Talk:How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life

Corrected Rushdie quote

I corrected the Rushdie quote to match the primary source rather than the ref cited, which was in error. Much as I dislike Rushdie's writing style, he is way too clever to misuse an apostrophe like that. --John (talk) 01:31, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Notability?

Note:when this discussion began, the article was titled Kaavya Viswanathan, the book's author.--agr (talk) 02:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to nominate this article for deletion at this time, but could someone explain to me: how is this not a case of WP:BLP1E (people notable for only one event)? Robofish (talk) 23:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Though technically a biographical article, it is in essence a well-sourced article about the plagiarism scandal itself, which is notable and does not exist in another form at Wikipedia. Changing it to Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarism scandal or something equally clunky just to "fix" this technicality seems a bit silly.

That said, you make a point, and if consensus agrees that a bio article is not the best way to present this info, I'm thinking it might be best to move/redirect the article to How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life and copyedit it accordingly.— TAnthony^Talk 05:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

This article has long bothered me. I'm not sure why an alleged plagiarism scandal, particularly one involving a high school senior/college freshman is notable, when a murder committed by the same individual would would not be. This article also has OR issues. At the least, I agree it should be moved to the book title. Another article with similar BLP1E problems, in my opinion, is Blair Hornstine. I'd be interested in your opinions that one too.--agr (talk) 19:23, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

This scandal was highly publicized and the article is exhaustingly sourced, not sure where your notability concerns come in. And as far as "OR issues," do you mean the representations of the allegedly plagiarized passages? I believe the examples are attributed to media sources other than the original novels. I just took a look at Blair Hornstine (the first time I've seen the article or heard of the situation), and I do see the similarity; the "event" seems notable and obviously overshadows Hornstine herself, but the event is not covered elsewhere. The thing about WP:BLP1E is that while it's obviously meant to weed out excessive bio articles, it seems based on the assumption that an article already exists which covers the "particular event" or "larger subject" to which the individual is related. In the case of Hornstine, I'm sure she seemed the simplest element of the case around which to base the article rather than call it the Moorestown High School multiple valedictorian case or something equally horrible.— TAnthony^Talk 22:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I looked at this article in terms of Wikipedia:Notability (criminal acts) which suggests only major murderers deserve articles. But I would agree that if moved to the book title it meets Wikipedia:Notability (books). As for Hornstine, I think the natural title would be Hornstine v. Moorestown. The article centers on the legal case, which arguably sets an important legal precedent in disability law and represents the long term notability of the story.--agr (talk) 11:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, Hornstine v. Moorestown does seem like the right choice in this instance. And Wikipedia:Notability (criminal acts) is an interesting read, thanks for that. It does briefly touch on the idea that in some cases when the victim/perpetrator of a crime remains in the public attention after the crime, articles are sometimes titled with the person's name because they go beyond the scope of the crime itself (though I'm not suggesting that this applies to the articles we're discussing here). What's your take on the Chandra Levy article?— TAnthony^Talk 16:03, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The Levy case drew vastly more publicity than Viswanathan, it's an ongoing story (what's happened to the suspect arrested in March?), and, of course, since Levy has been declared dead it's not a BLP issue. I suppose the article could be titled The Chandra Levy murder or The death of Chandra Levy. But then there's the whole Category:Unsolved murders filled with victim names.--agr (talk) 12:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

If there aren't any more comments or objections in the next couple of days, I'd be willing to make the moves.--agr (talk) 19:52, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I moved the article from Kaavya Viswanathan to How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life and tried to edit it into a book article. More eyes welcome.--agr (talk)

Per above, I've made a similar suggestion at Talk:Blair Hornstine.--agr (talk) 22:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Obviously I missed this article before the move, but I wanted to let you know that it flows very well; I had no idea that this would have ever been listed under a different title. Put simply, good call. --Grahamdubya (talk) 23:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Too much detail?

This is a pretty good article, but I have to ask: do we need all the extensive 'sample passages' from the book and their alleged sources here? It seems a bit like excessive detail to me - in a way, it's almost as if we're plagiarising the people who first made those comparisons, although obviously the key difference is that we've cited them to their sources. Still, I think it's somewhat unnecessary - we only need to tell the reader what was alleged, we don't need to 'show it all and let them judge for themselves'. Robofish (talk) 19:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I would say it has too much detail. Five word-for-word comparisons taken from different authors should do it. The company of regular Wiki editors excepted, most readers really wouldn't have much of any way to discern what is plagiarism, and what is not. So lots of examples, some a little iffy, are more in the line of entertainment, than encyclopedic.

As for the need to trim the work that's already been done ... some of the McCafferty quotes aren't needed to make the point. Nor am I convinced or happy that any of Hidier's (long) examples belong. 98.210.208.107 (talk) 16:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Plagiarism was not merely alleged

I changed some wording in a sentence and a heading that was calling the plagiarism "alleged plagiarism." No while I know we have to be objective and not make assumptions in our writing, at this point nobody is claiming that plagiarism did not happen. Both the author and the publisher (at least at first, by dropping the book entirely later they suggest the problems were more serious than they first realized) were claiming that all of the copying without permission were unintentional but did not (and obviously could not with the extent of the copying that was done) say that it had not happened at all. DreamGuy (talk) 16:29, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Plagiarism is a serious charge and as our article says, the boundaries are not clear-cut. Whether unintentional copying constitutes plagiarism is debatable. Many dictionaries define it as theft or stealing, which implies some intention. Our WP:BLP policy requires great care in making accusations about persons not convicted in a court of law. Our readers can make up their own minds about what happened.--agr (talk) 17:42, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

They can, provided the wording in the article is not biased. Saying "alleged plagiarism" when plagiarism is not under any dispute, only whether it was intentional or not, is taking a POV even more severe than the author in question and gives WP:UNDUE weight to the idea of innocence. If you insist upon some sort of disclaimer, you'll need different wording than something that is more severe than any side in the debate has even claimed. DreamGuy (talk) 00:04, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

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Examples

The Plagiarism section contains too many examples of alleged plagiarism cited in the cases, failing WP:NFCC#3a and possibly WP:NFCC#3b and WP:IINFO as well. The issue remains after this issue was previously raised in 2011, hence the RfC. How many examples should be kept, and which should be removed? (See Special:Permalink/875798994#Plagiarism for the quotes). –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:57, 29 December 2018 (UTC)