Talk:Jonathan Raban

message: Made a start on this article.  More details as I can find them. -- 20:49, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: 3 Apr 2005

message: I am a great fan of Raban's work, particularly with regard to his writing style. I have mainly read his earlier books and, with so little biographical information about him, have attempted to put together a biography (still somewhat limited) gleaned from articles and interviews. I feel that he should have far more prominence in the literary world, particularly in England, than he currently has, since he is one of the best living authors of his generation. All his books are available on Amazon at the amazon.co.uk site   Ivankinsman 08:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Congratulations, this is a well-made article on an author who deserves more readers in my country, too! Being a sailor myself, I particularly liked Coasting and Passage to Juneau. It’s a shame I haven’t got the time (yet) to follow these two up with Raban’s other work. Anyway: As soon as I have the time I would like to translate this article into German and post it on German WIKIPEDIA, where the present Raban entry is a rather measly one. Cheers, 87.161.180.181 14:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent and I appreciate the additions you made to the article. Let's hope there will be a wider readership for this fantastic writer! Ivankinsman 10:31, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 11 April 2007

message: Artur - please leave in Waxwings (novel) and Surveillance (novel) and Coasting (book) so that they connect through to the plot summary pages. If you take novel out, they go through to the definitions of these words. Plus, how is the German Wikipedia article coming along?  09:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, Ivankinsman and all the other Raban collaborators – sorry, I had no intention of destroying any links! I thought the categorizing of Coasting as book was a bit strange. O.K., if it is necessary to link the entry to other WIKIPEDIA articles, I won’t meddle. By the way: Does Waxwings have to come in inverted commas? As a publication in its own right (and not part of a publication), italicization without any inverted commas will surely do. Anyway, I had better stay away from that part of the article. :-))) On the matter of the German WIKIPEDIA article on Raban – sorry, I haven’t got the time (yet). I started a translation of this English-language article before it was abridged two or three weeks ago but stopped all work once it became apparent that something was going on with this article. The last thing I can stand at the present – having to shoulder a larger-than-usual workload in my regular job until early summer – is investing a lot of work in a German Raban article and then finding the English article drastically changed or having to fight the German article through an irrelevancy discussion or some such nonsense. Also, an enlarged German Raban article will have to be based on some research specific to how Raban has been received in Germany; that takes a bit of time. Finally, I would not want to enlarge the German Raban article just on the basis of having read only two of his books. So – the German article will have to wait for a number or reasons! Cheers –  20:40, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 13 May 2007

message: ::That's cool that Jonathan Raban uses wiki and comments on his biography. 
::I think he's one of the finest travel writers I've come across and even better than Paul Theroux. "Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth" was superb: great eye for detail and the truly bizarre as well as the idiosyncratic. 
::If JR reads these notes, I was wondering: while you were at Hull University, did you ever know a John Ure? -  00:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 30 May 2007

message: Hello ... I stumbled across this article while doing some WikiGnome cleanups on , and felt that you nuggets deserved my 2¢ worth.
First of all, I found this Discussion page unreadable because there were (a) no headings to break up the threads, and (b) no indentations to separate comments from replies ... I started by adding a  (which is the Very First Thing that you should do when you create a Talk page) ... this provides a Click here to start a new topic link to create meaningful section headers for new threads.
In the absence of any meaningful subject/headlines, I considered things like, Vandalism - page blanked and Comment by the article's subject, but decided to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) instead ... I used the date of the first comment in each thread as the headers when I broke up the discussions into sections.
Kudos to you all for signing your posts! ... I did not have to use any  templates to identify your contributions. :-)
I have modified some of your signatures using  ... this provides the wikilinks to the user's Talk page and their Contributions ... it just reduces the number of places you have to click to find out this information, and using it yourself is purely a courtesy ... OTOH, using the ":" (colon) for indentation in replies is considered Good Etiquette for being able to follow conversations ... each one used moves your comment one level to the right.
Anywho, I'm going to follow some more "What links here" links in articles related to this author, make some more cosmetic improvements, and then I plan to MOVE ON.
In the mean time, Grasshopper, just remember ... there was a time when I knew even less about this wiki-stuff than you do at this very moment, so don't be afraid to Be BOLD! ... that's how you learn.
Happy Editing! — 20:34, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion/Talk page etiquette  

message: If I were a pleasant, polite person like Jonathan Raban is (I'm not), and I didn't know what Wikipedia was, and I stumbled upon an article about me on the Internet, and all of a sudden I'm being yelled at about Wikipedia policies, I'd be entirely disillusioned. I of course agree that Mr, Raban is a notable person and an entirely suitable subject for an article, and I agree he shouldn't write his own article, but there's no cause to be incivil or unwelcoming. Ben-w 07:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: This is extremely poor form

message: This is a good website and for some reason Jonathan Raban is not on it. I am trying to get him listed as have no idea why a writer of his calibre does not feature. This was the reply from the British Council so I will keep people posted:
'We currently have over 200 authors on the waiting list to be added to the Contemporary Writers site. The site is primarily in support of our work overseas and therefore includes authors we work with plus major prizewinners from the UK and Commonwealth. I keep a note of authors that we consider should be added to the site (plus those that have asked to be added to the site) and an editorial board meets twice a year to decide whether they should be included or not. After we have prepared the author entry we contact the author for approval. We can only add between 5-10 authors every month so the waiting time can be considerable. Having followed your link to the Wikipedia page, I would agree that Mr. Raban is entirely qualified to be added to the site, and as such will add him to the waiting list.  Hopefully, we can add him as soon as possible.' Ivankinsman (talk) 18:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  British Council Contemporary Writers Website 

message: This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement.  Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. --Yoenit (talk) 23:12, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem 

message: Jonathan Raban Article
Can I also ask why you have removed the information I wrote about Jonathan Raban? I SPENT A HUGE AMOUNT OF MY OWN TIME AND EFFORT WRITING THIS PROFILE. I am sick of editors like you and MoonRiddenGirl simply deleting articles and/or stripping them down to their bare bones. Why was this article not put to a general forum of editors to review before you changed it? What give you the right to simply delete important and interesting biographical information relevant to an author and simply leave boring, bare facts? Who can I appeal to on this issue - I know that whatever I say to you or Moonriddengirl will simply be ignored. I also am fully confident that you will remove this from this talk page as part of your totalitarian editing policies. Ivankinsman (talk) 09:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: for anybody interested, moonriddengirl replied to these accusations here. Yoenit (talk) 14:14, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: A message to a very heavy-handed editor (Yoenit)

message: I was reading EW's article and noted that:
Family background
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was born on 28 October 1903 to Arthur Waugh (1866-1943) and Catherine Charlotte Raban (1870-1954), 
into a family with English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Huguenot origins. Wondering if there is a blood connection with JR? Ivankinsman (talk) 19:06, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Family connection to Evelyn Waugh? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Jonathan Raban. 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/20070927021433/http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=pastAwards to http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=pastAwards
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050831031541/http://www.thomascookpublishing.com/ba_prev_winners.htm to http://www.thomascookpublishing.com/ba_prev_winners.htm
*Added  tag to http://blog.theartsfuse.com/2007/03/06/kicking-off-the-podcast/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071006221327/http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=2581 to http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=2581
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:58, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Jonathan Raban. 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  tag to http://www.penusa.org/docs/Master%20List%20of%20PEN%20USA%20Awardees.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081014032319/http://www.pnba.org/1997%20Awards.htm to http://www.pnba.org/1997%20Awards.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090326112926/http://www.aitkenalexander.co.uk/author.php?recordID=267 to http://www.aitkenalexander.co.uk/author.php?recordID=267
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070512200435/http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writer.asp?userid=QC7NdzDBTS&cid=1186056 to http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writer.asp?userid=QC7NdzDBTS&cid=1186056
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:59, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I think the article is great but could give more emphasis to sailing. Raban was a sailor and his books Coasting and Passage to Juneau are innovative in dealing with yachting in a political and historical perspective. 74.14.15.161 (talk) 12:15, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  sailing