Talk:Simon Hornblower

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Question about authorship of article

Who in God's name wrote this entry? The panegyrical tone is hardly justified. The commentary, far from being "magesterial", is decidedly mediocre and frequently wrong. "Lucidity" would not be word of choice for his style. This looks like it's been taken straight off the back of a book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.131.27 (talk) 21:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Improvement and further improvement needed

Somebody has made a big improvement to this article. Well done. The only thing that concerns me is that it is quite shamelessly lifted from Professor Hornblower's homepage at UCL. I have tried to make it look a little more Wikipedia-style and have tried to put in a bit more biographical information. Remember that the general reader is just as likely to want to know where he went to school and what academic posts he has held as what his contribution to scholarship has been. Ideally we could add where he went to prep school, whether he was a scholar at Eton, his Oxford college, anything he did apart from teaching at Oriel, and any other interests he may have. He isn't in my out of date Debrett's People of Today but I'll try to get round to looking him up in a current edn of Who's Who.--Oxonian2006 (talk) 17:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Message re: edits

I recieved the following message on my talk page:

"I am rather confused about your edits to the article on Professor Hornblower. You seem to have attempted to wage a campaign of removing interesting information from his biography, such as his scholarship to Eton, his first in Part I of the Classical Tripos, his first in Greats, and his teaching activities at UCL. You even described some of this information as vanity. I am confused and wonder whether you would like to explain yourself.

With all good wishes.--194.80.206.116 (talk) 11:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)"

I thought it best to post my reply here as well:

Someone pointed out that it seemed a little 'panegyric' and OTT, I agreed and trimmed things. I don't think I was alone in holding the sentiment. So much info was gratuitous - does one really need a list of all the courses he has taught? to know he had a scholarship at school? He is a professor who went oxford, of course he got a first. Does it need to spelled out that a scholarship to all souls is the 'most prestigious honour'? Take this sentence:

'he has taught...Greek language (Intermediate Greek), and was for many years co-ordinator of the Life and Death in the Ancient World course (a core course for Ancient World Studies students)'.

He is a professor of classics and he taught Greek; hardly information needed in an encyclopedia. Really overkill with the Ancient World Studies mentions too. Bad syntax, blah blah blah

Another oddity was the fact that a lot of the changes were made by IP addresses that logged on or created their account solely to edit the Simon Hornblower article. Hence vanity. Enamoured student perhaps?

Compare the article to Jasper Griffin's, Mary Beard's, Oliver Taplin's, usw, for example.

This wasn't a major issue for me, so fear not I won't change any reverts or argue with them.

--Septemberfourth476 (talk) 17:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the interests of openness, it may be relevant to note that the IP address of the above-signed Hornblower advocate who wrote on your page can be quite easily traced to the School of Advanced Study, University of London:

http://www.580san.com/ip-194.80.206.0.htm

What a peculiar coincidence that Hornblower should have been a Professor at University College London at this time... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.130.189 (talk) 22:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]