1. If you start a chat, talk, or discussion, or make comments here, I will respond here and not on some other talk page. Similarly, if I post on your talk page, I'd prefer to continue the conversation there. Thus, we can avoid incomprehensible disjointed threads spread over several pages.
2. If you are complaining about an edit that I have made, just pause to consider the Five pillars of Wikipedia before you post.
3. No matter how much I may have p*ssed you off with my edits, please assume good faith.
4. Nobody likes an angry mastadon, even if they are right.

Every so often I clear out and delete all the messages on my talk page. I do not keep an archive, I simply delete them on the basis that no one will ever care. I make no apologies for this. I am a caveman.

Hi Legis,

I'm asking Wikipedians who are interested in United States legal articles to take a look at WP:Hornbook, the new "JD curriculum task force".

Our mission is to assimilate into Wikipedia all the insights of an American law school education, by reducing hornbooks to footnotes.

• Each casebook will have a subpage.

• Over the course of a semester, each subpage will shift its focus to track the unfolding curriculum(s) for classes using that casebook around the country.
• It will also feature an extensive, hyperlinked "index" or "outline" to that casebook, pointing to pages, headers, or {{anchors}} in Wikipedia (example).
• Individual law schools can freely adapt our casebook outlines to the idiosyncratic curriculum devised by each individual professor.

• I'm encouraging law students around the country to create local chapters of the club I'm starting at my own law school, "Student WP:Hornbook Editors". Using WP:Hornbook as our headquarters, we're hoping to create a study group so inclusive that nobody will dare not join.

What you can do now:

1. Add WP:Hornbook to your watchlist, {{User Hornbook}} to your userpage, and ~~~~ to Wikipedia:Hornbook/participants.

2. If you're a law student,

• Email http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Hornbook to your classmates, and tell them to do the same.
• Contact me directly via talk page or email about coordinating a chapter of "Student WP:Hornbook Editors" at your own school.

(You don't have to start the club, or even be involved in it; just help direct me to someone who might.)

3. Introduce yourself to me. Law editors on Wikipedia are a scarce commodity. Do knock on my talk page if there's an article you'd like help on.

Regards, Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 20:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could you provide a primary source that gives the date of birth of Henry Hudson? I was under the impression that no information existed on him prior to 1607. Jonas Poole (talk) 00:33, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

just lifted it from this Google hit - if it is not sufficiently authoritative, please feel free to revert. --Legis (talk - contribs) 01:22, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe EnchantedLearning is a reliable source by any means. The date is speculation at best. See the Henry Hudson talk page. There's a little discussion on his date of birth there. Jonas Poole (talk) 20:13, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to defer to you on this one. --Legis (talk - contribs) 21:00, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Legis

I have had to revert most of the edits made to the article Peter Birks because they were virtually indistinguishable from Jack Beatson, 'Peter Birks' (Obituary), The Guardian (16 July 2004), accessed 18 August 2009. You appear to be the editor who was responsible for reproducing a large quantity of copyright material in this article. I am surprised to find this kind of editing being done by a lawyer with a first-class degree. Just to show to what an extent you had plagiarised the material, compare:

He became regius professor of civil law at Oxford University and a fellow of All Souls College in 1989, having held chairs at Edinburgh (1981-87) and, briefly, at Southampton. Before that, he was a tutorial fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford (1971-81), a strong law college to which he remained very close, and taught at University College London.

He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1989, and an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, his undergraduate college, in 1994; ... He was made an honorary Queen's counsel in 1995, and served as president of the Society of Legal Scholars in 2002-03. He lectured and taught throughout the Commonwealth and in Europe. (The Guardian)

He became regius professor of civil law at Oxford University and a fellow of All Souls College in 1989, having held chairs at Edinburgh (1981-87) and, briefly, at Southampton. Before that, he was a tutorial fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford (1971-81), a strong law college to which he remained very close, and taught at University College London.

He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1989, and an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, his undergraduate college, in 1994. He was made an honorary Queen's counsel in 1995, and served as president of the Society of Legal Scholars in 2002-03. He lectured and taught throughout the Commonwealth and in Europe. (Your edit)

... [Birks,] with Robert Goff and Gareth Jones, [was] a key figure in the extraordinary development of the law of restitution in the last 45 years. (The Guardian)

Birks, together with Robert Goff and Gareth Jones, was a key figure in the extraordinary development of the law of restitution in the last 45 years. (Your edit)

And so it continues, including the lifting, almost wholesale, of this paragraph:

One example of his influence may be seen in the 1991 decision in Woolwich Building Society v Inland Revenue. This held, for the first time, that citizens are entitled to recover taxes paid in a case where the tax authorities are not entitled to them. The reasoning of the court of appeal closely followed that in a Birks essay but, possibly because the lawyers had adopted his arguments without attribution, the judgments do not refer to the essay. This was put right in the House of Lords, where Lord Goff described the essay as "powerful". (The Guardian)

One example of his influence may be seen in the 1991 decision in Woolwich Building Society v Inland Revenue. In that case the courts [synonymous with The Guardian's original, 'This'] held, for the first time in English law [you add 'in English law'], that citizens are entitled to recover taxes paid in a case where the tax authorities had no legal right to levy them [again, synonymous with the original]. The reasoning of the court of appeal closely followed that in a Birks essay but the judgments did not refer to his writing (some critics suggest this was because the lawyers adopted his arguments without attribution) [you move a subordinate clause from the middle of the sentence to the end, varying the wording just slightly]. This was put right in the House of Lords, where Lord Goff described his writings [='the essay'] as "powerful". (Your edit)

You copy a bit more copyright material, and at the end of the article even clumsily leave in, '· Peter Brian Herrenden Birks, academic lawyer, born October 3 1941; died July 6 2004'.

Disappointing editing from a highly educated member of the legal profession.

Best wishes

--Oxonian2006 (talk) 15:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't cross checked the revisions history, but I don't have any recollection of making the edits that you speak of (although given that the edits I did make were about 3 years ago, that may just be me getting old). However Peter Birks and I were at Oxford together, so it would have been slightly odd for me to plagiarise from third party sources for information about him unless I was feeling extraordinarily lazy. --Legis (talk - contribs) 20:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you look here you ought to see the edit to which I refer. If I have made a mistake I am willing to eat humble pie :-) If I came across as unnecessarily annoyed it was probably because I've seen far too many articles on Wikipedia that are nothing more than copied and pasted from the internet. Thank you for having the courtesy to reply.--Oxonian2006 (talk) 19:06, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For future reference all the information you need to do to nominate an article for speedy deletion is to apply one of the relevant templates at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Deletion templates. See WP:CSD for full information. Thryduulf (talk) 19:46, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Sorry, I was having a lazy day. --Legis (talk - contribs) 20:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Following your withdrawal of this AfD, I have closed it down for you. Hope this is OK. Regards, GiantSnowman 13:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine thanks, sorry, I really should have checked for vandalism before listing as AfD. --Legis (talk - contribs) 17:42, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]