Talk:John Dee

007

Dee often traveled throughout Europe as an agent of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, Elizabeth's principal secretary. Dee's reports were signed "007", and is the origin James Bond's designation.

I'm moving this to talk, because there's no evidence for it. The idea of Dee as a spy came from a book written by Richard Deacon in the late '60s, but his argument is highly speculative and not really taken seriously. Dee did have contact with Cecil and (more to the point) Walsingham at different times of his life, but to say he was Cecil's agent would be extremely misleading. I've never seen any evidence for the 007 part: Dee sometimes signed with a delta. Of course, if this can be backed up, it should go back in the article. PRiis 07:12, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

True, but the notion that John Dee was the original 007 is well-known, see for example [1] on About.com. Perhaps the above information could be included with the caveat that the evidence for it is scant, and even the explanation of why the notion exists in the first place. --Susurrus 06:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Harleian MS 6986 fol. 45. (figure 1 in Peter French's "John Dee: An Elizabethan Magus") in the British Museum is a letter signed by Dee and sent to Elizabeth dated 10th Nov 1588 and sent from Bohemia to England is signed with a simple "John D" with what looks to be the number 8 as a prefix... the idea that 007 was used as code for Dee seems pretty silly when he's writing to her and signing his name without a care all the way in Trebon. Furthermore I agree with PRiis, there seems to be no evidence at all that Dee was 007 besides it being written that he was.. about.com provides no evidence at all, perhaps someone could reference this? ie what Deacon says and the evidence he uses (or doesnt). Dee was obviously in contact with the crown and gave them all sorts of info, but thats not the same as being a James Bond (besides the fact he slept with someones wife). Saul Vodanovic

This is a heavily referenced piece on the issue explaining how it came about with examples. (Emperor 04:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC))

But perhaps, nonetheless, the reference to the Stephen Fry television show doesn't belong in the main article on Dee ? I don't think such an ephemeral reference even merits inclusion in the 'Popular Culture' section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.76.188.21 (talk) 14:38, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

You are correct, it does not belong in the biographical section and I've removed it. Yworo (talk) 16:14, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that could go in the "popular culture" section but not in the biography section. I'm going to later today take a stab at putting it there.--WickerGuy (talk) 16:29, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

As a general observation, "Popular culture" sections invariably attract WP:TRIVIA and WP:UNDUE contributions. A good rule of thumb: if is too insignificant or irrelevant to go anywhere but a Popular Culture section then it is too insignificant or irrelevant to go anywhere. Full stop. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:55, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

The fact that he spied is already in the article. The claim that he signed 007 is not well enough supported to put anywhere, even the popular culture section. It's also extremely unlikely: Dee is much more likely to have signed with a Greek delta, and also would have known that that letter's value is 004, not 007. Skyerise (talk) 18:22, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

a few days ago I put scholarly rebuttals to the claim that he signed his letters 007 in the "popular culture" section. WickerGuy (talk) 20:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I've trimmed it. The original is too much per WP:UNDUE and WP:BALASP. DeCausa (talk) 22:06, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Has anybody got Wolley's The Queen's Conjurer: The science and magic of Dr. John Dee, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I?

If you have, would you check this citation please?

Benjamin Woolley, writing in his biography of Elizabethan mathematician John Dee (1527–1608/9), notes that immediately after 1582 English letter writers "customarily" used "two dates" on their letters.

— Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Start of the year

Which "two dates" does he mean? (Four hundred years ago today could have been written as 7 January 1620/21 or 7 January 1621 (26 December 1620). Thank you if you can help. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:31, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

References

Citation style?

The article has been tagged with {{citation style}}. Why? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:50, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@JMF: 90% of the article uses {{sfn}} type citations. The other 10% should as well. Per the template documentation: "The most common correct use of this template is to identify an article that uses more than one major citation style (e.g., half the citations use ref tags, and half are parenthetical citations)." That's exactly the case here (except it's not half and half). Skyerise (talk) 13:52, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting... I've always assumed that {{citation style}} is intended for articles with a mix of Harvard, Chicago, and Vancouver citations. I'm afraid that the ref/ref will be always with us without a bot to convert then all. But they really do make editing a pain. I can't see anyone objecting if you change the remaining ones. But it gives me another job to do over at Robert Hooke, where I've working to get it up to GA standard (which I guess is your plan here too?)

A far bigger problem is the number of book citations without page numbers. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:06, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, lack of page numbers is indeed a bigger problem. If I am doing a thorough review of sources, I'll tag that inside the {{sfn}} template. There shouldn't be any objections to converting the remaining ref tags, the MoS says when the styles differ, the minority style should be converted to the majority style. There are several options when there is no by-line, including using {{harvid}} templates. Skyerise (talk) 14:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't exactly say that at all; there are issues round priority and consensus etc. JMF, it is most unwise to say "I can't see anyone objecting if you change the remaining ones" - people often do. Personally I can't use sfn at all, & find untemplated ref/ref super-easy and with many advantages. There is usually some loss of info when it is "forcibly" converted. But in this case, I don't know what the article is even doing on my watchlist, so if you get consensus, go ahead. Johnbod (talk) 18:23, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@Johnbod:, you sound like just the person to road-test SMcCandlish's draft How to use the sfnp family of templates. Sfn/sfnp make editing heavily-cited articles a lot easier and this is from someone who found Harvard referencing a pig wild boar when I first tried to use it. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:10, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Look elsewhere - I ran the cursor over it & it looked a nightmare; there's your consumer report. I'm just not looking for an improved citation style. Johnbod (talk) 01:26, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

People will argue until the end of time about what "citation style" and "consistent citation style" really mean; it was left vague on purpose and various RfCs and other discussions that have tried to make it less vague have failed to come to a consensus. In going over this article, I think the citation style is pretty much consistent, and I would remove the tag. The minor bits of consistency cleanup that could be done would be to identify the few <ref> citations that are being used multiple times, move those full cites to the bottom, and use {{sfn}} to match the rest of them. There is no reason to do anything with a <ref> being used only one time, since converting it would simply cause the reader to have to click twice to get to the citation details. I also saw one case of <ref>{{harvnb|...}}</ref> I think, which can be converted to {{sfn|...}} for consistency.

What's really unnecessary, though, is having both a WP:LDR block of reused citations, defined inside the {{reflist}}, and a ===Citations=== subsection doing the same thing below it. Either put all the reused citations inside the ===Citations=== list (and eliminate the LDR list), or put them all inside the LDR list and eliminate the subsection. The former is easier, since each source doesn't have to be individually wrapped in <ref>...</ref>. This "duelling reused-citation blocks" may be why this was tagged with {{citation style}}, but fixing it is a matter of 10 minutes of twiddling. I can just do it if this is wanted.

However, in all of these cases, what should really be used is {{sfnp|...}} and if really necessary, because of an annotation, <ref>{{harvp|...}}. Annotation here.</ref>, because {{sfnp}} and {{harvp}} produce output consistent with all the CS1 ({{cite journal}}, {{cite book}}, etc.) and CS2 ({{citation}}) templates. {{sfn}} and {{harvnb}} are for use with Vancouver citations and a few other styles that do not put parentheses/round-brackets around dates. They came along earlier and got mentioned in more documentation and picked up in more articles when the templates were made, so people assume they are "normal" or "the default", but this is basically a long-running error when it comes to complying with WP:CITESTYLE. This is a fully CS1 article, so it should be {{sfnp}} to match CS1. PS: My help page linked to above, shows how to use {{sfnref}} (a.k.a. {{harvid}}) to make {{sfnp}} or where needed {{harvp}} work with a source that has no by-line.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:38, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Thanks for your insights. I always wondered about that last bit. Not clear what you mean about "click twice" - they appear for me when hovering, no need to click at all! Skyerise (talk) 21:53, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

You can't hover on mobile, in a screen reader, or (to the small extent this may matter any longer) in a desktop browser with JS turned off. The "have to click twice" problem is still an issue even with a desktop browser with JS. If you take a source cited inline and used only one time in the article, e.g. <ref>{{cite book |last=Zounds |first=Xerxes Youill |date=2022 |title=The Zounds Method |publisher=Silly Books |page=ix |...}}</ref> and instead unnecessarily move the full cite to the end and replace it inline with {{sfnp|Zounds|2022|p=ix}}, when you mouse-hover the citation, you'll see "Zounds (2022), p. ix.", not the full citation, and will have to click on it or manually go to page bottom to get the rest of the citation details. So, doing that conversion doesn't help the reader. Short citations are basically just for when the source is cited multiple times at different in-source locations, as a method of avoiding repeating all of the publisher, title, publisher location, ISBN/ISSN/DOI/etc. information over and over again. And it's better than "antique" ways of doing this like {{rp}} which is a form of (partial) inline parenthetical referencing, the entire class of which was deprecated in 2022 as too much confusing clutter for readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:20, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Again, that last bit is good to know. Never liked that {{rp}} way of citing page numbers. Skyerise (talk) 22:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know how typical this is of other browsers but, using Chrome on Chromebook, if I mouse over ^[4] in the first sentence, "Moore (2006)" pops up. If I mouse over that popup, I see the full citation. No clicking, no losing my place in the article. Unfortunately, the same sequence using Chrome on Android requires a click for "Moore (2006)" and then another click to see the full citation--𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)