Talk:David Irving

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Good articleDavid 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.
On this day... Article milestones
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January 30, 2005Featured article candidateNot promoted
August 7, 2005Featured article candidateNot promoted
November 4, 2010Peer reviewReviewed
February 12, 2011Good article nomineeListed
August 3, 2011Good article reassessmentKept
March 18, 2025Good article reassessmentKept
On this day... A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on March 24, 2017.
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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

]

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

]

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

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · WatchWatch article reassessment pageMost recent review
Result: Kept. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:29, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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]

Keep in light of the improvements made by Nick-D. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discredited?

The sources provided for the discredited comment in the lead are rather lacking. One is a blurb from a website for a PBS documentary 20 years ago, an awful source. Another is from a book published by journalist

Peter Wyden
, who doesn't have credentials as a historians. Then the comment by Graham Long refers to Irving being "discredited" but does not state he has been "discredited by historians", so this is SYNTH.

I think this comment should be removed until there's actual evidence in the form of statements by multiple historians (or polling data for historians) proving it. JDiala (talk) 07:56, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is an impressive attempt at barrel-bottom-scraping. Taking everything together, the sources are more than adequate. If you feel a need to reinforce it, perhaps you could explore some of the >3000 sources potentially useful for this purpose: [1]. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 09:03, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The sources in that link do not justify the claim. JDiala (talk) 08:49, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please, stop @
WP:NOTDUMB. You can learn a lot if you take some time to navigate in archives of this discussion. Ixocactus (talk) 18:39, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply
]
This is a bizarre personal attack. Material needs to be properly sourced. The onus is on those wanting to include material to properly explain why their source supports their claim. It just seems odd to me that for such a definitive statement being made, editors have had difficulty finding actual historians calling him discredited. I should also note (for utmost clarity) that I am not a supporter of Irving or his views. However, I do take the integrity of the project seriously, especially for BLP articles. JDiala (talk) 23:37, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Try Evans, Richard J. (2002). Telling Lies About Hitler. Verso. p. 271.-- Toddy1 (talk) 13:58, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]