Talk:Brainhell

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Although a newspaper obituary is on file that confirms the biographical information and Brainhell's prominence in the online and ALS communities, the references in this article are all that can be included without connecting Brainhell to his real life identity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Barrylank (talk • contribs) 15:05, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. It would certainly not be appropriate to reveal unpublished personal details about a recently deceased person on Wikipedia, but any Wikipedia article should use published sources of information. The notability policy for articles about people requires third-party reliable published sources. Meanwhile, personal knowledge of editors is not generally accepted as a source because it can't be verified by other readers or editors. The consequence of all this is that the article is likely to be deleted if most of its content has no third-party references.

I've added a reference to the San Francisco Chronicle interview. Do you have details of where the obituary was published? EALacey (talk) 15:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely with the above. While it was only common courtesy to keep Brainhell's secret while he was alive, his obituary - featuring his real name right in the title - was published in a major US newspaper. If this article meets the notability criterion, then it should be fully referenced. If it's fully referenced, then his name is revealed in the references, so there's no need to be coy about revealing it in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.132.178.106 (talk) 22:49, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

We still need to be coy, I think. Brainhell talked a lot about his family on the web site. That means considerable information about a couple of kids, which someone could now put together with a name. That may be why his obituary did not actually mention the name of his web site Brainhell. And the web site, though it eventually published his picture, did not mention him by name, even at the end. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Barrylank (talk • contribs) 17:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

If we aren't allowed to cite the obituary as a source, that leaves us with only the blog itself and the brief Chronicle interview. That's probably not enough to satisfy the notability guideline. If it would violate the family's privacy to reveal this person's real name, is it the right time yet for an encyclopedia article to be written about him at all? EALacey (talk) 17:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)