User talk:PamD: Difference between revisions

If you leave a new message on this page, I will reply on this page. If you want me to reply elsewhere, tell me why.

16:42 Thursday 29 January 2026 – – – – WELCOME TO MY TALK PAGE

Please click “New section” or “Add” above to leave any new message, and please sign your message (just type ~~~~).

If you leave a message here, I will reply here, to make discussions easier to read. If you really want me to reply elsewhere, tell me a very good reason why I should do so.
If you reply to a message here, please indent (start the line with “:”) and sign your message.
If you are discussing any particular page, please provide a link to it – it makes life easier for me and anyone else seeing this page.

Thanks. PamD

Template:EngvarB has been nominated for deprecation . You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page.

Your fantastic work on women worldwide is much appreciated! I have a query about this edit, though – which I think mixes up two different schools (Ndola Girls Technical High School in Ndola and Njase School in Choma, Zambia. Does that seem right to you? Dsp13 (talk) 14:25, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Dsp13 Thanks for your kind words. Although it isn’t in the headline, that article lists Ndola in the second group of schools. Not a great claim to notability, but certainly verifying existence, and no confusion! PamD 14:39, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant, you’re right – thanks! (Someone just prodded Ibenga Girls Secondary School, so I was doing a hasty check of Zambian girls schools. Clearly over-hasty!) Dsp13 (talk) 14:53, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That list of results might help verify existence of some of the others. It seems a rather curious PROD from a very newly-registered editor. Pupil of rival school? Or some other personal vendetta? (Disgruntled alumna?) Odd. PamD 15:08, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Dear PamD, I’ve done some updates to the draft article. Do you think I need entirely to delete references to my own walk and the book, for it to be published? Thanks, Malcolm Wylie. Malcolm Wylie (talk) 20:12, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Malcolm Wylie Hallo Malcolm, I’ve had a look at your draft and I sadly don’t think it’s meeting the standard of “notability”. While the British watershed is obviously a real thing, it just does seem that no-one has written about it except yourself in your self-published book, and that article in Grough which mentions you and Mike Allen. That means that the article seems to be WP:Original research, which isn’t allowed. If you could find any other references to Allen’s walk (in an obituary perhaps?), that would be very useful. If your book gets reviewed in published media, that would be a great help. Have you sent it to The Ramblers for Walk, the LDPA for their Strider, your local or regional newspaper, etc? There are umpteen other walking magazines these days – a browse round your local WH Smith as was (TG Green is it nowadays? something like that) might suggest titles to which it would be worth sending a copy for review, or offering to write a piece about the project.

The extra references about watersheds in general aren’t really relevant – Britannica etc.

What is interesting and might be worth a mention is the alternative British watershed shown in the article Drainage divide, the map File:Europäische Wasserscheiden.png, which takes the southern point as the white cliffs of Dover, counting the channel as associated with the Atlantic rather than the North Sea. It has the note The map shows the European rivers’ catchment areas and main watersheds. Chart made on 06/2004 by de:Sansculotte. The image is released under the Creative Commons Share Alike license for futher use. Reference and sources can be requested from sansculotte@despammed.com. You could contact them and ask what sources they used for the England section?

You’ve got a typo in your table – the last section ends at LE, not JO’G!

I see that someone has suggested that you have used an LLM (ie AI) in the writing of the draft. If this is not the case (as seems likely, to me), it would be useful for you to say so. I see that your Britannica ref includes evidence that it was ChatGpt which found it for you: if you use AI to find sources, please make sure that you clean up the URL when adding the reference, as it is such a red flag. It might be useful to modify the URL (or just remove the ref, as it isn’t really useful) and contact the editor who placed the tag, @Gurkubondinn:, on their talk page, to explain the extent to which you used ChatGpt and ask them to remove the tag. (See bullet 3 of Help:Maintenance template removal#When to remove: “Consider first discussing the matter with the original placer of the template”).

I doubt that the draft as it stands has any chance of getting to / surviving in mainspace. But if your book gets reviewed n recognised publications, or an article in, say, the LDPA magazine generates any discussion of the English watershed, then it might have possibilities. A draft will not be deleted unless it has been untouched for 6 months, and even then I think the creating editor gets a warning, so your best approach might be to make a diary note to revisit it after 5 months and make a minor edit (just altering some spacing would suffice) to keep it alive, until there is more to add – either new stuff, or if you find existing references. It’s difficult to believe that no earnest Victorian included any discussion of the English watershed in a school geography textbook, or raised the topic in Notes and Queries (Ah, I see from its article that geography doesn’t seem to come within its remit, sad – but that sort of thing). More digging might find something.

I hope that your article can get published eventually. Of course this is all just one editor’s opinions.

Rereading your note and actually answering your question: no, I don’t think you need to delete mention of your walk and book. You have declared a COI. But it would be really helpful to see some other sources referring to it, those book reviews etc. (In recognised publications, not blogs, Goodreads, etc).

By the way, when you mention a page in a talk page post, please remember to add a link to it – I should have just been able to click on Draft:British watershed to get there, rather than having to type it out. (It does say this in the banner at the top of this talk page, but it’s a generally-acknowledged courtesy to your readers).

Good luck with this draft article, and with finding other interesting topics to write about in Wikipedia. PamD 15:14, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If this is not the case (as seems likely, to me),

There is also a reference with an IBAN that doesn’t seem to exist. This is consistent with LLM use, as they often hallucinate ISBN or books that don’t actually exist. But Malcolm Wylie is the only person who knows for sure if this is machine generated or not. —Gurkubondinn (talk) 15:23, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Gurkubondinn I don’t see the IBAN in any ref – or do you mean that one of the books doesn’t seem to exist? PamD 15:33, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I can find all the books in WorldCat, though Newsom has different ISBN. PamD 15:39, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but where did the user get this ISBN from? One of the correct ISBNs for this book is ISBN 9780198741572, so a typo of that one seems unlikely. Maybe there’s another ISBN that is just one or two characters off, which could be explained by a typo. —Gurkubondinn (talk) 15:43, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It is nr. 7 in Draft:British watershed § References, specifically ISBN 9780198715504. I can’t find anything for that ISBN. —Gurkubondinn (talk) 15:40, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh my bad, I mean’t ISBN.. An IBAN is a completely different type of identifier. —Gurkubondinn (talk) 15:44, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I guess we’ll have to wait for @Malcolm Wylie to get back to us to explain the dodgy ISBN. My guess is that he wrote all the text genuinely but asked ChatGpt for some more supporting lit about watersheds (unnecessarily, to my mind). It isn’t integral to the article. PamD 16:00, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Meanwhile there’s a party to go to – 25th anniv bash starts in 3 mins, and I’m here with a cup of tea. PamD 16:00, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone for your comments on the draft article. I seem to have made a whole heap of naive mistakes, including self-publicity, relying on ChatGPT for references and a less than scholarly approach to the subject. Do you think that I would best be advised to “retire hurt” at this stage?! My genuine view is that if the Scottish watershed deserves an article (which includes accounts of it having been walked), so does the full LEJoG. I’ll persevere if you think it’s worth it, but otherwise I’ll withdraw gracefully. Thanks, Malcolm. Malcolm Wylie (talk) 18:37, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Malcolm Wylie As I said above, I suggest you put it on hold for now by leaving as a draft visiting it every 5 months or so to tweak it, until there are more sources to add. It feels like a topic Wikipedia should cover, but we can’t be the first to do so. I like your map and hope it can find a home in the encyclopedia some time. I’ve ssked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject British and Irish hills to see if anyone can help.

Did you use Chatgpt to write any of the article, or to create the lists of hills and rivers in the tables ? Or only to give you a list of extra references?

There are plenty more articles which could use your enthusiasm, so don’t abandon Wikipedia. PamD 18:47, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I only used ChatGPT for the references. I know the hills and the river sources because I walked the hills and tiptoed between the river sources. Malcolm Wylie (talk) 19:05, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Malcolm Wylie I’ve tidied it up a bit, removed the sources which seemed too general to be appropriate, rejigged the text a bit. I removed the “LLM” tag because I don’t think it applies to anything left in the draft. I suggest you now wait for someone to come up with better sourcing, as I said above. PamD 19:43, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

OK PamD – thanks very much. M. Malcolm Wylie (talk) 19:58, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Today is a wonderful day for all of us! We congratulate you and all Wikipedians on Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary and birthday! Thank you for your edits! Your many years of hard work have been recognized and appreciated! (Infinitywiki2 (talk) 12:41, 16 January 2026 (UTC))[reply]

Thank you for correcting some of my edits on the Church of St Basil and St Paisios. ShrimpsAreTasty (talk) 09:32, 20 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello PamD. Hope you are well. I have been working on User: Balance person/Sarah Hosking (arts administrator) and wonder if you could help me out. Hosking has awards and publications and is well thought of so I have no doubt she is notable. My problem is in getting to the originals of some of the newspaper articles that are about her. They are reproduced on the Hosking Houses web site but I can’t get to the originals. The newspaper archives, even ones who list the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, are too old. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks if you do! Balance person (talk) 16:10, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo, Sorry not to get back sooner till you nudged below – various things going on including a fascinating long library book which is due back today and can’t be renewed because of another reservation, and a major proof-reading job I volunteered for. I’m going to have to put in another reservation to continue reading The Library of Lost Maps (no cheap copies on Abe Books yet!)

Online links for newspapers aren’t compulsory, we are supposed to AGF that the editor who added the refs is doing so correctly. But in these cases you’ve got an online copy you can link to, as we can AGF again that a respectable body like the HHT would not put up any fraudulent versions of their press coverage. So I reckon it’s fine to link to those copies.

I’ve fallen into the rabbit-hole of the (former!) red links in your refs: there is now more of a mention of The Stratford-upon-Avon Herald and a redirect from it and umpteen variations! En route I discovered the rule about whether newspapers have “The” in their article title – it’s all down to whether it appears in the masthead, and this one doesn’t. But there are redirects from with and without. (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)#Titles of works and publications)

I suggest there are possibly too many links in the lead paragraph – we can assume that our readers know what a “writer” is, what “retire” means, etc. How about:

Sarah Hosking MBE is a British arts administrator. After working for forty years in different sectors of the arts as a painter, art teacher, visual arts officer, writer, and interior and garden designer for the NHS, she retired and founded the Hosking Houses Trust in the village of Clifford Chambers, Warwickshire. Hosking bought Church Cottage in the village to offer ‘a room of one’s own‘ (in Virginia Woolf‘s words) with financial uplift to overworked, impecunious, mature women writers and artists.

(Also avoid the curly quotes, and it might be useful to mention VW as not all readers will recognise the phrase).

Does that help a bit? I realise I haven’t actually answered your question about tracking down newspaper archives for the Stratford Herald … just had a look at the two available from my public library and it’s not there. It might be worth rummaging around in the Internet Archive – I clicked on a couple of Herald refs from the Stratford-upon-Avon article: one seemed to be still there on the paper’s website but behind a paywall, but one led me here which is malformatted but has the goods if you scroll right down. PamD 10:28, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much PamD for your suggestions, given from within the depths of a very good book that you are reading! Sorry I interrupted! I have changed the lead as you proposed. It is better now thank you! Balance person (talk) 16:42, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@MossOnALog Thanks for your kind words. I try to remember to be gracious as well as informative! PamD 23:41, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello PamD….shyly wondering if you spotted my note above about Sarah Hosking? If you are way too busy, I will bother Ipigott instead? Balance person (talk) 08:22, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]