Talk:Robin Williams (writer)

Quote about Sweet Swan...

_ _ For starters, i am removing the following cite:

<ref>Katona, Cynthia Lee. ''Book Savvy''. USA: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2005. ISBN 978-0810854345.</ref>

The only purpose it can serve is to verify that Katona wrote that book, which is hardly useful in establishing the credibility of either writer: note that Book Savvy was written 2005 and the book the quote refers to was written 2006, per Williams's publisher's March 2006 newsletter. But even moving it, to immediately follow "Book Savvy" (to lessen the likelihood of some users inferring that that is where the original of the quote will be found), would leave it too confusing to be justified by merely proving Katona really did publish a book.
_ _ Keep the removed ref here on talk to help someone who wants to write a bio on Katona.
_ _ The publisher is also presumably the source of the quote, so the URL of the publisher's version should replace that of one of the dozen booksellers who presumably copied it, either from there, or from something the publisher provided more privately to retailers.
--Jerzy•t 20:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there is a longer version of the quote (by about 40%) at Mary Sidney -- Reviews, implying that none of the other sites are the source for it, and suggesting it as a possible source for all the others. Note that it has the smart-quotes and the "Williams' " construction, in violation of the "Williams's" one that IIRC our WP:MOS (or a pertinent article?) commends for modern names; these are probably the most likely places for "mutations" to occur if there were multiple steps of propagation of the quote. (For example, i replaced the smart quotes, per WP practice, and i almost added the S before realizing i was about to corrupt a direct quote, by changing its spelling!)

Unfortunately, that Web page is copyright by none other than the subject of the bio, so the situation deteriorates to this:

1. none of the sources we've found is specific about their source of it, beyond Katona's authorship, and
2. the only known source that could be the source for all the others is on a page created by the person the quote praises.

These conditions are consistent with Williams's source being a private communication from Katona, which would make verification by WP impracticable at best; if such a communication should turn out to be oral, with Williams making a paraphrase of its substance, verification by anyone would be impossible even in theory. But besides the issues of certainty that the communication took place and that its content is faithfully represented by the quote (uncorrupted by the carelessness, wishful thinking, and/or intentional misrepresentation that a private communication can enable), even a verifiably perfect record of a private communication presents problems for us about the relative notability of more or less private communications. Specifically, there's an aspect to a communication that lawyers call "dignity": for instance, a contract written on a paper napkin can be binding, but the effect of conflicts between contracts can depend on their relative "dignity". In our case, someone saying "your book is good" becomes a stronger endorsement if followed "tell you publisher to say i said so", and still stronger if the speaker themself publicizes the fact of their having told you so. So in our case, Williams presumably has become thoroughly publishing-savvy in the course of dozens of books, and understands the value in publicity of demonstrating the verifiability and "dignity" of an endorsement. Yet she fails to say anything that so demonstrates them about the endorsed book. IMO, this creates a presumption that the quote embodies a private communication, and one whose author has not verifiably acknowledged it.

Finally, the assessment is attributed to a close colleague, the teacher who introduced her to close study of Shakespeare:

Cynthia Katona at Ohlone Community College unveiled my passion for Shakespeare.

per Williams's personal bio. This would seem to heighten the probability that the endorsement's role as testimony to the quality of the book deserves to be discounted in recognition of a likely role as helping out a friend, or seeking pride or other indirect benefits through her success.

In light of all that, i am removing the "better" citation i provided, and rather than using this new best-one-so-far, putting a {{fact}} tag on it.
--Jerzy•t 06:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

A minor note: i finally tumbled to the fact that our copy of the quote, true to the source it was attributed to, had lost the italics on "Sweet Swan" that appear in the long Web version. All the other versions that Google came up with had also done so, with the exceptions of Guy Kawasaki's blog copies, and Amazon (which presumably lost the italics by italicizing the whole quote. It did retain the other features (smart quotes, and making the possessive of Williams by simply adding an apostrophe) which appear in some of the other copies, so one possibility is that all the others copied from Amazon but converted the whole quote back to non-italic text. FWIW.
--Jerzy•t 07:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Computer groups

I found

is a founding member of the New Mexico Internet Professionals Association, the Santa Fe Mac Users Group,

and kept the refs while reducing the text they support to

has been a leader in New Mexico computer-related groups

In this fashion, we can support OR by others without burdening the article with unencyclopedic text that arguably violates WP:SYN by seemingly trying to prove how vigorous she is in non-notable pursuits.
--Jerzy•t 20:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

References

Notability issues, including conflict of interest

IMO, the bio is notable for her computer books and should not be deleted, but i don't want to go too long without getting, say, WP:PR on the notability of her foray into the works of Shakespeare. My sense for a need for considering that is heightened by

1. the emphasis given to the opinion of her community-college prof who turned her on to the subject;
2. the consistency between the facts and some scenarios where Peachpit might avoid her carrying out her intention to privately publish Swan of Avon..., for reasons unrelated to their hope of turning a profit via its sales (or, for that matter, unrelated to making a worthwhile contribution to knowledge): e.g.

   - they're not funding her imprint, or

   - she twisted their arm, or

   - they believed she had a chance of taking it and her future computer titles elsewhere, or

   - they believed her value to them as a tech writer would be impaired by the embarrassment of her becoming a self-publisher, or

   - as she suggests, they're just nice people; and

3. the partisan diligence of the major contributor, and the evident friendship between her and him:
   1. Navy.enthusiast (talk · contribs) has brought the prose from 6 sentences to almost its current state with 2 secns of prose and 4 of lists (my ensuing edits removed some prose since his last edit), and from 2,768 to 8,851 bytes, from 04:14 on the 16th, to 13:19 on the 19th of December 2007 (with insignificant changes by a few intervening editors).
   2. The most significant intervening edit was the conversion by an IP of a "birth_date =" field from user:Hjal's (Hjal (talk · contribs)) April '07 "c. 1954" estimate to "1953"; interestingly, Navy.e converted that to an exact day within the next 2 hours).
   3. I have deleted the image that appeared in the author box, but i presume that at least admins can still see the verbal matter that accompanied it on the image page(s). Navy.e claims there to have communicated with the subject by EMail, and that she both has thanked him (addressing him as "George") for adding the pic and/or his editing, and placed her photo in the public domain. (On reflection, she can do that only if she took the photo with a timer; otherwise, only the photographer can, unless it was a work-for-hire paid for by her publisher, in which case only they can do it.) In any case, he implies they are two different people and that she can put it in PD, but he wiki-signed our statement that he is the copyright holder. Assuming he's not her, she feels he deserves thanks for furthering her interests.

--Jerzy•t 22:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Navy.e also used the tricky syntax required to single out Category:Mac OS, among the Cat tags he added, to have Williams listed above the alphabetical A entries (i.e., behind only the significantly name article Mac OS, and ahead of, e.g., Apple Guide, Inside Macintosh, Macintosh File System, and MultiFinder). IMO this is a serious part of the pattern of PoV.
--Jerzy•t 23:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I find it very strange that virtually all the sources cited are in fact ones originating from the subject of the biography herself. She is the founder and voice of the "Mary Sidney Society." Therefore, the biographical details found there and cited here are quite likely written by Ms. Williams herself. Most of this entire entry seems to me to be self-originating, and the praise provided for the subject by one of her closest colleagues, as discussed earlier, makes me even more uncomfortable. Perhaps one who is more familiar with Wiki protocols could tell us why we have a biography of a person written and supported mostly by the person herself?Doc5467 (talk) 03:49, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the article, your question still has not been addressed, and it is still a 100% subject-referenced page. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Because Ms. Williams is author of Sweet Swan of Avon and is currently very involved in Shakespeare studies (she is teaching Shakespeare Authorship courses at Brunel University), I am changing the first sentence to reflect that fact that she is not to be defined solely as the author of computer books.Jdkag (talk) 18:05, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Bibliography

Way too "everything and the kitchensink." Try to make a limited selection of noted works, not everything ever published. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:28, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I have been making a first attempt to collect what has turned out to be massive amount of available sources - I am planning to ask a Wikiproject or two for help if the article survives the AfD. I think the article can eventually be reorganized into sections of notable works, or have separate articles created for notable works, and that will help a lot. For now, I think treating this as a work in progress would be helpful due to the vast amount of sources available due to the dozens of works published by this author and the significant amount of critical attention many of these works have received. Given the early stage of the research, I think it is too soon to figure out what needs to be trimmed. Beccaynr (talk) 16:43, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

The Oxfordian

I'm adding these recently-removed citations [1] here, for further discussion about possible inclusion:

• Dickson, Peter (2006). "Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?". The Oxfordian. 9. Shakespeare Oxford Society. Retrieved 17 February 2022.
• Prodromou, Luke (2019). "The Shakespeare Authorship Debate Continued: Uncertainties and Mysteries". The Oxfordian. 21. Retrieved 17 February 2022.

It may be relevant that there is an article about Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, which includes some discussion of The Shakespeare Oxford Society, the publisher of The Oxfordian. As this article and/or an article about the book develops, would it make sense to attribute these sources instead of completely exclude them, per WP:BIASED? Thanks, Beccaynr (talk) 22:42, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't know when they were removed, but I'm pretty sure they were taken out because of WP:RS, not because of WP:BIASED. If you want to restore them, I would refer you to WP:RSN before doing so, since fringe publications are not considered reliable sources for anything other than themselves, and I'm certain there are more reliable sources for the information. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:33, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

To follow up on Tom Reedy's point, though a biased source may also be a reliable source, a fringe publication is generally not a reliable source. While we might expect that a news story on Fox vs the same story on MSNBC (for example) will have different emphases, they're both reliable, citable sources. The Oxfordian was a journal that took a fringe theory (that Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him) as a foundational principle. It was not peer reviewed except by others who held that belief. Shakespeare Authorship has been extensively discussed on WP and has numerous pages, including at least one that refers to Mary Sidney Herbert's supposed authorship of Shakespeare's works. Please refer to WP:FRINGE.

Also relevant is the repeated reversion of the sentence "Mary Sidney was first proposed as an authorship candidate as part of a group theory by Gilbert Slater in 1931." How is this relevant to Robin Williams' bio? She wrote a book that supported the same fringe theory, but this is not a page to discuss the content of the theory, or Williams' specific book. Note that I'm not removing the reference to Williams' book, just the expanded discussion of the Mary Sidney Herbert authorship theory. There's no contextual info provided about the many different Apple systems Williams wrote about, even though I suspect that each of her many books applied only to programs and systems that were superseded by the next year's iteration of technology. Though I question whether this article really needs to exist, and believe that it's far too long considering the level of notability of the subject, it can't be a platform to promote fringe theories WP:PROFRINGE or to give such theories undue weight WP:UNDUE. Bomagosh (talk) 21:25, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I added it first (btw, despite the heading here, I didn't cite The Oxfordian). IMO it adds a bit on-topic context in WP:PROPORTION. Consensus will be what it will be. I didn't notice that you started this discussion when I reverted you, but we're not at WP:EW yet. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:33, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Added ref [2] that makes the connection Williams-Slater. The author seems to be of the anti-strat persuasion, but not the same one. IMO it's good enough in context. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:35, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

This seems like a misunderstanding of what would be "context" in this article. The fact to be put into context is Williams decision to write this particular book, not the general area of the fringe theory of alternative Shakespeare authorship. The reference you gave doesn't even discuss the candidate the subject of this article wrote her book about. It's WP:PROFRINGE. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bomagosh (talk • contribs) 14:48, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Per my reading, stating that someone has had a similar idea before her is not promoting her idea. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:11, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) From my view, the addition looks like an attempt to comply with WP:FRINGELEVEL and WP:FRINGE/ALT, which seems different than the context that can be added about her computer books. My sense is that the limited addition is important context so it does not appear as if Williams was the first and/or only proponent of the theory she writes about in her book. Beccaynr (talk) 15:17, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Mentioning Gilbert Slater's work is a virtual non sequitur and not at all relevant to Williams' biography. Read the biographies of not just other SAD personalities such as J. Thomas Looney and Alden Brooks, but also people who made actual, valuable contributions to human knowledge, and you do not see any such mentions thrown in unless it had something to do with the subject developing their theories. I don't particularly care one way or another; at least not enough to get into an edit war. This article is an ill-written, undigested piece of literary gristle, and it's just one more example of the lack of thought that characterizes these types of theories and the people who indulge in them. For someone whose main notability is producing handbooks that are out of date months after their release, I suppose linking her with another forgotten SAD theorist could be seen as appropriate. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:40, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

This is exactly the problem with these additions. They are not related to the biography of the subject, because we have no evidence that Williams relied on either of the cited sources. Adding references to one or more individuals who had similar ideas about Shakespeare authorship is really poor context, because it doesn't make clear that Williams' theory is considered a fringe theory of a fringe theory. In fact, by listing others who are supporters of the fringe theory (with no further context), it gives the impression that this is more of a minority position.

Is the context you're seeking merely to say that someone else has suggested that Shakespeare didn't write his works? We can add a link to the Shakespeare Authorship Question that shows that there is an entire fringe theory of which her book is part. There are nearly 90 alternative candidates listed at List of Shakespeare authorship candidates including Mary Sidney Herbert, though Herbert has far fewer adherents among Shakespeare authorship deniers (SADs) than most others. There is no specific page for the vast majority of these candidates, some of whom have no living supporters and others (like Mary Sidney Herbert) with only a handful (which runs afoul of WP:UNDUE.) Bomagosh (talk) 20:44, 28 February 2022 (UTC)