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Talk:Red Skelton

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Light show (talk | contribs) at 00:47, 2 July 2014 (top: comment). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Good articlesRed Skelton has been listed as one of the Media and drama good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: May 28, 2014. (Reviewed version).
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Additional comments
The Official Red Skelton site has evidently been building up their biography section. Some of the recently added content duplicates material on Misplaced Pages. Evidence suggests it evolved here nature. First, we can compare what their "radio" page looked like in October 2013 to what it looks like now and see that in the past several months, the content has changed substantially. We see evidence of the natural evolution of that content in Misplaced Pages. For instance in April 2011, information on Skeleton being censored is added here by an IP. Note that this content is very different than it would become (and then it is presented in the external site) - the first two sentences are there, but the rest is not. The sentence "Comedian Bob Hope was also given the same treatment once he began referring to the censoring of Allen" and following came into the article the following Month, with this edit, but there's still a substantial difference in the preceding text, with "NBC silenced Red and Rod for 15 seconds." This became "They were silence for 15 seconds" as it is now and is it in the official site about a week later, here, as part of some general copy-editing. It is extremely unlikely that this paragraph would have been copied in three waves, with incremental changes; it is far more likely that the external site copied from Misplaced Pages. For one more example of naturally evolving text, information on his loss of deferment entered first on 22 May at 16:44. Minor grammatical changes that made the content more like the external site () as did substantial text additions (, ). The sections have other signs such as this that make it very unlikely that the copying is them to us. --Moonriddengirl 21:53, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
This article is substantially duplicated by a piece in an external publication. Since the external publication copied Misplaced Pages rather than the reverse, please do not flag this article as a copyright violation of the following source:
Additional comments
Here is another case where an external site is publishing content similar to our own - the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has an explicit copyright tag on this page - where evidence suggests that it evolved here naturally. The site is flagged 2014, and 2014 is the oldest current archive for the page (see). Beyond this, there is evidence of natural evolution of this content all the way back to the creation of this article in 2003. This is the lead of the external site:

Red Skelton was an American comedian who was best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing another career as a painter.


We see the lead sentence, starting with "Bernard Richard "Red" Skelton (July 18, 1913 - September 17, 1997) was an American comedian who started in vaudeville as a teen-ager, worked his way up to Broadway shows, secondary roles in MGM movies, radio performances and finally popularity in the early days of TV." placed in Misplaced Pages in June 2003. This had only minimal changes for years, when an IP rewrote the lead on 9 January 2006, to introduce what made Skelton notable in the lead:

Red Skelton ...was an American comedian whose greatest impact---in a career which began as a teen circus clown and graduated to vaudeville, Broadway, MGM films, and radio---began when he reached stardom with television's The Red Skelton Show (CBS, 1951-1970; NBC, 1971).


This is clearly moving to be more similar to the external site, but is still very different. This sat for some months until this edit on 10 July 2006 changed it to:

Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton ...was an American comedian who was most well known as a television star with The Red Skelton Show (NBC, 19511952, CBS, 19531970; NBC, 19701971). Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, MGM films, and radio.


Again, a change that brings it closer to the source. Later the same day, a different editor modified that to read:

Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton...was an American comedian who was most well known as a radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, clubs and casinos, while also pursuing another career as a painter.


A minute later, he changed "most well known" to "best known" and added "top" to the description. At this point, the lead in our article is the same as the lead in the external site, but the information on his early life differs substantially. We see that evolving gradually and naturally as well, with edits such as this, this and this. Just as with the source above, we have to conclude from these signs of natural evolution that the content was created here on Misplaced Pages by multiple people and taken as a source by the website that also publishes the text - perhaps unaware that use of Misplaced Pages content without attribution is a violation of license. (See WP:Reuse.) --Moonriddengirl 23:55, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
A fact from Red Skelton appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 May 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
  • Did you know... that comedian Red Skelton earned more from painting than from his television and radio career?
A record of the entry may be seen at Misplaced Pages:Recent additions/2014/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Red Skelton.
Misplaced Pages

Structure as biography

FWIW, one question of this and other bios, like Peter Sellers and Charlie Chaplin', always jumps out at me, and it's why have a separate "Biography" section for a biography article? It seems that every aspect of the article is biographical, as it should be. But as I'm only a drive-by, I'll just add that I feel a "Personal life" section is more useful and intuitive than co-mingling his career with his marriages and family problems, as details are easier to find, although that preference didn't get too far on Sellers or Chaplin. And if anyone feels a PD portrait photo of his attractive daughter at HS graduation would be of benefit, let me know. --Light show (talk) 00:47, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

News stories re: the bomber Skelton bought via his radio show

In case someone wants to start an article about the Soviet Army bomber Red Skelton collected funds for through his radio program, here are some news story links with some history of the plane. We hope (talk) 13:54, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Just added the note to the article that the last pilot (the third--this is the one who met Skelton in 1993) said he would have thanked Skelton some time earlier, but a US diplomat told him that Skelton was dead. We hope (talk) 14:49, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Let's see if we can come up with any more sources to flesh this out a bit. We hope (talk) 14:54, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Featured Article?

I encourage the contributors here to take this article all the way to FAC. But, then, of course, you probably already had that in mind. — Maile (talk) 15:10, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

That's the plan, yes. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:27, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
Cauliflower, Clem, San Fernando Red, Freddie and George...and, of course, Gertrude and Heathcliff...are smiling upon you. — Maile (talk) 17:53, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
Good to hear. -- Zanimum (talk) 13:43, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
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