Talk:Jim Bell

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Good article Jim Bell has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
February 1, 2008 Good article nominee Listed
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Contents

[edit] "Dead pool game"

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to call his "game" an "assassination market game" instead of "dead pool game". There are a few distinct differences between the two terms, and "assassination market" seems to fit here better. Jgw (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Y Done Skomorokh incite 17:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA notes

Article is well cited and fits GA standards, but I have two issues. First, the only picture in the article shows someone else, which could be confusing. Second, I had difficulty keeping the timeline straight. The "Politics" section goes up to 2002, then "Investigation" jumps back to 1997, and it wasn't clear what if any connection that had with his essays. Apparently in July 1997 he arranged a plea bargain, but then "completed his sentence" on April 15, 1998 according to the first sentence of "Release", after serving 11 months according to the infobox. Something doesn't match up. He probably didn't start serving his sentence in July, either. Cite [23] from that sentence dates from 1997 so it's only good for citing the amount of the fine. Can cites [12] and [13] be combined, since they're used together and are related? Gimmetrow 07:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your rigourous reading; the date on one of the references was awry and I have significantly reworked the timeline so that it should now be coherent. I have searched high and low for a free image of Bell but to no avail. I thought including some image would be better than others. Do you think, given that Bell is in prison for a long stretch, a fair use rationale for an unfree image would be possible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skomorokh (talk • contribs) 08:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Solid fair use involves commentary on the image (like details of a painting), or iconic historical photographs. If there's a photo of a defining event in his life, and the photo appeared in a lot of press, maybe.
The lead section could probably be two paragraphs. It seems fairly standard, unless the article is really short, to have one paragraph identifying why the subject is important, and a second paragraph summarizing broadly the rest of the article. Gimmetrow 17:50, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Cool, I'll get working on the lede. There are no pictures that I am aware which meet those criteria, but I presume policy wrt images has not changed of late and imageless articles can still qualify as GA? скоморохъ ѧ 20:49, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Imageless is fine if no images are possible, WP:WIAGA#6. I think the lead might be a bit long now at four paragraphs ;) Gimmetrow 23:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Dude, you're killin' me. I'll get to work. скоморохъ ѧ 23:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, looks like a GA now. I did remove the one image because it seems to imply something to have a picture of someone the prosecutor compared him to. If you want to take this to FAC, there may be some bits of POV to address, such as having "harassment" in a section header. Gimmetrow 00:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Appropriate Illustrations

The inclusion of the photo of Bob Murphy, in the absence of a photo of Jim Bell himself, is misleading to the casual reader, scanning the page, who is likely to think the photo represents Jim Bell. Bob Murphy's photo is also on his page, and I think including it here is downright spammy: Policy says "Images must be relevant to the article they appear in and be significant relative to the article's topic", but Bob Murphy's picture is neither. Aminorex (talk) 22:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

As I have shown on User talk:Aminorex and User talk:Skomorokh, this argument is without merit. The relevant section mentions Murphy in more than a passing fashion thus justifying beyond reasonable doubt the image's inclusion, no superior alternatives to the image have been offered, and the accusation of spam is downright bizarre. As for readers mistaking Murphy for Bell, I think given the caption this is an insult to the intelligence of the reader. Skomorokh 22:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

скоморохъ has reverted edits by multiple contributors which remove the Murphy photo. It is my contention that even the mention of Murphy on the Jim Bell page is of very little value, because his critique of AP is not original, but merely a restatement of Kay's practical critique from an anarcho-capitalist ideological position. That's why I think it tastes spammy. I'm hoping that additional persons will voice their opinion here, to clarify a consensus. Aminorex (talk) 22:14, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

You admit that the image is of value. No images is of no value. By your reasoning, including the image adds value to the article. Clearly, if your desire is to add more value to the article, your focus ought to be on sourcing superior images. The Kay argument is a red herring; if you can produce a reliable source that confirms what you say, we should by all means add the information to the article, but in the article's current state, it has no bearing. Regards, Skomorokh 22:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Negative value is also possible. Spam has negative value.Aminorex (talk) 23:01, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Please stop throwing that word around. Not only is it discourteous, but directly contradicting our policy: "There are two types of wikispam. These are advertisements masquerading as articles and external link spamming." Skomorokh 23:17, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

---

Since I've been accused of 'drive-by removal's and edit-warring, I'm adding my opinion to this debate.

As my edit probably made clear, I agree with Aminorex that the picture should not be included. I don't know about spamming, but I think it's a clear choice based on purely editorial grounds.

  1. It is misleading. When I came to read about Bell, I only barely noticed that the picture wasn't of him when I became curious about the long caption. I could easily've gone away thinking Bell was this balding white man.
  2. It adds no value. OK. So we now know what one, minor, Johnny-come-lately critic (whose criticisms may not even be original) of assassination markets looks like. Wonderful. How about a picture of Bell, or of the judge who imprisoned him, or of the two fellows who tried to start assassination markets, or of a market itself, or of... there must be dozens of pictures more relevant if you'd look.
  3. To expand on this point: Murphy has two lines. These two lines are poorly written - not to say repetitious of other articles, and could easily be turned into one line. There are many one-liners in this article, and quite a few of those have articles with pictures. MIT, Wired, the IRS, email, Kaczynski and McVeigh, etc. Should we copy over all of those? I don't think so.

--Gwern (contribs) 18:17 5 April 2008 (GMT)

[edit] Possibility of a fair use image of Bell

I asked here a few days ago about the possibility that copyrighted images of Bell could be used, on the grounds that his imprisonment makes it currently impossible to create free images of him. Skomorokh 22:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that'd really work. You could visit him in prison and take a photo. You could wait and then take a photo. You could persuade a copyright holder to license appropriately. You could hunt down a picture taken by a federal employee in the course of their duties, which would be public domain. There are a lot of still possible ways which means you don't really have that out. (Maybe you'd be within the letter of the policy, but not the spirit.) Just being inaccessible for a set period isn't enough. --Gwern (contribs) 16:37 5 April 2008 (GMT)
Thanks for the reply, I thought as much. Skomorokh 16:41, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kay source

I was asked for a reference to Kay's critique: http://packetstormsecurity.org/papers/contest/Richard_Kay.txt Aminorex (talk) 22:24, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

This is interesting, but does not seem to meet Wikipedia's standards for reliable sources as it appears to be an email/usenet posting. Is the material published anywhere? Skomorokh 22:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I hold that it is superior, by WP's standards, to Bob Murphy's self-published critque. Both are web pages, neither was published in a mainstream or peer-revenued venue. Kay's is at least not self-published. It was not an email or usenet posting. It was a submission to a contest for papers addressing DDOS security topics. It is customary to give priority to the first expression of an idea. It would be better for the text to reference Kay's article than Murphy's, on that ground alone. This would result in no textual reference to Bob Murphy on the Jim Bell page. My conclusion is that the photograph is misplaced. I'm not trying to beat the topic to death, just clarify some of my reasoning. Obviously not all can be recorded, but these are points which seem to have been omitted from the foregoing discussion.Aminorex (talk) 22:59, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree that if it were the case that Murphy's work was little more than a restatement of Kay's, and if Kay's work had been published in a manner acceptable to Wiki standards, there would be no reason to make more than a passing reference to Murphy and thus no real reason to include his image. Neither of those ifs have been shown to be the case unfortunately. The Murphy piece meets WP:V under the criteria for self published sources because his work in the relevant field (Chaos Theory) has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Furthermore, as Murphy was the senior editor of Anti-State.com at the time of publication, we can be reasonably certain that the cited work is in fact written by him and untampered with.

An argument specifying which criteria of WP:RS Kay's work meets has yet to be made. Skomorokh 23:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)