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Template:Vital article

Any interest in NOT suppressing discussion of Mary Shelley's vegetarianism, although it seems to be common practice throughout the Wikipedia project? MaynardClark (talk) 19:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest an edit and some reliable sources I guess?--tronvillain (talk) 22:29, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mary and Percy repeatedly advocated and promoted vegetarianism in their writings. Perhaps the term 'promoters of vegetarianism' would be more 'evidence-based' and therefore acceptable to the interested sets of Wikipedia editors. The current Wikipedia articles on Percy Bysse Shelley and Vegetarianism and Romanticism and A Vindication of Natural Diet assert as much about them, with their sets of putative 'evidence'. More wholesome ways to be vegetarian may exist and may have existed throughout Western history, as I personally have often claimed and still believe, specifically in religious contexts. However, if establishing a person's vegetarian dietary practice is going to require such a high standard, perhaps we can hold that same far higher standard to claims that Der Fuhrer was vegetarian (which a current Wikipedia article on Adolf Hitler seems to claim, contrary to all negative historical research by those who think that Hitler really wasn't vegetarian. See Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism, which claims that "Towards the end of his life, Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945) followed a vegetarian diet." We don't know what was intended when that word 'vegetarian' was used, but we know what organizations of practicing lacto-ovo or vegan vegetarians meant when they called themselves 'vegetarian'. "It is well known that Hitler is a vegetarian and does not drink or smoke. His lunch and dinner consist, therefore, for the most part of soup, eggs, vegetables and mineral water, although he occasionally relishes a slice of ham and relieves the tediousness of his diet with such delicacies as caviar ...".^[1] IMO, that string of words does not describe a practicing vegetarian of any consistency worthy of the term. But perhaps we could agree to see this claim as a significant historical dispute, but if 'birthers' or other 'denialists' today doubt something that stands on less evidence, they are politically 'shouted down' as if 'they lacked the brains they were born with.' MaynardClark (talk) 23:44, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If Mary "repeatedly advocated and promoted vegetarianism" perhaps you should easily be able to produce some references that support that. Note, someone's husband advocating vegetarianism, or having character in her book be a vegetarian aren't that. I really don't care if she is or no and it's entirely possible that she was, but for us to say "she was a vegetarian" rather than "her husband advocated vegetarianism" or "Frankenstein's monster was a vegetarian" there needs to be actual evidence for it. An article about Hitler is a completely unrelated - go edit that if there isn't adequate evidence for him being vegetarian.--tronvillain (talk) 13:38, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No one here is interested in suppressing discussion. However, the burden is on you to back your claims with high-quality sources and if you consider burden of proof to be "suppressing discussion" then we can't help you. --Laser brain (talk) 13:47, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's not MY goal in life (to argue this literary point). So much seeming hearsay pervades what humans write, even if they are widely regarded and well-read. Some of the (putative) 'facts' are authored by what become known as 'lightweights' in academic circles. However, my personal goals would be more concerned with and aligned with the determination of facts in the natural sciences relevant to the practice of whole foods plant-based diets that could be evidence-based rather than ideological. I think that efforts of social scientists (including historians) to determine facts may involve somewhat orthogonal but not entirely different skill sets. But along the way, I notice what appears to be a great deal of seeming interest in holding mention of one's interests in their own customized forms of vegetarianism to a higher standard of proof or verifiability. I already noted the other Wikipedia articles which make such statements about the Shelleys. I suspect that denialists have an implied 'burden of proof' to establish that the couple was a mixed coupled (bound together only by sexuality and not by ideas or values). That's a complex phenomenon if the vegetarian community of practice had ostracized (free love advocate?) Percy so that he could not find another vegetarian and ended up with a mere concubine who may have been fascinated with the idea, but not sufficiently to adopt the practice in her own life.

However, we can read that a Shelley Society was organized in London and that George Bernard Shaw became its secretary. However, whether or not Mary Shelley practiced a strictly vegetarian diet is not pertinent to the (hopefully evidence-based) choices I make in 2018 on what (plants) to eat (and why). [Nor do I think that their personal morals are 'ethically normative' for vegetarians or anyone else today.] MaynardClark (talk) 19:25, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

However, one might look at Fiona Sampson's In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein, published to mark the bicentenary of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. The Wikipedia article on that book also fails to mention (putative) vegetarian themes' {which we think been intended by Mary Shelley (1797–1851)}.^[2]

Perhaps Mary was not in fact truly a committed and consistently practicing vegetarian, but one could only hope (in the spirit of truth-seeking) that the entangling uncertainties that her intimacies of thought and body suggest could be untangled with scholarship, however (ir)relevant later seeming 'scholarship' on this topic might (*not) prove to be(come). The dietary truths of her historical actions? Time, circumstance, resource limitations, interest limitations, and shortage of critical acumen might prevent our seeing through that miasma as clearly as Wikipedian editors could wish. Oh, well. MaynardClark (talk) 19:49, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's a small thing, but from her letters in 1824 (emphasis mine): "Absolutely, my dear Hunt, I will pass some three summer months in this divine spot, you shall all be with me. There are no gentlemen’s seats at Palazzi, so we will take a cottage, which we will paint and refit, just as this country here is, in which I now write, clean and plain. We will have no servants, only we will give out all the needlework. Marianne shall make puddings and pies, to make up for the vegetables and meat which I shall boil and spoil. Thorny shall sweep the rooms, Mary make the beds, Johnny clean the kettles and pans, and then we will pop him into the many streams hereabouts, and so clean him. Swinny, being so quick, shall be our Mercury, Percy our gardener, Sylvan and Percy Florence our weeders, and Vincent our plaything; and then, to raise us above the vulgar, we will do all our work, keeping time to Hunt’s symphonies; we will perform our sweepings and dustings to the March in Alceste, we will prepare our meats to the tune of the Laughing Trio, and when we are tired we will lie on our turf sofas, while all our voices shall join in chorus in Notte e giorno faticar. You see my paper is quite out, so I must say, for the last time, Adieu! God bless you." And while WP:NOTFORUM, couples can have different beliefs or values without calling one of them a "mere concubine."--tronvillain (talk) 22:48, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If she lived until 1851, that was 27 years before her death at 53 - more than the half-way point in her life. Claims about 'Hitler's vegetarianism' are far LESS rigorously defended, and we have plenty of evidence that he didn't follow a plant-based diet consistently, though Wikipedians seem to want to say that Hitler was vegetarian. I wonder whether the only 'take-away' from this discussion might concern the precariousness of 'single-issue ethics' and diet as 'an ethically relevant factor' but not a guarantor of ethical normativity in the behavior of the historically-existing biological individual. MaynardClark (talk) 00:55, 28 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Again, the Hitler article is completely irrelevant, but as far as I can tell, it has a lot more evidence than there is for Mary. Show me her contemporaries describing her as a vegetarian, or her describing herself as a vegetarian, or writing anything that explicitly advocated vegetarianism. I've shown you evidence for eating meat, and all you've provided is Percy and unsupported speculation about how many values a married couple have to share, but he'd been dead for two years at the point of that diary entry.--tronvillain (talk) 13:50, 29 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Unless someone has a source to cite about Mary Shelley being a vegetarian, I'm going to close this topic. Kaldari (talk) 04:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In the Lake Geneva and Frankenstein section, please change "The story has been fictionalised several times..." to "The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times", to make clear that it is not Frankenstein itself that is being referred to. 2001:BB6:4703:4A58:8D0F:F46A:ACC2:AB5A (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:28, 30 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mary Shelley is a person, therefore she requires an infobox [WP:WPINFOBOX]. The infobox would be useful because it gives information to people like me, who take notes on people related to Shelley, but not Shelley herself, but do not want to scroll to the bottom of Shelley's article for her burial (date and place), legacy, etc. Vincentupsdellred (talk) 00:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Tagged a Wikiproject supporting infoboxes.

Vincentupsdellred (talk) 01:00, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Vincentupsdellred, please see the discussion above concerning this which was closed by Alex Shih very recently (just over a week ago in fact) as 'no consensus'. Thanks. SagaciousPhil - Chat 08:47, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Closed a little quickly I thought, though perhaps that was mostly because it also degenerated pretty quickly. Leaving it open might allow consensus to eventually build one way or the other. 14:08, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps we've had enough disruption on this topic for now? Surely there are other fires to put out on Wikipedia and we can let this one cool off for a few weeks before opening another RFC. --Laser brain (talk) 14:39, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That wasn't really a RFC, but I don't see the harm in leaving it an open issue indefinitely instead of quickly sweeping it under the rug.--tronvillain (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You don't see the harm other than the multiple admin board threads and ArbCom cases around infobox disruptions? Of course, feel free to ignore my suggestion and keep picking at this scab. --Laser brain (talk) 15:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry Sagaciousphil. I thought this time it might go over better than last time? Cheers, Vincentupsdellred (talk) 17:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I realise that this thread is a few months old, however as a "normal" Wikipedia user the lack of infobox was the first thing I noticed when I opened the article and I actually double checked the title of the article thinking that I'd mistakenly clicked on the wrong link. Realising it was indeed the right page my second thought was that it was an incomplete stub about Mary Shelley and that was why nobody had bothered to add an infobox. The fact that the lack of infobox was the first thing I noticed about the page demonstrates how common they are on Wikipedia and that people expect them on the articles they read. In my opinion, the arguments against infoboxes seem to come from an elitist group of regular Wikipedia editors who would appear to believe that they are far superior to the rest of us "normal" users; and insist on Wikipedia being used in the way they see as "proper", rather than looking at how Wikipedia is actually used by most people. Stubbornly sticking to what you believe is the "right" way of doing things, rather than listening to what your users actually want, is a surefire way of losing users and comes across as incredibly immature. Goodforaweekend (talk) 11:14, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm... a "new" user who knows about an eight year old RfC? And one who is happy to label people with opposing opinions as "immature"? - SchroCat (talk) 15:09, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New users are capable of searching archives.--tronvillain (talk) 13:43, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

...and seemingly incapable of knowing what a consensus is. Cassianto^Talk 13:53, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no, people talk about it once and a while, what a terrible disruption.--tronvillain (talk) 14:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nah - their very first post is on a contentious point, and they have discovered an eight-year-old RfC? All that and they didn't find the various discussions on the archives of this article? I just don't buy that at all. Quack quack quack... - SchroCat (talk) 14:43, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I'm so pleased you acknowledge that repeating this boring fucking subject on a near bi-monthly basis is "terrible disruption". It's a pity our illustrious committee don't share your view. Cassianto^Talk 15:11, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, that they never claimed to be a new user.--tronvillain (talk) 15:09, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am a new user. I noticed the lack of infobox and came to the talk page to see why it didn't exist. I saw where Sagaciousphil said "please see the discussion above" but as there was no discussion I checked the archive. I'm sorry that a new user having basic computer abilities is such an alien concept to you SchroCat. And the reason my very first post is on a contentious point is because I've been intending to create an account for ages but never got around to it, it was only how ludicrous the arguments against infoboxes are that made me finally create an account to make the point. And I never said having opposing opinions was immature, I said not looking at what users actually want and how users actually use Wikipedia is immature, I think your reading comprehension skills could use some work. And I know what a consensus is but as I said, a few uppity users who think Wikipedia should be run the way they want it to be, is hardly a consensus. goodforaweekend (talk) 00:18, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have very strong doubts that you are a new user, particularly given the nonsense above (finding an 8 year old RfC on a different topic, but not the discussions of the archives of this page. Given your continual insults to those who hold an opposing viewpoint to yours, I suspect that it won't be long before you are no longer able to use your account. - SchroCat (talk) 03:24, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And not only that, Goodforaweekend, but you are also fluent in knowing how to ping, and find and write a bunch of html for your "new" user page. It takes 20 seconds to create an account, but you've mananged to "not get around to it" until now? You must've been really busy. It's also a coincidence that despite being here for years, you manage to find the 20 seconds needed to create an account, and then make this article on this subject your first edit. Pull the other one, it has bells on. Cassianto^Talk 07:07, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't add an infobox to this article. It is perfect just as it is. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mary Shelley wrote the novelFrankenstein, has lots of movies base off it. The first one, was in the same title as the novel, was released at 1931, and fellow good actor, Boris Karloff,acts as Frankenstein's monster. Then, after that it got popular, and Frankenstein's monster was known as 'Frankenstein,' which is the person who brought the monster to life (in the book and movie) It is about a crazy scientist named Henry "Victor" Frankenstein, who made a whole new soul that he made come to life. The monster that he brought to life had an assistant, and the assistant brought Henry the wrong brain; he brought the abnormal brain instead of the normal. Then, you will have to read the book or watch the movie to find out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:E9A0:9070:E8FC:72ED:8E3:3213 (talk) 04:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]