Talk:Sacha Dean Biyan

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there is a lot of information missing about him like the humanitarian work he has done with the indegenous communities of ecuador and peru. if anyone has more info on this they should fill it in. cheers

Contents 1 Verifiability/sources 2 Chronology doesn't make sense 3 Image file 4 More on references

[edit] Verifiability/sources

The addition of neutrality and sourcing templates led me to try some fact-checking on the subject, with mixed results.

• High ghits count, although many seem to be purely promotional and/or drawn from this article.[1]
• 2002 Communications Arts Interactive Design Award: his website has been profiled by Communication Arts, but cannot find any independent verification that he has won this award (unless his appearance on the site itself counts as the award).
• 2003 German Art Directors Guild Award: cannot find any independent verification in English; a search on "Sacha Biyan Deutsche 2003" does not bring up anything immediately identifiable as connected to this award.[2]
• An interview appears on areaofdesign.com, but site itself has an Alexa ranking below 700,000 and so has its own notability issues.[3][4]
• An interview appears on klublife.com (the site has an Alexa ranking just above 2,400,000). [5][6]
• His own site (eccentris.com) has an Alexa ranking of 279,159.[7]
• Has been a Favorite Website Awards winner for this site.[8]
• His book Spiritus Mundi has been published by Brazilian firm Editora DBA [9], but does not yet appear to have been acquired by any U.S. libraries.
• The CD on which he was a collaborator has an Amazon ranking below 100,000.[10]. The product reviews have a strongly promotional flavor and are, with one exception, all from single-entry reviewers.
• Does not seem to have been mentioned by by major U.S./Canadian newspapers (LATimes, NYTimes, WashPost, Montreal Gazette, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail).
• Exhibitions section needs far more detail - are these solo shows? group exhibitions? A snapshot hanging in a coffee shop?

In short, he does seem to be a working commercial photographer who may meet WP:BIO requirements for inclusion. As it stands, however, the article is decidedly non-encyclopedic in tone and has a strong flavor of van...I mean conflict of interest. Robertissimo 09:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Right. I shall interrupt my reading of Thackeray's wonderful Conflict of Interest Fair to chime in on Spiritus Mundi. It is offered for sale, but the sole Brazilian library we can poll via en:WP doesn't stock it and Copac doesn't stock it either. -- Hoary 13:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• Added iTunes album release which i suppose is significant.
• Why does someone keep deleting the magazines he has shot for as well as his clients? These are taken directly from his site as well as other sources on the web.
• If you use the web as your only source for verification, it is totally inaccurate. There are many things that appear in hard copy or other media forms (more reliable than the web) which may not necessarily appear on the Internet. As such the basis of a lot of the info which has been omitted is incorrect. Also what makes the person above the authority on this subject, who only did partial research obviously, as opposed to someone who has been following the subject's career and work in magazines and on the web. I agree that all sources should be verifiable but for the sake of fairness, and most certainly to avoid "CONFLICT OF INTEREST" please do not get carried away on a power trip by thinking that you are the only authority. At least do your homework fully if you want to act like that, otherwise this Wiki will not live up to what it is billed as. For example, just because YOU cannot read Portuguese, does that invalidate all the relevant info about a solo exhibition in Sao Paulo found in this link: http://www.universia.com.br/html/materia/materia_cgce.html .... added in a series of edits on 15 Nov 06 by 75.38.30.166

Thanks for the reminder that info in Portuguese is just as valid as that in English, and that what's in books is at least as credible as what's on the web. Let's look at that link. The relevant part reads in full: MEMORIAL DA AMÉRICA LATINA / SACHA DEAN BIYAN - Destaca imagens do fotógrafo canadense que retrata povos considerados primitivos em países como Tailândia, Coréia do Sul, Peru, Bolívia e Brasil. Local: Memorial da América Latina - galeria Marta Traba (av. Auro Soares de Moura Andrade, 664, Barra Funda, região oeste, tel. 3823-4600). Datas: de terça a domingo, das 9h às 18h, até 11/01/2004. While I can't read Portuguese, the meaning is pretty easy to guess (aside from destaca). It shows that yes, he's had a solo exhibition, but it says very little else. The building is certainly very well known, and the gallery is a significant one too. -- Hoary 23:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

So then why did you delete all that info on his exhibits assuming otherwise? .... added at 00:56, 16 November 2006 by 75.38.30.166

If I deleted information it was probably because no evidence was provided for its veracity. If this doesn't explain what I did in some edit, please give me the "diff" (URL of a comparison of selected versions from the history page) of that edit. ¶ When you write something in a talk page, please sign it: just hit the "~" character four times in a row. -- Hoary 02:41, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chronology doesn't make sense

This chap was born in late 1968. He presumably didn't get his first degree till 1990 or so, and this may have started the period of "over ten years" during which he "worked as a consultant in the aerospace industry". (He could have got his "Master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering" while working as a consultant, remarkable though that would be.) This takes him up to 2000, at the earliest. He would by now be "in his early thirties", which is when he switched careers. It's only after that career switch, we read, that "his images have appeared in numerous magazines and galleries, and he has shot for clients such as Adidas, GAP, Sony Music, Discovery, etc.": clearly a busy fellow since 2000. Yet he has also [traveled] to some of the most remote corners of the globe. He spent seven years living amongst several Latin American and Asian tribes. Which seven years would those have been?

Perhaps all of this and more is explained on "one of the most cutting-edge websites on the Internet" (as opposed to all those cutting-edge websites that haven't been uploaded yet). But it and the other putative sources require Flash. Having previously (with SuSE) installed Flash and enjoyed a handful of amusing animations, a very small number of genuinely interesting websites, and a huge increase in advertising of the most distracting and annoying kinds, I've no intention of repeating the mistake (with Kubuntu). -- Hoary 23:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image file

As part of a larger cleanup addressing unsourced material in the article, I removed the image [11] accompanying the article, as the caption indicated it was copyrighted to the photographer and it appears to lack the "detailed fair use rationale" required. My understanding of Wiki image policy is far from complete and if I was incorrect in doing so, it could certainly be restored. Robertissimo 10:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More on references

User:75.22.34.196 inserted the following into the "Verifiability/sources" section above into the bullet on an award from Communication Arts Interactive Annual:

Look in the hard copy of the magazine 'Interactive Annual' - not the online version.

I checked around their site again, and did indeed find mention of the website Eccentris as a winner, and will include that (with a reference) in the article. Robertissimo 17:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)