Talk:Who's Who (UK)

Grammar

Shouldn't it be Who's Whom?

No. "Is" is a copula and has a nominative on both sides. The Wednesday Island (talk) 23:13, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Who says that the apostrophe-s stands for "is"? It could be "has"!137.205.183.109 (talk) 12:03, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Beckham

But David Beckham is in the book! --81.105.251.160 06:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe he was only added very recently. If you think there's an error, please correct it.--Runcorn 19:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Who Was Who

I think I heard that not everyone in a year's Who's who gets into the Who was who cumulation. Is this the case? Many members of UK Public Libraries will find that they have free online access to Who's who/Who was who === Vernon White (talk) 23:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of omissions from Who was Who. Yes, they are accessible via Know UK.--Runcorn 19:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

There must be an editing down process in the production of Who was who from Who's who entries. The editors need to establish who has died and their date of death. If this information is not available, then the subject cannot be included. I think there is also a "Notability" process at this stage too. I'll check with the publishers, if you wish. === Vernon White (talk) 20:20, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I would be grateful if you could check.--Runcorn 20:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

O/L version is also available on xrefer plus], a service similar to KnowUK. === Vernon White (talk) 21:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I've emailed Black's PR person. === Vernon White (talk) 21:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Scope of Who's Who

"the arts, business and finance, the church, the civil service, education, entertainment and sport, government, the law, local government, the media, medicine, professional institutions, science and the trade unions" SOURCE: Blurb for Who's who on KnowUK

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I think this widened scope only emerged in the 1970s. The blurb for Who was who claims 100,000 entries. The online version is updated annually.

Fair use rationale for Image:Who's Who 2007.jpg

Image:Who's Who 2007.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 05:10, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Who's Who 2007.jpg

Image:Who's Who 2007.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot 19:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

who's 'he'?

He also points out that there is a high proportion of Oxford and Cambridge (Britain's most prestigious universities) graduates among the new entrants.[3] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.30.36.226 (talk) 19:51, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Reviews

Volume 27 of the British Tariff gives a list of periodical book reviews of "Who's Who in 1849" at p 380, p 394 and another. A separate article is probably in order. James500 (talk) 02:54, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Reliability and accuracy

I guess the BBC is meant to be a reliable and accurate source but unless I'm missing something obvious I reckon that a number of the claims made in the BBC article are not true:

"The accuracy of the entries in the publication has also been disputed by several journalistic sources in the past. In 2001, BBC News reported that the entries for Mohamed al-Fayed, Anita Brookner, and Susan Hampshire displayed incorrect dates of birth. When Brookner was asked by the editors of Who's Who if she wanted the date corrected, she asked to have it blanked instead."

According to Wikipedia, Anita Brookner's date of birth is 16 July 1928, if we look at the 2001 edition of Who's Who (which I guess is what the BBC article is referring to) Brookner's date of birth is not blank but shows as 16 July 1928. We can even look at the 2000 edition of Who's Who and see that her date of birth is still shown as 16 July 1928.

"Similarly, former MP Jeffrey Archer listed an inexistent degree from the University of Oxford in his autobiography."

What the BBC article says about Jeffrey Archer is "And Lord Archer, the author and disgraced Tory peer, showed early form as a fiction writer when he filled in his questionnaire. Under education, he wrote Brasenose College, Oxford. It's still in the latest edition, although it is now common knowledge that Baron Archer of Weston-Super-Mare has no degree and only attended Oxford to do a one-year postgraduate physical education course."

Archer's entry in the 2001 edition of Who's Who, as far as I can see, doesn't mention any degree, it does claim he went to Brasenose College, Oxford which is confirmed by their list of notable alumni. Piecesofuk (talk) 10:05, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

@User:Piecesofuk: Brookner's birthday is given as 16 July 1928 in Who's Who 1980. It is given as 16 July 1938 in Who's Who 1983. It is given as "16 July" (no year) in Who's Who 1985. No birthday is given in Who's Who 1986 and Who's Who 1988.

The claim that the entry for Archer "listed an inexistent degree" in this Wikipedia article is certainly not verified by the BBC News article, which says no such thing, so I am going to remove it. James500 (talk) 19:43, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done James500 (talk) 19:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

• From the BBC article: It's still in the latest edition, although it is now common knowledge that Baron Archer of Weston-Super-Mare has no degree and only attended Oxford to do a one-year postgraduate physical education course. Has no degree = listed an inexistent degree. This was also reported in the Guardian (Archer claims to have been a student at Oxford university (in Who's Who he still lists Brasenose college as his alma mater). But according to his unauthorised biographer, Michael Crick, he was actually at the less exclusive Oxford department of education.) and a 1997 letter to the editor of the Independent by Oxford University director of international and external affairs Paul Flather (To be strictly accurate, Lord Archer took a PGCE teacher training course at Brasenose College, in Oxford, which is not strictly a university course. Moreover I believe, as a recent biography of him suggested, he did so without being a graduate. [...] So, contrary to his Who's Who entry, he was at the university only from 1963-64.). Pilaz (talk) 22:51, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Listing a college is not the same thing as listing a degree. "Has no degree" does not mean "listed an inexistent degree". What the BBC News article actually says is to the effect that Archer's biography omitted to positively state, in express words, that Archer's education at Oxford was not a degree; and BBC News article expresses an opinion to the effect that the said omission was misleading. An omission is not a listing, no matter how misleading the omission is perceived to be.

I think the new version is much better. James500 (talk) 23:19, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Etymology of "Who's Who"

This page cites http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2005-12-28-la-cemeteries_x.htm from USA Today as an example of the use of the expression "A who's who of X". Unfortunately the USA Today article does not show that the etymology of this expression has anything to do with this book. There is no evidence, for example, that the USA Today article is not comparing the cemetery to another Who's Who, such as one of Maquis' publications.

The expression "Who's Who of" (in "the Who's Who of the Magazine") appears in the Illustrated London News for 15 May 1847 on p 310, approximately two years before "Who's Who in 1849". The expression "who's who in" (in "who's who in the grand topic of the day") appears in the London and Paris Observer for 24 December 1826 on p 813, reprinting the London Literary Gazette of 9 December 1826 on p 769, more than twenty years before "Who's Who in 1849". The expression "Who's Who" is so well attested that I can identify at least two theatre plays with that title, going back more than sixty years before "Who's Who in 1849": "Who's Who? or, the Double Imposture" (1816) by John Poole, and "The Humourist, or, Who's Who?" (1785) by James Cobb.

I do not think we are in a position to simply assume that this book is sole and ultimate origin of the sort of phraseology used in the USA Today. I think we need sources that actually discuss the etymology directly. James500 (talk) 18:42, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done. James500 (talk) 19:08, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Full quote FT article

Hi James500,

Is there any chance you could provide a quote from the Melanie Cable-Alexander FT piece to support the Who Was Who section on corrections? Thanks. Pilaz (talk) 17:25, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

The particular fact in question is stated in express and unambiguous words on the Who's Who website, which you can read for free. Cable-Alexander is cited as confirmation by an independent source. As you can see, she says that all of the errors are corrected and the biographees don't know a thing about the corrections because they are dead, and the dead don't know anything. James500 (talk) 20:35, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I was hoping you'd provide an exact quotation from the Cable-Alexander article, because I don't have access to it. The Who's Who website says "where necessary", and I was hoping that Cable-Alexander would be able to expand on that. Pilaz (talk) 20:42, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Ah, you did add the passage. Many thanks. Cheers, Pilaz (talk) 20:43, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Waller, Sladen, and WP:SYNTH

Hello again James500,

Since you reverted my synth concerns, and unless I missed something, I'm opening this section on the passage that states The historian Philip Wallersaid that the story about Gilbert in Sladen's autobiography is not entirely accurate. I've looked at footnote 94 which you indicated in your edit summary, and I still see this as your personal interpretation of the two sources. Let's see if we agree on what Gilbert, Sladen and Waller wrote:

• Gilbert writes "the rudest letter of anybody" to Sladen.
• Sladen puts him down as the "Writer of Verses and the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan's comic operas".
• Waller quotes the same passage from Sladen as "Writer of Verses and [of] the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan's comic operas" (page 422)
• Waller adds an explanatory footnote where he states that in the 1897 and 1898 editions, the passage "Writer of Verses and [of] the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan's comic operas" was included, and that it was dropped in 1899.

So, help me understand: where exactly does Waller say that "the story about Gilbert in Sladen's autobiography is not entirely accurate"? Pilaz (talk) 21:10, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Adding to this, the sentence Accordingly, Gilbert did not supply any additional information Sladen was willing to print in Who's Who, contrary to what Sladen claimed in his autobiography is your conclusion of the two sources, which I think is WP:SYNTH. Pilaz (talk) 21:13, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

In his autobiography, Sladen wrote "Next year he filled up his form as readily as a peer's widow who has married a commoner." That sentence is the "good story" to which Waller refers in the first sentence of footnote 94. The second sentence of Waller's footnote demonstrates that the said "good story" is not true, because the lack of new information in Who's Who, 1899 proves that Gilbert did not fill "up his form as readily as a peer's widow who has married a commoner." Waller's words are not capable of bearing any other construction. There is nothing else they could mean. James500 (talk) 22:01, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

That's one possible interpretation. Another interpretation, which I find more likely, is that "Sladen did not always allow accuracy to get in the way of a good story" refers to Sladen's description of W.S. Gilbert as a "Writer of Verses and [of] the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan's comic operas", which is reductive as Gilbert had written several plays before collaborating with Sullivan (which, according to Sladen, drew a long reprimand from Gilbert). That's why I think that the inference that Gilbert did not supply any additional information Sladen was willing to print in Who's Who is not supported by Wallen's writing. Conversely, if we assume that your interpretation is correct, I still think you're jumping the gun: the fact that the changes allegedly submitted by Gilbert did not appear in the 1899 edition does not mean that Gilbert didn't send them to Sladen. The only thing we can be sure is that Sladen didn't publish them. At any rate, I think the author is not explicit enough to have any of those interpretations written in wikivoice, and he does not explicitly say that the story [...] is not entirely accurate (even if one abides by your interpretation, only a part of the story would be disputed). The whole paragraph should be rewritten to comply with WP:SYNTH. Pilaz (talk) 23:57, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

What you call your "interpretation" is simply an obvious complete mistake. Waller's "good story" is clearly not the line "Writer of Verses and the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan's comic operas".

I could point, in particular, to the following problems with what you call your "interpretation": (1) The line "Writer of Verses and the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan's comic operas" is perfectly accurate: Gilbert did write verses and he did write the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan's comic operas. (2) That line is not a story, let alone a good one. [The "good story" is Sladen bragging about how much power he allegedly had to force celebrities to supply information they did not want to supply: that is the gist of the quote from Sladen's autobiography and the context of that quote. (And Waller is saying that Sladen did not actually have that much power.)] (3) If that line was the "good story", the second sentence of the footnote 94 would make no sense at all, and would be completely irrelevant and superfluous. In fact, the whole footnote would be completely superfluous, since Waller quotes Sladen as saying "he asked me if that was the way to treat a man who had written seventy original dramas". Therefore why would Waller need to comment on the accuracy of the line, when Sladen himself comments on the omission? (4) Footnote 94 is a footnote to a quote from Sladen's autobiography, not a footnote to a quote from Who's Who.

But I think there is a more fundamental problem with the way that you are reading Waller's book. I'll try to explain what I think the problem is: Waller's book is a narrative in which each sentence follows logically from the previous sentence. You cannot understand what Waller is saying by looking at a particular sentence in isolation and ignoring the context in which that sentence appears, which I think is how you are trying to read Waller's book. Waller's book is not a collection of random factoids each of which is expressed in a single sentence that can understood in isolation from the rest of the book that precedes and follows that sentence. If you want to understand Waller's book, read the whole of the quote from Sladen and footnote 94 to that quote from start to finish as a single entity and a unified whole, and stop picking random bits from here and there within that passage and trying to look at them in isolation by themselves or in a different sequence to the order in which they appear in Waller's book.

The bottom line is that Waller's meaning is and should be perfectly obvious. It is simply self-evident on the face of the words Waller uses. There is no actual ambiguity in what Waller says, and you would have to strain very hard to find an imagined ambiguity. Waller unambiously clearly argues that Gilbert did not supply the changes to his biography for the 1899 edition that Sladen alleges he supplied. That is a fact, not an interpretation.

In order the avoid further time being wasted on single footnote of no great importance to single incident of no great importance, I have rewritten the article in a way that should be beyond argument. James500 (talk) 22:11, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

"Who's Who(UK)" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Who's Who(UK) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 16 § Who's Who(UK) until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 16:15, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Overquoting

MOS:QUOTE recommends paraphrasing quotes and summarizing them if there are too many in an article; in this C-class article there are over 50, so I added the over-quotation tag. Any thoughts on how to best proceed? Pilaz (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2024 (UTC)