Talk:Ian Hislop

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I have just added archive links to 4 external links on Ian Hislop. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

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Second ok, first ok but useless. Third and fourth no good. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:21, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Ian Hislop/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

I think the quote about Gervais' quip; "What does he know the little pug-faced cunt?" is taken out of context here, as it was a response to Hislop calling Gervais' stand up "rude and offensive", and therefore an obvious punchline to a joke, rather than a mere crude insult. Anybody agree?

Last edited at 14:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 18:41, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Gervais is completely up himself, so who knows? 2A00:23C5:6787:1000:990D:8C27:2873:734F (talk) 18:48, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Children

I see little relevance in identifying (a) the London Borough in which his children were born or (b) the fact that they both studied at Oxford. PDAWSON3 (talk) 02:52, 30 November 2017 (UTC)PDAWSON3[reply]

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Sentence in Sonia Sutcliffe article

The Sonia Sutcliffe reads "According to an interview with Cherwell magazine, he had in fact expected to be imprisoned", citing this source. Ignoring the fact he doesn't appear to have actually said it in the interview, is there any truth to it? Why would Hislop be prepared to go to prison when it was a libel case? Furthermore it was a libel case against Private Eye not him personally. Posting this here with a link on that article's talk page, as this page seems more likely to get a reply, as I believe the sentence should be removed. 2A02:C7D:3CAF:D900:50E:5AA8:D5BD:B89B (talk) 20:01, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

After some investigating it appears the toothbrush anecdote was an unrelated contempt of court case, according to an interview with his wife. 2A02:C7D:3CAF:D900:50E:5AA8:D5BD:B89B (talk) 20:16, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Categories - moved from other talk pages

For context: extracts from previous discussion - moved from User talk:Mathsci, where the full comments [which deal with other matters too] may be found.

If you disagree about my clean-up, you're free to object to it (if there are valid reasons: reading index term, WP:DEFCAT and WP:NONDEF might help see where I'm coming from), ideally without deliberately ({{noping}}!!) not including me in the discussion? Cheers (if somewhat less jovial than usual), RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For British satirists and comedians—Ian Hislop, Richard Ingrams, Eleanor Bron, Peter Cook, David Frost, John Cleese, Michael Palin—education almost always appears as a category where it is known. It's true of the Aussie Barry Humphries. It's true of Paul Merton, Caroline Quentin, Sandy Toksvig, Alan Davies, etc. Mathsci (talk) 18:15, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Education almost always appears as a category where it is known. Argumentum ad populum non mihi persuadet. Long-standing pages (or categories) being deleted is not unheard of, and this might be a case where this option needs to be exercised. I'm not feeling inclined to keep quoting WP:NONDEF, but it's clear that if you're looking for keywords to describe Ian Hislop (or any of the other examples), "alumni of X college" is not one (see also the Caravaggio example of the guideline, or the thought experiment I propose on Einstein's talk page [what are the first few words that come to mind when thinking of/which would best summarise X?]) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:12, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ian Hislop is regularly on the telly (eg documentaries about the two princes). Richard Ingrams still has some attachment to Private Eye: his categories remain intact. I also checked David Conway—same college as Nicholas Wade. Mathsci (talk) 13:54, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ian Hislop: was my previous comment too long? is that why you missed (or at least, do not appear to have responded to) the most important part of it. Other pages being similarly wrong is not a reason to copy them. i.e. two wrongs don't make a right, or, as I was saying, argumentum ad populum non mihi persuadet RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:25, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Mathsci, and thanks for your message.

Per WP:BRD, I have restored[1] the categories on Ian Hislop, pending discussion. @User:RandomCanadian should not editwar.

There is a tension here between guidance and established practice. On one hand, WP:NONDEF and WP:COPDEF suggest caution in categorising by non-core attributes. On the other hand, established practice involves much more intensive categorisation of people, such as that on Ian Hislop

I don't think that these issues can be easily resolved. For example the alumni/people-educated-at categories are very rarely the first thing we think of a person, and if WP:COPDEF was applied very strictly, then those categories would be emptied, which amounts to a form of deletion. However, I think it is very unlikely that such categories would be deleted at CFD, so emptying them would not reflect consensus.

Hope this helps. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Everything you've written has been very helpful. Thanks a lot. Mathsci (talk) 11:27, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is unacceptable WP:FORUMSHOP. Mathsci, there was a discussion on your talk page, which you've recently blanked (and where you did not answer to my questions), with edit summary "read". I find it unhelpful that you come here to continue this without leaving me a notice (and that I must thus thank BHG for giving me a ping); and without addressing any of my arguments (such as those BHG also points out). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:25, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RandomCanadian & @Mathsci: please discuss this on the article's talk page ... and until there is a consensus, please retain the status quo ante. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:31, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Renewed discussion

Moved from BHG's talk to avoid having the discussion on three separate pages... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:44, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you object to Category:Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford (which IMO comes into 'factoid by which we routinely categorise', like 'people from', 'nationality', 'year of birth', 'year of death') then take the whole category to cfd rather than removing articles here and there. I would say there is no chance of this gaining consensus, as efforts to delete the alumni tree for schools have always failed. Eg Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 April 21#High school alumni (United States). Oculi (talk) 20:31, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Oculi: That's 13 years ago; and most of the arguments would probably not mean anything by today's standards. Besides the alumni categories (which are clearly not-defining, however you put it), there's also "British people of Jersey descent"; "British people of Scottish descent"; and "British Anglicans". The first two are not defining characteristics (the national origin of this subject's parents do not seem to have much if any influence on his claim to fame - he was born in Wales, fwiw: probably another instance of a cat-tree that needs to be trimmed/deleted too); and the final one, while it gets slightly more than a passing mention in the article (and is much more of a viable category than the others), is still not something that is "commonly and consistently" used by sources to refer to this subject. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:23, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The additional problem of alumni cats is that, unlike the false equivalence you are making with nationality and biographical dates, is that they are unlikely to be plausible search terms (WP:CATS and WP:DEFCAT really makes me think of categories more as "keywords" than anything else, and well, "British journalists" is a plausible keyword to describe someone), and they are too frequently entirely unsourced and/or not even mentioned in the article... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:32, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Welsh?

As can be clearly seen in this source he doesn't really see himself as Welsh, saying: "I was born in Wales. I didn't spend very long there." Martinevans123 (talk) 19:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting. I was just looking for a source that says he does identify as Welsh, but the fact that he actively doesn't identify as Welsh is even better (as much as I'd love to claim him). – Pee Jay 23:01, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]