Talk:Anthony Coburn

Clean-up list removal
I have sectioned this and made very small amendments. Can be taken off the clean-up list Chasnor15 (talk) 14:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it absolutely cannot &mdash; there are no sources, no wikilinks, and it still has numerous style and NPOV problems. I have restored the tag. Angmering (talk) 17:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Why not just revert it back to before the IP rewrote the entire thing? Davhorn (talk) 00:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of interest
Not only is this article unsourced but we now have a relative of the subject editing. I've warned them about conflict of interest and original research, but it hasn't worked so far. Can we try to verify the facts because according to that person, there are a lot of errors on this page. anemoneprojectors  talk  21:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Stef Stargazer is the definitive account of Tony Coburn's life in the UK. The sources are his own life experience til his father's death in 1977 and his mother's and others recollections. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Renault12ts (talk • contribs) 23:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC) Renault12ts (talk) 23:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * That would be original research that other editors would not be able to verify. However, nothing on this page is verifiable at the moment as there are no sources. anemoneprojectors   talk  23:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks AP for your replies. So that the info re: Tony is verifiable, what sort of evidence would be required.Renault12ts (talk) 12:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Sources should be reliable and published - so cetain websites, books, etc are good. See Identifying reliable sources for more information. anemoneprojectors   talk  12:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Would a death certificate and a photo of a headstone, for instance, prove someone's date of death?Renault12ts (talk) 13:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Possible source
Doctor Who The Handbook: The First Doctor by David J Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker, (ISBN 0426204301)

There is apparently information regarding Coburn on pages 178 and 212 (and possibly elsewhere, but those are the ones I've been made aware of). ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:13, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

This page makes a pretentious mockery of peer-review
The 'printed, recorded, online' information from which this page is derived is neither 'reliable' nor 'verifiable' in any regard other than that Wikipedia 'users' are presently able to reliably verify that the same misinformation you people insist on publishing and republishing has previously been published elsewhere. In the absence of any proper research on the subject, a great deal of inaccurate BS has previously been written by this supposed 'researcher' or that in relation to my father. As (with only one exception that I or my mother can recall) none of these people have ever been bothered to consult with anyone who actually knew or lived or worked with Tony, (let alone study the substantial amount of documentary evidence held by his estate) very little of the unverified indiscriminate-hearsay nonsense they have cavalierly presented as 'fact' has any validity beyond underpinning the self-serving aspirations of people wishing to make easy money and/or gain social-advantage by presenting themselves as 'experts' on 'Doctor Who'. As, in the absence of genuine data, (derived from or backed up by the aforesaid documentary evidence) all of these supposed 'authors' have instead derived their variously alleged supposed 'information' from each other, the very notion of 'peer-review' in the context of James Anthony Coburn's life and work, amounts to little more than the misinformed leading the misinformed.

I have absolutely no problem with Wikipedia's requirement for 'peer-review' regarding academic subject-matter, in which context, the process is an expected and well-established essential pre-requisite for the inclusion of new knowledge in the evolving edifice of human understanding. In the present context however, where precious little that is not already unverified 'hearsay' presented by non-academically qualified, self-appointed 'experts' is publicly available, the process is made an absolute mockery of.

If Wikipedia's ultimate aim is to 'inform', then you are letting your 'users' down badly by continuing to insist on following the blind man who is in turn groping after the blind man in front of him. If Wikipedia's intention, on the other hand, is merely to pretentiously and self-interestedly present itself as an 'academic' resource by fatuously attempting to dress itself in academic apparel, without due regard to the actual veracity of the hearsay rubbish it currently presents as fact, well then you're doing a fine job of it and you should all just carry on as you are.

The plain and inescapable fact is that there can be no 'peer review' in regard to information on my father's (James Anthony Coburn 1927 - 1977) life, for the simple reason that no-one has, at any point, ever bothered to research the only existing (and still extant and available) source material on his life.

I, on the other hand, can state with absolute certainty (deriving from my own and my mother's certain knowledge as well as from Tony's own still extant letters 'home' to his family in Australia) that my father's full name was James Anthony Coburn (not merely Anthony Coburn); that he was born in Melbourne Australia, on the 10th December 1927 and died in Kent and Canterbury hospital (in the UK) on 28th April 1977; that he worked as a reporter for the Melbourne Argus before coming to England in 1950; that he came to England intending to be an actor and reverted (not turned) to writing on discovering how unlikely this was; that he spent virtually the entirety, not merely 'much of' his professional life working in the UK; that he never at any point in his life worked as 'butcher's assistant' but only, for a short period in 1953, as a delivery driver for a butcher's shop in the village of Seal in Kent (in the UK) whilst staying with friends in nearby Sevenoaks; that his play 'The Bastard Country' came high in the top twenty entries in a competition run by The Observer newspaper in 1956 -57 being subsequently staged by Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1960 and later used as the basis for the opera, 'Fire on the Wind', by the Australian composer Colin Brumby in 1988-91 (ref: www.atse.org.au/uploads/FireGillies.pdf); that he by turns wrote, script-edited and produced for all the various works listed under his name on The Internet Movie Database (as well as others not listed); and that his assignment at the time of his death was as producer for the second series of 'Poldark' (definitely not, as the Wikipedia page ludicrously insists, 'while preparing to take over as producer of the long-running BBC police drama series Z-Cars', his brief involvement with 'Z-Cars' having ended in 1962, almost a year prior to his involvement with cheesy old 'Doctor Who'.

the naivety you supposed 'editors' continue to demonstrate is simply staggering. (unless, of course, as your repetition of inadequate reasoning implies, you simply don't give a damn) The mere fact of something being verifiably in print (let alone listed online) does not make it factual, true, or reliable. If it did we could all take for granted as unquestionably verifiable fact that aliens built the pyramids and remain among us, that Queen Elizabeth and Bill Clinton (to name but two) are 'lizard-creatures' in human form, that a 'neocon' 'inside-job' brought down the World Trade Center, as a 'Pearl Harbour' pretext for war (as may well turn out to be true) and that the CIA killed Kennedy. there being, more than enough information both in print and online to support any of these allegations. I would have thought fully paid-up and qualified 'netizens' as you people no-doubt consider yourselves, would be only too aware of this fact. Stef Stargazer (talk) 08:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Anthony Coburn. 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/20080827231552/http://www.teletronic.co.uk/who3.htm to http://www.teletronic.co.uk/who3.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 01:29, 12 February 2016 (UTC)