User talk:MarkB79

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Hello MarkB79! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Khoikhoi 03:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC) Getting Started Wikipedia Tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Fair use • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Build consensus • Resolving disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Pages needing attention • Peer review Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

[edit] Hitchens and Irving

I thought "convicted Holocaust denier" was sufficient, but I guess it's readable as "obscure historian", so feel free to sharpen up the context.

And it was the inclusion that I took issue with. The only source I can see for this is one journalist writing an ambiguous couple of paragraphs in a blog entry, and possibly even misinterpreting a joke by Hitchens, which seems pretty weak as a source, and pretty trivial and uncontroversial as a biographical detail (boiling down to "Hitchens approves of some aspects of Irving's work, shared a dinner party with him twice, and has since dropped social contact with him"). --McGeddon 12:15, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem is really how little information we can actually get from that article. We don't know that Hitchens invited Irving to his home for dinner, only that he "came round here a couple of times", possibly just as somebody's guest (it's not even clear where "here" is, only that it's a place where Hitchens sometimes attends dinners). The "dropping social contact" quote sounds a lot like deadpan sarcasm from Hitchens, and isn't given any context in the blog entry. And I'm not sure it's particularly notable for someone to have been a fan of "some" of Irving's work - if Hitchens was a fan of the controversial Holocaust material, then perhaps, but this obviously isn't what it says.

I'm not saying that the source is unreliable or trivial - blogs written by noted authorities are absolutely fine - only that the actual information given is too slight and ambiguous to get much information from. --McGeddon 13:29, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Norman Tebbit Doctor Who quote

WP:BLP, a Wikipedia-wide policy, directs editors as follows:

"Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space."

While there is some doubt that any such book by Eric Luskin even exists, the quote ought to be removed. --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 16:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, viewing it from a Doctor Who fan's perspective, it's unheard of for such a Virgin Publishing book to have no serious record online. And it's not the first time a satirical site has misappropriated Luskin's name for some made up nonsense.[1] --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 16:58, 21 August 2007 (UTC)