Talk:Balliol College, Oxford

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Classical scholars

There ought to be mention of classical scholars such as Edgar Lobel, Sir John Beazley, WS Watt, KJ Dover and RGM Nisbet, to name only ones I have known personally, and all world-class. They could take the place of quite a lot of facetious trivialities that make parts of this article embarrassing to read. Esedowns (talk) 18:20, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Esedowns, those names are all included at List of Balliol College, Oxford people#Classical scholars, although William Watt (classicist) does not yet have an article. TSventon (talk) 22:20, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Undue weight

I believe the section titled 'Scandal' fails the second part of Wikipedia:Reliable sources and undue weight. This is an incident covering three months in 2021 in a history section that is supposed to summarise 759 years of the College. These sorts of edits are becoming more regular on Wikipedia pages and turn encyclopaedic articles into news reporting. I will remove the section in the near future to improve the page, unless any other experienced editors disagree strongly or can provide an alternative. Racingmanager (talk) 11:40, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Racingmanager: yes, agreed, much as Harriet's experiences must have been traumatic, it's undue recentism. It might be worth a couple of sentences, if the incident received significant coverage, but no more than that. The history section is rather poor quality altogether, looking at it, but that's no excuse. — Amakuru (talk) 13:20, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nobel prizes list

The list looks like it's been drawn up by the college's spin doctors, and probably needs a good pruning if its first name is any guide. The only association of Pauling with Balliol is that he spent a year there as a visitor once already famous.^[1] so he was neither a student nor really part of faculty. 130.190.87.39 (talk) 16:00, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I also removed the wording that "Balliol produced" various remarkable people to reduce the puffery. However, it is worth noting that quite a few established academics came to Balliol as visiting scholars. One way is via the Eastman Professorship which is administered by the Rhodes Trust. These visitors may or may not have done any teaching specific to Balliol. However, they were attached to the college and students and faculty may have had an opportunity to interact with them. One professor came as a visitor in the same year he was awarded a Nobel Prize so the college can take no credit. Such intellectual superstars could have gone anywhere else for a year but they chose to come to Oxford. Perhaps it was immaterial to them which college was attached so we cannot make too much of the connection. A degree of modesty is required. JPF (talk) 12:07, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "Obituary: Professor Linus Pauling". The Independent. August 21, 1994. Archived from the original on June 16, 2021. Retrieved January 25, 2018.

[1] "Obituary: Professor Linus Pauling". The Independent. August 21, 1994. Archived from the original on June 16, 2021. Retrieved January 25, 2018.

[1]