User talk:Barte

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Contents 1 Thanks for your reply on the talk page, and ... 2 Discovery! 3 BD / HD DVD 4 Thanks for your help!

[edit] Thanks for your reply on the talk page, and ...

Vow, this page has no history? It seems your edits are so well-balanced and of such high quality that nobody needs to deal with you directly! :) Anyway, I'm going to abandon my pseudonym account, and I will probably not immediately edit the same articles, so I thought I would say good-bye to you. You are one of the most NPOV and balanced editors that I came across! Keep up the good work! --Merzul 22:29, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Well thank you! It has been a pleasure collaborating with you, as well. In whatever incarnation you appear on Wikipedia, all the best. Barte 22:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discovery!

Bonjour Barte. While I think the controversy around Discovery is interesting do you think it deserves a place on wikipedia at all? Now that I think about it the controversy is just some people "questioning" an aspect of a book, without coming to any strong conclusion. Their questions surrounding what the author originally intended could be also asked of basically any book published since the dawn of publishing and therefore I think their "controversy" isn't that interesting, nor should it be on wikipedia, an encyclopedia, (and not a blog.)

Therefore I nominate the controversy section to be taken out. What do you think?

Perhaps the Washington Post article could be linked to the article under external links but apart from that there aren't any strong statements that deserve encyclopedic inclusion. The "controversy" is interesting given that one of the people involved in it is releasing a Stegner biography in February (and this is prominently mentioned in all of the articles I've read), seems like marketing rather than any real substantial information.

stan goldsmith (talk) 05:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The controversy has now been covered by the Washington Post and the AP (thanks for adding the link). The LA Times has also covered it here. Those secondary sources are notable enough to make this a credible controversy and an indelible part of the book's history, which is why I added it and think it should remain. Of greater concern, to me at least, is the article's lack of footnotes. (The Washington Post citation I added is the only one.) That, more than anything else, undercuts the article's strength as a verifiable encyclopedia entry. Barte (talk) 08:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I suppose it is a noteworthy situation because it's written about in these sources but it isn't concluded at all, so in essence anyone questioning anything about anything that is written about in major newspapers could likewise be a "controversy" even though the only "sure" thing is that the book is published and Wallace Stegner wrote it. I'll add some footnotes for the article as well, though most everything in the article is well covered in the external links and in the source material (the book itself) (is that enough to be footnote-esque?). stan goldsmith (talk) 05:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Stan. First--a request. Would you object if I moved this conversation to the Discussion ("talk) page in the article itself? You raise interesting points, and I would like to see the exchange placed closer to the actual article under discussion. Not an imperative, of course.

In reply.....

The book is certainly published: we can agree on that. And I think we can also agree that Wallace Stegner's intended version was never published: it resides at the University of Utah. And that at least three people--his son, his former agent, and a biographer--contend that only that version should carry Stegner's byline. These are now all pretty much sure things.

Are they correct? Is the publisher corrrect? I don't know: as you point out, the controversy hasn't been resolved. But this unresolved controversy speaks to larger issues, which, I think, is why it has attracted the attention it has. When a film director doesn't agree with the final cut, the Director's Guild has a procedure for substituting a pseudonym in the credits. Is this the literary equivalent? Should there be one? Are there other instances involving authors where this situation has arisen? These questions resonate in this dispute, and a resolution--at least here and now--isn't required to make that resonance interesting. As encyclopedia editors, we can't anticipate what readers, now and in the future, will find of value. Nor can we second guess the motives of the people involved. All we can do is summarize what notable secondary sources (the heart of Wikipedia research) have reported.

The footnote issue is more clearcut. Footnotes have become Wikipedia's best answer to the ever-present question about verifiability wp:v: how do you know what you read is true? And articles that lack footnotes eventually get tagged: {{unreferenced}}, which places an unattractive box at the top that says: "This does not cite any references or sources." I don't think the lack of footnotes was always called out so blatantly, but as Wikipedia has grown in popularity, it has also attracted more scrutiny. The answer to that is better scholarship.Barte 06:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again Barte. Feel free to move this discussion. Another important point I'd like to make is that it is for "certain" that the author Wallace Stegner did sign off on that draft of the book to be published (because it was and he was paid for it, twice). The magazine version for sure and the Beirut version at a much later date (1971) (he even supplied an additional, new introduction). So it seems that not only did he write it but he was ok with the publications as they were, which would seem certainly contrary to this "controversy."stan goldsmith (talk) 16:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Thread copied to Talk:Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil Any additional comments there, please. Barte (talk) 01:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BD / HD DVD

Hi! I don't mind my posts in talk page being deleted. So no worries. I am with you in this. I hate to see some of the article content overlapping, but not sure myself which one to delete/move.--w_tanoto (talk) 20:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your help!

Hey Barte,

Just wanted to stop by and thank you for your good work on High definition optical disc format war‎. I certainly didn't expect my little {{fact}} to prompt such a flurry of activity, but considering how nicely you cleaned up the references, I'm glad it did :) --jonny-mt 08:12, 25 March 2008 (UTC)