Talk:Shahs of Sunset

Concerns, April 2012

This whole thing needs to be rewritten to wikipedia standards. The author is associated with the show. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest— Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.183.20.231 (talk • contribs)

Done. Scopecreep (talk) 06:46, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit conflicts, January 2013

So we seem to have an ongoing edit war going on here that's moved from a slow-burn to something much hotter; therefore I've semi-protected the page for a bit with a note to encourage all parties to discuss things here on the talk page. Let's go through the apparent issues step by step: It appears that some of the editors are interested parties, given the censoring nature of the deletions, and this article's previous issues with conflicts of interest (WP:COI)--for example the issue of Shaahin Cheyene, who ended up having the LA Times publish a correction about a 2007 article in 2012 so that the blurb about him in the article would be fixed (it was).

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way, nothing on this page can be construed as an attack page (WP:ATTACK) which would be a serious problem. The tone of the prose appears neutral and doesn't appear to aggregate into an attempt to disparage or threaten its subject. Since this involves the biographies of multiple, living people this falls into the policies regarding Biographies of Living Persons (WP:BLP). Going over some of the possible concerns from BLP: as mentioned earlier, the prose is in a dispassionate tone. Since these are all written as short paragraphs running down their biographical facts, without any stated opinions, this doesn't appear to have issues with undue weight (WP:UNDUE).

Moving on to the issue of reliable sources (WP:BLPSOURCES), policy states that "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation"; while the topics are all cited, this leads to the next question: what is the quality of those sources? Since this is a fluffy reality show, some of the sources appear to be the major websites that cover various reality TV shows: Not exactly the NYT, but as the sources appear to be used for non-controversial statements (i.e. no rumors are being spread) it doesn't appear to violate WP:Sources. I noticed the one's involving Lilly's parents; after clicking through them they seem to be connected to her constant talk about her family on the show and on her blog. Let's examine these sources: Both are related to issues on a subject as a self-published source (WP:ABOUTSELF), primary sources (WP:PRIMARY), and the overall policy of no original research (WP:NOR). Lilly's personal blog is an example of the subject as a self-published source. In that case (in my POV impressively), her blog does not appear to be unduly self-serving; it does not involve claims about third parties (claiming someone is her brother or boyfriend is her own life, while claiming "Person X is dating Person Y" would be a potential issue); it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject; there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity (she's talked about being a blogger and it's part of her marketing); the article is not based primarily on such sources (it's only used to fill in a few holes in her own bio).

Continuing to the edit claiming sources purporting to identify her parents, they are potentially in violation of no original research: WhitePages.com appears to connect the names of the three children with two adults who are at least 20 years older. While the marriage record connects those adults, I'm not sure if WhitePages.com is a sufficient source to connect the parents to the children. As I write this out I think I'll err on the side of protecting that and remove the material, especially as the policy on primary sources states "Do not use public records that include personal details"--however the policy on primary sources encourages use of common sense (WP:COMMON), the question is whether or not common sense dictates trust in those sources (please discuss). Outside of those sources, none of the other edits appear to violate BLP, and their removal instead starts to edge closer to the policies that Wikpedia is not censored (WP:CENSOR) and we do not create highly tailored, public relations-style releases because it would violate our policy on a neutral point of view (WP:NPOV). So that is how it appears at this point, let's have a discussion below. If you'd like to learn more about how we format discussion on talk pages here. --Bobak (talk) 16:52, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Bobak, for lending some order here. On the page of Biographies of Living Persons (WP:BLP), it states this material "must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy." It also states under the Gossip and Feedback Loops subheading to consider whether material, "even if true, is relevant to a disinterested article about the subject." Given this is an article about a television show, of which Lilly is one character, I do not see the relevance or appropriateness of listing anything and everything that can be found about any person tied to Lilly. Thus, information about other peoples' land ownership, universities attended, marriage records and similar information is extraneous, unnecessarily intrusive, and detracts from the quality of this article.

The current paragraph about Lilly is redundant (She decided to "pursue her own bikini business" and she "founded a lingerie-inspired line of swimwear"). It also seems illogical to describe her siblings before her own details. BillGrossman (talk) 20:00, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for participating. I agree with you on the land ownership and marriage records, which weren't even clearly connected to begin with, and even then were questionable compared to the other characters' parents who've actually appeared on the show. I also agree about the redundancy on mentioning the bikini company mentions, I will fix that immediately. While her bio was in a chronological order (so is everyone else's, that's just a matter of how people tend to write them as anything else), I agree it doesn't make a difference if it's reordered to have her present situation first and foremost--I'll change that as well. I'll also make it clear in the first sentence that she's a entrepreneur/lawyer/blogger (I think that was included earlier but got lost in the ensuing edits).

Since she's mentioned being from Texas and a law student (and that she moved to LA for law school), I'd say neither of those cites are particularly problematic (if anything she's the most educated person on the show); those were linked to reliable, third-party sources which are the gold standard on Wikipedia. Moving over to the gossip and feedback loop issue, it's to prevent gossip from being spread. Here the source is herself through her official blog, which isn't gossip, but in applying the policy you brought up: there's no issues of it being true or reliable (at least from what's being attributed to it, if she were talking about another person's personal affairs, that would be problematic), which leaves relevance. Her parents were definitely irrelevant. Ali, meanwhile, has been a running story for the character in all her appearances: that's similar to how Omid Kalantari's off-air proposal to GG is still relevant as (even if Omid didn't appear on the show); he's become a character. Ali's own identity is actually fairly anonymous (despite his photo appearing on the show) as that's a very common name in a *lot* of cultures, lawyer or not. Her appearance and Barbie physique has been mention on the show and she seems quite forthright about it (as much as GG talks about her own nose job, etc). Do these new revisions make sense? --Bobak (talk) 21:12, 30 January 2013 (UTC)