User talk:Daniel C. Boyer/Archive Summary

Summarized Discussion

As a service to the community, I am summarizing the beginning discussion; full text is available in archive 5. Daniel placed his rebuttal following many items; this remains available in archive 5; I have summarized it in some cases. Kat 00:06, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

• The article was most recently listed on VfD by MB at 18:16 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
• I moved discussion here from VfD on July 30 2003, leaving the "vote" in place at VfD.
• The "vote" was moved here by Martin.
• Considerable discussion ensued with regard to the merits of the article and the pros and cons of differing approaches both to the article itself and policy in general. This discussion is summarized below.
• Votes continued to be added and changed throughout the discussion.
• The tally of votes was as follows at the time this summary was prepared:

Delete: 15

Keep: 13

"Severe rewrite or delete": 7

• On August 4 2003, Martin, who had been among the more vocal supporters of keeping the article, proposed redirecting it to the User: space temporarily as a compromise, and revisiting the issue in August 2004.
• Kat removed the negative review of The Octopus Frets.
• Suitability of "Spam Magazine" as a source was discussed. Martin removed it as unverifiable.
• Portions of the policy conversation moved to Wikipedia_talk:Auto-biography
• Redirecting the article to the user space was discussed.
• Nelson suggested voting for somebody to have a proper article.
• Nelson made several points about articles, user pages, and www home pages, and the differences among them.
• Martin made a point that the article is not particuarly biased.
• I posted a summary of the verifiability of the works listed in the article based on my research.
  • Poem, Blair House, no evidence of publication
  • Film The Erotic Life of the Eskimo, no independent corroboration, running time 3 minutes.
  • Film The Dead Man, apparently a student work.
  • Book, The Tailgating Spinster, published, net press run 50, 15 copies sold to date.
  • Book of poems, The Octopus Frets, listed as for sale by Black Swan Publications.
• Boyer provided listings for three libraries that have The Octopus Frets in their collection, and other evidence of publication.
• "fonzy" asked how "important" a person should be for an article to be written about them
• Imran proposed a test: In 100 years time will anyone without a direct connection to the person care about the article ? --Imran
• Portions of the policy discussion moved to Wikipedia:Criteria_for_Inclusion_of_Biographies
• I created a bogus page (now at User talk:Daniel C. Boyer/Katherine Jacobson) to demonstrate some of the verifiability issues; several users took it seriously before I made it clear that the page was hookum.
• —Eloquence provided a carefully written essay centering upon issues of verifiability, both now and when reviewing the article after the passage of time.
• Martin created verifiability for discussion of that policy issue.
• Daniel Quinlan summarized the case to be made for deleting the page, verifiability notwithstanding, to wit:
  • He stated that it fails to be encyclopedic.
  • He stated that it is Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, citing particularly:
    • "Mere vehicles for testing anarchism."
    • "Neither encomia/fan pages, nor critical pans. Biographies and articles about art works are supposed to be encyclopedia articles."
    • "A vehicle for advertising"
  • He stated that the material is autobiographical.
  • He stated that the material is self-promoting and advertising
  • He cited the 1000 person test.
  • He pointed out that allowing the article to remain may encourage "other people to promote themselves in a similar manner."
• Camembert made a rebuttal of these points, to wit:
  • He stated that having "encyclopedic" nature as a test for inclusion in an encyclopedia is inherently circular and hence without meaning.
  • Other autobiographical articles exist and are tolerated.
  • He stated that the article is neutral, and is not actually a fan page or a critical pan.
  • He stated that the article has mixed authorship and is not, on the whole, autobiographical; in his view it would not present a problem even if it were.
  • He points out that the article may well pass the 1000 person test.
  • He suggested verifiability as the primary test.
• Starling pointed out that Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is in essence a work in progress and not authoritative.
• till we *) stated his support for the article on the grounds that Wikpedia is not paper, and cited sources demonstrating that Boyer is a real person.
• Boyer and others discussed the extent of jurying and reviewing that various on-line sites employed before listing information about Boyer.
  • [My principal point here, however, was that it is part of the normal career of an artist to send out slides to juried shows, and in an attempt to get one-man shows, and, of lesser importance is the sending out of digital files to get pictures posted on sites on the Web. Saying that self-submission is a criterion not to get an article is almost like saying that there shouldn't be articles about artists. --Daniel C. Boyer 00:24, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)]
• A discussion of the relative obscurity of several other articles ensued.
  • The articles on casualties of the 9/11/2001 attack was cited
  • There was disagrement whether the articles in question were moved to the sep11 wiki.
• Tim Starling contrasted what he called the "top down" and "bottom up" approaches to article development; he favors the latter and suggests that it dovetails well with the Wiki model.
• Stevertigo suggested that the underlying policy issue is a question of the target size of the encyclopedia and the tolerable degree of obscurity.
• MB redirected the Daniel C. Boyer article to the User: space and cited the redirection of the Katherine Jacobsen page as precedent.
• Tim Starling said that the Boyer and Jacobsen pages were separate cases; the Jacobsen page did not have the degree of support that the Boyer page does.
• Dan Quinlan provided rebuttal but suggested that the redirection was a reasonable compromise given that the vote tally showed an absence of consensus.
• Tim Starling concurred that redirection was a resonable compromise
• Camembert replaced the redirect with the orginal article and said that the article should be deleted--or not-- but that redirection was inappropriate; and also cited three comparable entries -- Jen Besemer, Ronnie Burk and Franklin Rosemont.
• Wik suggested Rosemont should stay and the others removed, based on a criterion of relevance.
• Imarn concurred with Wik
• Kat expressed concern that the Besemer, Burk, and Rosemont pages were stubs and as such should be expanded or merged
• RickK asked: What about Easter Bradford?
• MB pointed out that over a week had elpased since he had listed the page on VfD and suggested that the page be deleted based on the vote tally.
• Camembert objected because the 3-way vote was unclear
• Jwrosenzweig concurred with Camembert
• Camembert pointed out that voting has been more an advisory tool for decisionmaking on Wikipedia rather than a binding tool
• Martin concurred with Camembert and wrote of the importance of compromise. He again suggested a redirect to User:, this time proposing a review in 12 months.
• Camembert reiterated his dislike of a long-term redirect but suggested the possibility of a one-month temporary redirect
• Martin concurred
• till we *) discussed mechanical considerations and performed the redirect.
• Imran suggested voting again, citing the ongoing changes in the article, and also suggested that perhaps Jimbo Wales should be asked to step in.
• Tim cited problems with the vote; particularly its 3-way nature and lack of rules.
• Additional discussion ensued among User:GWO MB, and Boyer about the meaning of the vote, the lack of metrics for measuring obscurity, and the likely content of the article if it is kept.
• Imran suggested the number of search results on Google as a possible metric and provided this raw data:

1. "Daniel C. Boyer" surrealism - 126 results.
2. "Daniel Boyer" surrealism - 23 results.
3. "Hieronymus Bosch" surrealism - 1,470 results.
4. "Lewis Carroll" surrealism - 1,210 results.
5. "André Breton" surrealism - 3,530 results.
6. "Marcel Duchamp" surrealism - 5,450 results.
7. "René Magritte" surrealism - 1,740 results.
8. "Joan Miró" surrealism - 1,360 results.
9. "Max Ernst" surrealism - 5,320 results.
10. "Yves Tanguy" surrealism - 1,790 results.
    

• Daniel Quinlan concurred with Imran's methodology.
• SpeakerFTD pointed out the importance of objective guidelines to frame the discussion, and pointed out that the independence and stature of sources must be considered, using Time Magazine as one example of a independent source with considerable stature.
• SpeakerFTD noted the similar difficulties at Talk:Collage.

• Imran expressed concern about the triviality of the content of the article.
• Boyer listed several libraries that have copies of The Octopus Frets
• MB added a link to Jimbo Wales' comments on the topic: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-August/005599.html.

• The article was deleted by Jtdirl, apparently unintentionally, and restored; there were several comments of a mechanical nature concerning this.
• There was lengthy discussion about redirects and links, cheifly of a mechanical nature.
• At 00:27, 7 Aug 2003, Oliver P. unilaterally removed the redirect and reverted content, stating that the compromise was inappropriate and conflicted with policy.
• Martin pointed out that and0rod was perhaps a precedent
• Oilver Pereira offered his views on relevance
• Tim Starling pointed out that a small class of articles polarize the community and that the conflict over the article is a microcosm of differing views on the relative importance of quality and breadth.
• Boyer brought up an unrelated point about echo drawings.
• At this juncture, MB added material on some other individuals sharing the same name to the article. An edit war on the article ensued, complimented with discussion here. The discussion might best be characterized as giving off more m:More heat than light.
• Martin revised the article to refer to The Octopus Frets as a booklet, stating that being 32 pages long, the term booklet seemed more accurate than book.
• A link to another comment from J. Wales on the mailing list was added, http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-August/005732.html
• User:Anthere proposed to try to refactor the discussion for clarity (separation of solved topics, and unrelated topics) since a month has elapsed
• Wik moved the article back to user:space
• Oliver voiced his worry of seing the move to user space become permanent