Talk:The Story of Civilization

message: this full article was taken from http://www.answers.com/topic/the-story-of-civilization —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.108.112.146 (talk • contribs) 21:02, 14 August 2006
:Actually, answer.com took it from Wikipedia. --Gmaxwell 22:48, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Circular References 

message: In October 2006, I did a lot of work to link the critical ideas from each volume title to the appropriate general history articles.
In November 2006, an editor swept through this page using WP:AWB . This program automatically enforces a wikipedia policy against links in headings, so killed my work.
Since the world is not perfect, and since I want to avoid a repeat, I have now added a short sentence to each volume immediately after the heading. These sentences have the proper links, and should be safe from overzealous automated tools. -Arch dude 03:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good :) and I fixed your link to AWB above. --Quiddity 04:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks! I try hard, but I am not a detail person. I should really sweep the article and add many more links. -Arch dude 01:14, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links for each volume. 

message: I added some defense of the volumes and Mr. Durants undertaking to the criticisms.  As Mr. Durant himself admits that errors are inevitable in his work, I've used the opening of his first volume, the better to let him defend his own works. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.50.176.188 (talk) 
The criticism section seems a bit partisan to me; generally a criticism section should contain a summary of criticisms, not a one-line summary followed by a rebuttal. If Durant's own position on the accuracy of the Story is in question, it should get its own section.Carl Wivagg (talk) 12:08, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticisms 

message: At present the article states that "Professor J. H. Plumb's opinion on the series was that 'historical truth… can rarely be achieved outside the professional world [of historians' " and gives as source somebody else quoting a review that Plumb wrote in the New York Review of Books. This is obviously a reference to Plumb's article of July 1st 1965 in NYRB titled "Amateurs" in which he reviews three books and says that "historical truth, it would now seem, can rarely be achieved outside the professional world". But none of those three books is by Durant! I am not (yet) deleting this reference, because I was able to read only part of Plumb's article (a subscription to NYRB is needed to read it all online) and Plumb might refer critically to Durant elsewhere in the article. But I am suspicious. Can anybody who has access to the full Plumb review state whether it mentions Durant? If not, this has to go - AG, UK.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.53.69.150 (talk) 21:13, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Further to my immediately preceding comment, I've now read Jack Plumb's article in NYRB and it makes no reference whatsoever to Durant or his work. Plumb criticises "amateur" historians as often getting things wrong, but he says there are exceptions and for all we know he regarded Durant as one. I'm deleting this quote from the article. If anybody can find a quote elsewhere from Jack Plumb (or another 'professional' historian) criticising Durant on these grounds, let them put it in, but this one illustrates the danger of 2nd hand quoting ("J. H. Plumb, New York Review of Books; quoted in Arnold Beichman, “Is History Only for the Historians?” The Christian Science Monitor, 28 October 1965") - AG, UK.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.53.69.150 (talk) 09:56, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism again 

message: When I came across this page just now I at first was very sceptical about the virtue of such an exhaustive & exhausting apparently nerdish list. But then suddenly realized that, if suitably furnished with all the relevant links, it can constitute in effect a schematic index to much of Wikipedia. Splendid. Wingspeed (talk) 22:55, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: An enigmatic remark. Anyway, I just rejigged the criticism section which had no attribution. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 21:05, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  A veritable index! 

message: The six preceding sections concern criticism of The Story of Civilization, largely by us wikipeditors rather than by second parties. Apparently there never was much coverage in the article. User:TheSoundandtheFury (just above) last year cut the last bit, a single sentence painted with a broad brush and no reference. See #Criticism again regarding the cut by "AG, UK" three years ago.
This article needs some coverage of contemporary reception, by professional historians and others, and subsequent criticism by historians. I suppose we are more likely to find professional criticism of single volumes rather than the whole, in which case the coverage must be pointed.
--P64 (talk) 17:10, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism (continue sections 4–9) 

message: I'm really not sure that the reviews section as is does anything for the article. It's just "the Wall Street Journal hated it, however, the New York Times called it a triumph". Without any details of what each reviewer thought, this is meaningless. Moreover, the format makes the article really choppy. It would make much more sense to have a longer "critical reception" section at the end that summarized contemporary and current reflection of the book, especially how the work's reception has changed over time. Bruhpedia (talk) 06:50, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reviews/Criticism