Talk:60 Minutes

Created

Created, with text from lede of article at en.wikipedia. -- Cirt (talk) 03:03, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Note on public domain material from the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents

Note: Extensive use of quoting from sources s:Interview with '60 Minutes' on CBS and s:Interview with Charlie Rose of CBS' '60 Minutes II', because they are both public domain as products of the United States Federal Government — the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents published by the United States Government Printing Office.

Cheers,

-- Cirt (talk) 03:03, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Quote order

Love the page. Just a question - is the sorting of quotes by author correct, or would they be better sorted chronologically (as on other TV show pages)? I can understand why it might be nice to see all of the quotes by a given person together, but I see at least two reasons why it might be better to sort them by episode. First, if there are related quotes from single episode (or multiple quotes on a single topic from the same episode), it would be good to see them together, rather than have to hunt to find them. Second, if the quotes are not sorted by episode, it opens the door for overquoting (meaning having too many quotes from an episode - in fact I see that this is already a problem, as the December 22, 1999 episode already has 11 quotes from one interview). ~ UDScott (talk) 13:19, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for saying you love the page, I really appreciate that very much!!! I structured it alphabetically by author, specifically because I've been criticized in the past, for ordering pages chronologically. Also, I already explained above, about the extensive quoting from the interview with U.S. President Bill Clinton, the interview is public domain. -- Cirt (talk) 15:04, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're referring to regarding criticism for ordering quotes chronologically - perhaps that was about a theme page? For TV shows, the preferred template is to have quotes sorted by episode. As for the overquoting - yes I overlooked your comment regarding the public domain status of those interviews. I would actually suggest (assuming the quotes were resorted by episode) adding a note on the page about this (so that others would not feel encouraged to keep adding a lot of quotes that do not fall under such circumstances. ~ UDScott (talk) 16:08, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh. I thought all pages were to be sorted alphabetically by author, so that's what I did here. Anyways, these authors happen to be so famous and notable that it makes sense to keep it alphabetical. :) -- Cirt (talk) 16:10, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

As I said above, I know that is the reason you sorted them this way (because they are notable people), but I gave some other reasons why this is not appropriate. Here's another: the show does not always feature notable or famous people. There may be episodes where something profound is said by someone not so famous. Again, I believe it would be better to sort the quotes by episode (as we do for all other TV show pages). ~ UDScott (talk) 16:15, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I understand, you make a reasoned and polite argument, thank you!! I'll do that reformatting soon. -- Cirt (talk) 16:56, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Y Done, reformatted chronologically, per recommendation of UDScott (talk · contributions), above. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 17:01, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Note: Quotes are still ordered alphabetically, by author, within each chronological sect. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 17:04, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Looks good to me! Thanks. ~ UDScott (talk) 17:07, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome! I also added the note Note: Quotes from this interview are public domain, from the work Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents as published by the United States Government Printing Office. — to those sections, per your suggestion, above. -- Cirt (talk) 17:08, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Article topic

Apart from the matter of the standard format for television articles, addressed above, I have some reservations about devoting an article to a news magazine, televised or otherwise. I.e.:

• Consider, e.g., that Wikiquote has several quotations from Time magazine. I don't think it would be very meaningful to collect them all into one article about the magazine. Notwithstanding that the quotes appeared under the aegis a single editorial regime, the result would be a mishmash of essentially unrelated materials.
• Consider previous discussion at Talk:The American Mercury about organizing quotes by theme rather than by the magazine in which they appeared. Various compendia of quotations organize quotations by subject matter or by author, but I am not aware of any that are organized by the venue of original publication.
• Consider that there has been a tendency to sometimes include newsy bits that document something interesting without much regard for whether they exhibit much quotability. (A tendency exhibited by some items in this article.) To the extent that this is acceptable to some degree, due to the inherent subjectivity in assessing "quotability", it makes more sense to place them in a article about the interesting something. To the extent that the tendency is problematic, having articles about news sources would tend to exacerbate the problem.

I would suggest dispersing most these quotes, those that have quotability, into theme articles about the subject of the quotes and/or articles about the persons quoted. Some of the quotes about the show itself might be retained, but the more quotable ones would be well suited for author pages. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:23, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with UDScott (talk · contributions), above, who said, "Love the page." We should keep this page. It is in line with prior precedent for television pages. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 17:42, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

My two cents: I beg to disagree with the idea that all quotes from this show should be dispersed to theme or people pages - I could definitely see those from well-known people (such as Bill Clinton) be moved to their own page, but I feel there would remain many quotes from commentary segments (for which the show is well known), for example, that should remain here. I do agree that it doesn't make sense to have a page for an individual magazine, but I do feel that a show like 60 Minutes rises beyond such categorization of being simply a televised version of a magazine. I believe that the show was a trend setter and a pioneer in television. It is one of the most watched shows that has ever been aired. While I can agree that not all the listed quotes rise to the level of quotability we like to see here, I still feel that to not have a page for the show is not the way to go. Many of the commentary pieces (not to mention the Andy Rooney segments) undoubtedly would yield memorable quotes - and such are not often just newsy recitations of facts. My feeling is that the page should remain. ~ UDScott (talk) 18:38, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, UDScott (talk · contributions), much appreciated, -- Cirt (talk) 18:43, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I completely agree that 60 Minutes (the program) is not only notable but preeminent. However, my initial impression of "60 Minutes" (the article) as being primarily about Werner Erhard, Bill Clinton, and Charlie Rose (the persons), led me to wonder whether this is a sensible and coherent article topic. That impression is not much changed by subsequent reorganization of the page: what the heck is all this about?

I appreciate the sense of UDScott's point about quotes from commentary segments, and would agree that some highly quotable examples could be found. However, such are not much in evidence within the present article. In suggesting that such quotes might be placed in articles on the commentators (I can hardly believe we don't have an article on curmudgeon par excellence Andy Rooney yet!), I was thinking that grouping them in articles by who said it, rather than by where it was said, could avoid or mitigate some of the problems that seem to me to be inherent in devoting articles to news sources.

Cirt is correct that there is precedent for articles on television shows but, notwithstanding use of the same medium, I think news sources are significantly different in kind from the putatively precedential articles. As a type of entity, 60 Minutes has more in common with an institution like The New York Times (also a preeminent news source) than a serial like The Simpsons (also sometimes described as yellow). While it would be appropriate to have a page of quotable statements about such institutions (to the extent that they are overly specific for articles like Journalism or Newspapers), culling statements from their publications about various notable persons and topics of interest would make the subject of such an article very diffuse.

By reference to "culling", I allude to another aspect of my initial impression of this article, not mentioned in my previous post, about which I ought to be frank. To wit:  Culling quotes from a vast body of reportage on highly diverse subjects could be be very susceptible to coatracking. My initial reaction (what the heck is all this about?) was quite negative because duplication of some quotes in multiple other articles is consistent with an extensive pattern of activity by a contributor who evidently has an axe to grind about one of the three abovementioned persons.

Perhaps the strength of that reaction led me to overreact in proposing to slash and burn an entire category of (potential) topics. However, I think we have a real problem here, something has gone off-the-rails, and I would be open to suggestions for a more targeted solution. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:02, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Ningauble, UDScott (talk · contributions) and I would love to hear your suggestions on additional quotes about 60 Minutes which you would like to see added to the page! :) Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 18:05, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

If the quoted individuals are notable, and happen to be speaking on Sixty Minutes (but not about Sixty Minutes), then the quotes should go on the pages of those individuals. I agree with comments above that we need to be careful with pages on news outlets. Quotes reported on those pages should be quotes about the news outlet itself. BD2412 T 18:23, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: The Bill Clinton interviews provide extensive enough material to have their own separate article (something like Bill Clinton 60 Minutes interviews). Cheers! BD2412 T 18:27, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

But don't we always have sections from quotes that occurred on the news program, in pages about that program? The "about" section is for "about" quotes, right? -- Cirt (talk) 18:28, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

The sample space of articles about news programs is too small to make meaningful generalizations about what is always done there. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

What I mean to say is we always have quotes from television shows on pages about those shows, but in addition to "about" quotes, and not to the exclusion of, right? We have both sections on television pages. -- Cirt (talk) 18:38, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Re. additional quotes: DanielTom found a good one here, making a broad and interesting point about the show. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)