Talk:Bob Walker (photographer)

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[edit] Many cuts

I am going to do what needs to be done to this article. It simply must be combed through and thinned out. There is simply too much detail in this article for the relative fame of the subject. Although I do think that most of the article is well written, there is just too much information about too little. Discuss below before you revert a section. Since this is a HUGE revision, I will save a copy of the article as-is on a sub-page here. Please get that version after discussing why it needs to be readded. --Xander the Potato Vanquisher 19:56, 1 August 2006 (UTC) (here)

You have my support here. DJ Clayworth 21:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE:

The revision is done. Im sure I left some silly copy midtakes in there, but the article is now about to the length it should be. Please discuss anything you want added back in below. --Xander the Potato Vanquisher 22:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

There is way too much detail in this article. I will remove some of the excessive references. DJ Clayworth 21:43, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Too much detail is in the eye of the beholder. Some of the "excessive references" you removed were the beginnings of further information. Diablobear

Sorry but this is an encyclopedia. The purpose of the articles is to give important information about important people. That's why we don't accept articles about every person in high school who won their class science competition. The same with individual articles. We provide the main information. If necessary there can be links to other places that provide extra details.

Wikipedia is not a repository of all the information in the world. To give you another example, that's why we don't list every movie made by an actor - that's what IMDB is there for. Particularly we do not need to know the telephone numbers of every organisation this man has ever belonged to. We do not need to know his social secutiry number (a huge breach of privacy, even if he is dead). Please go and have a look at some other articles on similar subjects to see how it should be done. DJ Clayworth 14:01, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course it's not a repository for all the information in the world, thus the general size limits, which this article is within. While I'm definitely new at this, and have adopted many of your edits, others appear simply arbitrary. Frankly I'm surprised that you're interested in this article. Diablobear 19:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm interested in this article because the quality of every article reflects the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. My concern here is not just about size limits - it's about balence. Plenty of articles are much shorter than the recommended size limits and with good reason. The size of an article should reflect importance. If Winston Churchill has a 50k article then this photographer should have a much shorter one. I think its up to you to explain why you think that this article should contain a list of phone numbers for all the organisations Bob Walker belonged to, or a five paragraph description of his apartment, or serveral sections of reminiscences by his friends? Other encyclopedias do not have this. I'm afriad this reads is if you are trying to use Wikipedia to create a home page for Bob Walker. DJ Clayworth 13:43, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

One of the great advantages of the web is that space is less a premium. And your arguments would have more weight if you were factual--all of the things you mentioned except for the description of his apartment are changes I had and have let stand. No one doubts that an understanding of the way in which a historical figure lived can inform.Diablobear 20:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

You are right, and my apologies for criticising you for a change that you didn't re-make. However I still don't believe that a list of the phone numbers of all these organisations is relevant to an encyclopedia article. Have a look at other articles - no other comparable article has them. If you really insist just list the organisataions lower down the article. And don't give a header to each one - it is the wrong format to use. We also don't need the text of the resolution creating a trail, and I would argue that we don't need a list of every exhibit this person has made.

Although disk space is cheap (though not as cheap as one might think - see the fundraising drives we periodically hold to upgrade servers) the main issue here is the time taken by a reader to read an article. If we insert a huge amount of detail which is irrelevant to almost all readers then we make it harder for our readers to get at the information they do want. Everyone thinks their time is valuable, and if it takes readers a long time to get to the inforamtion they want they will simply go elsewhere. If they want the phone numbers of organisations there are plenty of other places they can go to look them up. DJ Clayworth 17:39, 24 April 2006 (UTC) DJ Clayworth 17:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I accepted most of the edits you made, however it remains true that the phone numbers you keep mentioning haven't been a part of the article for some time, and those comments are irrelevent.Diablobear 18:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

My apologies, I didn't notice because you retained the sections on the organisations. They are wrongly formatted, and I've moved them to the 'external links' section. I've also removed the description of Walker's apartment, and the direct quotes from minutes of meetings he attended. Please look at some other articles. Nowhere else do we have a description of someone's apartment in their article. DJ Clayworth 17:56, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Diablobear, please explain why you think the description of the apartment and the minutes of the meetings are necessary. DJ Clayworth 21:25, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I was pointed over this way after visiting WP:3O, and the first thing that hit me was "Why would someone from Dubuque be interested in this guy? What was his primary claim to fame (this was never mentioned in the first section)? What sets this photographer/activist from all the others who are currently attending college?" Clearly his death by AIDS was not his claim to fame as American people were dying of it by the hundreds by the early '90s. I was also struck by the lack of Wikification within the article, most notably the first half.

This needs to be less of a biography/tribute page and more of an encyclopedia article. It should be summarized in the first section (I think I found a dit of the "notoriety" - finally - in the fourth section, which would make most readers get impatient as they strive to reach the point of the article). There is much too much detail in the article: it is written more in the style of a magazine article, but some things in there obscure, rather than enhance the message - the detail about his dog, the long quotations, the last three paragraphs of the "Photography" section (which, along with the "Travels" section, truly do more harm than good to an encyclopedia article as adding to the "overload cloud"), the overly dense and long "Environmental Activist" section (which is better written for a PBS documentary than here), and an unnecessary "Walker's Refuge" section that can disappear without anybody noticing (OBTW, an encyclopedic article is never written in the second person!).

My apology if this seems overly long, but I hope the people on the two sides take it for what it is supposed to be - a way to resolve a dispute, and the best way to do it is to ask yourselves those questions I posed in my first paragraph above and go from there. Best wishes to both participants. 147.70.242.39 00:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks 147. I will implement these suggestions. DJ Clayworth 18:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Interesting process. I'm just getting started on Wikipedia and welcome others' help in seeing how articles are Wikified, and in improving this one. Frankly one individual has made the process harder rather than easier to accept by being arbitrary, callous and condescending. When one reviews other articles he's worked on, you find a string of similar disputes. All I can extrapolate is that such disagreements, rather than positive change, are his real interests. I'm less inclined to concede to condescension or such pressures in the editing process--although, in fact, I have agreed to and allowed many of his suggestions. Nonetheless he continues to suggest in this discussion that changes long adopted, or deletions already made, are the basis for his actions.Diablobear 22:14, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Please comment on content, and not on other contributors. Personal attacks are strictly prohibited, and will not be tolerated. --Hetar 06:23, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] /original

Bob Walker (photographer)/original - I don't think that should be a subpage in the article namespace, and I can't see what purpose it fulfils that the article history doesn't meet - it needs deleting. Richard Taylor 20:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of the /original page was to keep a copy of the original copy for the article because I drastically altered it. This way, it would be MUCH easier to get old sections. It will be deleted in a couple weeks after the article is settled in. --Xander the Potato Vanquisher 13:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

This page has been moved to Talk:Bob Walker (photographer)/original Khatru2 08:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)