This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Shaparak Khorsandi article. This is
not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or
poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially
libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to
this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following
WikiProjects:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to
join the project and
contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the
documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Comedy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
comedy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComedyWikipedia:WikiProject ComedyTemplate:WikiProject ComedyComedy articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Iran, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles related to
Iran on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please
join the project where you can contribute to the
discussions and help with our
open tasks.IranWikipedia:WikiProject IranTemplate:WikiProject IranIran articles
This article is of interest to WikiProject LGBT studies, which tries to ensure comprehensive and factual coverage of all
LGBT-related issues on Wikipedia. For more information, or to get involved, please visit the
project page or contribute to the
discussion.LGBT studiesWikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studiesTemplate:WikiProject LGBT studiesLGBT articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject London, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
London on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LondonWikipedia:WikiProject LondonTemplate:WikiProject LondonLondon-related articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Television, a collaborative effort to develop and improve Wikipedia articles about
television programs. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page where you can
join the discussion.
To improve this article, please refer to the
style guidelines for the type of work.TelevisionWikipedia:WikiProject TelevisionTemplate:WikiProject Televisiontelevision articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
women on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.WomenWikipedia:WikiProject WomenTemplate:WikiProject WomenWikiProject Women articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women writers, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
women writers on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women writersWikipedia:WikiProject Women writersTemplate:WikiProject Women writersWomen writers articles
A fact from Shaparak Khorsandi appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the Did you know column on 24 August 2023 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Shaparak Khorsandi asked for her book to be removed from the
Jhalak Prize longlist, which she considered to be "a sticker for being brown"?
I think I have heard Shappi explain on the
BBC that she went to a Christian school, although she herself is a Muslim. Does any one know about this?
ACEOREVIVED (
talk)
22:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm pretty sure she's not, she was bought up in a secular family, and a lot of her jokes revolve about stuff that happens because she's not, but people expect Iranians to be very religious.- (
User) Wolfkeeper (
Talk)
20:20, 14 July 2009 (UTC)reply
Shappi Talk - new comedy series
On the programe on Radio 4
Front Row on June 23, 2009, there was an interview with Shappi Khorsandi in which it was mentioned how she is going to have series "Shappi Talk" on
BBC Radio 4. This could go in the article.
ACEOREVIVED (
talk)
21:20, 23 June 2009 (UTC)reply
"secular Iranian Muslim"
The expression "secular Moslem" seems a contradiction in terms. I don't see how she can be both. Tracing the expreession back to its source, it was comedian Paul Sinha who said this in an interview, and not Shappi herself, and I wonder if this really meant that many from her ethnic group in Iran were Moslems. I have removed this, and hope that a better substitute can be found from a more reliable source.
DavidFarmbrough (
talk)
14:21, 16 September 2009 (UTC)reply
The Lead currently says that the family was forced to flee Iran. However, according to "A Beginner's Guide to Acting English", the family was living in London when the Islamic Revolution happened. Later, the family was given indefinite leave to stay in the UK, presumably leading eventually to UK citizenship. What happened, therefore, was not that the family was forced to flee, but that a temporary stay abroad was converted to voluntary exile. However, after the revolution, Shappi's Khorsandi's father made a visit to Iran which ended with him fleeing to escape harm. It emerged later that the Iranian regime had arranged to have him killed in the UK.
For me, the phrase "raised without religion" in the Lead stands out like a sore thumb. Why is it in there and is it necessary? I think that some context explaining its significance should be added or that it should be removed.
The page opposite the inside front cover of A beginner's guide to acting English says "...moved to London with her family in 1976. They were exiled after the revolution in 1979." My bad on the edit mentioned above, apologies.
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
20:20, 24 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Coming out
The item says she "came out" on the John Bishop show in 2018: well, at the Melbourne comedy festival in early 2014, she was doing a set about her new life as lesbian, so the Bishop show should not have been a surprise.
146.199.78.33 (
talk)
06:26, 5 July 2022 (UTC)reply
Splitting filmography into a new article?
MOS:WORKS says "If an article already exists on an author or artist, then a separate article for a list of that person's works (such as Jorge Luis Borges bibliography or Robert A. Heinlein bibliography) is warranted if the list becomes so long that its inclusion in the main article would be unsuitable." The current filmography doesn't show it, but Khorsandi has well over 100 TV/film appearances, and dozens of radio appearances (see
BBC radio search results, although repeats are included there). I'm therefore proposing a split to a new article (see e.g.
List of performances by Pamela Stephenson.) Any objections or observations? Regards,
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
10:46, 1 June 2023 (UTC)reply
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Passed Not a long way from meeting any of the GA criteria Passed All images are CC licenced Passed No cleanup tags Passed Stable Passed No previous GA nomination
Sources are all reliable - mostly well-regarded British newspapers and the BBC. My only concern at the moment is that since a lot of these are interviews, we might see a reliance on primary material, so the relevant policies will be
WP:BLPRS,
WP:SELFSOURCE and I'll also consider the essay
WP:INTERVIEWS. Since this is a biography of a living person, I'll do a separate assessment viz the policy
WP:BLP.
Spotchecks are a GA requirement; I'll pick a few citations and check to see that the source correctly supports the citation.
N FN 4(a): "The family fled from Iran to London after the Islamic Revolution following a joke that her father composed which was seen as critical of the revolutionary regime."
The source states
"Her father, Hadi Khorsandi, a satirist who was initially supportive of the revolution, had to leave when things became too dangerous after he made a joke that suggested the regime’s fanaticism had gone too far ... 'They didn’t move to England to have that for me.'" ... "Like Lady Hamilton, Khorsandi considers herself a misfit. Part of that relates to coming from a family who fled Iran. Her memoir, A Beginner’s Guide To Acting English, describes the strangeness of arriving in England as immigrants, as well as the fear of the regime which still pursued the family, the constant checking under cars for bombs."
However, it doesn't say that they went to London, or that it was a direct result of her father's joke. I can't access the FT article that's also referenced in this (FN 5) but if that can be used on its own, or if it marries up with this source in a way that indisputably links it all together, then please could you provide a quotation? (N.B. the archive link for that source also just goes to a paywall)
the FT article has "Her family settled in the UK in 1979 when their life in Tehran became too dangerous. Initially supportive of the revolution, her father, satirist and poet Hadi Khorsandi, fell foul of the new regime after a light-hearted joke suggested their fanaticism was going too far...Even in London the family often lived in fear." - admittedly its not entirely explicit that they moved to London, but I took it to mean that. Does changing "London" to "the United Kingdom" work?
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
18:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)reply
She quickly gets down to the nitty gritty, the very personal, and will talk, for instance, about coming out as bisexual and how she admires the way young people today talk about sexuality. She recalls how difficult it was to be out, particularly as bisexual, when she was young. (She recently wrote that, although she was bisexual and had marched for Pride since she was 17, she'd never come out as such.)
but not that she came out in 2017. The other source (19) supports this alone so I think this footnote can be removed.
N FN 10: "She later became a patron of Humanists UK, which appointed her as its President for a three-year term from January 2016, succeeding Jim Al-Khalili." I think this must be a mistake as it's just a press release on one of her novels and makes no reference to this. I'm going off the archive link. The assertion is supported in full by FN 9.
N FN 12: "She married fellow comedian Christian Reilly in 2005, and they had a son." The source doesn't say that they married in 2012 or that her son is his. The source for FN 4 said that Reilly is the father so you can use that and perhaps another one that gives the year of their marriage.
N FN 17: "The siblings were raised bilingual and Khorsandi is fluent in Farsi." The source states that she was raised bilingual but does not mention her brother: "Never had I been so thankful for my parents’ insistence that I learned Farsi, and that I remained bilingual after the UK became our home."
I found an earlier archive copy, but the site doesn't seem to be suitably independent so I've removed the information it supported from the article.
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
18:57, 5 August 2023 (UTC)reply
? FN 30: I think you could argue this one either way. The exact quotation is "lively, ambitious and interesting, though the more narrative-based second half was thinner on laughs than the first." which I don't think, strictly speaking, supports the article saying "he felt that the quality of the second half of the show was not as good as the first". The quotation could also be read as a musing on how it's different but not necessarily worse quality. I'd suggest thinking about rephrasing this slightly or finding another review if possible.
I'm going to pause the review here while you address these issues: it might be worth combing through all the references in the Biography section as this is where most of the issues were, and this is the part that will likely need the most careful attention given that this is a biography of a living person.
I can officially put this review "on hold" if necessary; please let me know if you'd like more than a week to address this and I'll do that.
Thanks for your careful review,
Garnet-Septagon. I've been through the biography section and made a few tweaks, and should be able to go through the rest of the article text in the next day or two. I'll let you know when it's ready for you to resume. Regards,
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
19:47, 5 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I've been through the rest of the article and made a couple more tweaks, and I think it's ready for the resumption of your review. Thanks. Regards,
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
20:44, 5 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Great, all looks good. Regarding the first one, I think it's reasonable to infer from that that they fled to London, so the article text can stay as is. I'll update the list above to make it clear that all issues have been fixed and continue with the review proper.
Garnet-Septagon (
talk)
07:39, 6 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I think I've addressed everything now,
Garnet-Septagon; hopefully the text I added hasn't created too many new issues. Thanks again for your advice. (The Aston and Harris chapter is available through SpringerLink on The Wikipedia Library if you want to have a look at it.) Regards,
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
14:56, 10 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I'm going to put a summary box here and if I have to go into more detail about any of the things I'll write further notes below it, because editing in a table is a pain.
I'll edit the statuses as I go along so things might switch between 'fail' and 'unknown' if you address things while I'm still looking. But I'm intending that things marked as 'pass' stay that way, at the very least to give us a sense of momentum.
2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with
the layout style guideline.
2b.
reliable sources are
cited inline. All content that
could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
Career in comedy section: "she reflected that this sport "led to regular TV bookings..."" - 'sport' should probably be 'spot'. That's a bit of an industry-specific term though, I suggest 'appearance'.
General style:
Wikipedia:Reviewing_good_articles specifies that "The article should be clearly written, in good prose". Broadly speaking there aren't major problems with the way this article is written - the grammar is fine and it's clear what everything means. However, my issue with it is that a lot of it is written a bit like a listicle instead of an encyclopaedia article. If you take this section of Biography:
She married fellow comedian Christian Reilly in 2005, and they had a son.[12] They divorced in 2011.[13] Her daughter was born in June 2013.[13] In a 2014 interview she said "I'm doing it all on my own, I have no contact with the father. But that's fine, I'm not angry or bitter about it."[13] As of 2022, she was in a relationship with fellow comedian Mark Steel.[14] Her brother Peyvand also did stand-up comedy for a while but decided to pursue a career in journalism.[15][16] Khorsandi was raised bilingual and is fluent in Farsi.[17] Khorsandi was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder aged 47.[18] In 2017, she came out as bisexual.[19]
Firstly, it reads as a really choppy collection of short sentences instead of prose that flows. I think it needs a few conjunctions ("She married fellow comedian ... and they had a son, but divorced six years later. Her daughter was born in June 2013, and Khorsandi said in a 2014 interview ...")
Secondly, it kind of sprinkles in random facts like the sentence about her brother, being bilingual, having ADHD. If these facts are notable then I think they need a bit more - they could each be their own short paragraph if you can find sources that explain why they're relevant to the subject of the article (why did Peyvand choose journalism (does it have anything to do with Shaparak?) Does she do anything for ADHD awareness or LGBT causes?). To a lesser extent this goes for the Career section as well. I think it was wise to put a bit at the bottom "Her other television appearances have included..." because then you can strip out the stuff that isn't commented on further (e.g. with reviews). I'd like to see the reviews and significance of the shows mentioned in Career fleshed out further, which should be possible given how high-profile she is.
I thought the mention of Peyvand as having been a stand-up comedian was fairly relevant given that his sister has that role and their father was a satirist, but no objections to removing it. I've added a mention of her 2023 book that focuses on her ADHD. Working on the other points.
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
19:59, 6 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I don't think her brother is necessarily irrelevant, but that sentence really stands out as one that doesn't fit with anything else. You've already improved it by expanding on ADHD and sexuality, but the paragraph goes from talking about her religion to her partners and children to her brother to her ADHD to her sexuality all in one bunch.
For the middle part of the Biography section, I think if you put her relationships first ("She married fellow comedian...") and make it its own paragraph, because it comes first chronologically, then a short paragraph for ADHD and sexuality, then that would be a better structure. If you add a little about her father in the section's first paragraph, because he was a comedian, you could elegantly fit in that her brother was also briefly a stand-up comic.
Garnet-Septagon (
talk)
16:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)reply
You may get ideas or inspiration from
James Acaster, which was promoted to GA this week. I think the prose in that article is much more varied and the career section is more fleshed-out, and there are obvious similarities with the structure of this article given that they're both comedians.
WP:PARAGRAPH may also help.
For some reason, the amount of coverage of useful sources for Khorsandi really seems to dip after 2017, until recently. As you've observed, an awful lot of it is interviews. She did say that being on I'm a Celebrity made her realise that she was content and didn't want to seek to be really famous, so perhaps that has something to do with it. There are literally hundreds of listings or press-release-based gig-preview results which makes it hard to find useful sources. I did add a bit more from the Aston and Harris chapter, which has some analysis.
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
11:51, 8 August 2023 (UTC)reply
1b
Should have a name pronunciation (
MOS:LEADPRON), especially given that part of the article talks about how she initially went by Shappi because people mispronounced Shaparak.
I've not done it before but the official guidance is here:
WP:MOSPRON.
If you're editing on desktop then the dropdown above the edit summary has an option for "IPA (English)" to get the right symbols. As far as I know it's just a case of picking the right symbols for the right sounds, with a ' in front of the syllable that's stressed.
Looks pretty good to me, I'm not clear on long vs half-long vowel sounds and all that (the final i might be half-long but I really don't know). I would say that the 'r' definitely sounds more like an 'ɾ' ('flapped r') though (
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Alveolar_tap.ogg). And I don't think you separate words with a colon? The pages on
Nicolae_Ceaușescu and
Kim Jong Un don't anyway.
"until June 2021 known as Shappi Khorsandi" is confusing when her official website (which is shappi.co.uk and listed in the infobox) still exclusively refers to her as Shappi. I'm not sure there's an elegant way out of this given that she's also written about changing her name back, just pointing it out in case you can think of one.
but I would change "until June 2021" to "previously" as this is only the lead and it's discussed elsewhere.
I've amended to " previously performed professionally as" in the lead and similarly in the body text, but am open to any other ideas. 11:04, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
The lead describes her breakout show as Asylum Speaker, which is supported in the article, but the article also says how she herself considered the Secret Policeman's Ball to be when she got big. I'd change this to something like "she rose to national prominence after her 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Asylum Speaker, and appearing at the Secret Policeman's Ball two years later."
Actually this would read better as: "She rose to national prominence after her 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Asylum Speaker and her appearance at the Secret Policeman's Ball two years later."
Lists: I saw you put a note on the talk page about spinning her filmography off into its own page. If you're going to do that then that's fine, but if it remains on this page my suggestion is to turn it into "Selected Television Appearances" because
MOS:TIMELINE states that "it is expected that the information will be supported elsewhere in the article by prose analysis of the main points". IMO it's more for websites like IMDB to collate lists of all media appearances.
You might want to play around with
Help:Transclusion to transclude this article's lead on that page so they don't have to be kept in sync. I'm not sure what people typically do for articles that are lists of works like that. But obviously that's out of scope for this GA nom.
Garnet-Septagon (
talk)
16:01, 7 August 2023 (UTC)reply
2a
Only one suggestion: her books are duplicated in the Publications box and in Bibliography (which is missing one). Suggest removing Bibliography (
MOS:BIB).
There's an uncited quotation in Books section: 'Throughout the book, she explains how the Persian language differs from English: "They called me 'poppet'. Iranians said 'jaan' or 'azizam'."'. The citation two sentences later contains something similar but not exactly the same.
Do we have a source on her name written in Persian? Only a minority of readers will, so it could easily be vandalised and go undetected. I don't think it's actually required though, I can't find a relevant policy.
For Humanists UK specifically, I'd link directly to the relevant section of their website to support her current Vice Presidentship:
https://humanists.uk/about/our-people/patrons/ This will allow future editors to quickly verify whether the information is still accurate.
I'm going to go over
WP:BLP as well in this section.
Writing style Y
Reliable sources N
This is the main reason I've done this in a separate section; because of the mention of her claim about Boris Johnson.
For BLPs, "contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion".
This article states that Khorsandi states that Johnson inappropriately touched her, in an article that explicitly draws parallels with the Charlotte Edwardes case.
Columns don't have the same rigour as standard articles, but it's a step up from a self-published source.
As far as I can see, Johnson or a representative for him has not commented.
Given that this is a grey area, I think we should consider whether including it makes the article better. The article states that Khorsandi "had included references to this in some of her stand-up routines" with
this source, but I can't actually see that in the article. If we can confirm that that's the case, and/or get some more secondary sources on the accusation, then that would make me comfortable with it. Otherwise I think it should be removed.
Khorsandi's column includes "I mentioned it in my stand-up routine for a while and thought nothing more of it"; I've amended the punctuation to hopefully make it clearer that it was her writing this. An article in The Times for 1 October 2019 has "Shappi Khorsandi, a comedian and author, claimed that Mr Johnson touched her during BBC Question Time in 2006. Khorsandi said she felt "duty bound" to reveal details because Edwardes's claims were "not believed by some". She wrote on Twitter:..."; The print edition of The Guardian on 5 October 2019 had an "Issue of the Week: Boris Johnson groping allegations" piece that reprinted three paragraphs of Khorsandi's article (alongside extracts from two other articles not mentioning her). Given that her allegations are referred to in these two, which are amomg the UK's quality papers (as well as getting coverage in others of less repute like the Mirror, Metro etc.), I'm inclined to retain the point but have no strong ojection to removing it.
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
15:04, 6 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Apologies, I don't know how I missed the reference in the column to including it in her standup. I'd add the Times citation because it has a different source, but the others are obviously just going off the Independent column. Fine to leave it in.
Garnet-Septagon (
talk)
15:09, 6 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I've added The Times source; the allegations also appeared in some New Zealand papers, one of which I've added, to hopefully help show that the inclusion of the allegations is not undue. (But, like most everything, I'm not precious about this.)
BennyOnTheLoose (
talk)
11:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Presumption in favor of privacy Y
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Did you know nomination
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as
this nomination's talk page,
the article's talk page or
Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
Promoted to "GA" status on 11 August thus satisfying newness requirement. Article is also long enough, well and neutrally written, and thoroughly sourced. However, Earwig (
here) reports a 61.5% similarity issue with one of the sources. This issue needs to be resolved. The hook is short enough and interesting. I can't review the Financial Times without a subscription, so I assume good faith from an established user with respect to the accuracy of the hook. QPQ is done. Once the Earwig issue is resolved, this should be ready. Image has Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Cbl62 (
talk)
18:31, 11 August 2023 (UTC)reply