Talk:Mary Marquis

A fact from Mary Marquis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 29 November 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Scottish news presenter Mary Marquis continued to work while seven months pregnant in 1963, including one interview conducted on a roof?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/November.

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Oppose prod[edit]

I realise the sources may not be very good at present, but I assure people that this person was a well known newsreader in Scotland for several years, probably better known than some people who do have biographies on Wikipedia. Give me a bit of time and I'm sure I can find adequate sources. PatGallacher (talk) 18:07, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First Person Singular dates[edit]

Note sure what the dates were for First Person Singular. At the moment the article implies that it started before Reporting Scotland, but that may not be right.

Off the web, I can see that Gordon Jackson was interviewed in February 1971 [1], and painter David Donaldson in May 1973 [2]. Jheald (talk) 13:59, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

Per BLPSOURCES, tabloids are not used for articles on living people. A lot of the stuff we had here was innocuous enough, but was it helping the article? Most importantly, are there better sources available? Funnily enough I came upon her name mentioned in Irvine Welsh's Skagboys. --John (talk) 15:30, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BLPSOURCES says "Material should not be added to an article when the only sourcing is tabloid journalism." What evidence is there that the article in question is tabloid journalism? I can't read it because it's behind a paywall, but an interview with a retired BBC news presenter doesn't exactly strike me as "tabloidy". ¡Boz zio! 15:42, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the Mail and the Record are unequivocally tabloid sources. That could be a clue. --John (talk) 15:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's an RfC currently underway to determine whether the Mail should be blacklisted. If that vote is closed in favour of blacklisting, then you can go around removing the Mail as a source. Until then, unless there's a specific reason this particular article is unreliable, it should remain. ¡Boz zio! 16:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The specific reason this source is unsuitable here is that this is a biography of a living person and so our policy WP:BLPSOURCES applies. The RfC you refer to is discussing whether the Mail is to be blacklisted on all articles. The Daily Record, which is not the subject of the RfC is also unequivocally a tabloid. See how it works? --John (talk) 19:24, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, and I'm saying you're misinterpreting BLPSOURCES to suit your own agenda. I don't know why you're getting all snarky, but it's a bit bizarre. You've been reverted by two editors, so stop edit-warring. To quote your comment at my talkpage, "If you keep reverting, you'll get blocked. Don't say you weren't warned". ¡Boz zio! 06:02, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a link to the discussion where the Daily Mail was banned from being used as a source on BLPs (as you claim), I'm happy to self-revert. ¡Boz zio! 06:13, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have a link to the actual DM article? The link in the history is to a search engine, and I cannot find an article by that apparent title on the Daily Mail's website. In fact, I can find no evidence that the DM has ever written about Mary Marquis. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:04, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Someguy1221: The first few paragraphs are available here, with the rest behind a paywall. The author of the article is Jeremy Hodges, who according to this was at one stage "Scottish arts and features editor of The Sunday Times", as well as a biographer of Robert Louis Stevenson. That source also specifies that he wrote for the Scottish Daily Mail, which apparently has some degree of separation from the main paper (printed separately, etc.). (Don't know if that's common knowledge, but I wasn't aware of it). ¡Boz zio! 10:57, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably also available via Gale-Cengage, [3] if anyone has a library subscription; though I don't know whether Gale's archive includes the Mail's Scottish edition. Jheald (talk) 11:10, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]