Talk:Eleanor Robson

Publicity blurbs - Why does this entry even exist?

This reads like a collection of self-serving book blurbs written by the author herself. This needs to be properly edited or deleted. Besides, she is not a famous scholar in any field (Assyriology, history of mathematics, etc.), just a minor figure, so why is she here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anzu1939 (talk • contribs)

Please read WP:RS and come back when you can distinguish a reliably published independent review of a publication from a "publicity blurb". WP:PROF might be helpful reading as well. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:49, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Publicity blurbs for books also include positive highlights from published reviews. No need to be sarcastic; I could also say that you (Mr. Epstein) don't seem to know much about the publishing industry. The point is that (a) this bio corresponds to a scholar with no public profile beyond her small field (Mesopotamian mathematics), and (b) it reads like a press release written by her literary agent: it's simply a collection of praising remarks. There are equally negative reviews of this person's work. This is almost certainly written by the scholar herself or a close disciple. This person has no footprint outside her small subfield to deserve such a detailed bio -- a list of publications with selected words of praise for each item, something you almost never see in Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anzu1939 (talk • contribs) 00:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

(1) Most of the text in question was written by me, as you should have been able to determine for yourself by looking at the article history. I have no connection to Robson nor to her publishers, as a little more research would have told you. Please review WP:AGF and stop tossing around unjustified accusations of conflicts of interest. (2) It was intended as a factual description of what her works are about, not as praise for them, and if there are reliably published and factual critiques of her work that are inadequately represented here, I would be happy to include them as well. (3) I think that many of Wikipedia's articles on academics, limited as they are to the career milestones of the person in question, are sadly inadequate. I think we should have a lot more descriptive coverage of their actual accomplishments and works. So I find your argument that many other articles don't have this sort of thing to be completely unpersuasive. The correct solution to that problem is to fix up the other articles, not to lobotomize this one. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:10, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Eleanor Robson. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081210062657/http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/ to http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:52, 18 September 2017 (UTC)