensions? It is unfortunate that the infobox template for political biographies has been interpreted over-literally by some editors, leading ultimately to the quite monstrous boxes such as that which adorns the Winston Churchill article.
I have not restored the Wilkinson  box to its modest pre-TFA dimensions, but I have trimmed out some of the inessential detail. I've also separated the purely party office of Labour Party chair from the list of government offices. If editors wish to argue that key career details are missing from the box, please make the case here.  
Finally, thanks are due to the many editors who watched the article during its TFA, fought the vandals, and in many cases made useful small improvements. Brianboulton (talk) 00:53, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox expansion 

message: Maybe somebody could turn up a classic quote about her that I vaguely remember, how after a Spanish Civil War atrocity, she put a weaseling British official (the British ambassador to Spain?) in his place magnificently, similar to Queen Elizabeth I confronting the French ambassador after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.  Having difficulty finding it with Google... AnonMoos (talk) 01:25, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Wait, I did manage to turn up a version of this on Google, but probably not the version I remember (I'm quite sure I've never read Clement Attlee's autobiography before).  There's probably another version of this anecdote (in a form that may be more suitable for inclusion on this article) out there somewhere, but it's probably not publicly accessible on the Internet (or I'm not clever enough to find it)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:37, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Quote

message: It could be more clearly explained that it was due to her left politics as well as her hair color. (Not sure what "uncompromising politics" really has to do with the color red...) AnonMoos (talk) 01:43, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Nickname "Red Ellen"

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141109111307/http://openplaques.org/plaques/821 to http://openplaques.org/plaques/821
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thread_title:  External links modified