No . 130 The Trusty Servant
An editor , presumably an Old Wykepedian , had created a fascinating table of Fictional Old Wykehamists to end the article . It stood for some years , but was removed by another editor on the grounds that it was sourced only to the primary sources themselves , that is , to the fiction books that contained the listed OWs . That would , I think , have been acceptable if there had been an inline citation to each book , supported by a brief quotation from page N to the effect that PG Wodehouse ’ s Sir Derek Underhill was freshly down from Winchester , or whatever ; but as it wasn ’ t , the table was swiftly removed . I think this was a pity ; but once challenged , it becomes a project to reinstate such a thing , as every entry then requires detailed research and citation . If you love fiction and OW matters , the task is there for your attention on the article ’ s ‘ Talk Page ’.
A similar task , writ large , was required for the entire list . I realised that I would not be satisfied until the article was accepted by the Wikipedia community as a ‘ Featured List ’. That meant passing a formal review , in which any editor who is interested may ask for any changes he or she considers necessary for the article to meet the criteria . Those , in a nutshell , are that it is well-written , engagingly introduced , comprehensive , wellstructured , and reliably sourced . In such ways , the goals of allowing anyone to edit and being reliable are reconciled .
I set to work finding suitable sources ; the various Winchester College Registers made the task straightforward for the more recent members . Many OWs of earlier centuries had entries in the Dictionary of National Biography , and I confess that for a few brothers the Encyclopædia Britannica ( tell it not in Gath , whisper it not in the streets of Ashkelon , Wikipedians do use it sometimes ) came in handy .
The list also needed sorting into some kind of logical order . It seemed clear that a chronological order would make most sense . Given the size of the list , I divided it by century , and for the most recent two centuries , also by decade . This immediately looked better , and made navigation far simpler .
George Nash ( K , 02-07 ), the youngest OW on the list
This left the pleasant task of illustration . Portraits must be free to use under Wikipedia ’ s rules ; that means they are either Public Domain , generally because their creators died long ago , or that they have a Creative Commons licence allowing them to be used with attribution . An enormous database , Wikimedia Commons , now holds over 60 million such images . I decided to add a selection of portraits beside the list , to give the impression of a continuous flow of brothers rather than breaking the list up with galleries of portraits . There was space for some 30 portraits in the main list , with the founder
William of Wykeham at the start , and Gustavus Coulson VC beside the list of Victoria Cross and George Cross holders at the end .
Some portrait choices were more or less automatic , such as when Rishi Sunak became Chancellor of the Exchequer this year . Attentive readers will recall an earlier Trusty Servant article on Paul Britten Austin , which might have something to do with his depiction in the list . And it seemed right to try to include politicians from different parties ; artists as well as scientists ; soldiers , sailors , and airmen ; actors , poets , explorers , mountaineers , and mathematicians .
The final challenge was to get the list through formal review . Had I known it would take over three months , I might have hesitated . One reviewer asked for , and got , a summary history of the school , to my mind close to being off-topic , but I worked in Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham- Fiennes ’ s cheerful note that 14 members of his family received a free education as Founder ’ s Kin before 1868 , when the offer was withdrawn . Another rightly pointed out that with well over 1,000 OWs notable enough to get their own Wikipedia articles , the list needed sharper criteria to justify limiting itself to a selection of the most distinguished , so the article explains that , for instance , politicians have to be of cabinet rank to be included . I then had an opportunity to filter out a lot of early cricketers that an enthusiast had included , apparently on the grounds that once scoring a duck for Oxford made one ‘ notable ’. But perhaps it did not count as ‘ distinguished ’.
Featured List
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