User talk:Enoc46
Welcome and thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test on the page Illuminated manuscript worked, and it has been reverted or removed. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment further, please use the sandbox instead. Thank you. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi Enoc!
[edit]It takes a while to get used to editting Wkipedia, and quite often, at the beginnng, it gets reverted. Never mind!
Re Sistine Chapel ceiling, here's some pointers about general editting:
- It isn't possible to state everything that's important in the first paragraph, so the dates are given, but more information about how long it took is included later when the whole process is described in more detail.
- In an article where an artist's name is mentioned "in passing", then they don't need a full name unless it isn't clear. There is only one Botticelli. It was his nickname meaning "Little Barrel" so he must have been a very chubby baby. His brother was nicknamed "The Splinter". Similarly, if an article mentions someone like Hitler, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Pavarotti or Moses we don't need to explain which one we mean. On the other hand, if we mention the artist Bellini, is has to be made clear whether it is Jacopo, Gentile or Giovanni who is meant.
- This is the most important thing. Read and understand clearly before you add information. Information that interrupts the sense of a paragraph is very very destructive. Sometimes it can make total nonsense of something that previously made sense. Here's an example:
- The Church organ has two manuals and 1500 pipes. The bellows were pumped by hand but in 1974 an electric motor was intalled. A lunchtime organ recital takes place every Thursday at 1.00. It is located in the purpose-built shed outside the south wall.
- Why is the organ recital in a shed outside the church? Because someone came along and jammed information about the recital right in the middle of the description of the motor!
- The problem with this is that because it is, in fact, true information, most people who keep an eye on the page won't remove it, unless they read the sentence very carefully. The nonsense then gets buried unde other edits and may stay there for a long time until a careful editor pics it up!
- I want you to read this again much more carefully.
- "The overt subject matter of the ceiling is the doctrine of humanity's need for Salvation as offered by God through Jesus. It also has biblical illustrations of people from the book of Genesis. It is a visual metaphor of Humankind's need for a covenant with God. The old covenant of the Children of Israel through Moses and the new covenant through Christ had already been represented around the walls of the chapel.[2] The main components of the design are nine scenes from the Book of Genesis,...."
- The information that you added was a simple but true statement: the ceiling does have biblical illustrations from the book of Genesis....
- But:
- Did you add that information because it had been left out? No. Just below it says The main components of the design are nine scenes from the Book of Genesis,...., and then the article describes every scene.
- Did your addition interrupt any other important information? Yes it did! It interrupted one of the most important pieces of information in the whole article: an explanation of what the paintings on the ceiling are really about.
- Let me explain this:
- The overt subject matter of the ceiling is the doctrine of humanity's need for Salvation as offered by God through Jesus. It is a visual metaphor of Humankind's need for a covenant with God.
- These two sentences tell us that Michelangelo painted these nine Old Testament scenes, and all the other figures to show that people have strayed from God's way and need to be saved. That is the "overt" (open to all) subject matter of the whole ceiling.
- So jamming another sentence in between these two sentences without reading them carefully and understanding them was bad editting.
- Please don't make that sort of mistake again, because it is very troublesome!
- Also, it pays to read carefully so that you don't miss clues. The word "overt" suggests that there might also be "covert" subject matter- that perhaps Michelangelo also left messages that were not for everybody to read, or left clever visual riddles that would take 500 years to discover, like the great big mass of clouds and cloaks and figures that are floating around the figure of God, in the shape of an enormous brain.... this was spotted recently by a doctor.
- To find out people theories about what Michelangelo meant, a good place to start is the discussion page, where lots of people put ideas that are not included in the encyclopedic information.