Talk:100 Worst Britons

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This page isn't good. No-one is being served. Scrap it entirely.-- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 22:51 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Don't agree, for consistency reasons. If you want to "scrap it entirely", delete the "100 Greatest Britons" as well. User:Sir Paul 23:19 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I believe this page has merit. As it provides an interesting contrast with 100 Greatest Britons list. For example it is interesting to know that some people think that Margaret Thatcher was great, while others think she wasn't so great. Popsracer 23:28 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)
It is interesting to note though that each of the 100 Greatest Britons has an article, and 92 of which are >1000 bytes long (i.e. non-stub). This page is full of links to missing articles and stubs. Says something I suppose. Pete 09:17 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Are we allowed to use this information? Media organizations pay a fair bit to reprint polling results so can we just do it for free? SimonP 12:13 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ah, they pay to print these things, do they? Jtdirl was trying to claim that the lists couldn't be copyrighted, because if they were, the newspapers wouldn't all be printing them. If they pay to do so, that rather scuppers his argument! -- Oliver P. 08:13 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
They may pay to print the results of an ICM poll on the results of the next General Election but I will fall off my chair if the Daily Mail / Metro etc pay to print the results of these TV show polls. Those articles are essentially adverts for the TV programme in question. Pete 08:21 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Err... so this is a poll of those who think Harry Potter is alive? Bright group. -- Someone else 23:07 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Text from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion:

  • 100 Worst Britons I am not going to argue the case. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 00:28 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • I would also delete 100 Greatest Britons. There are thousands of polls like this and wikipedia should not be archiving them, they are primary source material. You may reference them, say mentioning that Winston Churchill was voted the Greatest Briton, but the lists should go. SimonP 01:15 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • Absolutely not. They are both perfectly encyclopaedic. They are not the POV of a user. They are lists compiled in valid surveys by reputable media organisations that were the subject of major public debate. That makes them perfectly logical factual lists. God we have tonnes of nutty lists on wikipedia. These are both factual, credible ones, which beat our usual [[grandfathers with the longest toenails in Arizona]] and [[Song titles containing more that four Zs]] bs. Keep. FearÉIREANN 03:11 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • I agree with Jtdirl/FearÉIREANN. Of course we have to draw the line somewhere, but if we have lists of all the tracks of LPs hardly anyone cares about these two here at least reflect what Britons (well, certainly not all Britons) think at a given point in time. They may be used productively by non-British users to learn more about current affairs and/or people in the media. --KF 03:52 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • Are these lists not copyrighted by the compilers? Lists can be copyrighted if some creativity has gone into them, and I think that's very likely the case here. Can we claim fair use? I'm not sure... -- Oliver P. 13:50 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • The chances of these lists being copyrighted are ziltch. They have been quoted, referred to and referenced in almost all the British print and broadcast media, many of whom printed the full list. So either the entire media is in breach of copyright or there is no problem whatsoever with quoting them. Broadcasters don't copyright lists, period, because they want them to be circulated as widely as possible. While they may have been constructed accurately, they were created as a PR stunt to get media publicity to promote the 'Saturday night history' zones on both BBC2 and Channel 4. In the circumstances to copyright them and so limit their availability would be an act of such moronic stupidity that even the thickest TV executive (and there are many, the Sunday Times mocks them as the BBC 'Tristrams') would not do so. Why create the lists at considerable time and effort if you don't want as many people as possible to know about them, know your association with them and so hopefully watch your expensive history programmes? FearÉIREANN 23:06 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
      • I still that polls are basically primary sources and that there are too many dumb polls that could flood wikipedia. Do we really want articles like Best barbecue hosts or Most empathetic Harry Potter character? SimonP 15:26 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • I don't understand the statement, "Broadcasters don't copyright lists". Every piece of text created by a human being is copyrighted by default. You don't need to "copyright" it. As soon as it is written, it is copyrighted, and remains so until released into the public domain. Feel free to use your wide-ranging journalistic contacts to find out if it has been. But in any case, as SimonP says, these things are primary source material. Much as I like these lists, they are not really encyclopaedic content. However, now that I come to think of it, I don't support outright deletion. Articles on the polls would be all right, if they are well-known and interesting to the general public. But including the full results of the polls in the articles would be like including the full text of a story in an article about that story, and we don't do that. An encyclopedia is supposed to describe things, not just regurgitate them. -- Oliver P. 21:55 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • There are no copyright issues with these polls. As to lists - hello? :-0 Where were you when wiki was flooded with nutty lists about two-fingered guitarists, three-legged nuns, songs with three Hs and no Os in the title.  :-) I seem to have been the only one complaining about all this crap; I was told they were a useful playpen to keep the list-aholics happy and away from anything useful! It is a bit bizarre to put it mildly that having tolerated dopey polls for months, now two real, proper kosher polls turn up, there is a problem with them!!! As to the primary primary source: that it an extremely weak argument. How do you 'do' lists other than list them? Cover them through 100 linked biographical articles? Listing a list like this is fundamentally different to dealing with a primary text of a document. A primary document consists of facts, analyis, detail etc. If we quoted word for word Jon Snow's report on these lists, that would be the equivalent. But listing the 100 greatest britons is no different to listing British monarchs or Chinese emperors. Even if you do it backwards in latin in a Basil Fawlty accent, it will still be . . . a list, something which wiki has plenty off, except these are real credible ones, drawn up by real credible sources, published in places like the Times, the Guardian, the Irish Times, the Economist, etc., which makes them a bit different from most of the dumb lists we have carried. Keep, obviously. FearÉIREANN 05:07 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Discussion will continue below, to save cluttering up Votes for deletion. -- Oliver P. 06:53 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The article is named incorrectly. It does not list the 100 worst Britons. Silly Channel 4 human interest story would be closer to the truth. Or maybe list of British politicians and pop stars. There are perfectly good cultural reasons why these polls always turn into a list of politicians and pop stars, it has a lot more to do with humour than any kind of moral judgement. -- Tim Starling 07:12 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

How about 100 Worst Britons (television programme)? Same would go for 100 Greatest Britons. Pete 07:19 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
We almost always give articles on television programmes the names of the programmes themselves, unless there is a need for disambiguation. That's not the case here. -- Oliver P. 07:25 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Ok, but as Tim points out it is a somewhat misleading name in this case. It is possible, although I do not think it likely, that a reader could believe the encyclopedia has NPOVly determined a rogues gallery of the 100 worst Britons. Some indication in the title that this article is about a tv programme would probably do more good than harm. Pete 07:34 10 Jul 2003 (UTC) (who is again spending too much time on a trivial matter!)
The Wikipedia matters that seem the most trivial are actually the most important. :) That's my excuse for spending so much time on them, anyway... This sort of discussion has come up before. I don't think it's entirely resolved, but mostly people are going with the simpler titles. Basically, the argument is that titles should be as simple as possible to enable easy linking, and that they don't need to contain extra information because the articles should explain what they are about clearly enough to dispel any confusion about what the title means. -- Oliver P. 07:55 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
For those of you who didn't pick it up, my first title suggestion was a subtle hint that I don't consider this list to be encyclopedic, regardless of the title. -- Tim Starling 07:58 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Subtle as the hint was, I did manage to pick up on it but do not want the article deleted, so tried to subtly change the topic away from whether the article would be deleted but to what the best name for the article is. My problem is this.. if we delete this article.. then 100 Greatest Britons would have to go too.. but that article is about a TV series that became fairly significant (at least in the UK). Further it is a handy pointer to 100 articles (92 longish,8 stubs) covering great swathes of British history. I would be unhappy about seeing that deleted, and thus a defence of this 'lesser' (in the sense that this programme had little impact) article is required. Pete 08:16 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The argument continued:

Jtdirl, what you consider the saving grace of these lists is precisely the reason (well, one of the reasons) that they don't belong here: the fact that they were compiled by other people. That makes them primary sources. Lists drawn up by Wikipedians are fine, as long as they use fairly objective criteria (e.g. lists of monarchs, bald ambidextrous collectors of garden gnomes, and so on), even if those criteria are a little, um, silly. (It's only when the criteria become overly subjective that we have a problem, as is the case with List of interesting or unusual place names.) These lists are just the creations of media organisations. Opinion polls can be interesting, and I have no problem with having articles about individual opinion polls, if they are well known, but that doesn't mean we should include the full results of the opinion poll, because then it becomes less of an article, and more of a regurgitation of primary source material. There are basically two types of page in the Wikipedia article namespace. Firstly, "proper" articles, which describe and summarise what is known about a topic, and lists, which categorise articles according to some objective criterion. These opinion polls categorise articles, but only as "people who were listed in the top 100 in this opinion poll", which is rather a strange way of classifying articles, I think. We can have proper articles about the polls, but these should discuss what has been said about the results, and what conclusions people have drawn from them, and so on, not just display the results. -- Oliver P. 08:13 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Is it fair to say that your view is that the article should be deleted if and only if we can't find more to say about it, in terms of conclusions drawn etc, than just giving the results? Pete 08:24 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Now is not a good time to ask me what my views are. Having just stayed up all night, my brain has now degenerated to the point at which I am now editing an article on Jordan, and creating articles on Gareth Gates and H from Steps. This is not a good state to be in. I think I should go now... -- Oliver P. 09:38 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I believe that number 97 Lord Irving should be Lord Irvine. The original source says Irving, but I could not find any trace of a Lord Irving who would fit the context of this poll and Lord Irvine does fit with the context of the poll. Does anyone else agree? Popsracer 11:00 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I am sure you are right. Pete 11:04 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

God but wiki is weird sometimes. I have spent the night defending the 'honour' of Celia Larkin, a woman who makes my skin crawl almost as bad as her erstwhile lover, Bertie Ahern. And Oliver is writing about Jordan, Gareth Gates and (sharp intake of breath) H from Steps!!! AAAAAAGH. How could you, Oliver? :-) Ok. Gareth can sing. Jordan is . . . em well engineered in her frontal region . . . but H? H? I'll never take Oliver seriously again! :-p FearÉIREANN 04:46 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Erm, yes, I don't know why I did that. :) But as you can see, I ran out of things to say about H from Steps pretty quickly... Do you have anything to add there? ;) -- Oliver P. 04:58 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

BTW why no Will Young Ollie? (Don't laugh but I went into your Gareth Gates page and put square brackets around Will. Square. Will. Spot the connection? :-) ) FearÉIREANN 04:50 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, I did put a link to him in the Gareth Gates article, but it must have got lost as I rearranged a few of the sentences... Maybe I'll start an article on him next. Unless, of course, you want to have that honour. ;) -- Oliver P. 04:58 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I watched this program. It was moderately OK. :)

  • Who presented it?
  • Who gave interviews?
  • When was it shown?
  • What were the trailers like?
  • Who produced it?
  • What was the polling methodology?
  • What was the reaction of the 100 Greatest Britons team?
  • Has the idea been syndicated in any other countries?
  • What similar polls/programs have there been?
  • What was the media reaction?

No rush, but I'd like to read an article with that kind of information :) Martin

I'd like to know that, too. I missed the programme. :( -- Oliver P. 14:27 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Seems to me that the links to the actual web sites should take care of most of that. nroose Talk 05:33, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I personally think the most interesting thing about these two pages (100 Worst Britons and 100 Greatest Britons) is that there are 2 people on BOTH lists - Tony Blair and Robbie Williams. nroose Talk 05:33, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

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