Talk:Giles Hattersley

Moved from article

On 8 February 2009, Hattersley wrote in The Sunday Times that his English Wikipedia entry falsely claimed he was the son of politician Roy Hattersley. The Telegraph journalist Shane Richmond noted that Hattersley did not appear to have a Wikipedia biographical entry at the time, and that there did not appear to have been one in the past.

It is imperative it stays in the article, it is what most peope hitting the page will want to know - is it true or not. He has written, in a very high profile British newspaper (not a down market tabloid), that it is, it is clearly not in the article that he is Roy Hatterley's son and never has been. Wikipedia has never made this claim about Giles Hattersley, and that needs to be clear. Giano (talk) 17:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's now only a matter of time before somebody does make attempt to make this claim. — CharlotteWebb 18:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

An ancient canard; I found it claimed on this blog], but we would never use that as a reliable source. --Rodhullandemu 19:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

This is all ridiculous, Wikipedia's owm PR machine (does it even have one) should be countering these ridiculous claims from Hattersley, not leaving it to the general writing editors. Giano (talk) 19:17, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Is the WMF office open on Sundays? I doubt it. Even so, how would a rebuttal be achieved without the obvious counter of "well, they would say that, wouldn't they"? Better left where it belongs- on the furthest shores of oblivion. --Rodhullandemu 19:35, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Do we have any clues as to which English Wikipedia, Giles Hattersley was looking at? Apparently it wasn't this English Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 20:25, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

For all we know, his entire article could've been oversighted. That wouldn't leave any trace. --Conti|✉ 20:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

We can keep the paragraph for now, but a year from now it will be forgotten and irrelevant in this biography. --Apoc2400 (talk) 20:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

"Original research"

Ref this removal, this does not constitute original research. I did not say that the first article was created then (I have no access to any proof one existed before or not, and am not assuming anything so far). I stated that this article was created then, with the appropriate proof. We surely do not need third party sourcing for interpreting our own software?. If the apparent need for this piece of article text to exist is to refute claims made against Wikipedia, then including the date of this article being created is going to be quite pertinent to the reader, don't you think? MickMacNee (talk) 19:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that sentence ought not to be in the article because it's an excessive self-reference which WP:ASR tells us to avoid. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:19, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Without qualification, do you think the statement "journalist Shane Richmond noted that Hattersley did not appear to have a Wikipedia biographical entry at the time" makes any sense at all to the reader, when they are actually reading a biography of Giles Hattersley? The bigger glaring self reference would appear to be the implicit assumption that the reader has the first clue that this article has only existed for a few hours, or indeed would have the first clue how to find that out. MickMacNee (talk) 20:47, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It would appear to be a moot point anyway. MickMacNee (talk) 20:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Temporary deletion

I have temporarily deleted this article, and kindly request that no one restore it until we've sorted out all the facts. Giano has been blocked for 24 hours by me for incivility related to this entry. Jay and I are already aware of the situation and I am reaching out to the newspaper for further clarification.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Be careful that Mr. Hattersley does not misconstrue this deletion as an acknowledgment that the article contained the falsehoods that Mr. Hattersley claimed it contained (before the article existed). Right now he can point to the deletion log and his readers will only see that the article was deleted 20:48, 8 February 2009 by Jimbo Wales, and assume that the deletion was in direct response to Mr. Hattersley's rant found here. — CharlotteWebb 21:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Have no fear. Things will be straigtened out. GoodDay (talk) 21:02, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Please try to be serious. — CharlotteWebb 21:03, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I am. GoodDay (talk) 21:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

• I must say that I don't understand the reason for deletion. DuncanHill (talk) 21:50, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Neither. Why wasn't oversight or selective deletion used instead? — neuro^(talk) 21:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see that any selective deletion or oversight would have been necessary either. All that has happenned is to make it harder for people to see the true history of the article - which doesn't help when someone makes false statements about it in a major broadsheet. DuncanHill (talk) 21:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I can understand deletion if the whole article was a BLP issue, trouble is that the general editing public is not going to understand that, and I don't believe that the whole thing was a BLP issue. The section should have been removed and the incriminating edits oversighted - I don't see how deleting the whole page will cause anything other than drama. — neuro^(talk) 21:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

• The page was written to set the record straight. It was factual, it was referenced and it was accurate. The matter was widely known and discussed for 21 hours before I wrote the page. The page was openly writen, I also discussed it with an Arb at the time I was writing it. I posted openly concerning it on the Admins Notceboard, where upon it was vastly edited and expanded by others. The page needed to be written by an editor, who if checked would be seen to be a reliable mainspace editor; my mainspace edits are reliable. You are all reading far too much into this. People will be looking for an bio on this man, and I don't see why he can't have one, so long as it is accurate. Giano (talk) 23:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems we have the facts now. Since this was intended as a temporary deletion until we had the facts, could you please undelete and allow the community to decide what to do? --Tango (talk) 23:59, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

A message from Giles Hattersley

As to this thing about a Wikipedia entry - as far as I know, I've

never had one. I think the line must have been tweaked at some stage

(not by me) from talking about mentions of my name on the site to an

actual entry. The mistake pointed out in the piece, was pointed out

to me a year or two ago in some corresponding page where my name

cropped up - either Roy Hattersley's entry, or a third party's page.

I'm glad to hear it no longer exists!

As you can see, the entry as it stood before was a serious WP:BLP violation. (In fact, it was a serious WP:BLP violation even before these emerging details were discovered.) Given that Giano created the entry specifically, in his own words, "as a rebuttal" to a news story, it was also a violation of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR.

I was asked up above, why I deleted the entire entry, rather than just some offending revisions. The reason is simple: they were all offending revisions. The article was a WP:COATRACK designed by Giano to "defend" Wikipedia against a slight.

It appears that now The Times needs to issue an apology for this, but not Mr. Hattersley himself (I am still taking issue with him for other errors in the article). It would be quite helpful, though perhaps quite difficult, if someone could find the precise revision where the error originally appeared. (Or else, conclusively show that it never happened, which would be quite difficult I suppose, given that the edits could in theory have been randomly oversighted or deleted from who-knows-where.)

I hope this case will be a lesson for people. It is not ok to create hatchet jobs about people for any reason, and especially if the reason is simply because you feel that they were wrong in some respect about Wikipedia. Not ok. Not ever.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

What BLP violation? Suggesting that he writes the articles that appear under his name? DuncanHill (talk) 23:39, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

All the revisions I saw said something along the lines of "this appears to have been an error", which it clearly was. Did someone change it to something accusing the author of acting in bad faith (or even just recklessly) at some point? That said, I think commenting on a error that you last saw a year or two ago without checking that it still exists is pretty reckless (although perhaps that's recklessness on the part of the editor, rather than the journalist, there's no way for me to know - although if I were a journalist I would make sure I read the final version of anything that was going to have my name attached before it went to print). --Tango (talk) 23:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)WP:COATRACK aside, I don't see that creation of a properly-sourced article is an issue. Many articles are created here as a result of external events. Per this Arbcom decision, I'm assuming that Mr Hattersley has released his ostensibly private email for publication. But to return to the issue of notability; it was thin as the article was originally written, although sourced. To my mind, at that point, it would have been a borderline WP:AFD article, but certainly not a WP:CSD#A7. So it's debatable.

I agree that creating biographies in reaction to coverage of the project is an extremely poor practice, whether as rebuttal or praise. Putting a stop to it here and now is the right thing to do. Steven Walling (talk) 23:47, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

If it's solely a rebuttal, then it's largely indefensible; otherwise, if external events from whatever source, indicate a defensible need for a notable topic, then the article should be created; but not as a bull-rush.--Rodhullandemu 23:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, the decision should be taken on grounds of notability (I've yet to be convinced the subject is notable). The creation of it as a rebuttal is clearly wrong, but there is no need to delete it on those grounds. --Tango (talk) 23:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE is really the key here. It is entirely possible, and indeed all too easy, to write a completely indefensible biography by relying solely on perfectly good sources. It is not enough that a claim be sourced. As it turns out, the error appears to not have been Mr. Hattersley's at all, and so upon reflection, I think it is pretty clear that a minor error in the newspaper (which the paper ought to apologize for, both to us and to Mr. Hattersley) is not even something that would ever belong in his biography in the first place. Anyone who thinks it is ok to use Wikipedia by writing hatchet jobs in response to negative articles about us, is invited to recuse themselves permanently from all WP:BLP editing, and indeed to leave Wikipedia entirely.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:00, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It would be helpful if Mr Hattersley could actually tell us where the error was, instead of us having to trawl a couple of million articles (and their revision histories) to find it. DuncanHill (talk) 00:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)Its a coatrack, created under questionable circumstances for questionable motives, delete it under BLP's Do No Harm - or BLPSE, (finally a decent use for that godforsaken procedural tool). I'm fairly convinced that the cited erroneous claim exists no where relevant, unless the revision has been oversighted since I don't have access to OS.--Tznkai (talk) 00:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

How about restoring the first two paragraphs, but not the last one about the recent Wikipedia piece? The rest of the article looks fine to me. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I am quite willing to criticise Giano when he has acted wrongly, and I have voted for restrictions on his editing more severe than have been imposed - so I am no soft touch when he is concerned. But I genuinely do not think he intended to write a 'hatchet job' or a BLP violation. I think he was acting in good faith. Sam Blacketer (talk) 00:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps interesting: I agree too. I do not think Giano intended to write a 'hatchet job' nor to commit a BLP violation. But the fact remains that he did, and that it was a particularly egregious one given the overall circumstances. As far as I can tell, Giano acted in good faith to do something monumentally wrong, and he did so for all the same kinds of reasons that we all know so well about him. I don't think Giano is a bad person, although one has to wonder sometimes if he isn't deliberately trolling. But one need not be a bad person to be entirely in the wrong.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I see nothing resembling a "hatchet job" and nothing "monumentally wrong" about the article. I think Giano very scrupulously wrote a fair article that wasn't called for (for one thing, it broke the rule that WP is not a newspaper, though of course this is broken all the time). But all right, you and I disagree about it. So, putting myself in your place, believing that the article was "monumentally wrong" but that Giano "acted in good faith", I'd have summarily deleted it, salted it, and firmly but politely warned Giano away from creating responses to similar non-events in the future. -- Hoary (talk) 13:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

As for the article itself, there is no need or reason to do anything immediate. We can let this situation settle out over the next few days before deciding what, if any, article is warranted. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:15, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Good faith or not aside, (I'm convinced he was doing his best to protect Wikipedia's reputation), on a practical level creating an article as a rejoinder was a bad idea in concept. The final version of the article read like a brief biographical sketch and then a petty rejoinder, calling out the LP for his article's mistake.--Tznkai (talk) 00:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Further thought, I agree with Brad above on leaving the article alone for a day - or possibly starting completely anew after calmer heads have prevailed.--Tznkai (talk) 00:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Side comment

I just read the Hattersley article and it follows the same line as a torrent of MSM stuff being put out lately; just this morning there was a discussion on Irish National Radio (RTE) in which several press and broadcast journalists all agreed that Wiki was dreadfully inaccurate - without any sense of irony whatever. Wiki is a non-commercial model that is in direct competition with these guys livelihoods - we must not forget that. They desperately want it to fail. All involved in the discussion claimed to never use Wiki, yet oddly, the local MSM is full of material lifted from the "totally unreliable" Wikipedia. (Including an endless string of my photos). We must stop open ended editing of BLPs - period. It is like handing a loaded gun to your worst enemy. (But I get very concerned when I read that Gaza needs to be censored). But surely Jimbo, instead of being so apologetic, should comment on the accuracy of the MSM? The Times, for example, faithfully reported the Iraq WMD claims by Blair as "fact". A rather more serious inaccuracy in terms of consequences than anything we've seen on Wiki. While you don't and shouldn't write Wiki articles to counter the MSM bull - it would be nice to hear Jimbo being more assertive in this matter - and maybe less assertive with people like Giano. Remember, de facto, a handful of the Corporate Rich control the Anglophone media and yet we must read, in silence, bull***t about the 3,000 elite with their skewed vision?!! If the MSM journalists and commentators were not so Corporate-friendly in their views, their reporting and their writing they wouldn't be MSM hacks! Remember that bit of self-selection next time you read some rubbish in the papers about Wiki. Wiki writers are not, unlike corporate journalists, paid to convey a particular POV. Sarah777 (talk) 01:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Wiki writers are not, unlike corporate journalists, paid to convey a particular POV.

Well, at least that you are aware of. I happen to know that some wiki writers are being paid to convey a particular POV, and they're successfully doing it. And, on the flip side, most paid journalists are not paid to convey a particular POV. Lots of drama in your statement, Sarah777, but not much fact. It's irony on top of irony about supposed irony.

I agree that the MSM isn't quite getting it right about Wikipedia, but from my vantage point, they are coming much closer to the truth about Wikipedia now than they were in 2007. -- 76.98.14.41 (talk) 01:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh come on! Of course they are paid to stay "on message". I suspect you mustn't actually know any. The instructions do not have to be explicit - the paycheck does the trick. Sarah777 (talk) 01:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I know about six people whose paycheck derives from their contributions to journalism, two of them quite personally, and I don't know if I can name too many people I know who are more ethically bound to produce work that is passionately devoted to their profession and to the reader, than to their employer. Sarah777, you have an extremely pessimistic (but regrettably, thanks to a few bad apples, understandable) outlook on journalists. Indeed, being that Wikipedia itself is purportedly built on the assembly of facts from "reliable sources" like newspapers and magazines, your criticism is something of a major indictment against Wikipedia. Is that were you wanted to go with this? -- 76.98.14.41 (talk) 03:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Nope. I have long had issues with using the Anglophone MSM press as "reliable sources" - it undermines the credibility of Wiki - rather more than using the "unreliable" Wiki undermines the MSM. Wiki errors are generally short-lived vandalism or POV; MSM writing is systematic POV pushing in most cases. Sarah777 (talk) 03:41, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

A confused Englishman asks - MSM? DuncanHill (talk) 03:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

MainStream Media; you daily papers and TV channels - not including the Socialist Worker ! Sarah777 (talk) 03:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I don;t think anyone would ever accuse the Socialist Worker of being mainstream! I forget, who owns the SWP at the moment? DuncanHill (talk) 03:51, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

And then of course if someone has died it ain't a BLP - is it? But we must be sure they are really dead before we write nonsense about them! It is only fair to note that many Wiki editors are actually MSM hacks who would cease to be MSM hacks if they wrote with the accuracy and truthfulness that they do here. Sarah777 (talk) 01:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

" it would be nice to hear Jimbo being more assertive in this matter - and maybe less assertive with people like Giano" - agree. His principal value to the project is in his high profile and ability to speak directly to other high profile people, not in being a contributor or a "super-admin with bells on". DuncanHill (talk)

What should we be learning here?

It occurs to me that it's not clear exactly what the problem is with this article. Every day, dozens of articles are written or significantly edited to reflect recent news events (Saddam's execution, Bhutto's assassination, a long list). And just the other day, another journalist complained about his WP article, and it got significantly rewritten within 24 hours.

So is the problem that the article was written by Giano, an editor who rarely works on BLPs? I note that half a dozen other editors also participated in the article, expanding it, adding facts and improving language as is often done in our collaborative efforts. Is the problem undue weight? Then it's like tens of thousands of other BLPs, particularly brand new ones. Is the problem that it's written in response to an external article about WP? Well, we do that all the time.

Can someone clearly define why exactly this article is a problem? Risker (talk) 00:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't a problem until a certain person took an interest in it, and decided that being kind to fashion journalists was more important than treating Wikipedia contributors well. DuncanHill (talk) 00:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I think notability and undue weight are the key issues here. Discussing the problems with the article should probably wait until it is undeleted and people who aren't either admins or were here before the deletion can contribute - and AFD would be the ideal place for such a discussion. --Tango (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we have some Giano issues conflated with genuine issues here: this article was a self refrencing WP:COATRACK, or at least it read like one. (IMO, obviously)--Tznkai (talk) 00:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, I very much dislike how often COATRACK is misused in discussion, but this article in the state it was did appear to be one. Not that I think Giano had bad intentions, he simply saw a gap in our coverage (imo GH is undoubtedly a notable journalist) and filled it. The problem is Wikipedians' fondness for navel gazing and self reference. the wub "?!" 00:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

That Giano had wrong intentions is not in dispute; he said himself that he created the article as a "rebuttal". That's not a valid reason to create a Wikipedia entry. Ever.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm having real trouble divining a coherent policy stance from all of this. So editors are encouraged to correct an article when John Seigenthaler writes an piece pointing out that he was never under suspicion for killing JFK, while they will be blocked if they start a correctly-sourced stub when Giles Hattersley writes a piece pointing out that he is not related to Roy Hattersley? Wikipedia:External peer review, for example, is entirely editors reacting to outside publishers. While the stub wasn't perfect, "perfection is not required" was still considered a true statement on the site last time I checked. Jimbo, I don't see how you can expect us to see this as anything other than 'Giano was involved and got irritated when another editor with whom he had previously clashed inserted Giano's username as creator into the article, so he had to be blocked and the article expunged'. - BanyanTree 02:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the other issue is that writing an article about someone because they criticized Wikipedia will be seen as a kind of revenge, even if the article is perfectly neutral, sourced, etc. However normally we don't care about why an article was written or how it reflects on Wikipedia, as long as it meets the rules. Still, there is certainly no hurry to have this article. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a similar case is brewing over at Libelous comments concerning Professor Hewitt. Background on Knol: Corruption of Wikipedia (http://wikicensored.info/)--67.169.144.135 (talk) 06:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I can agree with Apoc2400's "other issue". As for this particular article and its repercussions, however: I'd never heard of Hattersley till half an hour ago and remain unconvinced of his significance. I've looked at what I think is Giano's final version. The first two paragraphs seem entirely innocuous and irrelevant to the brouhaha here. The third and final paragraph said Hattersley wrote in The Sunday Times that his English Wikipedia entry falsely claimed [...] -- it doesn't accuse Hattersley of falsely saying anything. It now starts to appear that the ST may have distorted Hattersley's words; but, rightly or wrongly this material does appear under Hattersley's name, and it's a reasonable (if occasionally mistaken) assumption that a signed article is indeed written by the person who signed it. Nothing objectionable so far. Then the article notes that Richmond disputes what Hattersley wrote about this. It's all written coolly; there's no "sexing up" of anything. I understand that the charge here of "coatrack" isn't without foundation, but it seems exaggerated. If I'd seen the Telegraph blog article (let alone just the Sunday Times article) I'd never have written this or any article, and I don't think that writing the article was a good idea; however, given that an article was written, I think this was a decent if flawed try. Poor decisions, very likely; blockworthy behavior, no. -- Hoary (talk) 02:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

• The situation we have now is that the Sunday Times on its website carries a story (allegedly by Mr Hattersley) falsely claiming that Wikipedia libelled his mother. The Wikipedia article which correctly mentioned that another major newspaper had commented on the inaccuaracy of that claim no longer exists. DuncanHill (talk) 02:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
  • And the conclusion you draw from this is what? Neither of those things is particularly critical to writing a biographical encyclopedia article about Hattersley, if we actually try to manage that. They would be important to writing a well-balanced article about this incident in some place like the Signpost. Your points simply illustrate the continuing fallacy of trying to recast single dramatic events into biographical sketches of the players involved. --Michael Snow (talk) 03:00, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The conclusion I draw from it is that Jimbo should spend less time trying to be a one-man police force, judge and executioner on Wikipedia, and more time defending Wikipedia from false accusations made by competing organizations. DuncanHill (talk) 03:04, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
      • Maybe, maybe not (what competing organizations?). But again, not particularly relevant in trying to write an encyclopedia article about Hattersley. --Michael Snow (talk) 03:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
        • News International and its associated companies publish encyclopædias, for which Wikipedia is a competitor. They publish newspapers, for which Wikinews is a competitor. Get the idea? DuncanHill (talk) 03:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
          • Jimbo is doing entirely the right thing, defending the wikipedia from editors who lose their good sense when someone dares to say something critical of wikipedia. Whatever Hattersly may or may not have done, it is inappropriate for editors to try an punish im on wikipedia particularly when we don't even have a reliable source (no a blog is not usually a reliable source on a BLP particularly for such a contentious issue, it's not even clear if the Telegraph maintains full editorial control over the blog) and even more so when they are writing articles precisely to punish him. The actions of editors here are causing far greater damage to wikipedia then Giles Hattersly has ever done. In case people are not aware, maliciously attacking people in articles on wikipedia to 'set the record straight' or whatever other nonsense you come up with does not make people thing well of wikipedia but brings us far greater discredit then any inaccurate article in a newspaper ever does. Nil Einne (talk) 09:30, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
            • Hi - could you explain what aspect of the article you consider to have been a malicious attack? Gonzonoir (talk) 09:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
              • Any article written with the intention of 'setting the record straight', particularly when that article contained no reliable sources about the record that needed setting and was supposed to be a biography but was primarily about an error someone may or may not have made which was not even apparently notable. The fact that the error now appears to have not even been Hattersley's further proves the point. This should have been an article about Giles Hattersley not the Times and it's highly questionable of a non-notable (as it remains up to now) error in a non-notable article (as it remains up to now) not even made by Giles Hattersley even if it occured in an article under his name is of any relevance to Giles Hattersley and if it is, it didn't deserve to occupy so much space in his article. If you don't have enough source to show Giles Hattersley is notable, you shouldn't be writing a bio about him and the first thing you should do when writing a biography is go into depth in his life, not about the alleged (at the time) error. Nil Einne (talk) 10:30, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
                • • I see your point, but for me the intention behind an article's creation is far, far less important than the actual content of the article, which was all sourced and neutrally-written (when I edited it yesterday afternoon, at any rate). I can see an objection on grounds of undue weight, given that it was a stubby article, but Hattersley himself appears notable according to the criteria at WP:CREATIVE - he has had, and the article cited, biographical coverage published in other newspapers, and is clearly a widely-cited journalist. I assumed that we fix undue weight issues by editing the articles: and this one had attracted several uninvolved editors who were expanding the other sections about Hattersley's life and career at the point when it was deleted. Gonzonoir (talk) 12:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

                    The last version of the article I saw had just one independent, non-trivial source about him, we usually require multiple. Other sources may exist, but someone needs to go and find them before writing the article. --Tango (talk) 13:33, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

                    I have not followed this from the beginning, but to repeat Gonzonoir's comments, editor motivation has nothing to do with anything unless it violates verifiability, NPOV, notability, undue, etc. Some people write because they hate their job and have nothing better to do, others because they are obsessed with Pokemon, others because they have OCD. Unless it is leading them to push a POV, which this marginally might be (I can't see the original), it is utterly irrelevant. Joshdboz (talk) 14:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Roy Hattersley

Since no article existed on Giles, and his claim has now apparently shifted to saying the errors were in some other location, I took a look at Roy Hattersley, that being the primary possibility he offers. Using diffs, I went through the entire history of the article on Roy Hattersley and could find no mention of Giles whatsoever. So, anyone have any ideas about any other articles where this might have popped up? --Michael Snow (talk) 03:04, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

None at all. Someone else has already checked Arena (magazine), the most likely other source for this claim by Mr Hattersley. DuncanHill (talk) 03:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at Grace Jones, which quotes an interview she gave him, and no mention of Roy in there either. DuncanHill (talk) 03:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Nothing in Andreas Lipa, which uses an article of his as a reference. DuncanHill (talk) 03:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Somebody check the User Talk space history for every editor that has ever contributed to any of the above-mentioned articles. (kidding) Why don't we wait for more feedback from The Times, and not spend so much time trying to be a "wiki-hero" by being the one who finds the smoking gun? -- 76.98.14.41 (talk) 03:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If there ever was a gun. DuncanHill (talk) 03:33, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Nothing in British Press Awards 2006 (he was nominated for one of the categories). Unless Mr Hattersley can actually tell us where he got his information from, I doubt we will find it even if it is there. DuncanHill (talk) 03:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I've checked any number of logical articles, and nothing. Needle, haystack.--Tznkai (talk) 03:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The Scotsman

This article [1] in the Scotsman newspaper last July includes readers on-line comments, including one about Giles being Roy's son... Maybe Giles saw that and thought it was WP?? Then there is this blog too, which mentions the son thing: [2]-- Myosotis Scorpioides 11:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Integrity of News Corp and their journalists

Hattersley and the newspaper have changed nothing in the article at the time of writing, many hours after their attention was drawn to the error. His unraveling explanation would have been parsed for what it was worth in a few minutes had he been an editor here; yet it seems to have been initially accepted without any question. Perhaps at the very least we are owed the full text of his communication(s) with Wikipedia. Jimbo says: It appears that now The Times needs to issue an apology for this, but not Mr. Hattersley himself (I am still taking issue with him for other errors in the article) ......Jimbo - so you do know he has 'issues' then? Shane Richmond - Communities Editor of Telegraph.co.uk - blogs about this further. He says: Giles Hattersley set out to argue that an open site such as Wikipedia is intrinsically less reliable than a professionally edited publication. Inadvertently, he has proved the opposite. You'll see a comment from Tim who tried to correct the story. He says: I did append a comment to Mr Hattersley's original article, politely informing the Times that it had been comprehensively pwned by Mr Richmond. They, uh, didn't publish it. Draw your own conclusions. And I submitted the following: Is this story accurate. It seems that Mr Hattersley has invented a Wikipedia entry for himself which never existed. He did proofread the article, didn't he? After all it appears under his name. Also not published. -- luke (talk) 14:41, 9 February 2009 (UTC)