Talk:Round the Horne

More edit warring

Drfrench, what the hell are you doing with the continued edit warring and not bothering to discuss things on the talk page? Your last edit summary of "fix formatting" fools no-one. It is a revert, so please be honest in your summaries in future, even if you are trying to avoid accusations of breaching the blue line of WP:3RR. You've been asked several times to DISCUSS rather than edit war, and I can't understand why you are not able to do so. - SchroCat (talk) 16:16, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

DrFrench, your version does not seem to be an improvement. Please explain what you are trying to do, and why you think it is better than the previous version. If you continue to WP:EDIT WAR, you may be blocked from editing. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:41, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Bolding

@Tim riley: Taking this to the talk page as requested. Can you explain why MOS:BOLDREDIRECT does not apply here? The redirects in question are DobbiroidsDobbiroids, Binkie HuckabackBinkie Huckaback, and Dame Celia MolestranglerDame Celia Molestrangler. Tevildo (talk) 21:38, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

You have misread the MoS guideline. The redirects are not from this page, but to it. Bolding here is unhelpful and pointless. Tim riley talk 21:42, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

There would be little point bolding an outgoing redirect link. See also MOS:B - "This is also done at the first occurrence of a term (commonly a synonym in the lead) that redirects to the article or one of its subsections, whether the term appears in the lead or not" [emphasis added]. The bolding is consistent with the MOS. If there's a reason that the MOS doesn't apply here, please share it. Otherwise, the MOS prescribes that the terms should be bolded. Tevildo (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

One of us misunderstands the MoS guideline about what is commonly (not compulsorily) bolded. I'd be glad of advice from my co-author of the FA text, SchroCat. Tim riley talk 22:09, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Why bother with the redirects? They seem rather pointless to me, given the dozens (hundreds?) of character names used. - SchroCat (talk) 22:13, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I think that's right. And on top of that, for every one editor who puts Dobbiroids into the search engine there will surely be many more who would open the main article and wonder why on earth Dobbiroids is in unexplained bold type. As the MoS does not make it mandatory to embolden terms to which a redirect points I think we should refrain from doing so here, as simply unhelpful to our readers. Tim riley talk 22:28, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

OK, this discussion can stand as the reason for non-compliance, I won't labour the point. A similar argument could be made for restoring the capitals to Director-General, but, as they say, I don't have a dog in that fight. Perhaps adding a comment to the text to deter any future editors who want to follow the MOS might be an idea. Tevildo (talk) 22:41, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

For the second time in a few days I have had the pleasure of thanking an editor whose views were the opposite of mine for his or her magnanimity in letting my view stand. That sort of thing doesn't happen very often and I thank you, Tevildo, Tim riley talk 23:19, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Not at all! We followed the process and we reached a resolution without resorting to personal abuse, which, I agree, is far too common these days. I'm still right, of course. 😺 Tevildo (talk) 00:03, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Historical inaccuracy

The article states:-

• "The fourth series began on 25 February 1968"
• "In the fourth series, Sandy tells Horne that Julian is a brilliant pianist: .... At the time, gay male sex was a criminal offence in Britain."
• However, the Sexual Offences Act 1967 received Royal assent on 27 July 1967. So, by the fourth series, gay male sex was not a criminal offence in Britain. - this needs to be re-written
  • The 1967 act repealed some of the penal laws, but by no means all. Cottaging, as here, certainly wasn't legalised. Tim riley talk 19:42, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    • The statement is "At the time, gay male sex was a criminal offence in Britain." which is not true - the statement does not refer to cottaging or soliciting, just "gay male sex", so it needs modifying or deleting. Arjayay (talk) 19:53, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to the great and good Roy Jenkins the 1967 lifted some of the restrictions on gay men, but by no means all. Relations now legal were not then. Tim riley talk 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

• Furthermore, I seem to recall that when Julian and Sandy were working for "Bona Law", they said they were spending a lot of time on their "legal practice", to a huge round of applause - but I can't find a reference for this - Arjayay (talk) 19:22, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Bona Law (Feb 1967): the quote you are looking for is "We've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time". Tim riley talk 19:42, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    • I had already deleted that comment (now struck) before you answered, please do not reinstate deleted comments, as that is re-factoring. - Arjayay (talk) 19:53, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Oops, my apologies. Must have (yet again) fallen foul of an edit conflict. User:SchroCat what think you? Perhaps we should invite Arjayay to propose a tweak to the wording? S/he may have a better way of explaing the minor influence of Julian and Sandy on public opinion, perhaps. Tim riley talk 20:03, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

It’s not referring to the fourth series (as the 1967 date makes clear), but it did leave that impression. I’ve tweaked it to avoid that minor issue. - SchroCat (talk) 20:31, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks SchroCat - a much simpler clarification than I could come up with - best wishes - Arjayay (talk) 20:34, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

My pleasure. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 20:36, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I think in this particular case "my pleasure" is more appropriately my phrase than yours, but bless you, nonetheless. Tim riley talk 19:29, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Citation formatting

I've had edits reverted today by User:SchroCat and User:Tim riley accusing me of edit warring and WP:CITEVAR violations. What I was trying to do was to make sense of some of the citations in the article, because – quite frankly – the formatting is bizarre and hard to follow.

In fact, when User:SchroCat reverted my first edit it was because I had assumed that the date related to the transmission of an episode. The citation didn't make it clear what it referred to - certainly nothing that indicated it referred to a website. Having a footnote, which links to a citation elsewhere in the page just seems to me a bizarre way of doing things. I can't say I've seen it done this way in other articles, but that be down to the articles that I read or edit.

The main thing I do on Wikipedia is to check and update/fix citations (and fix any typos I see at the same time). These seemed, to me, to need fixing, so I started to fix them. I didn't even realise that my edit had been reverted, so User:Tim riley, no it wasn't edit warring, I just hadn't noticed that User:SchroCat had reverted my edit, especially as they hadn't done me the courtesy of leaving a note on my talk page.

I can see from the history that I attempted some editing of the page about six years ago. I don't remember that, but my edits today were WP:GOODFAITH edits and I hope we don't have any WP:OWNBEHAVIOR issues developing here. If the consensus here is that people like the way the citations are laid out, then so be it. To me, they don't make sense as they look vague and incomplete and one has to go to another section altogether to find the detail. Personally, I would find it much easier to follow if {{sfn}} use was confined to providing a page reference, with a bibliography of the books used – and that citation templates were used as normal in all other cases.

DrFrench (talk) 22:22, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

DrFrench, CITEVAR is quite clear: "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style, merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles". Given the existing style is one used and accepted in articles across WP (including this article going through two community-based review processes), it shouldn't be changed just because a single user doesn't like it, or prefers another.

No, I didn't leave a note on your talk page - there's no lack of courtesy there, again it's uncommon for anyone to leave a note - but as I pressed the revert button, this should have triggered an alert notification at the top of your page to notify you.

No-one has accused you of not acting in good faith; perhaps you could demonstrate that good faith by not falsely accusing people of ownership when they are only following the guidelines they also link to in edit summaries, such as BRD and CITEVAR? It just helps keep the temperature down if such things are not thrown around without basis. Thanks. - SchroCat (talk) 06:22, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Firstly. I'll say it's not down to 'personal preference'. It's because of readability and accessibility.

Some time ago, I had a bad accident and suffered a serious brain injury. Cognitively, this limits what I can do. So, I do what I can manage, and I think I do it rather well; checking references, expanding and improving them (if possible finding new relevant references) and a bit of basic copyediting. At the present time, this article has 219 references using {{sfn}}. When I see an article with lots of references, I edit them section by section, so I can concentrate on just that one section. It's not a 'personal preference', I am restricted by my condition.

In this one specific diff, I have:

• added a complete citation  – for the first documentary mentioned  – to the specific issue of the Radio Times in which is was listed, down to the page number (rather than just a generically worded link to BBC Genome)
• corrected the name of the second documentary programme mentioned (from Horne A' Plenty to Horne-a-Plenty)
• added a complete citation  – for the second documentary mentioned  – to the specific issue of the Radio Times in which is was listed, down to the page number (rather than just a generically worded link to BBC Genome)
• for the third programme mentioned, I have updated the broadcast date to show it was broadcast a year earlier than it previously stated
• added a complete citation  – for that programme  – to the specific issue of the Radio Times in which is was listed, down to the page number (rather than just a generically worded link to BBC Genome)
• added a complete and detailed citation to the BBC Programme Catalogue for that programme, rather than just a generic "Horne of Plenty". BBC. Retrieved 4 March 2019. citation.

And that's just one of the edits I made.

Now, you may feel that they aren't important edits, but they are accurate edits. There was a choice available to you and other editors; a) to 'fix' the 'error' I made, or b) simply to revert the edit. That's why I mentioned WP:OWNBEHAVIOR, because (and I hope you understand, with this extra info) from my perspective, it looked like keeping the status quo was more important than having good-quality and accurate citations. I did not make any accusations.

Even though I have issues with my cognitive load, I can still make valuable contributions to Wikipedia. But, unfortunately, the layout of references in this article page is quite literally hostile to editors with cognitive issues, like me. As I mentioned, I haven't come across an article with 200+ {{sfn}} references. The vast majority of these references are to just a handful of books. In such a situation, it would be more manageable to read (and edit) the article if instead the {{sfn}} referencing was only used only where there were multiple references to a single book and that other referencing waas done with inline citations in the usual way. This would eliminate the 'double hop' for each and every citation in this article.

And it's that 'double hop' that's the real problem for disabled editors, like me. The blanket use of {{sfn}} hides the actual detail of the citation making it impossible to check/correct/expand citations.

I'm always mindful of WP:5P when I edit, but also WP:IGNORE too. Mea culpa for not getting consensus, but in this case, it seemed to me that improving the article's readability and accessibility was non-controversial and more important than blindly 'following the rules'. DrFrench (talk) 22:10, 30 April 2026 (UTC)