Talk:Joe Riley (artist)

Source analysis

1. Dallas Morning News - This obituary is a RS because it is from a major newspaper.
2. Stang eulogy - This appears to be a self-published source. Its conversational tone lends it an unprofessional air as well.
3. Latex Mask Central does not appear to be reliable at first glance. The interview seems to be self-published. Usually, interviews need to be conducted by reputable sources for us to use them.
4. This blog does not back up the information in the article (it seems to be virtually empty). I'm not sure we could use it as a RS even if there were text there. Blogs don't usually count as RS.
5. This list of quotes is self-published.
6. This is an empty blog entry, which therefore doesn't support the information in the article. Again, usually we can't use blogs, as they are self-published.
7. This usenet citation might constitute original research.
8. This usenet citation cannot be used to support facts, as it is not a RS.
9. Fancast looks like it might be an acceptable source for facts, as it seems to have some sort of editorial control, but I am not totally sure.

The problem is that most of these sources are self-published and I do not believe they meet Wikipedia's requirements for SPS. Awadewit (talk) 00:38, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the thorough analysis. I took the liberty to replace your bullets with numbers so as to make it easier to respond:

• The #4 and #6 are not "empty": they are Archive.org snapshot which may miss a CSS subfile and if your browser doesn't degrade gracefully you have been looking at "white text on white background": you can convince yourself of it by selecting the whole text of the page (such as CTRL+A or "Edit > Select all text") so as to highlight it and see that the source is there. (Having to do this can be annoying, but I thought an archive.org copy was better than a mercurial blog page; I have now annotated the source about this).
• For #9, Fancast: there are basically only 3 cinema databases, Baseline (NY Times), AllMovieGuide, and IMDB. As indicated in the footer of their pages, Fancast merges infos from Baseline and AMG: "Portions of Content Provided by All Media Guide, LLC © 2009 ALL Media Guide, LLC. | Portions of this page Copyright © 2009 Baseline". As indicated in the External links of Joe Riley, you can find the same information from InBaseline directly or at the NY Times or at the Turner Classic Movies Database. The difference is that Fancast: (1) has a better interface and presentational layer, (2) prints out the full data of the database's subfields, such as "Other: conceptual designer" instead of just "Other" (as NYTimes do). My point is, Fancast is as reliable as Baseline and New York Times, it just does a better job at mirroring and displaying the contents of their database. Should I document this better in the article or notes, or switch refs to InBaseline.com?

• That is a very helpful explanation - thanks. Striking that concern. Awadewit (talk) 04:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• For #3, Latex Mask Central is an industry web magazine but on a narrow topic; they also hold advanced mask seminars twice a year in Florida. The site features interviews with working pros, but because they're behind-the-scenes SFX people you don't hear a lot about them, they're not famous movie stars. For instance I see there's a small Wikipedia article about Steve Wang (who's interviewed and featured at LMC) but most of them are not covered by Wikipedia. Also, I didn't use LMC as a major source for huge claims, it's there as a backup to the fact that Riley worked on designing both gore effects and children's animations: both claims are already reliably covered by the databases at Fancast/Baseline/NYT/TMC, the latex interview just gives his words and pictures about it beyond the dry listing at movie databases.

• I have no idea about LMC's place in the movie industry. Generally, to prove something reliable, we ask that it be cited as reference somewhere else. However, as you are only using it to bolster already reliably-sourced information, we can dispense with that for the moment. If you intend on developing this article further, I would recommend looking for such a reference. Awadewit (talk) 04:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

At a more general level about "self-publishing", from Wikipedia:Verifiability:

• "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." — Ivan Stang is an expert and a source about the Church of the SubGenius since he co-founded it, and his founding book was published by McGraw-Hill[1] then reprinted with the next ones by Simon & Schuster[2]. So I think I can at least report from his primary sources what he claims about people who have been involved in the development of his "church".

• Ok, but precisely because it is from someone so close to the original events, I believe anything quoted from Stang needs to be tagged as such. Stang is not an objective observer. Awadewit (talk) 04:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• And to illustrate my point, notice how one of the key points of Wikipedia:Verifiability is sourced... to a self-published online post on a mailing list, namely Jimmy Wales on WikiEN-l. I have no problem with this reference, since it's a good source for what Jimmy Wales says or claims about something; but I think that the same applies to a self-published page or post by Ivan Stang or Joe Riley himself (as long as it's used to source personal claims that are not outrageous, of course).
• The #5 quotes are "officially published" by the Church of the Subgenius in their The Stark Fist of Removal and thus on the record about themselves and adepts. I know their site doesn't look very pro, but one has to factor in their very "slacker" nature. (The same goes for the Stand eulogy's "unprofessional air".)
• The #1 source, Dallas Morning, had another article in 1997 about Riley's character design for Santa vs. the Snowman 3D: "Dallas latex foam sculptor Joe Riley and production designer Dan Dudley created the rest of the eye-popping animation, such as the spooky Nutcracker, a security viewing portal for Santa's helpers and several snow beasts and vehicles, many of which suggest famous sci-fi film sets and characters."[3] — I don't have access to "$2.95 - Dallas Morning News - NewsBank - Dec 13, 1997" but DNA Prod has a free scan of it as press clipping.

Last, I'd like to point out that: (1) The claims in the article are neither damaging nor outrageously self-serving or agrandizing (2) We can't reasonably expect a Time Magazine article about Riley. Don't you think that the article's sources are overall reasonably credible enough proportionally to the small claims made, the lack of expectation for more mainstream coverage, and the subject at hand? — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 13:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I am still worried about the abundance of self-published sources here, namely the blogs and usenet pages. It is one things to use these sources sparingly, but it is another thing to use so many of them. That is my real concern. Awadewit (talk) 04:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Thank you for going through some rather lenghty points. One last batch:

• About #4 (Riley blog): to alleviate, the claim is now introduced with "On his blog, Riley reminisced in 2006 about how ..."
• About #5 (Riley quoted by the Church): In addition to what I previously said about it, I have further qualified the claim with the language: "Riley was quoted by the Church's online zine The Stark Fist of Removal as saying: [...]" — this should make the reader fully aware of the source (without looking up the notes) while keeping this useful biographical quote about how Riley considered the SubGenius lark.
• About #6 (Riley blog): was cited a single time and only to document the name of his surviving wife and son (access to the pay obituary from Dallas Morning would probably source it too). But then, I had the rather ghoulish idea of googling the first sentence visible from the Dallas obituary and I found Riley's memorial page at his Funeral Home, which I added to the article's source. So the blog entry is now only a backup about his wife and son.
• About #7 (Stang on Usenet): the "St. Joe Riley" moniker is already reliably established from the credits in the Steve Jackson Games book, and backed up by the Stand eulogy. #7 is cited a single time in third position for this, and isn't used to add anything to the prose: it's only a note reporting that the moniker can be found in use at least as early as a 1993 Usenet post. Also, I don't think it'd qualify as "original research" since the note is only directly reporting about a fact: "source-based research" is not "original research" (which imply production of new scientific claims or syntheses). I have also amended the note with "this copy of a 1993 post (archived at Google Groups)" for clarity.
• About #8 (Stang, still on Usenet): cited a single time, it is used for the claim that Riley "made the Church's rubber masks of Dobbs and NHGH (also used in the MTV ad)". Poor sourcing indeed, but I'd plead that it's a poor claim too (since everything that cames before in the paragraph is enough to show Riley's involvement in the early art/video productions of the SubGenius). I may be able to find other sources, at least in SubGenius.com's Stark Fist backissues rather than Usenet, which would be a small step up.
• About "Stang is not an objective observer": Indeed, that's why he's tagged early as "a friend" of Riley, and I used the word "eulogized/eulogy" (as opposed to the Dallas Morning "obituary"). For primary sources, I think I've tagged them all with "Stang says" or "Riley said" or such.
• About Archive.org, something I forgot: it is often useful to at least temporarily enable JavaScript in your browser when viewing Wayback Machine snapshots. This is because they keep the original page as is, but insert a Javascript footer that will dynamically reprogram the page to "pull" archived snapshots of external files used by the page. This is especially mandatory in order to see images within a snapshot: without Javascript, the archived page will try to display, say, "www.site.com/logo.jpg" (the image may be broken now, or changed); with Javascript, the archived page is modified to display, say, "web.archive.org/web/19991230/www.site.com/logo.jpg" to try and load archived images too. The same goes for old CSS files, or to let the page's links go to archived copies of other pages instead of their current version.
• About the Baseline database, one detail: its strength is that it's an industry movie/TV database storing everything you can see in the rolling credits at the end of a movie, not only casts but also full crews (including stunt/makeup/SFX/art people, even the person who made the movie's poster) — and it's made accessible for free on the Fancast site, with most fields and subfields displayed. By comparison, AllMovieGuide is more about prose contents (biographies, synopses, reviews) and IMDb is more geared at public consumption with focus on movies quotes/goofs and the main actors and directors.

Hopefully the article is better and we've cut a lot of work for the AFD such article will eventually have to face. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 19:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC) P.S.: I've added more non-self published sources related to vital records (middle name, county of birth, parents, high school, first marriage); together with the movie database records, I think they backup all the non-SubGenius part of the Stang primary source. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 18:59, 31 March 2009 (UTC)