Talk:Fox family of Falmouth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cornwall, an attempt to improve and expand Wikipedia coverage of Cornwall and all things Cornish. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project member page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.	Cornwall Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the importance scale.
See drop-down box for suggested article edit guidelines: Shortcut: WP:Cornwall Articles are written using a standard set of headings (see suggestions for article structure here). This is to maintain consistency between Cornwall articles and to improve the quality of entries through a constant style of writing. These headings are, however, plastic and in a state of flux and although we welcome suggestions or improvements, we would appreciate discussion before any major changes to the layout yourself. Be bold - if you know something about Cornwall then put it in! We value your contributions and don't be afraid if your spelling isn't great as there are plenty of spelling and grammar experts on clean-up duty! At WikiProject Cornwall we subscribe to the policies laid down by Wikipedia - particularly civility and consensus building. We are aware that the wording on Cornish entries can sometimes be a contentious topic, especially those concerning geography. You don't have to agree with everything but there is no excuse for rudeness and these things are best solved through consensus building and compromise. For more information see WP:CornwallGuideline. These pages are not platforms for political discussion. Issues relating to Cornish politics should be restricted to those pages that directly deal with these issues (such as Constitutional status of Cornwall, Cornish self-government movement, etc) and should not overflow into other articles. Most of all have fun editing - that's the reason we all do this, right?!

	This article is part of WikiProject Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), an attempt to better organise and unify articles relating to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the assessment scale.
Low	This article is on a subject of low-importance within Quakerism.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

[edit] Sections to add

• Quaker activities
• Scientific and technological activities

===Vernon White - T A L K . . . to me. 22:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability tag

Someone has bunged a notability tag on this article. Do they want MORE references?

Clearly, with several members of the family in ODNB, it is not easy to deny a certain amount of fame, depite the person's modesty.

The articles on the ODNB individuals do not show how influential the whole family was, in 19th and early 20th C Falmouth.

As noted above, additional material is needed to indicate their influence on mining technology, through the foundry and on the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). === Vernon White ^{. . . Talk} 21:43, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I find the "notability" tag rather surprizing (to say the least!), and so have asked the editor concerned to explain their reasoning here. DuncanHill 21:51, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The tagging was done not for the referencing (which was done very well), but for the way this reads more like a family genealogy, rather than an article. There are many articles on notable families on the Wikipedia, however they do not get into the "and-so-and-so-begat-thus-and-such" like this does. Scattered among the notables are many for whom notability is not explained nor claimed, and those need to be trimmed out of the article. Those that have articles should be hyperlinked to the parent article; those that do not explain who they are (i.e "Edward Fox of Wadebridge.") should be explained at that mention; those that in and of themselves are not notable do not bear mention just in the fact of their birth. Chris 04:07, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the last contributor hasn't noticed the explanatory value of the information on individuals whose notability isn't yet claimed. With individuals of several generations sharing the same name, such as the five or more "George Croker Fox's" even apparently unnotable persons have some meaning (George Croker Fox the Second (1752-1807) seems to have pretensions as a scholar of Greek, but I have no evidence other than his publications, listed here).

The unnotables also provide footnotes to the two immensely valuable Victorian Quaker Journals, written by Caroline and Barclay Fox, which drop references to various kinfolk in a rather confusing way.

Perhaps objectors might approve of placing the achievements of the family before the family history, in this article.

Are there any exemplary WP articles on families that you would recommend as a model? Should there be guide-lines on articles on families in Wikipedia:Notability (people)?. It would be appreciated if guidelines suggested a better layout than the "begat . . ." approach. I haven't yet worked out how to do the graphics at Wikipedia:Family trees.

BTW, I am not related to the Fox family. I am a Quaker and am interested in how Victorian Quakers transformed themselves.Vernon White ^{. . . Talk} 08:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that Kintetsubuffalo/Chris has a good point when he says that the article "reads more like a family genealogy", but I don't think that the solution is to trim out the less notable people. On the contrary, they have a place in the story of the family, but the significance of their role intends up being uninentionally overstated by the article's structure.

The genealogy is clearly an important part of the article, but I suggest that it should be at the bottom of the article, in the place where an appendix would be in a book. What the article needs, I suggest, is a clear narrative, telling of the story of the family's activities. That could be done either thematically (e.g. politics, medicine, industry) or chronologically, or maybe by a combination of both approaches.

Vernon has clearly done a lot of excellent research, and has plenty of useful material with which to tell the story here, and I would really enjoy reading the story once it's written up. I have been looking for a few articles which might serve as examples of how this might be done, and found a few which might help:

• Rothschild banking family of England (the best I found)
• Bulmer (family) (a much weaker article but it tells a story)
• Mitford family (narrative a bit short, but heading in the right direction)
• Garman Sisters (more integrated than the Mitfords)
• Smalbroke family (chronologially ordered, and somewhat genealogical in focus, but does tell a story)

Hope this helps. But in the meantime I have removed the notability tag, because notability doesn't actually seem to be in question. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:10, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Vernon White ^{. . . Talk} 08:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ??? Improvement ???

Improvement? --Vernon White ^{. . . Talk} 19:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)