Talk:Harold Pinter/archive1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Query 2 Pinter [Not an actor] in Doctor Who 3 "Declining a Knighthood" 4 On "New directions" part 5 Playwright 6 Ashes to Ashes 7 The Birthday Party 8 Cleanup 9 Vandalism? 10 Hitchens "Commentary" 11 NPOV 12 Notes 13 Cleanup 14 Dispute 15 Wikipedia:3RR 16 References 17 Cleanup update 18 Nobel medal (images of) 19 Honors 20 Inappropriate material deleted 21 Image of Harold Pinter used in this article were tagged by Wikipedia for speedy deletion 22 Further resources: Other external links 23 [Portions of] Miscellaneous [section moved to talk] 24 Material from note 2 (Billington biography) 25 Notes

Query

[Added section heading formatting]

Harold Pinter, despite being a writer, seems to be the kind of person associated with / known after his interventionist stands on various issues. I guess his is an excellent case of an artist crossing the barriers of conventional analytical theories, and meeting life for real. So, this inter-connectedness must have created a unique discourse of dissent in contrast with the direct, polemical writings of people like Noam Chomsky. I would be grateful if those who have followed Pinter's writings and intellectual activism closely can enlighten me on this matter further. I am intrigued by how he has addressed the intricate isuue of human bondings in his 'Betrayal'. Rather than remaining silent about topics related to personal life, he has proven that it is better to address it, since it is, after all, a matter of perspective. The politics of an Individual's life and views has to be related to the time and space he/she inhabits. I would also like to know whether Pinter can be contacted by e-mail. Please do share your views on this, and if possible, mail me to suave25in@hotmail.com

Pinter's e-mail address is private; one should not publish it online here or elsewhere on the internet. If one wants to contact Harold Pinter, one can write to him c/o his agent, Judy Daish Associates (see information published in the Forum of his official website and in his published works and directories of authors for the address). Unsolicited e-mail would be regarded as spam. If you are interested in discussing Harold Pinter online, you may want to vist The Harold Pinter Community Forum (an ezboard requiring registration for posting) linked on his official website. --NYScholar 11:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC) [Sorry forgot to sign earlier]

Pinter [Not an actor] in Doctor Who

[In a version of this entry] The notion that Harold Pinter once performed in the 1967 Doctor Who story 'The Abonimable Snowman' has has shifted from supposition to fact, as evinced by the reference to it here in the Wikipedia entry on him. I'm afraid it is not true, or at least Harold himself denies it. The actor taking the part of the monk Ralpachan was indeed named 'David Baron' and that was indeed the actor's name that Pinter used before fame as a playwright between 1950 and 1960. However, Pinter spent most of 1967 in New York overseeing Peter Hall's Broadway production of 'The Homecoming' and simply would not have been around to film the Doctor Who episodes that year. He had no connections with the writers or directors of the series or that story, and no interest in Science Fiction. He was also doing pretty well for himself at this stage, and had no need of acting work. The image of the character available on the BBC doctor who site does bear some resemblence to him, it has to be said - compare http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/photonovels/snowmen/three/11.shtml with the image of him from the 1966-recorded 'Basement' on his own website at http://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/acting_intv.shtml) but I'm inclined to believe him when he says he simply wasn't there. Mark Batty

I had no idea he had denied this, or that it was in any way controversial. IIRC it has appeared in a number of episode guides. He wouldn't have needed to have had an interest in sci-fi to have done The Abominable Snowmen as it's not a particularly SF story.DavidFarmbrough 07:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

The soundtrack of Doctor Who: The Abominable Snownmen was released by the BBC in 2001. The booklet states "Also worthy of mention is the actor playing Ralpachan: David Baron is in fact the stage persona of the playwright Harold Pinter".Hovite 10:26, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Current conclusion: The attribution of Harold Pinter as an actor in The Abominable Snowmen episodes of Dr. Who is a mistake. It has no substance in reality. It is not the "David Baron" that was the stage name of Harold Pinter. It is a different person. It is not clear if the listing of the name "David Baron" is correct or incorrect in websites relating to Doctor Who; but if so, it is another person named "David Baron," not Harold Pinter (who used that stage name early in his acting career). Re: the photographs that people tend to offer as "evidence" for comparison on various websites: Speaking for myself, I don't think that the resemblance is particularly striking. The men pictured have very different features, e.g., hairlines, brow, jaw lines, nose, ears, and eyes (even taking account of the effects of makeup for the role). This question was discussed several years ago (in 2001) in the Harold Pinter Community Forum (archived thread), where someone checked credits for another "David Baron" (not Harold Pinter) on IMDb.com ("David Baron I"), and observed that this actor who played Ralpachan in Doctor Who (whose actual name is apparently "David Baron") is/was someone else (not Harold Pinter). --NYScholar 21:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

emended the heading and comment to reflect totality of comments more accurately now. --NYScholar 20:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

"Declining a Knighthood"

AFAIK it's not possible to "decline a knighthood", since you are never offered one unless it is known that you will certainly accept.

• As I understand it, potential recipients are contacted and asked whether they would accept, if offered. These contacts are supposed to be secret, but often leak. Bovlb 15:32, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Pinter stated in an interview that he would be uncomfortable with a knighthood long before one would have been offered. CRCulver 00:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

One may be interested in this article re: this matter: "Pinter's new companion," by Susannah Herbert published in the London Guardian Opinion sec. (16 June 2002).--NYScholar 11:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC) [Sorry forgot to sign when posted earlier]

For some further historical perspective on the practice of knighthood in general (see comment by Bovlb above beginning "AFAIK" ["and for all I know?"], and so as "to know" more about it, one may want to read the Wikipedia article knight and follow its links, as well as research the process on one's own, through connected articles and followed up with a search via Google and/or other online search engines. In relation to Pinter: as Crculver suggests above, for all "intentions and purposes," Harold Pinter has "ruled out" the possibility of a knighthood by rejecting it in advance of one's being offered. It seems that he was approached during the Conservative administration of Margaret Thatcher and did not want it pursued. It was an issue of politics--his not wanting to accept a knighthood from the crown during that governing regime. He is married to Lady Antonia Fraser, who inherited her title through family (a title acquired initially in Ireland (not England) via rather complex and somewhat controversial property arrangements; it does not appear, therefore, that he is opposed to titles in general, and many of his friends and fellow actors and playwrights in the world of theater and other performing arts in the UK have the royal-conferred title "Sir" and "Dame." Long ago, he did accept a similar title--"CBE" (Commander of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth II, and he proudly accepted the title of "CH" (Companion of Honour) more recently, as Herbert points out in her article cited above:

. . . Harold Pinter, who noisily spurned a knighthood for political reasons when John Major was Prime Minister, but is now happy to become a Companion of Honour - a somewhat grander and rarer tribute given "for services of national importance". (Their numbers are limited to 65.) Pinter took pains to announce to the Guardian that he did not regard this gong as "having any political connotations at all" and assured his admirers that his radical firebrand spirit remains uncompromised in every way. Lest Tony Blair should derive any base gratification from his acceptance, Pinter spelt out its meaning several times in several different ways. "I will not be supporting the present Government." The tribute, he declared, was "an honour given to me by the country for a long haul."

(See his website "Biography" for the list and dates of such honors and awards). --NYScholar 20:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC) [updated]--NYScholar 21:04, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

See also British honours system#Refusal or forfeiture connected to category List of people who have declined a British honour. [updated]--NYScholar 20:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

On "New directions" part

Two questions here. Has he spoken or written against any other government or group? There are (quite unfortunately) many places where an oppression of people and the human right violation is common and it seems ridiculous that with the exception of Cuba, three countries written here that he had criticized practices democracy. Also, he is involved in National Secular Society. Shouldn't this be written here instead of "Personal life" section as well since involvement in that society is not really a personal issue? --Revth 01:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)'

Turkey today is only barely democratic; Turkey of 1981 was most emphatically not democratic, and Turkey's practices against the Kurds (which is Pinter's focus) has been and still is outright Fascist. I am certainly no fan of Pinter politically, but I do believe he deserves credit for that one. Arre 02:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Playwright

He's known primarily as a playwright - so why are his plays not listed? Mandel 15:32, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

They are now. --NYScholar 21:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Ashes to Ashes

I removed the link to Ashes to Ashes because it links to a David Bowie song of the same title. Dark jedi requiem 08:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The current link for the play needs populating. --NYScholar 21:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The Birthday Party

On his website(www.haroldpinter.org), it claims The Birthday Party was published in 1957, not 1958 as this article says. As I believe his website to be correct, I will correct the error.

That date of "1957" is not a date of publication; it is more likely a date of composition [or a copyright date] (which the site tends to use more than dates of publication--see below). The play was published first in 1958 in a literary magazine (Encore) and subsequently published by various publishers such as Methuen (in the UK) and Grove Press (in the US), in various revised editions. One needs to do more advanced research to make such distinctions among possible dates of composition and dates of publication accurately. Pinter's works have a very complex compositional and publishing history. Please see the "Bio-bibliographical Note" hosted on the Nobel Prize site for related critical resources if one wants more accurate information than is currently in this Wikipedia entry. The entry still needs substantial revision and editing. --NYScholar 21:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

[I'm adding a cleanup tag on the article.] Dates on Pinter's website often tend to be dates of final composition and/or dates of first performance and not dates of first publication and/or dates of (film/tv) release. (Several sections of his website were compiled by research assistants tasked with such work and by his (multiple) assistants beginning in around 2000, when the website was launched. There are sometimes typographical and other errors in the sections.) Some works were published long after they were first written; e.g. his novel The Dwarfs. When not confusing, one tries to use those dates or clarifies discrepancies otherwise. Did some cleanup of this article. Added some citations and additional sources for verification and further reading. --NYScholar 21:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Many sources of the information listed in the article are already listed in the "References" and "External Links" and "See also" sections. Among the references listed in "References" is an extensive "Bio-bibliography" provided by the Swedish Academy (I helped to correct and expand it). That bibliography contains references for this article, and I have thus cited parenthetically and otherwise in the article.[Clarified and updated somewhat.--NYScholar 22:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)]

Subsequent editors can help by providing more specific citations, but they do need to consult those sources directly first. (Please do not comment on editing changes if one is not oneself making any efforts to do work to improve this article. As an editor on other articles, I have been asked to supply explanations of editing changes, and I have done so here too to the best of my ability. Asking for an addition for a citation by placing ^{[citation needed]} after an already-documented or source "cited" for that fact) is not at all helpful. In such cases, in-text and parenthetical references/citations are already given to Pinter's official website (HaroldPinter.org as listed in "External Links") and other specific sources listed at the end of the article (MLA format as keyed to a "Works Cited"). Redundant citations are not required. --NYScholar 21:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC) [Updated. --NYScholar 22:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)]

Wikipedia can't count on the good faith of editors alone. Direct quotations, of all things, need in-line, and hopefully properly formatted, references. --TJive 22:35, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Please re-read more carefully. In my view, you actually have been missing some in-text citations for direction quotations already given (right in the sentences). I've edited some sentences to revise further but feel that it really wasn't necessary. Sometimes quotation marks are used for common phrases used multiple times on various occasions by many people (such as "not in our name"--it's the name of an American organization that has joined up with the StopTheWar Coalition in the UK and become an internationally-known group; "cf." means "confer" (or consult) by way of a source; it is a form of citation (MLA format). --NYScholar 22:53, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

MLA is inadequate for our purposes, especially for sources that are largely electronic and available online. There is a disconnect between your article text and what is quoted from what reference. Please see WP:CITE and Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Generic citations for methods of citing these so that viewers can access the original source for quotes without having to seek it laboriously. --00:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

The above comment is unsigned. [It was perhaps written by User TJive.] Whenever possible and useful, the notes and references are hyperlinked and the formats all follow the style recommended by WP:CITE. (Please scroll through the whole article at Cite; the MLA style format information is linked toward the end of it.) --NYScholar 01:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism?

Someone has been silently changing this article, removing formatting and other features that it has taken me a long time to add, without leaving any trace of those silent edits in the "history." The changes do not improve the article at all and remove important information from it. They seem to be some kind of vandalism. They may need to be reported to administrators.--NYScholar 00:17, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

What and when? You have to be specific. I did a copy-edit, because the article had a number of problems; I don't know if they were your problems or not. For instance, your observation on Hitchens was inappropriate as it violated WP:NPOV. Also, there were many extraneous spaces, such as the ones after asterisks, that I deleted. Addressing this is not vandalism. Citing a vague list isn't any better for that observation either, it needs to meet WP:Verifiability and WP:Notability standards. Please read policies to see why some of these were changed. --TJive 00:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Only one change by you shows up in History. I've removed the tag. Re: your so-called "copy-edit": Please stop making multiple silent changes (I don't know how you are doing that): you need to identify reasons for changes in the "Edit summary" as any other W editor is asked to do. The spaces after the asterisks are intentional. (One spaces twice after a period and an asterisk. It's normal typing. That Wikipedia alters the two spaces to one automatically is fine. But what is the point of deleting spaces that don't show up online?) The asterisk is a bullet; please don't remove the asterisks or the spaces after them. [Such spaces occur in the very examples given in the sec. on bullet lists in W: How to edit a page. Elsewhere the W policies say don't just edit to remove a space here and there.] The bullets--(* E.g.)--are there for readability of the article. You are not "improving" this article but rather rendering it weaker. --NYScholar 00:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

If there is no point to them not being there (which isn't true; they take up useless bits of information and this is already a long article), what is the point in bitching about the fact that I took them out? As for asterisks, look here:

• No space
• A space

See any difference? I don't. So there's no reason to have them there either.

As for your other comments, I most certainly did provide an edit summary ("copy-edit, remove editorializing, place fact tags so that quotes in particular can be SPECIFICALLY sourced"), so I have no idea what you're referring to with either that comment or by saying that I have making "multiple silent changes" at once. You can edit the whole article at once. That's what I happened to be doing, because that's what needed done. Please review the citation articles I provided earlier. If I come back to this article tomorrow and nothing has changed about the NPOV and citation problems, I'm going to revert some of the changes as well as put tags back in. --TJive 00:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Elsewhere the W policies say don't just edit to remove a space here and there.] The bullets--(* E.g.)--are there for readability of the article. There is only ONE "edit summary" yet many, many changes that you or someone else (not I) made. I don't know how that has occurred. There is no indication in the edit summary that spaces were removed or other changes (other than a request for a citation and change to the Hitchens description (from "neoconservative"--which he is, btw--to "polemicist"). I've added several supporting citations and references to support the previous version subsequent to your change. If there is no "change" to see in removing spaces, there is no need to remove them. They simply don't show up. So why waste your time and my time changing them??? --NYScholar 00:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

No one is making "silent" changes. All changes are visible in the history. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:56, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I just returned to explain why I find the two spaces after the * useful: in editing mode (online), it's much easier to read and find errors and make changes. Also, when I type, after a period (.) and an asterisk (*), I generally hit the space bar twice--it's how I learned to type way back when, and my computer keyboard is set up to allow me to do that. The two spaces show up in editing mode and make it easier for me to read and recast sentences (as now), even though after I preview changes, the spaces get automatically reduced in both instances. But it's so much easier to work w/ while composing and editing. So that's a reason that I'd rather people didn't alter the way it is in some articles (like this one)--a lot of Wikipedia editors add two spaces after * and a lot don't; it's just personal preference in typing.--NYScholar 02:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, I suggest that you manifest some respect for the contributions that I have taken my time to make to this article. I don't see any kind of commensurate effort being made on your part. What exactly have you contributed of substance to this article (compared to what I have done--see the full history [if you have time: it's all provided there]. Your minor changes do not show up when I look at the history. Mine do. Don't threaten me with "reverts" etc. You'll be reverting back to earlier versions that are incorrect and unsourced and not NPOV if you remove my changes. If you are not particularly knowledgable about the subject (Harold Pinter) than you are not able to judge the substantive changes. Making cosmetic non-essential "edits" that are not even "corrections" of any errors is really not improving the article for the majority of readers. It was I who placed the tag on the article for "cleanup" and, after cleaning it up (not getting any actual requested help with that), I have removed the tag.--NYScholar 01:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

First of all, it's my business alone what I choose to "waste" my time on, and the fact is that extraneous spaces are not needed, are removed quite frequently, and that was not all I was doing with the article. I left a summary and I gave it; I didn't specifically mention spaces because that's covered under the concept of "copy-edit" and the fact that it's not a big deal in the first place. Why are you wasting your time and mine complaining about them?

As for Hitchens, "neoconservative" is an unnecessary pejorative for someone who does not describe himself that way; this is particularly so in light of your non-neutral commentary on how "reasonable" the tone of this, that, or the other comment is. As well, and as I stated already, simply mentioning a list or a name is not proper sourcing; it should be properly referenced with a good reference standard and must meet WP:Verifiability and WP:Notability criteria, e.g. not blogs, mailing lists, and self-published web sites. Please review these guidelines and policies.

[Addendum: NB: The Wikipedia article Christopher Hitchens describes his "involvement" with well-known "neo-conservatives" and links to articles discussing his various alignments with their views and his being a "polemicist." The controversies are accessible via the linked citations to sources and in the article's references. Some sections of the article still need "expansion," according to one of its current categories listed. [See earlier discussion of these issues pertaining to Hitchens made earlier below.] NYScholar 18:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Please also see WP:CIVIL. I am attempting to politely point you to policies which explain my edits and would help improve the article. It is my decision what level of involvement I choose to have with any particular article on this site. You do not own this article. When you edit, there is a message saying, "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." I hope you understand that this applies to any article, regardless of your own personal level of contribution or interest in the subject. --TJive 01:08, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL and commenting "politely" does not include using words like "bitching" to describe another editor's comments. I do not see any way in which your changes improve this article. I've accepted the change from "Neo[-]conservative" to "Polemicist" but that's about it. Regarding "merciless" editing and so on: if the shoe fits. . . . I've read your talk page and I really don't see any expertise in this subject at all there; so why are you working on this article? Do you want to improve an article on "Harold Pinter" or have you no interest in the subject and are just interfering to put your own "mark" on it? If the latter, why? What do you actually know about where to find authoritative verifiable sources on this subject that I have not already given readers access to? Please stop. Thanks. --NYScholar 01:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

BTW: your own bias against citing "blogs" (which many mainstream media newspapers and magazines have now (including the BBC, NBC, MSNBC and so on) and specialized discussion lists hosted by academic institutions as adding other points of view to a single one cited initially (by another editor some time ago) is just that: bias. It is not NPOV. NPOV is looking at a variety of points of view on a subject and presenting a representative selection of them. If one does not know the subject, it is not possible to know the range of points of view on it. The external links are to articles published by mainstream media and websites enabling people to read the articles; e.g., the Wall Street Journal is a restricted site and one can't access the Hitchens article on it without a subscription; it has been posted and discussed on the U of Utah site discussion list. It appears to me that your bias is against there being a "Marxist" pov cited; that is not enabling NPOV; it is censoring povs. If Hitchens' pov is expressed, then so must be the povs of others who disagree with him. Hitchens' viewpoint is itself not NPOV, so it is hardly fair to leave it as the only one there (as originally was the case): see the bonafide ref. to the BBC "Special Report": that is a mainstream media outlet--not a blog, not a self-published website. Harold Pinter's site is an official website for a Nobel Laureate. It is cited by the BBC, the New York Times, the Harold Pinter Society, and just about every organization that includes external links for resources on him as a subject. (Google "Harold Pinter" and you will see that.) --NYScholar 01:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I do not find the word "bitching" to be uncivil; it is synonymous with "complaining" and perfectly describes what I was discussing.

My intentions and expertise are not germane here. I, like any other unsanctioned editor, am perfectly free to edit this article in accordance with Wikipedia policy, and given that you misinterpret or do not understand policy, this fact is all the more relevant.

My comment about blogs is not, "not NPOV"; it is Wikipedia guideline. This article does not have any relevance to blogs or bloggers and so blogs are not a reliable source for information on this subject. If you want to cite a positive reaction or criticism of others' criticism, then find a notable and verifiable source which gives it; simply mentioning certain servers where users give their opinions, and then declaring them "more reasonable" is hardly generating neutral, verifiable, and encyclopedic content. Again, it would serve you well to read the citation guidelines and attempt to incorporate proper referencing rather than to make stubborn and pointless arguments here on this talk space about my motivations and space-erasing. That's not going anywhere and doesn't particularly effect me. --TJive 01:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course, I've read official Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia [editing guidelines--updated link --NYScholar 03:19, 5 August 2006 (UTC)]: nowhere do they prohibit citations of blogs outright. This article might be instructive Defenselink (US Defense Dept.) on the importance of using blogs as intelligence (information) re: the War on Terror]. I was not DISCUSSING blogs per se; I was reponding to the aspersions that you cast on blogs:

". . . must meet WP:Verifiability and WP:Notability criteria, e.g. not blogs, mailing lists, and self-published web sites. Please review these guidelines and policies."

(and I hadn't linked any blogs anyway, so I really have trouble following your initial references to them (as just quoted). You just keep throwing more and more red herrings into this talk page; why I have no idea. (Who is wasting whose time?)

If the subject and the article "don't particularly [a]ffect" you, then why cause me and others all this grief? Just stand down and let others interested in the article work on it to improve it. Blogs come in many, many different sizes, shapes, kinds, and degrees of reliability; you are stating a false description of blogs and Wikipedia's policy on blogs. The world moves on, are you? BTW: by definition, almost all websites are "self-published," including most "official sites." The publishers of such sites publish them themselves--there are not necessary "publishing companies" that do so. All the major media outlets publish their own so-called blogs (weblogs) themselves. (A weblog is a web journal.) They are much more accepted now as alternative informational resources than they once were. I choose what I post very carefully, with disclaimers if any are needed so as to maintain NPOV. I am posting authoritative and verifiable resources (titles of published newspaper articles, books, bibliographies, and so on. Where they are hosted is just a convenience for readers to access them; their content is both authoritative and verifiable (fact-checked by me and capable of being fact-checked by others).

Updated. --NYScholar 07:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

"and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources" (Note the bold print as added). If a blog is reprinting an article from the Wall Street Journal for purposes of discussion, then the source is the article in the WSJ, not the blog. The authoritative source is the newspaper. The blog is simply a place to access it. (It is quoted exactly on the blog, e.g.; people highlight, copy, and post.) Clearly, the word "largely" requires using editorial discretion.

Re: blogs per se (as a subject): If a section of an article concerns documenting worldwide "reactions" to an author's Nobel Prize (and you had no NPOV rationale for removing the whole section heading earllier just because you didn't like there being additional responses to the one by Hitchens), then blogs are authoritative sources of their authors' reactions (by definition).

Re: your claim that blogs are totally irrelevant for the subject of this article; that claim is inaccurate. Harold Pinter and his work are discussed frequently in hundreds to thousands of blogs depending on events in the news pertaining to him; after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, there have been thousands of blog posts about him. Obviously, I have not cited and am not citing discussion lists and blogs as "reliable sources" of information throughout this article; at the time you wrote the above comments, I was simply citing one academic discussion list quoting an otherwise-restricted access article from the Wall Street Journal for convenience of Wikipedia readers after another editor had included only the article by Hitchens as an example of reactions to Pinter's Nobel Prize. You responded with a quotation from Wikipedia policy including comments about blogs, confusing the issue (I think) and leading to my response about blogs (since at the time I actually thought that "discussion list" was a kind of "blog.") Later, I found one blog posted on Znet to substitute for the link that you removed, because it also quotes in full the article from the restricted part of the Wall Street Journal website, again for Wikipedia readers' convenience. It also includes commentary on the article (Hitchens' "commentary." That way more than one pov appears, not just Hitchens'. Many other links to reactions to Pinter's Nobel Prize are listed in the "Special Report" in The Guardian and in the BBC source linked too. [Updated. --NYScholar 07:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)]

That was the point of reference and comparison and documentation before you started tinkering with it (and taking out the section heading (without there being any edit summary re: that, btw). No one is saying that the blog's opinion is any more than an opinion, but neither is Hitchens' (e.g.) opinion any more than just an opinion (his); that's why it is useful to describe its similarity to "neoconservative" views, btw (whether or not he accepts that that is what his views are). Hitchens may try to reject the label (neoconservative) yet, nevertheless, he expresses views meeting the Wikipedia definition (as linked earlier[[which you removed] and here). Hitchens' viewpoint (which it is not up to him only to define, btw--not according to NPOV) is being cited in this article (now) only by way of example: not as the "final word" on Pinter's Nobel Prize; that's why it was outrageous to have this article include ONLY his single quotation (initially--before I revised it).

Furthermore, I challenge anyone to write a "verifiable" and "authoritative" Wikipedia entry on the subject of "blogs," for example (and there are such articles), without consulting blogs (primary sources for such an article)! One needs to be reasonable and exert judgment in selecting sources (part of my own professional expertise; primarily what I do for a living: evaluating, citing, and communicating information about published (online and print) sources. . . .). If the subject is "What is the reaction in all kinds of sources to an event?" then one must examine "all kinds of sources," keeping in mind their similarities and differences and not treating them as if they were all the same in authoritativeness and authenticity and value (as they are not): and, of course, that includes Wikipedia itself--which is totally "self-published and not "peer-reviewed" in the sense of an academic journal or an academic book or an Encyclopedia published in book format or online by established publishing houses! (Many so-called "editors" of Wikipedia have no professional training as editors.) This is the "Commons licensing" without government-sanctioned "copyright" licensing, and so on; let us not confuse issues here.

Please don't stand in the way of people communicating knowledge to one another in bonafide ways that are within Wikipedia's own guidelines (if one reads them "largely" carefully). There is verifiability and there are pretensions to verifiability that I find on Wikipedia. A verifiable source that is initially a print source is one that one can find in a bookstore, a library, or through a publisher. Every source that I have cited is verifiable in that sense (though sometimes, as with the ABC and BBC, e.g., the sources are "self-published" (by those media companies) online (as well as in the print copies of newspapers, e.g.). (Media company websites are bonafide official sources of their own productions.) The kinds of sources previously listed as such in this article before I began editing it were not presented in proper documentation format (so that one could find them easily to verify them)--I had to reformat them into such format. There were many statements totally missing sources. I have now supplied most of them (a few remain--I know what the sources are, but I haven't yet had time to provide them too--perhaps others will do that now).

Yet, instead of thanking me for doing this much-needed work on this article, you are harassing me, and I really don't appreciate that.

I leave it to others to continue the work of supplying additional sources for verification as they may be further needed. I'm out of time (due to responding to your editing changes and comments) since I had (time after time) to undo loss of my sources of information that I had already provided and that you (or another person) deleted or asked for (unnecessarily adding multiple "^{[citation needed]}" tags, when they were already in the References and external links lists. One has to read the lists of References keyed through documentation formats within texts. If one does not, one cannot find what sources are being "cited!" That is common scholarly procedure. (If one mentions an author's name and gives a short title in a sentence, and if the source is listed in the "References," then the citation is already being supplied. You have to read the whole sentence! In such cases, "notes" and numbered links are simply redundancies. (Due to your confusions, I've added a few that really aren't necessary, given MLA format used). --NYScholar 02:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous. I don't know how familiar you are with Wikipedia customs and policies but I'm assuming your familiarity is not that great based upon your comments, especially in regards to the history. I am not "harassing" you. I didn't even comment until you made some further edits to the page that basically reverted some of my copy-editing. The only thing "harassing" is quibbling - repeatedly - about asinine matters like deleting extra spaces, or not changing an article over multiple edits with detailed rationalizations for every single one (that is why it's called an "edit summary" not an "edit detail" and why there are talk pages in the first place). I merely suggested that you use more generally accepted Wikipedia citation so that readers can see the source for the direct quotations - footnote styles that everyone is accustomed to and that Wikipedia desperately needs for credibility - and that is why I put in fact tags, so that they could be replaced with Wikipedia reference notations. That is it. You're turning this into a bizarre personal feud that I'm not interested in. At all.

As for blogs, I never once said that you were using blogs. My comment was in reference to your improper use of a mailing list as a source for criticism claims. I mentioned mailing lists, and yet you harped on the point of blogs. Yes blogs are acceptable, in a limited fashion, as external links sometimes and as reference points for blog-related articles. This is not such an article. Criticism and counter-criticism of Pinter should be cited from verifiable, reliable, and notable sources, per Wikipedia guidelines. A mailing list does not meet that criteria and is not encyclopedic. It should thus be removed.

You also need to treat material neutrally. Making political arguments, or using political epithets and pejoratives, is not acceptable. Statements which assert that an argument is "more reasonable" than another betray a personal POV and value judgment on a contentious subject. That is also not acceptable.

These are simple matters with very clear guidelines that you are not following or are not willing to understand. That I am pointing them out has nothing to do with you personally, and has everything to do with attempting to improve Wikipedia. Stop making this into something - everything - that it really isn't. --TJive 03:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, lastly, as for the header under the Nobel section, it's simply not needed. There is not enough material to justify a sub-section for what is only relevant to the material directly above it. --TJive 04:17, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I wrote a reply which is completely lost due to an "editing conflict."

[Addendum] Despite multiple attempts to back-page to recover it, I could not. Some Wikipedia glitches seemed to prevent doing so. Eventually I just began again.--NYScholar 17:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

MLA format is recommended in W:editing guidelines and citation format guidelines. You do not know what you are talking about if you say that "MLA is inadequate for our purposes": who is "our" referring to here? You? Wikipedia readers? I have seen WP:CITE etc. I am also an academic scholar who teaches all the major formats (Chicago, MLA, APA, ACS, and so on). I will ignore that remark as it appears to me simply to derive from ignorance. If you lack knowledge about documentation formats and abbreviations, don't act as though you don't. Stop removing a section heading because of an invented rationale just because you do not consider them useful; someone else might consider them useful. They do not harm and they are helpful guideposts. There was more material in the section before you excised it. I've removed all remarks now; the items are already listed in the "References" section for anyone who wants to read them. --NYScholar 04:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[Deletion of personal attacks. Added internal link --NYScholar 18:26, 26 July 2006 (UTC)]

You should also know that MLA is not the only option here and that I never implied that it was disallowed. The same references can be made to the same sources with the same format with in-line citations so that a reader can give a simple click and access the source that matches the quote. That is the standard on Wikipedia for good sourced articles. Look at just about any featured page. Clean citations with a small number allowing direct access to the sourcing in context to the information it provides. Simple to do, efficient, and explained at the links I gave about three or ten times.

There's no reason to delete the Hitchens information. It is notable, verifiable, and sourced. --TJive 04:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, when there are edit conflicts, your information is not lost. Simply go back a page and copy and paste the information back into the main edit space, but first look through the history "diffs" to see what was changed since you started so that you can account for it. Your practice of instead making dozens of small edits actually creates more difficulty for others because there are many more potential edit conflicts. --TJive 05:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is a link to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, the general table of contents for pages offering guidelines in Wikipedia. Formats are consistent with discipline-specific style sheets and such style sheets are among those suggested for documentation formatting in Wikipedia. One has to examine each section and go to links in the sections for more specific guidelines, recommendations, suggestions, and related information. [update] --NYScholar 00:53, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Hitchens "Commentary"

[added this section heading later--NYScholar 21:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)]

Re: the citation of the article by Hitchens; User TJive deleted the source that I had provided earlier, which had included a copy of the otherwise-inaccessible online version (posted on a university server discussion list).

Here is a link to the source that User TJive removed: a comment from the "Marxism mailing list archive" hosted by the University of Utah Economics Department, and posted by "Walter Lippmann" at "WSJ/Christopher Hitchens assault on Harold Pinter," which happens to be a academic, university-hosted discussion list about Marxism. [I still think that this is a "reliable source," given its academic venue: see the section on "Evaluating sources" in Wikipedia:Reliable sources, which lists exceptions and the value of academic sites.] As in the post provided by the blogger "David Peterson" in "The Silver Christopher," which is also critical of Hitchens' "Commentary," the poster to the U of Utah Economics dept. list, "Walter Lippmann", includes a text of the article from the Wall Street Journal's restricted archive, which is not accessible to most Wikipedia readers if they do not subscribe to the newspaper or its online premium services. [updated].--NYScholar 01:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

NB: The Index to these archives of mailing lists hosted by the Economics department of the University of Utah, contains its "Disclaimer" and "Fair Use Notice" pertaining to copyright. That disclaimer and fair use notice pertains to the posting of the text of the article there, in "The Silver Christopher" (where one can find similar disclaimers and notices via Znet, and in this Wikipedia article and talk page, to which Wikipedia's own disclaimers and fair use notices pertain. [update] --NYScholar 02:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

After that I found added a link to a single post in a blog hosted by Znet called "The Silver Christopher," which includes a copy of the article (so that people reading this article can access it), including also commentary on it. That is a blog, which is "largely" not recommended as a source to cite in Wikipedia; but I have given the link to one entry on it (with date) because it provides Wikipedia readers with access to Hitchens' article. For more information about the perspectives of both Christopher Hitchens and Znet, one can easily visit those Wikipedia articles, as linked both here in talk and in the article. I think that this solution is better than not being able to access the article at all, since the Wall Street Journal website does not provide free access to it, but access only to its subscribers. I know that blogs are "largely" not linked in Wikipedia articles; in this case, I think the linked Znet source provides a service to readers of this article, as it provides an accesible online copy of Hitchens text (within fair use--for educational purposes of research) and it also provides a commentary on it, presenting more than one point of view on what Hitchens--a clearly-biased source as defined in the Wikipedia article on him--has to say about Pinter's getting the Nobel Prize. In her recent changes to the "References" section that I provided for this article, user SlimVirgin removed the link to the text of the article in "The Silver Christopher." I restored it to the bibliographical entry in "References" to one post there for the reasons that I have just given above. --NYScholar 17:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The current Wikipedia article Christopher Hitchens lists several commentaries and opinions about his work, including several blogs and self-published websites as examples of "Criticisms" of his biases. "The Silver Christopher,", one of the featured blogs hosted on Znet, written by "David Peterson" (not this David Peterson apparently). [Znet blogs use "not verified" after the individual posts in such blogs; it does not "verify" who is posting under that user name; thus, the name of a poster (as in Wikipedia) may be a pen name or screen name as opposed to an actual name, following its posting practices in such Znet blogs.] The section of "The Silver Christopher" posting texts and comments on Hitchens' published articles is similar to some of those websites and blogs already linked in the Wikpedia article on Christopher Hitchens as examples of such "Criticisms"; see Christopher Hitchens#External links for those examples. (Writers like Noam Chomsky also have blogs hosted on Znet; according to Wikipedia's guidelines pertaining to blogs, it is acceptable to link to blogs of such authors as, say, Chomsky and Hitchens (if they have one), and there are links to such "official" blogs of these living people in articles about them.) Reading the article on Christopher Hitchens and following those links is a means of contextualizing Hitchens' "commentary" on Pinter's Nobel Prize initially listed by another editor in this Wikipedia article on Harold Pinter. [Updated.] -- NYScholar 22:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Note also that the full text of the Wall Street Journal "Commentary" by Christopher Hitchens on Pinter's Nobel Prize in Literature is a primary source relating to that brief quotation from Hitchens posted in The Guardian (see the "Special Report" for related links); like the article by Sarah Crown, it's not in the main list of links, but it is linked in articles linked within it; earlier articles on Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize link to previous articles like this one "Harold Pinter's Surprise 75th Birthday Present." Such articles are already accessible by following the various links throughout the articles listed in the Guardian's "Special Report," including the one by Crown (discussed in my note on this talk page). (See links to other Guardian articles at foot of webpage. Note that the link provided to Wikipedia is not to the English-language version of Wikipeda, though that article contains other language version links, including the one that now resolves to the current English version article.) Also, for those who want to do their own further independent research, the Guardian provides its own search engine feature for locating related news articles on Pinter. [Updated.] -- NYScholar 22:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

Deleted non-NPOV. See References for a selection of articles on Pinter's Nobel Prize and Nobel Lecture.

I finished cleanup of this article. --NYScholar 05:55, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[editing conflicts have led to problems with adding replies to this Talk page; perhaps due to lack of space. (Jus could not get Wikipedia to save changes for most of time between this comment and next one.)] See history for what was attempted to be posted here earlier. Thanks.--NYScholar 05:55, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Took a break; returned; corrected some minor errors and added further informational links for citations of sources. --NYScholar 00:38, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Notes

It's taken me a while, and I'm sorry to have had to preview-save-return to correct so many typographical errors, but I've finally finished work on converting citations (mostly) to linked in-line (in-text) "Notes"; the expanded/reorganized References list includes those items and others referred to in the body of the article. I hope that this work has improved this article. [updated]. --NYScholar 20:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

I've done some further cleaning up of this article, including the associated "Wikiquote" page. Please see talk there for explanations. --NYScholar 21:33, 30 July 2006 (UTC) [My preference is raw signature, no link; I've tried to delete the links above.]--NYScholar 21:41, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

You're using your own citation style again. You must quote the headlines used by the publication, not make up your own then put them in quotation marks. Please read WP:CITE. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

References should be listed in alphabetical order, not grouped according to subject, and please don't add commercial descriptions e.g. from Amazon. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:32, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not "using [my] own citation style again." MLA style sheet format is what is used universally for writers of literature and subjects relating to literature (humanities). Titles used by publications are "regularized" and uniformly capitalized according to MLA style format [capitalization rules]. See Wikipedia:Citing sources, scroll down, and READ about the formats. I have spent hours correcting previous editors' errors and do not appreciate your repeated reversions to incorrect and mistaken information. Cease and desist. And lay off my work. Go work on subjects that you actually know something about. This is disgusting.--NYScholar 23:51, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

It's taken me several hours to fix the problems of inconsistency and errors and inaccuracies that SV has introduced into this previously-carefully constructed article. I had worked on this article since at least June, and all this work had to be reconstructed from scratch; due to Wikipedia formatting procedures, it's very time-consuming. I really object to what SV did to this article and the trouble that she has (purposefully) caused here.--NYScholar 03:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

"References should be listed in alphabetical order, not grouped according to subject, and please don't add commercial descriptions e.g. from Amazon. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:32, 30 July 2006 (UTC)": this is not correct. Most extensive Wikipedia entries have extensive bibliographies broken up into sections. See, e.g. Rwandan genocide as an example. Again, you are wrong.--NYScholar 23:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

• Here's the direct link Bibliography of the Rwandan Genocide: mostly a combination of MLA and APA format [originally]; done by many, many editors originally in French (a version of APA), and in long process of being regularized and made more consistent; but the sections serve as examples. The reader's convenience is what one keeps in mind. (I haven't time to finish the editing; but there's a good start there. It was a mess of capital letters for last names of authors and very confusing and inconsistent in sections. I've worked on fixing some sections; the French sections still need work [and some further verification]. Read the talk page there.)

And, once again, Wikipedia has no single policy on how to construct lists of references or even what to call them; there are multiple examples given and possibilities; consistency is the main watchword, and you're apparently not very keen on consistency.--NYScholar 23:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The entire article uses MLA format consistently; you have stuck in hugely long dashes that have nothing to do with that or any format and do not match the usage of the format in the rest of the article, which is, correctly, "---." [In Wikipedia editing style, one can make it look like a shorter long dash: namely: –––.] --NYScholar 00:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC) [I restored my previous use of "Harold Pinter" as the author in the heading, so that repeating his name and using "---" is no longer necessary again. See "Cleanup" heading above and the cleanup tag on the article now relating to these problems. --NYScholar 02:35, 31 July 2006 (UTC)] [Updated after further cleanup of "References." --NYScholar 21:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)]

I am about to bring you to the attention of arbitration for more than Wikipedia:3RR: for intentional and malicious harassment. Desist, or I will. At this point, you appear to me to be embarrassing yourself and Wikipedia. --NYScholar 00:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll have to restore the descriptions of books relating to the ISBN numbers etc. later; if you removed them, I haven't time to replace them there. They weren't ads; they were catalogue descriptions of the books for purposes of verification of the sources by those who don't have copies of the books (which I do have). I have referred to the actual sources themselves, not to just the descriptions. Obviously, you haven't read the content of the descriptions of the book and your (usual) kind of complaint is simply another knee-jerk response made without understanding of the relevance to verifiability and usefulness in knowing what the sources are actually about. The damage that you are doing to this article will take hours to correct, and, due to time wasted over your trivial bickering over Jacobs et al., I haven't time now to work on any of this. I've saved previous versions and will restore as needed later. --NYScholar 02:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed the remaining descriptions that another editor inconsistently left in the article. It's not worth my time to try to reconstruct what she deleted before, and I had provided them only for people's knowledge and convenience. I won't make that effort again. --NYScholar 05:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Dispute

I have brought this article to the attention of administrators. While the changes made by SlimVirgin are being investigated, I have added a "cleanup" tag to the article as well. I dispute the accuracy of her very misleading claims about format and her changes to the previously-correct format. MLA format is the appropriate format to use for this subject. See Wikipedia:Citing Sources. --NYScholar 00:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

After having finished cleaning up others' errors and problems in this article over the past couple of months, over the past day, I have cleaned up the inaccuracies and mistakes that SV has introduced. (Though by now there could be more, since it's taking a long time to write these comments. It's been over four hours of work just since adding the message about the tag below! None of it had to be done, and I really object to what has happened to this article due to what SV did to it.)

For example, as my previous and current note to Billington's authorized biography of Pinter indicate (now restored), Pinter's parents were not "immigrants"; they were born in England. The source that SV added (Crown) has errors in it. One does not cite a secondary or tertiary source ("intermediate sources" according to Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Reliable sources) if primary sources are available. The official Nobel Prize website (already listed in the external links before and now) is a primary source of information about Pinter's Nobel Prize; it is what one should cite, not some newspaper article which uses online biographies of questionable reliability and sources like Wikipedia articles (which are often incorrect, as this one has been in previous versions) for information. The reason that I began working on this article was because I recognized how many errors it used to contain. Over the past two months, I corrected the errors.

SlimVirgin, who it appears to me knows nothing or little about the subject Harold Pinter other than what she has read in the article that I expanded in the last 2 months and in a few newspaper articles and websites (and perhaps other than the sources that I already linked), repeatedly made changes based on what I know to be sources that cannot be cited in this article. She introduced and continued to re-introduce factual errors from one newspaper article that is incorrect in what she paraphrases from it. (She doesn't give a quotation; I found where she got the material in that one source, and Pinter himself and Billington both correct it; Pinter's parents were both born in England; they are not "immigrants," so he does not come from an "immigrant" Eastern-European background. THEIR [parents] and HIS [grandparents], or his ancestors were, as the article said before SV changed it; "ancestry.")

SV has repeatedly re-inserted information that I deleted because I know that it is not documented in Billington's published book or in any other source already used in the essay or that can be used in the essay (given WP:Reliable sources. If SV has no source that she can cite authoritatively and reliably, and she does not add any citation to back it up, then she cannot add unsourced information to the article or add it back into the article after I have removed it (phrases, unsubstantiated "facts"). Such unverifiable informaton does not belong in this essay.

WP:BLP pertains to Harold Pinter and other living people that the article mentions. WP:NOR applies here.) Because this article deals with a living person and refers to other living people, after reviewing W:BLP carefully over the last several days in relation to the article on Charles Jacobs (political activist), I decided that one needs to be more sensitive in this article too, and I added the "BLP" tag to this talk page to indicate that need for caution. (There was negative unsourced misinformation contained in earlier versions of this essay inserted by earlier editors, which I removed early on. [Fixed link --NYScholar 01:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)]

I also revised and corrected problems on the Wikiquotes page.

I think that SV should not work any further on this article. It uses MLA style format which she doesn't "care about." She does not know how to construct the citations in the notes so that they match the reference format being used already in the article (MLA format or based on MLA format). That is the predominant format of this article: See WP:Cite for rationale to conform to it in subsequent changes in this article, so that they are consistent.

[See WP:Cite re: importance of staying consistent to the format chosen by the article's "major editor" (the one who selected the majority of the "Notes" and "References" citations format, i.e.). (It is, of course, accurate to say that no one "owns" the article. I certainly don't think that I "own" it; but I have devoted a lot of my time to trying to improve it by adding citations to reliable sources, notes, references, and resources/external links sections, and it is extremely upsetting to see the efforts destroyed by someone who doesn't understand the documentation format already used and its actual consistency.)

See, particularly, the "technical issues about footnotes" section: "Editors should not switch from one citation system to another without checking on the talk page that there are no objections. For example, editors should not switch from footnotes to Harvard referencing, or vice versa. If no agreement can be reached, the system used by the first major contributor to use one should be deferred to. However, this advice does not apply to switching from one footnote style to another, which may simply constitute a technical improvement" (italics added for emphasis). In my view, the changes that SV made were not a "technical improvement"; they introduced multiple errors and inconsistences in the article and thus worsened rather than improved it. (updates)--NYScholar 01:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)]

I am aware that with Pinter's winning the Nobel Prize, more and more people are seeking accurate information about him. That is a main reason why I spent so much time on this article and why, in the very-detailed note 2, I took this opportunity to correct erroneous or misleading details about his family background posted all over the internet.

Billington is Pinter's authorized biographer--his biography is based on extensive and intensive interviews with Pinter, it is scrupulously documented for the most part, and scholars and critics consider it the current standard authoritative source of facts about Pinter's life, as are Pinter's own later published and broadcast interview remarks, which this Wikipedia article now also cites as verifiable sources throughout and in the references. When Billington publishes an updated and expanded edition of his biographical study of Pinter and his work, this article can incorporate the new information as deemed relevant by future editors. --NYScholar 04:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Removed tag (at least for time being); will return to re-post it if future editors introduce more errors and problems.--NYScholar 07:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC) [re-added tag while working on further cleanup. After that, removed it. Will add again if necessary.]--NYScholar 12:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:3RR

Warning to SlimVirgin (again). Brought to the attention of administrators.--NYScholar 00:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Renewed warning. SV's persistent re-introduction of previous errors through reverting to them is causing same problems. She is not knowledgeable about the subject, chooses unreliable sources of information about it to cite, and adds factual inaccuracies and other kinds of errors to the article without realizing it; when informed of these inaccuracies, she reintroduces them, without concern for the overall accuracy of the article. See the tag at the top of this page referring to WP:BLP and see WP:AD.--NYScholar 01:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

References

I've put the References section in alphabetical order (per WP:CITE and every book I've ever read). The way they were laid out was confusing and made it hard to find anything; the whole point of the section is to make it easy to see, at a glance, who has been used as a source. Please edit in accordance with WP:CITE and WP:MoS. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Once again--see earlier warnings--you have created more problems. Apparently, you don't know how to alphabetize or the order of letters in the alphabet. The last time you changed the order, you mis-alphabetized. Now "there you go again." I suggest, once again, that you stay out of this article. You are wrecking other people's (especially my) hard work. Other Wikipedia articles do use single and double bullets (asterisks) to indicate works relating to works in reference lists. Apparently, you don't know that. You do not improve the article with the changes you make and revert; you weaken the article. You are not the only reader of this article, and you are not a bibliographer. You don't know or care about the format used in this bibliography (as you yourself have said), and, therefore, you are not equipped to edit (to "improve") it. Every time you change something, you make more mistakes.--NYScholar 03:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Before I saw this additional problem, I had just posted a WP:3RR repeat warning to Slim Virgin re: Harold Pinter on her user talk page. --NYScholar 03:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

There was a logic to the previous version of the References which, apparently, SV could not perceive. I suggest that she go back into the article and make the changes back to the way the References list was before she wrecked it. Let her get the headache.--NYScholar 03:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC) [Updated: As she never fixed the mistakes, I fixed them later. See my subsequent explanations. --NYScholar 22:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)]

NYS, please leave notes about articles on the article talk pages, not on my user talk page. I don't care about most of the idiosyncratic citation things you want to add. My main concern here is that the References section was very confusing to read, and References section are always in alphabetical order, so I changed that. Also, you have a tendency to alter headlines; these should be copied exactly from the text. And there's no need to make citations longer than is necessary: the longer they are, the harder it is to read and to find the essential information (where and when published, and by whom). Ditto with wikifying: wikifying once is usually enough, unless the article is quite long, but to wikify the same publication over and over even in the same sentence is unnecessary and makes the text hard to read.

You seem to have taken ownership of this page and a couple of others. While I respect editors who are protective toward articles they're working on, it shouldn't cross the line into ownership, where you regard yourself as the only person allowed to edit it. You are complaining about my edits to this page and two others. You have made 349 edits to this page; I have made 28. You have made 162 edits to Charles Jacobs (political activist); I have made 16. You have made 62 edits to the David Project; I have made 11. Most of your edits are minor and involve undoing the fixes that other people have made. Please allow other people to edit these articles. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Note WP:CITE: alphabetical order. [1] SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: SV's request not to leave comments about the article on her talk page; what I left was a WP:3RR warning (twice) pertaining to this article on her talk page, not comments about the article: the Wikipedia's Administrators' notice about 3RR at WP:AN3 says to follow the procedure of posting such a warning in the user's talk page:

"If you find yourself in a revert war, it is a good idea to ensure that the "other side" is aware of the 3RR, especially if they are new, by leaving a warning about WP:3RR on their talk page. Administrators are unlikely to block a user who has never been warned. If you report a 3RR violation here it is good form to inform the person you are reporting of this on their talk page and provide a link to this page WP:AN/3RR." (italics added). [I have not yet listed any of the 3RR warnings that I have made to SV on WP:AN/3RR.]

SV: From my pov, there seems to be some hypocrisy in your telling me not to post such comments as 3RR warnings on your talk page (where you would be most likely to see them and in a section on your talk page with the "3RR" heading started by another user some time ago)--and referring to them as if they were "notes about articles," since you yourself had posted a (possibly-pre) 3RR warning on my talk page re: Charles Jacobs (political activist). When you were reverting my changes to that article and this article on Harold Pinter, I posted 3RR warnings on your talk page. That is the procedure. After you removed my repeated 3RR warnings from your talk page recently and blocked me from adding them there, I also removed the discussions about 3RR from my talk page. I have, however, stated them repeatedly to you, because you have reverted my changes multiple (way more than 3) times in 24 hours and also because it has proved so time-consuming for me to continually have to correct your mistakes, which I believe constitute a kind of "sneaky" WP:Vandalism of this article; changes that you make are not "good-faith" attempts to improve the article but rather vindictive attempts to retaliate for changes made to another article (see your own comparative statistics above that you give re: other article, which are really not relevant to this one, especially since my changes were attempts to correct mistakes in your reversions of my earlier good-faith editing changes to it). The number of changes that I have made to articles is proportional to the content added and errors corrected (many of them mechanical errors, some of them my own, which I needed to correct in stages, since I couldn't see notes while previewing editing to separate sections). It is sometimes very hard to read the editing box and, even though I do use the preview feature, I do not catch all typographical errors in doing so, or I come up with an improved way to state something later. This are all "good-faith" edits and not comparable to what you are doing in your changes, which is introducing inconsistences erratically and arbitrarily without following the documentation format that already is used in the article. [Added and then updated this comment after the series of comments below it.]--NYScholar 02:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)--NYScholar 20:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW: in the link that SV provided re: alphabetization, the very "References" list given as an example is itself not alphabetized! The list that I provided initially was alphabetized; it used single and double bullets and the alphabetization continued in each series of single and double- bulleted items. (It's a format that I have found used in other Wikipedia articles; if I had not noticed it and thought it useful, I would not have paralleled it.) But I did change the list of "References" later, into a single-bulleted alphabetical list, correcting the errors in alphabetization that SV made, as explained below. [I added this comment after the one below, made earlier.]--NYScholar 02:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

SlimVirgin operates according to her own non-standard rules of alphabetizing [and is apparently unaware of what words are supposed to be capitalized in titles (MLA has uniform practices re: that too, which I have been following in my editing of this article).]. She continually cites WP:CITE, yet she herself clearly has not read the entire article there. She needs to consult MLA format rules for alphabetization [and capitalization of words in titles]. Every style sheet (and one follows the predominant style sheet used in the article already in existence before she came to it), has its specific rules to follow for listing bibliographies, notes, alphabetization in bibliographies, and so on. MLA calls bibliographies lists of "Works Cited" or "Works Consulted" or "Selected Bibliography" and so on. SlimVirgin (see previous comments either here or on other talk pages where she has been harassing me) has previously said she doesn't "care" about MLA format rules; well, in that case, she has no business working on articles which already use that established format and which are about subjects that she knows nothing about and about which she has nothing substantive to contribute. To know what the format is, one must either use the guidelines in the links provided or get out an MLA Style Manual or look them up elsewhere online or in print publications. To go into an article that is already correct according to the style sheet chosen (MLA in this case) and to alter inconsistently some parts of it to some other possible but not required format (in additionally inconsistent ways), is to ruin the actual accuracy of the citations so that other readers will not be able to figure out how to find an item if a link becomes dead (one needs all the information, not just some of it, and correct punctuation is important). Continually to revert my already-correct format in notes to incorrect format (mixing up punctuation that MLA format uses in bibliographies into the notes introduces errors that make it difficult to understand the entries). The entries are constructed according to MLA format and the punctuation is part of that format. Every entry must end with a period, for example; many times SV left those off in deleting other things. She also linked things in a confusing way instead of following the way they were already linked. She started linking dates instead of titles of articles or organizations instead of those titles, for e.g., and had no consistent manner in those changes. All style sheets are based on the principle of consistency; they are "languages" of a kind (sign systems); unless one is extremely "fluent" in the use of the style sheet, as I am, one really should not attempt to change the work of another editor, who found the sources, cited them, and knows what he or she is doing. [Further updated after fixing SV's mistakes (again). The number of edits that I have done are largely do to my having to correct her errors. Other edits are what I have contributed to this article over a period of approx. two months.]--NYScholar 07:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

What is at issue is not a question of "ownership" or a "personal" matter. What is at issue is editorial practice: knowing how to read format guidelines for alphabetizing and how to follow them. [updated --NYScholar 22:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)]

SlimVirgin turns this dispute about editing the format of bibliographies into personal attacks; but I am questioning her editorial practices, which I do find "questionable." [NB: From my own point of view, this is an "editorial" dispute, not a "personal" one. I object to SV's attempt to drag it down to a "personal" level, and her making personal attacks on me as an editor; as I say, it seems to me that she is interjecting an editorial dispute from another article into this one on Harold Pinter and perceiving the differences of editorial documentation formatting as a "personal" conflict, when they are not. The differences have to do with the documentation format (MLA) used for articles about literary subjects. The MLA format, which has a method of supplying links to embedded URLs, is appropriate for an article about a playwright who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature for the body of his dramatic work.)[updated--NYScholar 22:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)]

Once again: see WP:Cite and read all the material linked at the MLA Style sheet links. [See also W:Citation. --NYScholar 19:52, 7 August 2006 (UTC)] Go to MLA as linked by Wikipedia and via MLA to direct links to the MLA Style Manual etc., or, if one is in college, to a writing center which has the various bibliographical documentation style sheets. Wikipedia does not invent these documentation formats; it adheres to those already in existence. Read more closely.

NB: Please do not confuse the accurate MLA-style punctuation of quotations within quotations in bibliographies and notes and in texts (in which commas come inside the quotation marks, except for colons and semi-colons) with the Wikipedia's own particular style of punctuation for what its Style Manual calls "scare quotes." [E.g., in the previous sentence, I am not using "scare quotes" but I am simply quoting a phrase from the source (Wikipedia Manual of Style). [If they were "scare quotes," as in, say the word really said with sarcasm, in a primary source, then perhaps Wikipedia would punctuate it as, "She said that he said, "'Really'." (There is a sarcastic tone of voice implied.) Otherwise, quoting exactly, without any implication about a tone of voice, the phrase is punctuated, "She said that he said, "Really." (There is no tone of voice implied.) For the latter, if I quote the whole sentence, I would render it as: "'She said that he said, "Really."'" (Even knowing with certainty whether or not a phrase is indeed a "scare quote" requires interpretation of intention, which most users of Wikipedia would not have if they do not have access to a printed source and are not able to know about another Wikipedia user with certainty. For example, often there is no "scare" intention in my own quotation of phrases within double and double and then single quotation marks. I am simply quoting a source's title or part of a passage from a source, and the quotation marks indicate that. Thus, if I am quoting a quotation within a quotation, the quotations of single words or short phrases are not "scare quotes" and should not be punctuated as if they were. There are legitimate quotations of quoted phrases and punctuated as such (following MLA punctuation of quotation rules). Different style manuals handle punctuation of quotations differently, and it is important to be consistent; otherwise, readers will mis-read the sentence being quoted as if there were an implied tone of voice in it, when there is not one. [If I have made any errors there, I will return to correct them later after checking primary sources.] But please do not change bibliographical citations and notes by altering the punctuation of titles as if they are "scare quotes" because they are not. These are actual quotations within quotations and follow precise punctuation rules (which are not necessarily the same as Wikipedia's style for punctuating so-called "scare quotes" and therefore should not be changed to that style arbitrarily, especially if one does not know or has not read or examined the primary source of the quotation). Without doing so, one cannot know what kind of quotation something is. I'll review phrases used intentionally ironically in the article later if I have time; perhaps I'll find something to fix. But I haven't done so yet, and I have intentionally rendered quotations within titles consistent with MLA format punctuation rules (which frequently different from, say, Chicago Manual of Style and APA and at times occasionally more-idiosyncratic Wikipedia Style Manual guidelines (also not requirements). Note also that "citation templates" at this time are neither "recommended" or "required" by Wikipedia.) An important rule of thumb is consistency for accuracy and clarity.[update]--NYScholar 01:54, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

In the case of this particular article on Harold Pinter, I volunteered my own time and effort to improve what I saw as an article which, before I began working on it, was filled with errors and needed development, especially use of Wikipedia:Reliable sources.^[1]

Wikipedia users and editors need to educate themselves in the many discipline-specific styles of documentation. As a start (and it's just a start), read again WP:Cite, which explains the importance of choosing documentation styles consistent with the disciplines of the subjects of articles. When no consistent format has already been chosen for an article, as it points out, one should choose a documentation format style (e.g. MLA, APA, ACS, or styles given as examples--and only for illustration purposes) that matches the discipline of the subject and then follow it consistently according to the guidelines of the publications of the organization involved (e.g., MLA, APA, ACS) (online and print). [Updated]--NYScholar 22:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

See also W:Citation for further information about the various accepted general and disciplinary-specific documentation formats for citations in notes and lists of works cited ("References"). [I just added this link to discussion above too, for other Wikipedia users' information and convenience.] --NYScholar 19:52, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup update

I have finished copy-editing and correcting this article (unless I find more errors later!), restoring the notes and references to MLA format consistent with the discipline of the subject (literature). Arbitrary changes by user SV, such as altering what was previously-correct punctuation, capitalization, and alphabetization, and removing "online posting" in the "References" created confusing inconsistencies in the format. A documentation style (such as MLA format used throughout this article) must be consistent and uniformly applied; lack of consistency and uniform application of style guidelines leads to confusion for readers, especially those readers interested in a specialized topic (e.g., Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature) who are familiar with its documentation format and who know how to read and to understand it.

The current format of this article is useful both online and in print (when the article is printed out; printable version is an option in Wikipedia, and many Wikipedia users print the articles and read them offline).

Without accurate bibliographical information in the "References" and the "Notes," the article is weaker and less useful to the wide readership of Wikipedia.

As Wikipedia articles are "open source" and often copied as is and re-posted elsewhere (with requisite credit given to Wikipedia) and often translated into other languages and then re-posted, it is essential that the articles be accurate both in content and style, which includes consistency in both documentation and documentation format. Producing such consistency requires an eye for detail that not everyone has. If one is not particularly interested in such detailed copy-editing, or in the accuracy of punctuation, including capitalization, then there is no reason to involve oneself in such copy-editing. One is bound to introduce errors that worsen rather than improve the article.

To Wikipedia users/editors: I have devoted a great deal of time and care to trying to make this article accurate and free from error. If any major errors (not minor mechanical and typographical errors such as those involving stray punctuation or clear cases of misspelling) appear to remain, please post a comment about your perception of the error on this talk page. That way other Wikipedia users and I (if I see your comment) can consider the problem and discuss how to resolve it. If there is no significant problem, there is no reason to edit the article.

Please do not make arbitrary changes to the "Notes" and "References" or re-format them arbitrarily. Instead, please make suggestions for such changes and engage in discussion about them on this talk page.

I understand that people may want to add information about Harold Pinter to the article. If so, please post the information that you are interested in adding and the rationale for adding it, so that other Wikipedia editors can discuss such matters, especially if these matters might spark controversy. Participating in such discussion can result in feedback on the accuracy of the information and useful sources for verifying and documenting.

Before commenting on this page and/or before posting any information about Harold Pinter on this talk page or in this article, please read the BLP tag warning at the top, particularly the items linked in the tag. Thank you very much. --NYScholar 06:51, 3 August 2006 (UTC) (UTC)

Nobel medal (images of)

[. . . .] The Nobel medal and each Nobel medal are trademarked and their images are both trademarked and copyright protected; see the copyright notices on the Nobel Foundation official website; I added a link to the Literature Nobel Medal webpage in "External links" in the article for those who need more information. --NYScholar 01:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC); updated --NYScholar 19:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Once again, I have deleted the Nobel medal image that another editor added after I wrote the above comment. There are clear-cut copyright violations in the posting of this image in Wikipedia Commons that have not been dealt with. If one clicks on the image, there is a clear reference to the fact that the image is marked for deletion due to copyright violations. See Nobel medal image talk page for updated explanation and quotations from the copyright notice of the Nobel Foundation. --NYScholar 19:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A user added the Nobel Prize in Literature Medal image (now with a registered, copyright notice to the design as a caption that shows up when moving cursor over it with mouse) back into this article. Then a different user objected to its placement on the page as "horrible," resized it as a thumbnail, and moved it down. I've re-located the thumbnail image tag to the section about the prize (further down), where such an illustration (if permitted) appears more appropriate. (See discussions of potential problem of not getting written permission to do so and of "fair use" claims on the image talk page and other related article talk pages pertaining to the Nobel Prize if one wants more information.) --NYScholar 18:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Another user (SoothingR) has now deleted the Nobel Medal image from the article without any discussion on this talk page, claiming that it is not "fair use," apparently unaware of the extensive discussion of this issue in this talk page and the talk page for the Nobel Prize and on my own archived talk page, where an administrator reverted my own earlier attempts to question "fair use." Is this issue resolved or unresolved? Has Wikipedia yet heard from the Nobel Foundation's public relations administrator regarding this matter (requirement of written permissions for use of trademarked and copyrighted images of Nobel Medals throughout Wikipedia)? If so, what is the status of this situation? --NYScholar 04:15, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Honors

Explanation: Please do not revert to "Honours."

"Honors" is the Am. spelling and acceptable. Wikipedia redirects "honors" to "honours"; but there is no Wikipedia link being used in the heading. The article uses American spelling consistently. Changing one spelling introduces an inconsistency. British spelling "honour" is followed for the actual titles of the honors conveyed, as for quotations of them. Use of capital letters for such honors indicates the name of the title or honor or prize. It is acceptable in Wikipedia to use American spelling. American editors (like me) use American spelling. The nationality of the subject does not govern the spelling to be used. Many articles in the English version of Wikipedia on subjects of various nationalities use American spelling. --NYScholar 18:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

For more information, see the following Wikipedia article American and British English differences, especially the sections relating to spelling or orthography. Please be careful not to introduce inconsistencies of spelling into this article; the text of this article currently attempts to conform consistently with conventions of American spelling, American punctuation and quotation, MLA (Modern Language Association of America) usage. See WP:Cite, and other Wikipedia policies and articles that I've already linked to in earlier comments and replies. If in doubt, please review the conventions. (I've already addressed some of these issues in earlier comments and replies to others' comments and changes above in this talk page; so please read those too.) Thanks. --NYScholar 18:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

See also: English Wikipedia#Controversies for further perspective on the importance of consistency of conventions within the texts of Wikipedia articles: "The policy, however, is to prefer an appropriate form of English for articles of regional scope (e.g., Canadian English for subjects related to Canada) but otherwise to allow the use of any variety of English, as long as the variety of English is consistent throughout the text of an article" (English Wikipedia#National stylistic conventions). An article on a Nobel laureate and world-renowned subject like Harold Pinter is of international (not regional or national) scope, and this usage of American English (as long as "consistent throughout the text of an article") is thus allowed. --NYScholar 19:55, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Not a criticism... but does the above mean that if someone started an article on a US president (most certainly a figure of international scope) using, say, Australian English, it would be left alone? I highly doubt it... 86.135.7.184 03:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

You miss the point of "The policy, however, is to prefer an appropriate form of English for articles of regional scope (e.g., Canadian English for subjects related to Canada) but otherwise to allow the use of any variety of English, as long as the variety of English is consistent throughout the text of an article" (English Wikipedia#National stylistic conventions)." How "someone started" the article is not the issue; as it stands, this article consistently uses American English and there is no rationale for changing all the American English usages consistently used in it to another usage. When a title of a work or an entity or a source or a quotation uses English spelling, it is consistently being followed in this article as it is. (Please go to the Wikipedia policy cited about English-language usage and read it in context. Please don't take it out of context to make some unrelated point.) It is violating the Wikipedia quoted policy to change consistencies within this article to inconsistencies by editing without concern for the prevailing and consistent English-language usage (American English). --NYScholar 05:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

So what if somebody took the time to revise the entire article into English spelling? Would you, NYScholar, insist in reverting it? (Not that I could be arsed to do it personally - this article got way past "human-readable" format long ago). 81.129.31.22 01:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Inappropriate material deleted

It is inappropriate for an anonymous editor to add (with erroneous heading format) as a separate section to what is already a long article the entire text of a letter signed by Harold Pinter and others. There are many, many letters of this kind that Pinter signs. Such letters are already mentioned in the section on his political activism. The material added is misplaced and should not be quoted in full in the body of this article. The entire text of the very same letter is already accessible in the note in the section on "political activism." Please read articles like this one more carefully before just adding material to it as the anononymous editor has done in this case. I've deleted the material entirely as it is already accessible in note 30, keyed to the section on "political activism." (I added the citation [though redundant] to the same letter published in The Independent; as the letter was distributed to the international media, it is published in many such venues, and it is not possible or necessary to list each occurrence of its publication.) --NYScholar 00:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC) [Updated link to note 30 as notes automatically re-numbered since first posting this comment. If note numbers change in future, please keep this in mind when searching for what is currently note 30. Note also that in current links, note number 30 reads as if it were note number 29; numbers in links are one digit lower than actual note numbers keyed to main article text.] --NYScholar 18:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ongoing deletions of inappropriate and irresponsible insertions by anonymous IPs; e.g., User: 75.213.170.156 and User: 81.145.240.22. --NYScholar 09:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Image of Harold Pinter used in this article were tagged by Wikipedia for speedy deletion

There have been copyright/lack of fair use rationale problems with two images of Harold Pinter uploaded by other editors to Wikipedia Commons without giving any "fair use rationale" at all. Most recently, the image originally uploaded by User:Raul654 that showed up in this article as "Image:Harold Pinter.jpg" (which User:Slarre replaced the previous image with); both images have lack of fair use rationales despite claims of fair use. The tagged notices mark them for speedy deletion. Wikipedia editors are required to delete them from any articles using them. For more information, see This image is a candidate for speedy deletion. It will be deleted after 2006-12-01.. After seeing the messages about one of these images from Wikipedia today, I posted the appropriate templates on the talk pages of the two users who uploaded them to Wikipedia Commons (as requested in the templates). These problems of potential violations of copyright and unsubstantiated claims of fair use need to be taken seriously by Wikipedia users, according to the Wikipedia policies defined in the notices. --NYScholar 17:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Uploaded a new image of Harold Pinter to Wikipedia for use in this article, providing copyright information and a fair use rationale. I hope that it can stay in the article. I added related information in the resources section.--NYScholar 10:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Further resources: Other external links

Thank you to the user who provided the link added. In the future, if at all possible, please do not just toss in links to news reports and newspaper articles in this section. If there is some reason to include the news source as such in additional text in the body of the article and a citation, it needs better integration in the article. In this case, the link was thrown in at the end of an otherwise-alphabetized list of external links (not sources of citations for the text); this article features citations in "Notes." This particular information needs more work to be incorporated better in the section called "Honors" relating to "Career"; it is not parallel to the other links included in "External links." See the link:

• "French PM honours Harold Pinter with Legion D'Honneur"

It is a news article and the information needs better integration in the text and/or references list. This section of "Further resources" is for "Other external links" relating directly to the subject, not for news sources that can be better integrated as citations. [I have updated the article section "Honors" with information from this source and included it as a citation in the Notes.] --NYScholar 07:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[Portions of] Miscellaneous [section moved to talk]

<<

• On the day his Nobel Prize was announced, 13 October 2005, the Sky News reader saw his name and erroneously reported him dead. It was widely known that he had been battling esophageal cancer since 2002 and that he had fallen and injured his head in Dublin, upon returning from the Gate Theatre festival celebrating his 75th birthday that previous weekend; that knowledge may have led to her mistaken assumption.... [integrated rest in article]

>>

The article is long; a separate "Miscellaneous" section is not really needed in the article. I've moved it here so that people can consider what in it may be worth keeping in the main article and what can be omitted. -- NYScholar 01:33, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Since moving the whole section, I've already integrated some of the items previously placed in the "Miscellaneous" section by assorted users into already-existing and new sections of the article. (in progress) --NYScholar 01:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Material from note 2 (Billington biography)

With aim to shorten; source material is accessible in the Billington biography pages 1-5; here is the passage that documents facts stated in article; moved from note 2 to talk page: <<

"A constant feature of the Pinter legend, repeated in all the books, is that the family were Sephardic Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin and that the original family name was Pinto, da Pinto or da Pinta, but there seems no evidence for this whatsoever. Indeed Antonia Fraser, with a historian's passion for genealogy, sat down with Pinter's parents one afternoon after lunch in Holland Park and discovered the real story: three of Pinter's grandparents [his paternal grandfather, Nathan Pinter, and his grandmothers] hail from Poland and one [his maternal grandfather, Harry Moskowitz (in business, aka Richard Mann)] from Odessa, making them Ashkenazic rather than Sephardic Jews" (3). ("Pinter's paternal grandfather Nathan was born in Poland in 1870 and came to England alone in 1900 in the wave of Russian pograms. He later went back for his wife and family. . . . [Their] third child Jack, Harold Pinter's father, was born in the East End in 1902. . ." [2-3]. Pinter's maternal grandfather [Harry Moskowitz (Richard Mann)] emigrated to London from Odessa "via Paris" in 1900 and remarried "Polish-born Rose Franklin" following his first wife's death; Pinter's mother, Frances, their "eldest" child, was born in 1904 [3].) In the Aug. 1950 issue of Poetry London, Pinter's first poems to appear in such a poetry magazine ("New Year in the Midlands" and "Chandeliers and Shadows") were "published under the name of Harold Pinta largely because one of his aunts was convinced—against all the evidence—that the family came from distinguished Portuguese ancestors, the da Pintas" (29). Pinter also discussed his heritage with Ramona Koval, during a public interview at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August 2002, later transcribed and posted online on ABC public radio (Books and Writing). At that time, Pinter repeated some of these details, referring to speculations about his family's Hungarian and Portuguese derivations: "My mother and father were born in England, by the way, in about 1902 and 1904; so they were here. They were English. . . . they were English-Jewish. My grandparents came from a rather mysterious area which some call Odessa and others call Hungary. I have no idea. My wife is convinced that after a lot of research, and she’s pretty good at research, that my family did actually come from Odessa. And she has pretty good evidence of that. However, I found that in the 1946 Olympics there was a Hungarian sprinter called Pinter. And I also know that—I’ve been told, anyway—one of my aunts believed that we were originally da Pinta in Portugal and that we were thrown out by the Spanish Inquisition. I wasn’t quite sure whether they had a Spanish Inquisition in Portugal, but according to my aunt, they certainly did. [laughter]. [Cf. Portuguese Inquisition.] And where they went from the Spanish Inquisition is rather misty, shall we say, so I’m not quite sure . . . Anyway, in short, my background is slightly misty. But my family, nevertheless, was a very stable and conventional Jewish family." (Pintér [or Pinter] is a common Hungarian surname; Pinto, Pinta, and da Pinta are common Portuguese surnames and place names. Pinto and da Pinto also occur in Italian [by way of Portuguese]. Cf. List of most common surnames.)

--NYScholar 01:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Notes

1. ^ I have removed one citation that SV added--a newspaper article--by nature already deemed questionable in terms of reliability in WP:Reliable Sources-- because I have found that this particular article ("Nobel Prize Goes to Pinter," by Sarah Crown, published in The Guardian on 14 Oct. 2005) contains factual errors (For example, Crown says that Pinter's had "immigrant parents," but his parents were not immigrants; rather they were born in England.) It is unreliable to include as a reference in this article and to cite it directly, because then people will read it and think it is accurate, which it is not. I have (and had) already included several other sources, including other newspaper articles from the same publication, The Guardian, which have been cross-checked and which I know have correct information. Moreover, the London Guardian 's own "Special Report" lists the articles from The Guardian that the newspaper itself deems most important, and Crown is not included in its main list of links. I had already included and linked in "References" this "Special Report" two months ago, long before SV came upon the article and this apparently-sudden interest in Harold Pinter within the past few days.
   
   There is no additional reliable information that the article by Crown provides for the paragraph where SV had linked it (after she deleted my citation to the primary source), and SV's multiple reverts to include it as a source instead of the primary source that it only partially quotes, the Swedish Academy's actual press release of its own citation (linked on its website and on the Nobel Prize website), are perverse attempts to counter what I already authenticated and cited reliably. The "Special Report" about Pinter's Nobel Prize in the London Guardian also features a link to the Swedish Academy's own press release of the citation (which Crown quotes only partially from), and its link is provided in my citation and hyperlink to it. The "Bio-Bibliography" posted on both the Nobel Prize and the Swedish Academy's websites (with several language options accessible) incorporates the shorter version of the citation distributed to the press initially in its press release (and almost universally quoted by journalists like Crown) fully in its introduction. The sources that I have currently listed are the most reliable sources of the Swedish Academy's "citation."

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.