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James Lileks (May 2, 2021). "Lileks: Wikipedia wants me to do what?". Star Tribune. Retrieved May 3, 2021. We all can agree that William the Conqueror existed, and Wikipedia has an exhaustive entry with many fascinating details. This one I found remarkable:
This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.
Discussions:
RM, William I of England → William the Conqueror, Not moved, 29 August 2005, discussion
RM, William I of England → William the Conqueror, No consensus, 26 January 2008, discussion
RM, William I of England → William the Conqueror, Moved, 22 February 2010, discussion
Please read WP:CITEVAR - changing something that's consistent and is not wrong to an editor's own preference is not something we do. All of the changes were reverted (except the change of the template name at the bottom) because all of them contravened CITEVAR - the short citations don't need commas, the citations do not need to be set with last and first parameters, it was harder to keep the bibliography in alphabetical order by putting the date parameter first occasionally, and the column sizes and indentation are NOT required or an improvement in my mind. There is no requirement to change just to change - what happens on other articles isn't required to happen on this article as long as the style is consistent - which it is. Ealdgyth (talk) 19:14, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That "column sizes and indentation are NOT required or an improvement in my mind" is not a standard for reverting. In my mind (or specifically, to my eyes), the change in column sizes and indentation were an improvement. —GoldRingChip19:19, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
CITEVAR is very clear - changes to the style of the references need consensus before being made, if the article is already consistent. It's designed to prevent folks going around and randomly changing to their preferences when they are not the primary editors involved in editing and maintaining the article. I do not follow around and revert your changes in situations where the citations aren't consistent nor do I go around to other articles imposing my own preferences - if an article is using sfn, I use sfn. If its using list defined, I use list defined, even if I'm making copyedits to the references. Ealdgyth (talk) 19:23, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The point of CITEVAR is to avoid editwars over things that editors can reasonably disagree on. Also, I would suggest that regardless of CITEVAR it's not a good idea to make a change of this scale to a featured article without suggesting it on the talk page first -- typically a featured article has had multiple editors review it, and you can save yourself editing time by getting consensus first. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:25, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
David Douglas in William the Conqueror says that Wiliam's last words were "I commend myself to Mary the holy Mother of God, my heavenly Lady, that by her intercession I may be reconciled to her Son our Lord Jesus Christ." Mark Hagger concurs, although he just says that "just as the bells of the cathedral were ringing for prime, William the Conqueror raised his eyes to heaven, commended his soul to St Mary, and died." David Bates, speaking of the two sources describing Wiliam's death, says "There are two accounts of the scene at William the Conqueror's deathbed, but neither of them is fully trustworthy. Far and away the best is Orderics, even though the lengthy speeches he gives are more an indication of what he thought should happen when a great princes died, than of what actually took place. The second, the so-called 'De Obitu Willelmi' is a tract, written in the early twelfth-century, which has been shown to have been copied almost word for word from two ninth-century sources, with the names being changed where necessary. It is of little value. We have to rely on Orderic for most of the basic facts, with some extra evidence supplied by William of Malmesbury and in a charter." - so none of the three academic biographies of William done in the last 60 years support the speech given by the youtube source. Ealdgyth (talk) 18:49, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I realize this is a British English article, but shouldn't his name at birth be noted (in parenthesis at least) in the language he spoke? CRoseJ (talk) 04:07, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]