Talk:Alasdair Gray

Although it's not of literary material (instead it's mostly photobooks), I think that the list of Martin Parr's works is a pretty good model, going into about the right level of detail.

If the result of your work becomes very long (as is likely), it can (and perhaps should) be spun off into a separate article. So don't worry about length. (But spare the reader bibliophilic minutiae: "The first circa two hundred copies may be identified by a typo on line 14 of page 27" etc etc.) -- Hoary (talk) 03:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all,

Yesterday I received permission from the photographer, Mark Wild, to make his Oran Mor photo CCA. I have added it to the article, and now need to figure out how to get rid of the other. The permission will be properly forwarded, here it is:

Thanks, it's a beautiful picture. --The Huhsz (talk) 02:23, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's hardly a credit to Gray's international reputation at the moment. Any takers? --The Huhsz (talk) 02:22, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No takers for that suggestion three days ago, but it seems that after I've done all the work making it slightly less of a disgrace, there are some people who wish to "correct" the article so we give Gray's exact dates of birth and death three times. Well, this space is for you to make your arguments for why that would be an improvement. --The Huhsz (talk) 16:26, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I thought full dates were required in the opening sentence, by

And you thought right.Bmcln1 (talk) 16:34, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Point us to it, would you? --The Huhsz (talk) 21:31, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:MoS Bmcln1 (talk) 23:03, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply

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Yes, but I meant the specific section of MoS which supports your claim, please. The Huhsz (talk) 23:13, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'll assume that the lack of response shows that you know you were wrong. There is no such section in the MoS. I've restored the version as written; next time, please bring any concerns to talk first, rather than edit-war. --The Huhsz (talk) 08:24, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• If anyone's interested, the relevant advice is at
  MOS:OPENPARABIO and it reads: The opening paragraph should usually have dates of birth and (when applicable) death. These dates (specific day–month–year) are important information about the subject, but if they are also mentioned in the body, the vital year range (in brackets after the person's full name) may be sufficient to provide context. I am against unnecessary clutter, and would argue that on what is really quite a short and undeveloped article, which already gives the full dates in the infobox and in the body of the text, providing the same dates a third time clutters the lead without providing any merit to the reader. It's also a norm here that on stylistic matters (which this is), precedence is usually given to the people who actually do the work of researching and writing an article to decide. I'm still assuming good faith that the latest revert was not done by one of the participants here editing while logged-out; that would certainly be bad. If there are any arguments for using the full dates in the first sentence, other than the ones already made about a non-existent MoS provision, I am very happy to discuss them here. --The Huhsz (talk) 18:52, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Dear Commrade. Yes, you've made a lot of recent improvements to this article. That's why I thought you deserved credit via the ITN/RD nominations page. But that never confers ownership, as I'm sure you know. I've no firm views on that date format, I was just a bit surprised since, as I said, 99.5% of the articles that I have seen have the full dates if they are available. Your initial rationale for changing "(move for now)" wasn't exactly clear. But thanks for copying out the relevant style guideline from MoS. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:41, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

LOL, and I thanked you for it at the time, and repeat the thanks here. No, I have no illusions about private ownership of articles; all our work here is for the

overlinking too, which is an area with less flexibility than the one we are talking about. It's a penalty of "anyone can edit". A better comparison might be ENGVAR or CITEVAR where the person who puts in the work gets to choose the format and it is for those wishing to change it to propose reasons. I admit that being referred to an imaginary section of MoS, then being reverted by a mystery IP were a little irksome. But hey, worse things happen. If there's no good reason to keep it in the three-dates version I will put it back, with the hidden note tomorrow. But I repeat the admonition; if anyone here has the time to have a strong opinion on date formats, it might be much more helpful if they could harness that time and use it on hunting out sources. For an article about a famous Scottish writer to contain so very little sourced content about his books is a more serious problem than date formats, in my opinion. Would you agree? --The Huhsz (talk) 20:20, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply

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I would agree. But I'm left wondering why 99.5% of the bio articles I've seen (and created) aren't all done like this. There's nothing special about Gray in this regard. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:51, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the majority of editors here don't think twice about stylistics, don't take the trouble to read the MoS, and just slavishly copy what they see in another article. Maybe that's why we see things like New York, New York, United States and Paris, France. --The Huhsz (talk) 10:59, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I do tend to slavishly copy. But "it's a hell of a 'pedia!" Martinevans123 (talk) 11:03, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I think we all do. I know I do with referencing formats. Speaking of which, I have mined the bits of the Dietmar Böhnke (2004) Shades of Gray: Science Fiction, History and the Problem of Postmodernism in the Work of Alasdair Gray that I can see in the Gbooks preview; there might be some more there but I wonder if anyone reading this has access to the entire book? --The Huhsz (talk) 14:05, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Well. I've done my bit; if you compare an older version with the article now, there are fewer lists of minor works (shunted off to a sub-article), a bit about his principal source of notability (his writing), a lot more decent sources including the secretary's critical biography and what I can garner from the Böhnke source mentioned above. I also organised the material a bit better; having a section called Life on a biography article always looks lame. Martinevans123, what do you think? Is it getting there? --The Huhsz (talk) 13:58, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd say a stalwart effort that has made a huge improvement. A great shame he died before this could be done. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:13, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks! I know, it doesn't reflect well on our project that it was in such a shocking state until after his death. --The Huhsz (talk) 21:57, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Stating the full dates of birth & death (when known) after the name is standard, in addition to stating them in the ibox & Early life section. The lead should include the important points of the article, including DOB & DOD. There's no reason for this article to be an exception to that. Jim Michael (talk) 21:12, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree the lead could be a bit longer, if that's what you mean. If it's "standard", why isn't it in the MoS? What particular benefit will the reader gain from stating the data three times as opposed to twice? --The Huhsz (talk) 21:56, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the lead should be longer than it currently is. The lead should be a summary of the article; the DOB & DOD are important biographical info, so they should be in the lead. When the dates are known, they usually are. There's no reason for this article to be different in that respect. I've not encountered anyone else who's questioned that practice, so it seems that it's long been accepted practice to do things that way, even if it isn't written anywhere that it's the case. To state the dates in the lead, ibox & body of the article isn't undue repetition - it's standard. It's very common to state the subject's name & place of birth in each of those places in the article as well. Jim Michael (talk) 22:50, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback on the lead. I'll work on making it a little longer. In the absence of any argument to the contrary I'm fine with the dates for now. If you believe it's vitally important for every biography to state full dates in the opening sentence, perhaps a discussion at

WT:MOS is in order. Perhaps once the article (and its lead) are a little better developed there will be a better case for including them. For now I think it would clutter things. Thanks again. --The Huhsz (talk) 23:31, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply

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@The Huhsz: Thanks for all the hard work you've been putting in, it's making such a difference.

On the question of the lead, the issue may be that some services may summarise Wikipedia entries by taking only the lead -- not the infobox, not the rest of the article -- which is why it should be as rounded and complete as one can make it, within an overall limit of about 4 short paragraphs, and balance with the rest of the article. Which I think you've achieved well. But that may be a practical benefit for including the full dates in the opening sentence (as well as it being where a lot of readers may first expect to find them). But I'm happy to defer to your preference on this, per the guidance from MOS you quoted.

One thing that struck me as a little hard was the summary of Rodge Glass's biography with the quote "the quality of Alasdair's output is limited by his need to pre-empt criticism, and bring socialism and Scottish nationalism into everything". Perhaps worth contextualising this rather hard statement (on the face of it) with eg Jo Littler's view in the Guardian that the bio was "As big-hearted and unstintingly critical as Gray's own work, ... a fittingly entertaining tribute" [1], or Gray's own (broadly) positive take on it [2].

But all in all, a very good improvement. Jheald (talk) 12:50, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jheald, that means a lot to me. Everything you say makes sense. I can see that it might look like the biography was a hatchet job, which, having read most of it, I know it wasn't. One reason I pounced on the Glass quote was that we need balance in the article; especially soon after someone dies, there is a tendency to make the article look like a eulogy or a hagiography, so I thought this refreshing criticism from someone who knew Gray extremely well was valuable to the overall article. But you're right, this too needs to be balanced so the reader doesn't get the wrong impression about the biography. I've added the full dates as I think the lead is developed enough not to be overwhelmed by this. --The Huhsz (talk) 15:22, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Another issue which I was lucky enough to notice; the fair-use image

Well, I've updated the image rationale and added (at risk of overdoing it, perhaps) a raft of highly reliable sources including a school textbook which discuss the image. I've already asked User:JJMC89 to review their choice to tag the file; if it looks like they are too busy to do so, we can ask around for options. Seems silly to have this hanging over the article for a protracted period because of one user's error. What do you think, Jheald? --The Huhsz (talk) 20:36, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In my view the image is quite a good one for the page, but to me the key issue is that it is the only image on the page that really characteristically demonstrates the "strong lines and high-impact graphics" we describe of his published graphic design work, which was such an important part of what he created -- the Lanark image (IMO) is a lot more busy than the style that really characterised so much of his work, the portrait (with questionable copyright release?) is interesting, you can see the 'family resemblance' in style to his book illustrations and graphic commissions. But for me it is the Herald image of the bold, simple, striking, strongly focussed character of so much of his published design. That for me is the key thing that it brings to the article (which possibly could be brought out more).

Then for me the second aspect is, if one could choose one image to represent that dimension of his work, why would one choose this image? And here I think the arguments for it being an image from the culmination of his career, very widely seen, commissioned by a newspaper at an epochal moment, and manifesting exactly the boldness and impact and focus characteristic of his graphic work, the thistle almost in the round sights of a target, all come into play.

That's the line I would argue for it, what seems to me the key rationale for it. Jheald (talk) 21:01, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I see we have a couple of IPs trying to edit-war

• To extend this slightly, let's look at the last one:
• Despite his hostility towards English immigration into Scotland, He was not hostile to English immigration. His mother was English. His publisher was English. His secretary and biographer was English.
• notably condemning English people as being either “settlers” and “colonists” in a 2012 essay "Condemn" is not a fair summary of the essay, as he was clearly supportive of the former, as the sources make clear.
• Gray claimed to be a civic nationalist. Gray did not "claim" to be a
  WP:CLAIM. --The Huhsz (talk) 00:03, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]

They're still at it. Current wording is fair IMO. I feel like this is part of a campaign to attack critics of England as Anglophobes, as they've also targeted Fintan O'Toole CiphriusKane (talk) 19:59, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The revision did not use the word "Anglophobe" or its cognates. Pointing out that Gray wrote an essay at the end of his life that was expressly condemnatory of English emigration into Scotland (he was a writer - he knew the use of the word "settler" was pejorative since its redefinition by the APLA) is not POV. He, in common with the majority of his compatriots, didn't like English people. It's hardly an "attack". 2A00:23C6:7687:801:7D1F:8938:1723:352B (talk) 09:56, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Repeating a point just to stress his "Anglophobic" sentiments is undue. Using weighted wording such as "condemned" is undue POV, and please provide a source that Gray and his "compatriots" disliked English people CiphriusKane (talk) 15:21, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/alasdair-gray-death-age-cause-novelist-scotland-literature-art-murals-a9269331.html 3MRB1 (talk) 00:54, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]