User talk:SteveRoper

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[edit] Fran Matera

This is great material you added. Since the previous material had citations, is there any way you could add citation to your additions. Are the dates published anywhere besides your own research? --Tenebrae 23:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

To Tenebrae ... (I came across your comment while editing and just now found it again in another "Talk" section.) Thanks for the encouragement. My additions are explicitly documented in the article when referring to outside sources like Saunders' own interviews and autobiography that I added to the "References" list for more primary sources. Thus, when I say "Saunders in 1971 said...", that refers to the 1971 interview with Ridgeway listed under References. But for what happened in the strip and when (for example, Roper getting married in Aug. 1976), that's my own research, and I take the responsibility as one who has read and studied the entire strip from beginning to end, and can personally vouch for it in my digital documentation of it. Does that answer your question, or have I misunderstood? --"SteveRoper" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.17.59.122 (talk) 16:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for responding. Is 152.17.59.122 the same editor as SteveRoper?

I'm afraid I don't see "Saunders" or "Ridgeway" under References. Clarify? Thanks! --Tenebrae 23:11, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Tenebrae: Ridgeway is the fourth entry in the revised list of "References." (Ridgeway, Ann N. (interviewer). 1971. Allen Saunders. The Journal of Popular Culture 5 (2), 385-420.) It's the first of eight important primary sources I used in the revised article and added to the list. The Saunders bibliography is last in the additions. Don't they appear in the article you're seeing? Please let me know, because if the sources I referred to aren't appearing, there's a problem. And yes, I guess I'm that number, which Wikipedia probably assigned because I forgot to sign in properly before responding to you. (Sorry!) By the way, I've been assuming you're talking about the Steve Roper and Mike Nomad article I redid. If you've instead been referring to the Fran Matera article, all I changed there was the date he began drawing this strip, which was April 8 1985, not 1982. All SRMN strips before that date are signed "William Overgard", and the change in artist was obvious. Matera once thought he began earlier than that because the audition strips he drew were from a story Overgard drew in 1982. --SteveRoper.

I see what happened -- I was talking about the Fran Matera article! I'll port over some of the cited background info from Steve Roper and Mike Nomad when I get a chance. Cheers! --Tenebrae 04:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Tenebrae: Whew, glad to see this resolved! If there's anything else I can help with for SRMN or any of its authors, I've got a lot of research to share. --SteveRoper.

(Additional material proposed for Fran Matera article: removed as suggested below.)

This interesting stuff, and I'd love to see it cited at a published source. Technically, we're not supposed to put uncited material in either the article or the article's talk page, both of which have to abide by the same guidelines. Without a linked source of print citation, the encyclopedia cannot take anyone's word for it, no matter how authoritative they may seem (as you certainly do!), since that falls under one of the big prohibitions, original research. I'm hoping you'll voluntarily remove the technically uncited material above. I'm hoping even more than you can dig up a citation! Go for it, fellow fan! --Tenebrae 18:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. It's not my article. Anyone can edit it -- that's the whole point of Wikipedia. Indeed, there's an official guideline about article non-ownership, at WP:OWN. Don't worry -- after a couple years of this, I'm still learning guidelines and policies! --Tenebrae 18:17, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Tenebrae: As requested, I just deleted it. The comment came from Matera himself through his agent, as a treasured moment in his past that he was reminiscing about, in a description of the item for eBay auction, but of course it disappeared after the auction, as per eBay policy. So now there's no documentation of it, nothing to link to, and no citation is possible; and apparently my digital copies of that strip vs. the original aren't admissible evidence. I see the cautionary intent in the prohibition against "original research," but it makes no sense when the discoverer of a very relevant fact does have first-hand evidence and can produce it. And as for a restriction to published sources, what publisher is going to publish a book these days on topics like Fran Matera? That's the whole value of Wikipedia: it's covered, and keeps covering, a prodigious number of nooks-and-crannies topics that published encyclopedias can't or won't include! —Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveRoper (talk • contribs)

Thanks for understanding and seeing the bigger picture behind the policy. And you never know who's publishing what these days -- there are a lot of adventure comic-strip collections out there. In fact, if you have access to Matera's agent, why not consider co-publishing a collection? Seriously -- there are a lot of entrepreneurial small publishers out there now, what with print-on-demand technology. Just an idea. I'd buy it!--Tenebrae 04:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] signatures in articles

Please don't sign your contributions to articles. User signatures should not appear in the articles themselves. All of your contributions are credited to you in the article history, which you can view by clicking on the "history" tab. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you. Gamaliel (Angry Mastodon! Run!) 02:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)