Talk:John Reed (actor)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

	This article is part of WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan, an attempt to complete and improve the Gilbert and Sullivan related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale for the G&S Project.
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

[edit] Photo of Reed

There are lots of pictures of Reed on the internet. Can someone put one in? I need to get Wiki for dummies!

How about one or more of the images at http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/mikado/docimages/docalbum7.html

--Ssilvers 17:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Performing business

This situation with John Reed wearing color glasses and riding a skateboard is a good example of an issue I'm not sure how to resolve. I saw him do this myself. There were no cameras allowed in the theater, probably, so how can this be proved? Is this just a fact that's doomed to oblivion because a respected autority on G&S didn't put it in a book? Penfield June 27, 2006

Right, It's a fun story, and you can write an article for one of the G&S society-type newsletters, or a book that someone could later cite (according to so-and-so, p. 349, Reed did the following). But on Wiki, we really can't say "I saw him do it". But, Reed was reviewed numerous times, and I bet you there are a number of books and articles that can be found where a critic or writer mentioned a similar story about one of Reed's encores. Of course, it takes more work to research it than to just relate your experience, but it's Wiki policy, and if you think about the whole encyclopedia, it is a policy that makes a good deal of sence in terms of controlling the quality (including neutrality and verifiability) of the encyclopedia. -- Ssilvers 04:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's one type of encyclopedia policy. I know two people very well who wrote articles for the Britannica, and they most surely were writing off the top of their heads much of the time. No cites, no references, nothing. [Penfield]

They couldn't have been Plaza-Toros!  :)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability Ssilvers 04:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Britannica has other means of ensuring that garbage doesn't make it into their articles (not that they are always 100% successful at that). I am not saying that your particular story was "garbage," but if there were no verifiability policy on Wikipedia, most assuredly a ton of "garbage" would make it in, and there would be no principled basis for preventing it. Although it is tedious to seek out verifiable sources, I usually find that anything worth saying in a Wikipedia article can usually be authenticated.

As Sam noted, John Reed was reviewed a lot, and if he pulled off this kind of business with any regularity, some reviewer would have commented on it. (And if he didn't do it regularly, is it really "encyclopedic"?) Marc Shepherd 12:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)