Talk:Ben Johnson (sprinter)

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Contents 1 ban 2 Sources 3 Contradiction 4 Sources and sensationalism 5 Plagiarism 6 Censoring Quotes 7 Cynics?

[edit] ban

ban him —This unsigned comment was added by 194.83.233.3 (talk • contribs) .

Quite. When was his world record surpassed by (presumably) non-steroidal means? -Ashley Pomeroy 10:57, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

its incredibly naive to think the gold medalists in these events are drug free. not testing positive does not equate to being drug free. the article is excellent, renders my copy of speed trap useless (almost ;)). StrengthCoach 23:34, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

hmm, sorry but I don't think it's a very good article. It's an excellent story which would be perfect for a magazine or something, but using all this emotive language and summarizing a book doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. It's also too long and while interesting, an encyclopedia should just list the facts and cut all the action. 218.102.71.167 10:19, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome to try and do better. Yankees76 22:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm a track fan and this is a very informative and interesting article. Well done. An encyclopedia entry doesn't have to be boring. Missaeagle —Preceding unsigned comment added by Missaeagle (talk • contribs) 19:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I'm working on putting together sources for each quote/fact. Much of it is from Speed Trap, Inside Track and the CBC. This was the first article I wrote for Wikipedia, and I missed that aspect. If anyone can help, please feel free to add sources. Thanks. Yankees76 14:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

I see a contradiction: "Gold" should read "bronze", otherwise it doesn't make sense in this passage: "In May 1987, Lewis’s father died of cancer and it was at the funeral that Lewis pulled from his pocket his gold medal from the Los Angeles 100 metres and put it in his father’s hands. “I want you to have this”, he said, “because it was your favorite event”. When his mother expressed her surprise, he said calmly: “Don’t worry, I’ll get another one”. 29 July 2006

I'm not following you. Carl Lewis won numerous gold medals at the LA games. Ben Johnson won the bronze. The paragraph is about Lewis - not Johnson. And please sign your posts as well. Thanks. Yankees76 05:11, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources and sensationalism

Wow, this is an extremely dramatized and sensationalistic article. Sources are badly needed here. An example is:

It was in a quiet meeting with Francis, in Toronto in September 1981, three months before his 20th birthday that Francis brought up the subject of steroids. He informed Johnson that steroids represented 1% of performance, or the equivalent of one metre in the 100 metres, and he suggested that it was time to put Johnson in touch with his doctor. And it was a few days later that Johnson phoned Francis. He had made up his mind, and yes, he wanted that extra metre.

How can we so baldly assert the facts of what was a private meeting of two people? Was this Francis' story, as would make sense since the article quotes from his book later? This should be stated.

Was Johnson panicked by all this into a late run to the drugs cabinet? Not according to Francis.

The tone here is hardly encyclopaedic.

In the finals, however, Ben stepped it up a notch, destroying the world record with a time of 9.83 seconds. He finished almost exactly a metre ahead of Lewis, exactly the lead that Francis once told him the steroids could provide.

The dramatic value here -- the difference equalling exactly what was promised with steroids -- seems so perfect as to cast the original account of Francis/Johnson's meeting into doubt. --Saforrest 17:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

That quote/fact was obtained here: [[1]]Yankees76 13:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Saforrest. I just tried to clean up the first section. I think we could do with less melodrama and fewer sub plots. David D. (Talk) 17:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plagiarism

Just out of interest, what is to stop me deleting this whole article? I just googled one of the sentences from the article and came back with this article from The Times. Clearly there is major plagarism in this article. It might be best to delete the whole thing and start again from scratch. Here is another example. Many of the sentences are identical. It looks like this whole article is a cut and paste job from multiple sources. David D. (Talk) 19:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

It's just too hard to pick through and delete the plagarism sentence by sentence so i have deleted everything back to the source of the problem with this and subsequent edits. Sorry but it has to be this way. If I have deleted original work then please reinstate it. David D. (Talk) 20:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with David D. on this. It is a shame, as much of the plagiarized information was interesting and well written. We should leave a link on the article's page to those sources for those who want more information. Uucp 20:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Censoring Quotes

It's purest idiocy to use censorship on quotes! "Don't tell me I cheated the system because that's [expletive]". That should be changed immeadiatly! In other respects the article is somewhat sentimental, but that's minor. Those who care enough, just change the stylistic solutions to create for a more neutral tone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.221.16.164 (talk • contribs)

It seems like you care enough. The advantage of wikipedia is that you can actually make these changes yourself. Everyone is allowed to edit the articles. David D. (Talk) 17:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you propose we change it to? The editor above doesn't seem to have read the Boston Globe article that the quote is pulled from. The quote is word for word from that article, [expletive] included. There is no need to make any changes.[2]Yankees76 17:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly right. Changes should not be made with out research. David D. (Talk) 18:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Right. The reason I didn't change it myself is that I could't find out what it is that Johnson really said. The point was that it would be better to actually quote Johnson and not some Boston Globe reporter who apparently has got some journalistic practices very wrong. If the interviewee says something unquotable you don't quote him and censor the inappropriate parts. It would be hilarious in some other context, but here its just stupid because its so wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.221.16.164 (talk • contribs)

Okay well then I will leave it up to you to contact the Boston Globe and ask them to reprint the article uncensored or at least publish a transcript of the interview so that we may then find out what word was censored and make the correction. Let me know how that goes. Yankees76 04:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cynics?

"This was the start of Lewis’ calling on the sport of track and field to be cleaned up in terms of the illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs. While cynics noted that the problem had been in the sport for many years" It doesn't make a person a cynic! That's ridiculous!