Talk:David Day (Canadian writer)

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Does anyone know if he is related to fellow Canadians & comic book artists Gene and Dan Day? 66.31.78.14 (talk) 18:18, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Criticisms

The article subject posted a complaint about this section at the Teahouse. After looking at it, I've trimmed the criticisms section, as it was sourced by items like Youtube and reddit. The remaining quotes are a bit of a hit job, and I wonder whether the blogs they are quoted from are reliable sources.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 21:39, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

I've also come here from concerns raised at the Teahouse by KingoftheWoods who claims to be David Day himself. Whether they are or are not is less relevant than whether or not the criticism section is written in accordance with out WP:BLP policy. I do not think it is. I do note that ThatMontrealIP has already removed one Reddit-based source - thank you. And whilst drafting this response, Usedtobecool has now just deleted the entire 'Criticism' section. I support them in that deletion.

Whilst there is clearly enough 'chatter' online to conclude that a number of Tolkien fans think David Day makes up rather a lot of 'facts' in his books, none of this criticism/opinion matters if we on Wikipedia cannot cite that criticism to reliable sources. As it stands, I do not think we can. UTBC's edit summarys states "the sources don't meet the high standards required for critical material about living persons: blogs, "critics" who neither wikipedia nor google knows of, one of the "Tolkein scholars" is a physics major, one person opinions seem to be attributed to groups, all seem to be self-published critiques. The sources for the rest of the article look poor too." This is quite valid, in my view, and deletion currently has my support. I would like to quote - in full- one of the partial quotations cited in the 'criticism' section, to put concerns into context: "In Tolkien scholarship the worst insult one could deliver at any point for many years was equivalent to “That sounds like something David Day wrote”. Today the worst insult you can throw at someone would be “You got that from Wikipedia didn’t you?”" That blog site clearly states: "This is an independent, fan-run Website. Tolkien Studies on the Web is not affiliated in any way with the Tolkien Studies academic research journal." I do not think this counts as a Reliable Source.

The final citation is used as a source for this quote about Day: "...it is important to be aware that a considerable number of other details in those vivid descriptions were invented by Day himself with little or no justification in the texts, and that these extrapolations are not distinguished from the justified facts in any way.", yet lower down that page, the author of this criticism quite clearly states: "I have not read any of Day's books all the way through, but I have read or skimmed parts of at least four of them. (I know that makes me less than well qualified to write even a limited "review" like this; I apologize for that, but with the help of Conrad and others I hope I have been fair.) In every case, my impression has been exactly as described above: they are interesting collections of information about Middle-earth, but they all tend to extrapolate from Tolkien's own writings in order to make Day's books more fun to read. Again, this isn't a problem if you want to enjoy them for their own sake, but it can make them quite deceptive as references for Tolkien's world." I have quoted this in full to show that none of the criticism presented can be regarded as reliable. It may be quite correct, I do not know - but we cannot accept anything like it here without far better sources than private blogs and authors of Tolkien fan sites. Our policy of protecting the rights of living people against uncited scurrilous opinion must take precedence. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:37, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm in agreement. Thanks.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:30, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• Hi! I only became aware of the talk page after I published my edit, thus adding the page to my watchlist; sorry I didn't leave a note yesterday. As I said, the sourcing for the rest of the article isn't good either. Please see the notability discussion below, if you are interested. I agree (was said somewhere) that the list of works is indiscriminate; the lack of secondary coverage makes it difficult to identify criteria for trimming it though. I am going to remove entries without ISBNs or bluelinks for now, see if it sticks! Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 05:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Notability

He has written a lot of books but the article has no independent references that cover him in-depth a requirement of being notable. Theroadislong (talk) 21:42, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Want to PROD it? John from Idegon (talk) 23:52, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

None of the ones currently cited are independent secondary sources, are they? Got no hits to support notability in my quick WP:BEFORE. Unless there is some special trick to digging sources in this field that I'm missing, ... My faith in PROD though—somewhere between little and none. Usedtobecool ☎️ 05:43, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Theroadislong, Usedtobecool: Ah, just saw this. I've had a thorough look for book reviews, and it's very hard to find anything solid - which is somewhat remarkable, actually. We can't allow this page to be a CV or a Catalogue, and there's precious (no pun intended) little else here. I'm afraid I agree, PROD is pretty much a waste of time as it only takes one person (you know who) to wreck it, so it's AfD or nothing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:55, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Theroadislong:, @Usedtobecool: David Day is an well-known author on environment issues (The Doomsday Book of Animals (with a foreword by Prince Phillip), Eco Wars or The Whale War) which were published on big publishers like Penguin. His books are even mentioned in other Wikipedia articles (e.g. on 24 articles on extinct animals) He is also the writer of the ITV series Lost Animals of the 20th Century (which also exist as German version (Tiere, die es einmal gab) if you doubt the notability of this series). Your delition is not acceptable because you have never informed me on the delition. --Melly42 (talk) 13:33, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

A book review in The New Scientist: https://books.google.de/books?id=EIZI3TDTGTsC&pg=PA44&dq=%22the+doomsday+book+of+animals%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVycOD3evtAhXRzaQKHVyNB7IQ6AEwAXoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=%22the%20doomsday%20book%20of%20animals%22&f=false, And here several external citations for the Doomsday Book of Animals: https://www.google.de/search?tbm=bks&hl=de&q=%22the+doomsday+book+of+animals%22 Here is a citation for Eco Wars by Michael Palin: https://www.google.de/search?hl=de&tbm=bks&sxsrf=ALeKk02ONUatTwJf0lLJ0AunhXKjLg8drg%3A1608988835979&ei=ozjnX66mO4v6sAfrnZjgAg&q=%22eco+wars%22+%22david+day%22&oq=%22eco+wars%22+%22david+day%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3...13912.17516.0.17818.12.12.0.0.0.0.97.1036.12.12.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.XgouYUTwLOs --Melly42 (talk) 13:17, 26 December 2020 (UTC) Here is an external citation for The Whale War: https://www.google.de/search?hl=de&tbm=bks&sxsrf=ALeKk00uhCDSdMzC9iCgPaR2CKgX7WVtEA%3A1608988855341&ei=tzjnX8SlFIL7kwWixLeoDQ&q=%22the+whale+war%22+%22david+day%22&oq=%22the+whale+war%22+%22david+day%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3...68041.80373.0.84387.46.37.9.0.0.0.142.3429.25j12.37.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.19.1471...0j0i19k1.0.0WYYtoHkYaA. If you don't accept that as notability you can delete several other WP article too (which are still unopposed) --Melly42 (talk) 13:25, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Melly42, I am not sure why you think we need to inform you about anything, but anyway, DESiegel is working on a draft at Draft:David Day (Canadian writer). I would recommend you collaborate with him there. He is an experienced admin who can guide you and decide when the draft is ready to be merged back. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 13:01, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. The draft looks good. -Melly42 (talk) 14:13, 27 December 2020 (UTC)