Talk:Patricia Davies (codebreaker)

This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Biography This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles Women This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of women on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.WomenWikipedia:WikiProject WomenTemplate:WikiProject WomenWikiProject Women articles Women in Red This article was created or improved as part of the Women in Red project. The editor(s) involved may be new; please assume good faith regarding their contributions before making changes.Women in RedWikipedia:WikiProject Women in RedTemplate:WikiProject Women in RedWomen in Red articles

A fact from Patricia Davies (codebreaker) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 July 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that Patricia Davies and Jean Argles, two sisters who signed the Official Secrets Act as World War II codebreakers, did not find out about each other's top-secret work until the 1960s? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Patricia Davies (cryptographer).

Hello Balance person, I'm enjoying reading about the Outram sisters and will attempt a DYK review if someone doesn't get there before me (this will be my first). With four submissions already, my QPQ-free quota is nearly expired – so thank you for the inspiration.

Concerning the length of their (remarkable) silence, I haven't yet located the exact passage in the references about the "1960s", only "years later", "more than 30 years", etc. [NB: One of the points on the DYK Checklist is "hookcited", which I'm guessing is meant literally.] Would you happen to remember if the specific 1960s timeframe was mentioned somewhere?

Also, I just ran Earwig's Copyvio Detector (another first), and it shows 23.7% (i.e., violation unlikely), so that's one item that can be crossed off the list already. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 16:05, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing the review! I have here the book the 2 sisters wrote called 'Codebreaking Sisters' and on page 291 it says,

"It was a long time before Jean and I felt able to share our own war stories even with each other. In fact it wasn't until the 1960s that we finally sat down and revealed everything--or nearly everything -- that we'd been involved in during those heady years between 1942 and 1945." Hope that hits the spot. Balance person (talk) 16:36, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would think so! Thank you, Cl3phact0 (talk) 18:46, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Added a second iteration of the book cite with the page number (not exactly sure how to manage using the same cite with different page refs). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:00, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another question re: spelling: Outram or Owtram (per book cite)? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:03, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! It should be Owtram with a W. Oh my goodness thank heavens you caught that. I have now corrected the name throughout the text. Thank you!! Balance person (talk) 21:04, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cl3phact0, the percentages on Earwig are only an indication, you need to look at some of the detailed comparisons as well. In this case Earwig has picked up a quote and phrases like "signed the Official Secrets Act", so it looks fine. TSventon (talk) 10:57, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, TSventon. I did click through the links that Earwig listed and scanned the red highlighted passages (though perhaps not in enough detail). Am I missing something? Also, per comment on DYK Template, I felt that some of the checklist items needed a more experienced eye, so I've left them out. Is this acceptable practice? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 11:08, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cl3phact0, I gave you some advice on Eaarwig as you said it was your first time using it, it seems that it wasn't needed. However, I would say "I just ran Earwig ... and didn't find any problems" rather than "I just ran Earwig ... and it shows 23.7%".

As you have been involved in four DYKs, I would suggest completing the review (with a note that it is your first). You may want to use the blank form from Template:DYK checklist, which has an explanation of what the ticks mean. "Sourced" means "Does the article contain at least one citation to a reliable source for each paragraph and direct quote?" "Eligibilityother" is only needed if you find a problem. If you have particular questions you could ask at WT:WIR. TSventon (talk) 12:43, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good, solid advice. Thank you. It may take me a few days to absorb enough to fill in the blanks. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 13:19, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In that case I suggest a note on the nomination page that you will be adding to it over the next few days and no action is needed until then. TSventon (talk) 13:25, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Until I have done all the reading to come up to speed on the nuances delineated in the Template:DYK checklist, I will not have full confidence that I will actually achieve this (in a reasonable timeframe) and don't want to hold-up the process if there are others who wish to add to what I've begun. As such, I would prefer to leave it as is for now. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 16:09, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Balance person: When I suggested using the Official Secrets Act 1939 rather than the more general Official Secrets Act in your hook, I did not mean to alter your wording, only to pipe link to the more specific article: [[Official Secrets Act 1939|Official Secrets Act]]. In my view, it flows better without the "1939" (or perhaps ought to be "of 1939" should you prefer keeping the date in the hook). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 17:43, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I don't know what a pipe link is or how to do one. Is it something you could do? I am happy not to have the date in. I was just trying to respond to what I thought you had suggested. Balance person (talk) 18:47, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect! Yes, I'll take care of it. [NB: A pipe link – and I might have the nomenclature wrong – is a link that says one thing but goes somewhere else, more or less. If you link to an article and add a | ("pipe" in wikispeak, aka: Vertical bar) between the actual article name and what you would like to appear in the text (see example above – the text to the left of the pipe is the source article name; to the right is what appears in your text), then you can eliminate sometimes awkward article naming from your prose, be more precise vis-à-vis context, etc.] -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:44, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PS: This can easily be done using the Visual Editor too. Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:59, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Balance person: Would it be correct to say: "Upon Argles death in 2023, Davies became the last surviving person to have been required to sign the Official Secrets Act." ? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 07:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I Honestly don't know. All the quotes say, 'the two sisters were the last to have been required to sign' so it is ambiguous ...does it mean the last pair of sisters or does it mean the last people or the last people connected to Bletchley Park? Why do you ask? Thanks for info on 'pipe' by the way.Balance person (talk) 07:31, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As you say, it's ambiguous. I suspect that as the people who were doing SOE related top-secret work were a very small subset of the WWII generation (of whom their aren't many left full stop), she may be the last. Leave it as is unless a clearer ref can be found? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 07:41, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Should "the two sisters were the last to have been required to sign" be in quotes? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 07:43, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, leave as is please.

I am pretty sure I made that 'last sign'phrase myself so ..no. But it would have shown up in your earwigging if I am wrong I think? Balance person (talk) 13:19, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Got it, thanks. I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole so probably won't have time today, but I promise that I will do my best to get this done ASAP. It's such a great story! -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:56, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While reading the article in detail for DYK Nomination review, it occurs to me that the Owtram sisters' father, Colonel Cary Owtram (wikidata:Q120055137), would be an excellent WP:AFC candidate. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 17:15, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article refers to her as a cryptographer but doesn't seem to mention anything about her having done cryptography work; just decoding and translation from German to English. Can somebody please add more details about her work as a cryptographer?

— SkyLined (talk) 05:42, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! My understanding is that a cryptographer is anyone who makes or breaks code. In the opening part of the article it says, 'Davies listened to radio transmissions in both German and encrypted code as part of the Special Operations Executive war effort, transcribing and decoding the messages and passing them on to Bletchley Park.' Morse is a code too so anyone taking down morse and decoding it would be a cryptographer. The title of the Owtram book is 'The code breaking sisters' and there are many pages that write about that. One of the sisters was apparently very good at unscrambling messages that were extremely difficult to decode given the circumstances of the coder (under fire, in a hurry etc) Does that help with your concerns? Balance person (talk) 08:13, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Just had a thought as to whether you are taking the making and breaking codes as only being the case the first time a code is created or decoded? The Oxford Essential dictionary of the US military explains codebreaking as 'the decrypting of code messages by unauthorised persons (the enemy)'. Nothing about doing this only the first time. Within programming literature it is often stated that ' Coding is a part of the logical reasoning .....used to encrypt words, numbers in specific patterns or codes using particular rules and regulations. Decoding is the process that is used to decrypt the patterns into original forms from the given forms.26 May 2023'. This is the sense in which the words are used in the article. Thanks for your prompt. It's good to unravel these things. Balance person (talk) 10:48, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Skyline's concern. 'Davies listened to radio transmissions in both German and encrypted code as part of the Special Operations Executive war effort, transcribing and decoding the messages and passing them on to Bletchley Park.' in the lead is unsourced and not supported by the rest of the article. I don't believe transcribing Morse code counts as cryptography. Reference 14 links to a 14 page interview transcript with Davies here, where she recalls transcribing messages, which were sent to Bletchley Park for decoding. The Owtrams can be described as 'The code breaking sisters' because Pat transcribed code and Jean was a cipher officer. TSventon (talk) 11:04, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has an article on cryptography. It says "cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages". This refers to people designing the encryption protocols and those finding ways to break these protocols. It does not refer to people using the decryption techniques that cryptographers have found to decode the messages encrypted with that protocol. If simply decoding a message would make you a cryptographer, which pretty much everyone has probably done as a kid in some kind of game, almost all of us would be cryptographers, so it wouldn't be a distinguishing feature that needs to be mentioned. — SkyLined (talk) 11:40, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I too checked the wikipedia page on Cryptography and found that it is, '... the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior'. I think taking kids' games as an instance of 'adversarial behaviour' is not really in the spirit of the definition. But even so, if we can write and call ourselves authors, maybe we can play games and call ourselves cryptographers! Balance person (talk) 14:23, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Balance person, please could you respond to my post at 11:04? TSventon (talk) 14:56, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I think we may have different understandings of the meaning of cryptography and cryptographer. I am certainly not an expert and actually was not the person who chose to offer, a kind intervention, the bit ' (cryptographer)' after the name Patricia Davies as a way of differentiating her from e.g. hockey players with the same name. Did you see my understandings from 08.13 and from 10.48 and 14.23. ? How do you think we could progress? I am a relative newbie here and certainly don't want to get into a long wrangle. I simply want the interesting story of these two sisters to be recognised. Balance person (talk) 17:06, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

TSventon: I would recommend a less demanding tone on this. I tried to help with progress on this article and discovered there were no categories on codebreakers but that there was coverage on cryptographers. I therefore included the category Category:British cryptographers and also suggested Patricia Davies (cryptographer) would be a possible way of differentiating the article from Patricia Davies. You may be able to come up with more constructive ways of dealing with these issues but I don't think it is fair to exert pressure on a relatively new contributor who is trying to find her way around Wikipedia editing.--Ipigott (talk) 16:45, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ipigott I an not trying to put pressure on Balance person, I put the time to help locate my post. I would suggest naval officer, television producer might also be possible. I feel some responsibility for the article as I encouraged a new reviewer to complete a DYK review rather than appealing for a more experienced reviewer to do so. TSventon (talk) 17:04, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

TSventon: Thank you for a quick response. Requesting a reply to a post within a few hours is unusal, even if you feel a level of "responsibility". I know you help out with many articles relating to women and their works but it seems strange to me that you attach such urgent importance to such a minor issue in connection with a well developed biography. I don't think either naval officer or television producer would have been viable options for differentiation but let's see if there are other reactions.--Ipigott (talk) 17:47, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If she was not a cryptographer, we should change the title. Unfortunately, I'm also not sure how to boil her entire career down into one or two words for a better disambiguating title. — SkyLined (talk) 06:40, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If "cryptographer" is not correct, then perhaps "codebreaker" or "WWII codebreaker" would suffice? Many people contributed to the work of WWII codebreaking efforts and not all were Alan Turing. [NB: I considered this while doing the DYK review and concluded that if the article had survived WP:NPP and WP:AfC on it's way to a DYK nomination, it wasn't my place to question the disambiguating title in the context of the review.] -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 08:57, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think "codebreaker" would suffice and is less specific than cryptographer.

[ Cl3phact0, I would say that if you want to raise questions not covered by the DYK criteria in a review you can, but you don't have to. If you are uncertain you can ask, at WiR in this case or at the help desk.] TSventon (talk) 09:23, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the process but I'm personally not complaining that it slipped through. I expect there's no generic rule that we can add to make sure this is caught. It's part of the process of any article that more and more people will have a look and find ways to improve it based on their knowledge of the subjects. — SkyLined (talk) 09:59, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. In this case, thanks to the DYK, nearly 4.5K people had a look! -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 10:28, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all of you for your interest in the article I wrote about Patricia Davies and that I put forward for consideration for DYK. I am delighted that it made it onto the DYK section of the main page and that lots of people have now seen it. And may then also have gone on to read about Jean Argles too.

I do stand by the definition on the wikipedia page on cryptology that it is about "constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages". But, as SkyLined helpfully added above, it is in the nature of the WP article process that more and more people have a look and join in. As far as I know, nobody needs anybody else's permission to change a bit in brackets e.g. (cryptographer) designed to differentiate one person from another. So, if somebody wants to change it to (WW2 Codebreaker) or just (codebreaker), and knows technically how to do that with all attendant redirects or whatever is necessary, then that would be okay with me. Just don't ask me to do it because I don't know how! Balance person (talk) 10:57, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• We've now adopted codebreaker rather than cryptographer. A useful conclusion to our discussions.--Ipigott (talk) 11:15, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks all, this is a great example of Wikipedia works in my opinion. Happy to have been part of this. — SkyLined (talk) 17:58, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]