Talk:Robert Byrne (author)

Potential conflict of interest

I am Robert Byrne's son. I wrote this page as a birthday present to him this year after his wife Cindy pointed out that several people had indicated their surprise that one didn't exist previously. I just wanted to be clear to indicate who I am in the interest of transparency and to help explain why some facts are not footnoted to published sources. Russellbyrne (talk) 18:03, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The request for feedback for this article was posted here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_feedback/2011_May_2#User:Russellbyrne.2FRobert_Byrne_.28author.29 Russellbyrne (talk) 06:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

[For reader convenience, the sole feedback comment is reproduced here:]

It is most definitely difficult to maintain editorial distance when covering one's own father; I do recommend you put a note on the Discussion page there stating your Conflict of Interest for the sake of transparency. It's not a total bar to writing an article, but a definite "proceed with caution." I've fixed some of your formatting, the the absolute main thing you need to do is add sourcing. Give a read of WP:Notability (people) to understand what sort of coverage is required. Ideally, you want to footnote as many individual portions as possible to the source from which the information was derived. This is the other problem with writing about family, you know many things that you can't necessarily back up from published sources, which is called WP:Original research (or at least in the same vein thereof). One of the keystones of WP is WP:Verifiability, and info we can only get by personally asking someone doesn't really work. That said, it should be impossible to find articles written about his work and accomplishment, media profiles, etc. since the man seems to have done a lot of work. A thought: might you be able to get your mom to sneak away his book of press clippings about himself (if he has one)? That could make it a lot easier if you have a copy of the DesMoines Tribune from 1978 to quote for whatever facts about him. Though online resources are preferred, we understand that not everything is online yet, so a good, clear citation to a specific article still qualifies as "verifiable." Good luck in your mission, and I recommend that you also drop by the Discussion tab of WP:WikiProject Books and WP:WikiProject Billiard to post the same request for aid from the experts there. MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:50, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed with all of that, other than the fact that there is no official Wikipedia preference for online sources. If anything, the opposite tends to be truer, as a much higher percentage of online sources versus print ones are unreliable. Some editors prefer online sources as they are easier to verify, but this has nothing to do with Wikipedia citation guidelines or verifiability policy. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I've worked the article over a bit to remove some of the less neutral language (other than some deserved praise that actually has independent sources). Cleaned up a lot of the formatting, and worked various lists of this-'n'-that into real prose. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

List of books

Resolved

 – Book list cleaned up.

It may be overkill to list hardcover and paperback editions of his works separately. The present Works section lists them separately if there is a unique ISBN number, or if they were published in different years. Russellbyrne (talk) 06:58, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that is overkill. Just list each book once, with multiple ISBNs. A substantially revised edition should be listed separately, like the Byrne's New Standard edition that came out a few years ago. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I cleaned up the book list (even added a missing edition or two). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:33, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Iowa state

I still need to go through my Robert Byrne files to see if there's anything useable there. Question: While at Iowa state, did he edit the humor column, or did he actually write it? Russellbyrne (talk) 04:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Reader's Digest

I couldn't find the specific volume of Reader's Digest Condensed Books from 1977 to reference for Thrill. That will need to come from Byrne's shelf of personal copies. Russellbyrne (talk) 16:06, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

You may want to keep a set of notes-to-self at User:Russellbyrne/Robert_Byrne_article_notes or whatever, under your own user page, except where you want other editors to help you look for a source. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

NBC Interview

I've removed this from the article:

Byrne was interviewed by Connie Chung on NBC's Today Show in 1984.

It is too uninformative to be encyclopedically useful. It could be added in, to the appropriate section, if there were some indication what the interview was about, and when it aired. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 16:05, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Original research

Unresolved

 – Source needed for chess claim.

Wikipedia's policy against original research forbids using home-made interviews as sources. I've had to remove those. I've left the minor details in the article unsourced, as they are not likely to be particularly controversial, but the chess claim probably should be sourced, to something published. I also removed the playing piano backwards bit as non-encyclopedic. While cute details like that may have genealogical interest, Wikipedia is not a genealogy site. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:32, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Dangling sources

Unresolved

 – Several sources are cited too vaguely.

Some six journalistic sources are cited, at the bottom, as having been used in the article, but there are no inline citations present indicating what facts are being sourced to these publications. They need to be read and used per the citation instructions in WP:CITE or removed, since they serve no purpose just sitting there. It's likely that all of them are of value in improving the article. They are:

• "Online interview published April, 2010". Untold Stories: Billiards History.
• Garchik, Leah (February 6, 1983). "Creating a Bowl of Perfect Cherries". San Francisco Chronicle.
• Zentz, Renny (May 8, 1994). "Byrne takes not-so-novel approach to billiard success". Telegraph Herald.
• Zimmerman, Joy (October 7, 1988). "A Master Quipster". Pacific Sun.
• Jowers, Andrew (April 28, 1993). "Author Byrne: Engineering, humor and billiards". Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
• Rasmussen, Eric (January, 1996). "Writing the Great American (Civil Engineering) Novel". American Society of Civil Engineers News. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Also, the reference citation that reads "As described by Byrne in an interview with Shelly Till on the local public-access television program On the Edge with Shelly Till" is badly incomplete and thus not verifiable or reliable. It requires a date, channel ID and location. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:40, 22 September 2011 (UTC)