Talk:If—

message: This poem is quoted by Grandpa Simpson in the episode Old Money. Should it be included in the pop culture section?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.90.88.131 (talk) 01:06, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Simpsons?

message: Surprised there is no mention of the influence of the work of Isocrates here. One of the early texts... To Demonicus? If someone would be so kind as to include a footnote or comment. (94.170.64.102 (talk) 05:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Isocrates

message: The dash in the title seems to mean links are getting messed up (since it's an extended-ASCII character). Are there any objections to moving the page to If (poem) or something similar? Shimgray 02:25, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there don't seem to be any objections, I'm going ahead with this change --Lox (t,c) 17:25, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dashes

message: Text of poem has been removed. As has already been mentioned on this talk page, Wikipedia is not for source text. That's what Wikisource is for. :)  So, there's a Wikisource box there now. --Midnightdreary 22:23, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The text should be there. Its out of copyright, a normal enyclopaedia would show it, readers expect it to be there. Just not having it because of a pedantic application of a general rule is stupid. Perhaps the rule could apply to longer material, but the poem is short. Do articles about paintings not show a picture of it? If they have pictures, then the poem should be illustrated with the text. 78.147.202.148 (talk) 12:18, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: {+1} This page is about the poem itself. --ElfQrin (talk) 00:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: But the poem is not about itself. 75.36.151.17 (talk) 10:44, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text of poem 

message: If the official title is "If—", why is the — omitted throughout the article? --KnightMove (talk) 11:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  If? 

message: I'm very troubled by the audio file. I don't know if wikipedia standards favor any dialect of English, but the current recording definitely needs cleaning up. I'm a native English speaker from the US, and I have great difficulty understanding the poem in the current recording: I assume it's more difficult for non-native English speakers.
What are the protocols for replacing this recording? I would be willing to make one myself, if I know I'm following wikipedia standards.
Thomas1617 (talk) 02:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Audio 

message: The article states "It was first published in the Brother Square Toes chapter of Rewards and Fairies". However, I had been taught that it was first published in the Obituary column of the "The Times". The source was a book we had back in the 1970's of unusual facts and it proved to be correct on most points. 
Can anyone confirm/deny if it appeared in "The Times" before publication in "Rewards and Fairies" ?
Bmoregan (talk) 14:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Originally published in... 

message: Rather stupid not to have the text in the article nor any obvious links to it. 92.28.250.159 (talk) 13:01, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where's the ****ing text? 

message: It is frequently stated that Kipling himself noted in "Something Of Myself" that the poem had been "anthologised to weariness". (If you google that exact phrase you will see that it's commonly held). I don't have a primary reference for this, but someone might like to add one. Rob Burbidge (talk) 10:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:   "Anthologised to Weariness" 

message: "As an evocation of Victorian-era stoicism—the “stiff upper lip” self-discipline, which popular culture rendered into a British national virtue and character trait, "If—" remains a valid cultural currency."
Aside from the punctuation mistake, this sentence is pretty clunky - particularly the term "valid cultural currency". Without trying to be unkind, it reads a bit like the sort of thing an undergraduate literature student would write in an attempt to show off their vocabulary. Are there any objections to changing it to more basic/accessible language? Lewdswap (talk) 18:13, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Valid cultural currency 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on If—. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20091212030541/http://www.icons.org.uk:80/theicons/collection/stiff-upper-lip/biography/spartans-and-stoics-with-stiff-upper-lips to http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/stiff-upper-lip/biography/spartans-and-stoics-with-stiff-upper-lips
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Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 09:49, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Should the title be italicized? — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  21:29, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italicized 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on If—. 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/20110213052406/http://www.library.dal.ca/DUASC/Digital-Collections/Kipling/Editions to http://www.library.dal.ca/DUASC/Digital-Collections/Kipling/Editions/
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Of all the pop culture references to this poem and not a mention of 1968's 'if....' (dir. Lindsay Anderson, starring Malcolm McDowell...), the title of which was directly inspired or influenced by this poem. It was a suggestion made by an assistant or someone to Lindsay Anderson when deciding on names after the original working title for the film had been Crusaders. Somebody add it? Thanks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.23.153.85 (talk) 20:30, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Really? 

message: Was the mural restored? If not, was the defacement allowed to remain?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.35.22.82 (talk) 10:54, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Manchester University defaced mural  

message: I've started another test balloon for adding the full text of the poem to the article. Seems like this was last discussed ten years ago, and I must say I find the arguments proffered against inclusion thoroughly unconvincing. Just because the text is available at Wikisource does not mean that it cannot be included in this article (it goes without saying that copyright concerns have not applied for the last few decades). The expectation of any reader of the article would be for the text to be present, but that shy little Wikisource icon at the uttermost ends of the page is effectively invisible - I've been editing WP pretty busily for six years, and I only found it because I went looking for it after reading the discussions above. It's not a long poem either, and the text does not bloat the page by any reasonable measure. Lastly, "are we doing this kind of thing"? Yes we do - see for example The White Man's Burden and The Gods of the Copybook Headings, to stick with Kipling - and neither of these is as famous as "If—". 
So, I'd suggest we keep the text included here. And if there is disagreement, I'd like to see some better rationale than "Wikisource has it". We are not taking bread from the mouth of Wikisource's children, and that shit don't cost us printing money either. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:05, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I for one support including the text. For a couple of non-Kipling examples where the text is included see Crossing the Bar and Break, Break, Break. DuncanHill (talk) 21:20, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikisource isn't exactly behind a "beware of the leopard" sign but it's not terribly obvious as pointed out above, and asking readers to read two pages instead of one is hardly welcoming or helpful. To discuss a poem without the poem is like Hamlet without the prince. DuncanHill (talk) 22:05, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

text: I'm just not seeing the merit in pointing out that the project also has the text at another location. Almost all of our images are available at Commons. So why do we include the actual images in articles? The "Wikimedia Commons has media on this topic" link should do just fine, under that logic. Answer: we include them because they are helpful illustrations for the audience who is in the process of reading that article. And there's nothing more helpful in an article about a poem than the actual poem. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:24, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

text: Commenting because Ched pinged me. If people are having trouble finding the link to Wikisource, we should leave it in. Looking at the article on my phone, the Wikisource link is in the external links section, where people are not too likely to find it or even realise that it's there. Around half of our readers use the mobile version. So I think might be a good idea to include the text of the poem. It's short, it's public domain, — Diannaa (talk) 22:42, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Full text added again 

message: Why is there no citation of the author of this recording? Rzn2blv (talk) 14:55, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recording