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This article is unneccesary because it is redundant. The article "Christopher Hitchens" is a sufficient place for a discussion of his political views. There is no need whatsoever for this separate article just on that subject. In any event, it gives far more detail than is of interest to nearly everyone except perhaps his mother. Hambleton (talk) 01:45, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
-Agreed. This should be merged into Christopher Hitchens. Quark1005 (talk) 05:38, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
When is the merger going to take place?203.184.41.226 (talk) 02:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree. Why a whole page of this man's views? Was he that important? Chisme (talk) 04:40, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Agreed. He was a mid-range journalist, nothing more. Wikipedia presumably doesn't aim to list every journalist's views on every subject? How do we go about getting this deleted or merged? 2.27.134.137 (talk) 17:30, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Albert Einstein's political views which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 15:29, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
There appear to be many sections of this article that cite only to primary sources. This is bad for multiple reasons. First, our policy on no original research says to be cautious about basing large passages on primary sources. Second, placing such emphasis on primary sources violates our neutrality guideline and, specifically, the fact that we should give weight to aspects of the article subject in proportion to their coverage by reliable secondary sources. Finally, we run the risk of this article becoming unencyclopedic as it reads like a soapbox for Hitchens' views.
Accordingly, I'm leaning toward blanking sections that cite only to primary sources. Any objections? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:26, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure how much primary material is considered acceptable, but it seems that at least 50/128 sources for this article are just Hitchens' own writing. Including one supporting a subheading that rather blandly just states "In March 2005, Hitchens supported further investigation into voting irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election". Should a wikipedia article really just be acting as a complete bibliography for a journalist's columns, who by definition of their trade will have expressed views about almost anything and everything at one time or another? 2.27.134.137 (talk) 17:30, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
On closer inspection it is almost worse than that, a lot of the sections are block quotes or a brief summary linking straight to the primary source i.e. a column by Hitchens himself. I am very much a wikipedia novice, do others agree that such subsections should be removed or condensed with others if nobody else has thought that particular column worth commenting on?
Otherwise the article just becomes a slightly extended bibliography of every regular column the man wrote, even on issues like the Ohio voting irregularities in 2004, which I can't imagine anyone considers of historic or general importance anymore. Or at least not to the extent of needing to separately list every opinion stated on the subject somewhere on wikipedia. I am genuinely unsure what the standard is for wikipedia. If this is the usual way of doing things so be it. 2.27.134.137 (talk) 10:48, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Just a small point. Most of the Bosnian War subsection is a quote from an interview with Johann Hari. A few years after this interview Hari was drummed out of British journalism in disgrace for fabricating interview quotes to make them more fluent and impressive (among other things). After one initial example was found it became clear he'd been doing this quite a lot. I have no evidence to prove this particular quote is fabricated, but it is perhaps another good reason to integrate it into 3rd person text rather than relying so much on the block quote. 2.27.134.137 (talk) 09:11, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I've deleted a bunch of word-for-word duplicated paragraphs. Just want to check this is correct. Is there any situation where directly duplicating paragraphs of content in different subsections would be correct? 2.27.134.137 (talk) 10:19, 19 August 2016 (UTC)