Talk:Eddie Calhoun

Revert

I was recently reverted without comment. I gave rationale for my edits in the edit summary. I would like to restore my edits. Chubbles (talk) 16:48, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? We've been over and over and over it, and you don't change. Stop linking every name, every musician. You know nothing about these subjects, let alone if they are notable or could be turned into substantive articles. You're not thinking of what's good for readers or Wikipedia. You are simply reacting on reflex. You're doing what you want, and to hell with everyone else. Not every musician is going to be in Wikipedia. Wikipedia discriminates. How can you possibly not understand this? Why bother talking about it? .
Vmavanti (talk) 09:28, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

I'll confine my response to the specifics of this article. Each of the persons and places I have linked in the article is a plausible candidate for an article; one is a place (and since Wikipedia functions essentially as a gazetteer in addition to an encyclopedia, we have articles on any populated place regardless of size), and the others are jazz musicians from the 1940s and 1950s, eras which, despite my best efforts, are still spottily covered on Wikipedia. They may well be notable - the article itself notes, with a source, that two of them toured Europe, which already suggests they may meet WP:MUSIC. Wikipedia is not finished, and red links help grow the encyclopedia by pointing to topics that may need coverage; WP:REDLINK says, "In general, a red link should be allowed to remain in an article if it links to a title that could plausibly sustain an article, but for which there is no existing article, or article section, under any name. Do not remove red links unless you are certain that Wikipedia should not have an article on the subject." I am neither mad nor kidding; I just want to put a few red links back in this article, and in general, to see more red links where they are needed (and watch them turn blue as the years pass). Chubbles (talk) 02:24, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not interested in what you want. I'm interested in what's best for Wikipedia. If you want to improve Wikipedia, stop creating red links indiscriminately. Your comments are self-serving. If you wanted to help, you could so by writing articles, finding sources for articles, or correcting any of the problems on the 4400 jazz articles on the Jazz Cleanup Listing. Your assertion about the paucity of jazz articles is laughable. There are almost 27,000 articles in Wikiproject Jazz, and there are probably more which haven't been tagged yet as part of the project. It's not like you're a rookie. I've seen your User Page. You take a lot of pride in seeing how many articles you can create. Nice game. But Wikipedia is not about you. All you are doing by creating red links is creating work for others, work that you are capable of doing. That's irresponsible and lazy. Your comment about wanting to see them become blue links is a smoke screen for fairy tale wishful thinking. I can tell you which names are likely to be turned into articles and which are not. I know that better than you because I know the subject better than you. You must know that jazz is a small subject with few fans. On Wikipedia, as far as I know, there are two people who do most of the work on jazz articles: me and EddieHugh. Two people. Who do you think will come along and do this work? Santa Claus? I can show you red links from 12 years ago that haven't been touched. As I have said to you repeatedly before, you must change your methods and try to help Wikipedia rather than harm it.
Vmavanti (talk) 03:18, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

So if I read you correctly, you have removed the links because you believe they are indiscriminate. However, I have noted above that these were not included indiscriminately; each is there because it is plausible that it may some day become an article (and thereby subtly encourages someone, not necessarily you or EddieHugh, to come along and write them). I think, in fact, they have been removed indiscriminately, without examination, simply because they are redlinks. I don't think they should be removed until, as REDLINK suggests, "[we] are certain that Wikipedia should not have an article on the subject". You also seem to believe that we have (essentially) enough jazz articles, that only a small number of topics (which you know and I do not) are still missing, and that none of the links here are on that list of topics. However, I gave simple rationales why it is plausible that several of the jazz-related articles might merit inclusion; you said nothing about the geographical location. Have I understood you? If I have, I believe I have answered to your concerns. If I restore the links, will you (unilaterally) remove them again? Chubbles (talk) 04:54, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Preliminary investigation uncovered no information for Chicago All Stars, Lennie Capp, Dick Davis, Norvel Reed, or Irvin Hoffer. Little or nothing has been written about these musicians, which is why I see no reason to red-link them. If little or nothing has been written, then it's impossible to write an article about them. Therefore there is no reason to red-link them. Google Books has The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz edited by Leonard Feather, which I assume is your source for Eddie Calhoun. I see no reason to link Paradise Lake, Mississippi. Geography is a much more complicated subject than you might think. Complicated geography is something I learned from disambiguating. Those are two different subjects: whether an article about a town might be created, whether an article about a musician might be created. I'm less sure about the former than the latter due to the complexity of the subject, but I have little faith that someone out there is planning an article about Paradise Lake, Mississippi, if it still exists. That's something you might not know about America. Towns disappear.

There's an assumption in today's world, whether you share it I don't know, that obscurity means virtuousness. The further on the outside, the fringe, the backwater, the wiser, talented, moral, admirable that person is. Insignificance is put in sarcastic quotes to suggest the relativity if not the falsity of one's judgments about value. It's all relative, they say. Long ago when I was a teenager in high school I had many friends who were musicians. They were in school bands and orchestras and they played in my friend's basement for fun. They were all outsiders, not the In crowd, though they were more popular and better liked than they thought. They had a knee-jerk reaction to any musician who became popular. They cringed when Rush's "New World Man" became a Top 40 Hit. More proof that the album was below the band's previous work. For much of my school years, they shunned the Top 40, pop music, and anything that suggested popularity. In their eyes popular meant dumb, superficial, fleeting, insignificant, fake. Unpopular meant good, different, bold, experimental, smart, moral, real. You didn't have to be Freud to figure out what was going on. They were unpopular and they rationalized it through projection and by concluding popularity wasn't that great anyway. They had their egos tied up in their music and their musical idols. They introduced me to Yes, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Traffic. But in time they came around to see that not everything in the Top 40 was evil and that there was nothing virtuous about being poor, lonely, and unhappy.
Vmavanti (talk) 19:00, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, now we're getting somewhere. (In the first paragraph; the second appears to be totally unrelated to the matter at hand.) If we're going to remove a redlink - if we're going to make a statement that this is probably something we will choose, on behalf of our readers, not to say anything further about - then we should do the legwork to ensure that the topic isn't going to meet the inclusion requirements, consistent with the WP:REDLINK quote I mentioned above. You said you did some preliminary investigating - where did you look? I see you mention Feather and Gitler, anywhere else? (I'm not sure whether some of these musicians may fall under more of the pop, R&B, or easy-listening sides of the spectrum, so they may not be covered by standard jazz reference works.)

As for the geographical place, whether someone is actively planning an article is irrelevant; the issue is whether the topic ought to be covered by Wikipedia, and there is longstanding precedent that nearly any populated place merits inclusion (or at the least is presumed prima facie to be notable), including ghost towns (I have written several articles about disappeared towns, in fact). Please see WP:NGEO: "Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history." Chubbles (talk) 22:14, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I looked in my hardcover volumes of New Grove, Berendt's Jazz Book, Gioia's History of Jazz, Yanow's Swing, all my guitar books, and Google.
Vmavanti (talk) 23:49, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

That's fairly thorough, and reasonable. My indications are in agreement that Reed, Hoffer, and Capp appear to be little-known outside of the context of being people Calhoun played with. Dick Davis, though, looks to have been an R&B/jump blues saxman who is probably not covered in standard jazz works and who may be covered elsewhere (he played with King Kolax as well and has been anthologized several times; see, e.g., [1]). So, for the top three, we'll want to add some basic contextual information so that the reader understands who these people were in relation to Calhoun; helpfully, the Grove article identifies each of their instruments. (This is the final step in removing a redlink that so many people don't even think to do, but is so important to actual users of the article). I'll make an edit soon putting all this together that hopefully will be acceptable to both of us. Chubbles (talk) 01:00, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Follow-up: I just discovered Grove has Erwin Helfer's name wrong - he's the "Irwin Hoffer" they mention. Chubbles (talk) 01:19, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

That's proof that you haven't been following the rules. You have been red linking arbitrarily and indiscriminately. Otherwise you would have known the correct spelling of the guy's name. You didn't even do a Google search, because Google would probably have given you the correct spelling—if there had been any sources in Google about him. You are supposed to do some research on a name before you red link it. You are supposed to at least consider notability. You don't. You told me "this is how Wikipedia works". No, it isn't. 78.24 told me "this is his method of working which is different from yours." That's true. But it's unacceptable. My method means progress and solving problems. Yours creates problems. Yours disregards the rules so you can do whatever you damn well please. You red link a musician's name because it's a musician. You deprod labels because they are record labels. Those are your motives, assumptions, and actions, and they have nothing to do with the goals and purposes of Wikipedia. You want to "save" those articles because they interest you. You create articles to build up your virtual trophy room, despite the documentation saying that no one owns articles. Some people are naturally fearful of change, of what's new and different. But I believe you are open-minded enough to change. Otherwise I will have to require admin intervention. What you have been doing is a counterproductive nuisance.
Vmavanti (talk) 16:54, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

• "It is useful while editing articles to add a red link to indicate that a page will be created soon or that an article should be created for the topic because the subject is notable and verifiable"
• "Do not create red links to articles that are not likely to be created and retained in Wikipedia"
• "In general, a red link should be allowed to remain in an article if it links to a term that could plausibly sustain an article, but for which there is no existing candidate article, or article section, under any name." — WP:RLVmavanti (talk) 17:01, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Just when I thought we had come to a beautiful Hegelian synthesis...look, I don't know what else to say to you, other than that I am tired of the ceaseless bad-faith assumptions you make about my editing and my reasons for contributing. I'm pinging @78.26: here, since you mention you've been talking; 78, if you want to weigh in here, I'll take another opinion. Chubbles (talk) 18:57, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

At this point I merely have time to say that there is a very wide spectrum regarding what is "likely notable", just read a day's worth of AfD discussions. Impugning another editor's motives is about the most collegiality destroying action I can think of. It must cease. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 19:09, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Notability isn't that complicated. If a person has a special interest in the subject (as opposed to the public interest or Wikipedia's interest), then it becomes complicated. That's what makes AfD discussions complicated, annoying, and melodramatic. Because they are not discussions or debates. Too often they are examples of people trying to get what they want beyond any other consideration. Those people ought not to be editing.
Vmavanti (talk) 19:47, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

On the point of collegiality (the rules don't order us to be collegial, by the way, or honest), wouldn't you say I was being collegial when I disclosed every source I used to determine notability? I did not get the same consideration from Chubbles before he changed my edits. If he had researched these names before red linking them, he would at least know how to spell their names. That's obvious.Vmavanti (talk) 19:52, 27 January 2019 (UTC)