Talk:David Irving

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^{Date: 04:08, 16 February 2025 (UTC)}

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David Irving has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 30, 2005	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
August 7, 2005	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
November 4, 2010	Peer review	Reviewed
February 12, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed
August 3, 2011	Good article reassessment	Kept
A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on March 24, 2017.
Current status: Good article

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Cahal Milmo and Aline Nassif (25 April 2008). "Legal victory for B&B owner who evicted Irving for being too moody". The Independent.
Cnaan Liphsiz (5 May 2009). "Wikipedia editors: Coverage of Israel 'problematic'". Ha'aretz.

Section sizes

Section size for David Irving (37 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	16,015	16,015
Early life	3,299	3,299
Student years	2,000	5,513
Carnival Times article	3,513	3,513
The Destruction of Dresden	5,470	6,073
1963 burglary of Irving's flat	603	603
Subsequent works	5,813	5,813
Revisionism	17	14,401
Hitler's War	4,701	4,701
Irving's work in the late 1970s and early 1980s	5,478	5,478
Hitler Diaries	3,400	3,400
Other books	805	805
Holocaust denial	21	38,706
Movement towards Holocaust denial	4,254	4,254
Increasingly public Holocaust denial	13,005	13,005
1990s	2,152	2,152
Ernst Zündel trial	6,517	6,517
Holocaust denial lecture circuit	12,757	12,757
Racism and antisemitism	4,405	4,405
Persona non grata	5,572	29,382
Libel suit	5,645	5,645
Life after the libel suit	11,498	11,498
2009 Norwegian Festival of Literature	6,667	6,667
Reception by historians	4,831	4,831
Personal life	1,832	2,577
Illness	745	745
In popular culture	1,918	1,918
Works	2,508	2,508
See also	157	157
References	15	10,265
Explanatory notes	48	48
Citations	533	533
Bibliography	7,114	7,114
Reviews	342	342
News articles	2,027	2,027
Film	186	186
External links	1,953	1,953
Total	147,816	147,816

Photo

Isn't the photo used a bit too obviously propagandist? He looks mean and "in-your-face" and grumpy. Isn't this just a very basic, a very crude way of immediately portraying him as a villain?

I'd think the article- or the man's works themselves- would do a proper job of displaying him for, well, himself. Having an unflattering picture, while it works on "the plebs", will have the opposite effect on the sort of people who might actually bother reading him.

How about finding a neutral picture? Something that doesn't bias the reader one way or the other?

(Sorry if my editing isn't proper; I very, very, very rarely engage in this sort of thing)

I think I "sign" with three+ tilde signs? 85.220.85.93 (talk) 03:51, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly think it is neutral. 2601:248:5181:5C70:1502:8587:7BB9:1A6F (talk) 08:12, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

uncited claim about divorce

In the article, it states that "Irving's affairs caused his first marriage to end in divorce in 1981." - but there is no citation. I think this should be removed as per WP:BLP. 45.178.73.82 (talk) 21:02, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA concerns

I am concerned that this article no longer meets the good article criteria. Some of my concerns are listed below:

At over 11,000 words, WP:TOOBIG suggests that it might be split up or summarised more effectively.
The article relies too much on block quotes: removing and summarising these will help reduce the article length.
There are many sources listed in the bibliography that are not used as inline citations: these should be considered for their inclusion or removed.
Some sections are too large and should be broken up with headings.

Is anyone interested in fixing up this article, or should it go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 02:56, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the problem is as great as you lay out. The article is written well, and covers a lot of territory with appropriate detail. 156 kb isn't outlandishly big. WP:TOOBIG says "the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material."

The GA version in 2011 contained block quotes, too. The block quotes convey a great deal of information including Irving's deeply hateful tone, which would disappear if summarized.

Feel free to reduce the bibliography. Binksternet (talk) 03:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Binksternet: Sorry I did not respond to this sooner: I missed it on my watchlist. Responses below

I do not think the scope of this topic can justify the length: if there were already attempts to spin out the article, I could agree with this, but this article has not done so yet so I do not think all of this information should stay here.
Regarding block quotes: WP:NOR says we should not be making interpretations of the work. Instead, Wikipedia should be presenting what secondary sources have said about the topic. If the block quotes "convey a great deal of information including Irving's deeply hateful tone" then it should be presented from secondary sources. Also, direct quotes might bring copyright concerns if done too often, which is why I recommend using them sparingly and summarising the information instead.

Would you be interested in addressing these concerns, or should this go to WP:GAR to get additional opinions? Z1720 (talk) 22:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do whatever you think is right. I think the GAR process will unnecessarily waste the community's time. For 14 years now, the article has contained a bunch of blockquotes. In 2010, the peer-reviewed version had 1,162 words worth of blockquotes. The previous GAR attempt (archived at Talk:David Irving/GA2) was a biased attempt to whitewash the article resulting in affirmation of the GA status. The article has been improved bit by bit for more than a decade, and represents standing consensus on the topic. I don't think a new GAR is necessary. Binksternet (talk) 22:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Reassessment

David Irving

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result pending

The article has uncited statements, including entire paragraphs. There are a lot of block quotes in the article, which would be better summarised. The article is not concise, and some sections are very long which would benefit from being broken up by headings. Z1720 (talk) 04:08, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It should be straightforward to address the issue with uncited statements, which seems fairly limited with the current text. I've just fixed one issue and will try to fix the others. Nick-D (talk) 01:36, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've cited what I think all the material not covered by a citation and added some more sub-headings. I've also trimmed some unnecessary detail. Nick-D (talk) 07:11, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]