Talk:Timothy W. Lynch

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The movie Star Trek: First Contact featured a character named for him, "Ensign Lynch". The character was assimilated by the Borg and then killed by Captain Picard.


Is there any proof that the character was named for him? His review passes it off as a coincidence.

Contents

[edit] Edits I've Made (Dec. 05)

  • The assertion that Tim's reviews are "insightful" and "balanced" is not NPOV. Those are opinions, and therefore, not appropriate to the entry, even though I share them. I removed it.
  • The assertion that Tim's quitting Voyager and Enterprise reviews was "famous" is dubious. By what measure was it "famous"? Famous to whom? People who read Trek reviews on the Web are hardly a gigantic demographic, and I've never read any reference to Tim in any other fan publication or on any other site, and no source was provided for this assertion (which is a requirement for all material on WP), so I removed it.
  • The assertion of a "curse" on Trek shows in their third seasons is something I've never heard about in all my years as a Trekker, and again, no source was cited for this. Similary, the idea that Voyager got better in its third season is clearly an opinion, and therefore, not NPOV. I deleted this passage.
  • The bit that says "Tim loves to teach physics" is redundant. Most people who go into a certain field do so because they have type of affinity for that field, and it goes without saying that those who become teachers do so because they really enjoy teaching, and that subject. I removed it.

In addition, Tim has informed me of several other things that were in the entry:

  • The character in Star Trek: First Contact was not named after him. The character from Peter David's novel, Worf's First Adventure, on the other hand, was. I clarified this point, as well as the point about the character in Sisko's vision in "Shadows and Symbols", whose name Tim pointed out to me was spelled differently, and likely from a street near Ron Moore's alma matter.
  • The bit about his enjoying folk music was inaccurate, as it was added by a student of his, based on a sample of exactly one song that he heard Lynch do, when Lynch has many instruments. I removed it.
  • The bit regarding Tim's use of cows in his curriculum is true, but as described, is vague and not contextualized. I removed it.

So guys, please stop vandalizing the page with irrelevant material, okay? Tim himself informed me that he would eventually get around to reviewing the article himself, and making any alterations to it he could. I liked reading Tim's reviews too, and I enjoy conversing with him via email and on Peter David's blog, but please don't contribute to WP unless you can follow the guidelines, okay? Thanks.  :-) Nightscream 05:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I bet Nightscream is actually TWL in disguise.

Flypanam 00:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Consider your bet lost, since I'm simply a friend/fan of his. You can ask him yourself on Peter David's blog if you don't believe me, as he's made several posts there during the past few days. Nightscream 22:37, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Dude, it's a BAD idea to encourage people to edit their own article, and it's also a bad idea for a friend/fan of his to edit the article, as it shows bias and often OR (both of which are against policy). Frankly, I don't see why he even has an article at all. So he does Star Trek reviews, so what? Lots of people do. DreamGuy 05:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Discussion of whether article should stay has been made before: User Jrp : "Should this even be in Wikipedia? I like his reviews, but..." in article history.

Decision was made to keep it before, and I say keep it. Enough people know who he is and several people who do not know him personally have made edits to it. (unsigned but by USer:Flypanam)

Funny, I don't see any discussion here, and certainly nothing that has been formal enough to be referred to as a DECISION to keep.
Certainly if he is a notable person, you ought to be ablt to give some sort of rationale for how he fits the Wikipedia notability guidelines. Please try to give reasons for keeping this article. Who is he? Why should anyone care? The article says he wrote some reviews, lots of people write reviews, so what? I've asked a couple of times, but nobody has tried to answer yet. If I don't see a good explanation soon I will put this article up for deletion, especially as an editor who was actively involved in making the page has put up other articles for people who were determined (by real full vote decisions) to not be notable and that have already been deleted. DreamGuy 23:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

It's in the actual article's history. I'm not sure how that worked out, but Jrp reasoned that it was good enough to keep after he questioned the validity.

I believe Lynch is notable enough based on a cult following, and a somewhat strong name recognition. Earlier versions of the article, before I, or even "nightscream" I'm assuming, had even seen the article, written by Woohookitty, Reaverdrop, JIP, JW1805, EurekaLott, Jrp, and StAkAr Karnak, none of whom i've ever even noticed before, and had no contact with, and who Lynch most likely did not know, seem to have added to the article, and none of them seem to have had any problem with the notability of this person. Lynch, presumably, does no self promotion through the internet, having merely started the website as a hobby in college which grew in popularity by change, and he appears twice on about.com for Star Trek reviews (http://scifi.about.com/od/reviews/) as well as being mentioned having his reviews featured in the psiphi review page, mentioned on the same page. The page seems to speak highly of him, out of a list of only a handful or review sites, with even fewer personal review sites (some are from IGN and other much larger review websites). He also is a reviewer for rottentomatos, and even though showing up on page 10 when searching google for merely "star trek reviews", he is one of the first independent reviewers to show up (many like imdb.com, tv.com, amazon.com, treknation.com come before him, but they are commercial websites). Flypanam 01:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

With respect to his notability, I agree that Mr. Lynch is perhaps a borderline case. I don't think there was a significant debate earlier and I didn't make a strong position either way. Although I can cite no sources, I believe that Mr. Lynch's reviews were influential both on Star Trek as a franchise (his "abandonment" of Voyager is cited as a turning point for the franchise), as well as on internet review culture. (Consider that he started writing reviews in *1988*.)I do not think there are many people that have written as much commentary on the state of Star Trek in particular and Sci Fi in general as he has. That said, he has no published books, has never appeared on TV, hasn't run for public office, and hasn't died in an interesting way. So, maybe he's not what Wikipedia calls notable. (I am also concerned about Nightscream's edits, because he/she appears to be too close to the subject for a NPOV.) In total though, I put him just on the notable enough side for our purposes. JRP 06:07, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm new enough to Wiki that I don't know if it's bad form to be commenting when I'm the subject of the article, but I thought I'd weigh in. If I'm violating some kind of protocol, my apologies.

On some level, I agree with Jrp that I'm a borderline case. Certainly, when I first discovered the article back in October, I was extremely surprised to see it.

On the other hand, I think dismissing this with "lots of people write reviews, so what?" is a little bit extreme from a historical standpoint. I was not the first person to write reviews for a worldwide forum (Usenet, to be specific), but I was the first one to do so on a regular and timely basis for any length of time: my predecessors had all stopped or at least become sporadic by about 1990, as opposed to my eleven-year run. At least one professional TV critic (Alan Sepinwall, of the Star-Ledger in NJ) has written that I was his inspiration for getting into the business.

Outside the reviews, it's also worth noting that:

-- I conducted a lengthy interview with Richard Arnold (a name that anyone who followed Trek licensed material knows well) in 1991 that caused a major uproar and may have contributed to his subsequent firing later that year. (Said interview was originally posted to Usenet, but was passed around to every major forum of the era.)

-- To the best of my knowledge, I was the person who began the letter-writing campaign during casting to keep Paramount from changing "Voyager"'s captain from female to male. (I can provide links to the Usenet thread about the subject, along with a print reference naming me as the primary instigator.)

-- I reviewed novels for the magazine _TV Zone_ from about 1997 to 2003 or so, and was invited to do so based solely on the reviews. (To this day, I've never met any of my editors from that magazine.)

-- I was one of the two or three major proponents for the successful restructuring of Usenet's rec.arts.startrek.* hierarchy in 1991.

-- I am prominently featured in the book "Net Trek" in the mid-1990s, and was hired to write the foreword.

-- I am listed in IMDB for contributions to the CD-ROM Trek trivia game.

So, using Jrp's statements, I have in fact been published and I have in fact appeared on television (albeit for unrelated reasons in the latter case).

Since I'm new to Wiki, I don't know if any of the above items or the sum total of them would be enough to justify notability -- but I toss them out as facts which I hope are relevant.

(I also don't know if the "considered for deletion" flag means that the discussion now goes someplace else. If it does, I'd appreciate somebody letting me know.)

TimLynch 00:59, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Having read the guidelines for notability a bit further, I believe the TV Zone publications count as being a "published author in a periodical of circulation over 5,000". (An argument could also be made that moderated Usenet groups such as rec.arts.startrek.reviews could also fit that description.)

TimLynch 01:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

You may be interested in reading Wikipedia:Autobiography, which gives guidelines for writing about yourself. In short, there are a small list of things which it's socially acceptable to edit about yourself, but even then it's somehow "tainted". (And you should never do more than spot-edit someone else's work.) It's an extremely difficult position to be in. However, the TV Zone and Net Trek information is good and not original research. (But, for example, things about you that only you know, is considered original research and frowned on.)
In any event, now that this is AFD, it becomes tricky. I wouldn't, for example, recommend voting there. (Your account is new and that's a policy violation.) As one of the major reasons cited for why this article should be deleted is vanity, doing much of anything about this from your vantage is really rather difficult. :/ JRP 01:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks; much appreciated for that.
Since the question has now been raised about verifiability, I'll admit to newbie-related confusion about what would qualify as sufficient to verify that the claims are true. Several authors have used quotes from my TVZ reviews as promotional blurbs on their own Web sites; would links to those constitute evidence that I did in fact have a regular column there? If so, I can provide them (though it may not be before the AfD discussion period ends). Similarly, short of sending someone a copy of the book, what would constitute sufficient evidence of my contributions to _Net Trek_? Bibliographic information? Links to Usenet threads discussing it? (For "Win Ben Stein's Money", there have to be episode guides to it around someplace.)

TimLynch 17:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

I know that DreamGuy had indicated (rightly) that references provided solely by the person that the article is *about* shouldn't be trusted without additional confirmation. (Which, we have done, in this case.) But I found this paragraph in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons that seems to confirm that we have done the right thing by incorporating this information:

You should not write about yourself, since objectivity on the subject is hard � but you can assist by providing references, by challenging unsourced statements, and by assisting other editors. The appropriate place for such communication is the talk page of the article concerned. Although you might want to draw attention to any concerns by leaving a brief note on the talk pages of particular editors, lengthy discussions anywhere else than the article talk page will likely go un-noticed.

I also believe that we are now on good footing to satisfy the WP:BIO requirements, specificially the section dealing with published "authors, editors, and photographers". Between the video game and the TV Zone magazine, not counting any internet publications, this should be sufficient. I will remove the notability box over the weekend, unless challenged otherwise. JRP 22:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the video game comes anywhere near close to asserting notability, and the TV Zone one probably doesn't either. We still don't have any proof of that, and a plain old "book reviewer" isn;t the same as someone who writes regular articles, unless these "reviews" were full fledged articles. Do not remove the notability tag until something showing actual notability by Wikipedia standards has been suggested and confirmed. DreamGuy 23:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Here are a few links that I hope will officially confirm the TV Zone part. As it's inappropriate for me to add it to the article, hopefully others will. (Apologies for the poor formatting as well!)
1) http://www.visimag.com/tvzone/t137_reviews2.htm
2) http://www.visimag.com/tvzone/t140_reviews2.htm
3) http://sff.net/people/krad/01gloat.htm (part of author Keith deCandido's site; it's the "2001 gloat page" with review blurbs, including two written for TV Zone by me)
TimLynch 00:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 25 January 2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

[edit] NPOV

Okay, I know I'm late to this discussion, since I didn't know it was going on (I obviously should've checked in on it, but there are many WP articles that I monitor), but I'd like to clarify one point:

DreamGuy said, "it's also a bad idea for a friend/fan of his to edit the article, as it shows bias and often OR (both of which are against policy)." and JRP said, " (I am also concerned about Nightscream's edits, because he/she appears to be too close to the subject for a NPOV.)".

The idea that editing an article about a friend "shows bias", in and of itself, is false, as is the idea that NPOV cannot be achieved thus. NPOV is something about which a determination must be made. Such a determination is made on the basis of the content. (i.e.: wording, whether an opinion is expressed, etc.) You can't simply arbitrarily declare NPOV violated simply because an editor knows an article's subject. If you want to argue bias or non-NPOV, then you have to cite the passages that illustrate this. Obviously, neither of you have done this. In fact, when you look at my very first post on this page, what do you see? Well, l deleted the following things from the article:

  • The idea that Tim's review's are "insightful."
  • The idea that Tim quitting his Voyager reviews was "famous."

If I were "biased," then why would I delete these items, when they appear to be clearly complimentary, especially the first one? Far from violating NPOV, this actually shows me upholding it. It was the person who contributed that material that violated NPOV, and I removed it in keeping with that policy. It would appear that you didn't really read this, nor did Flypanam, who trollishly accused me of being a sock puppet for Tim, in violation of the WP rule on Civility. So guys, please try actually reading an editor's material before throwing accusations of non-NPOV around, 'kay? Thanks.  :-) Nightscream 10:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia Section

Here we go again. Jrp keeps vandalizing the article by blanking out the Trivia section, claiming "NPOV," yet not once does he ever even bother trying to illustrate how it violates NPOV, beyond the fallacious reasoning that I responded to (and clearly refuted) in the above section. I tried leaving messages on his own Talk page almost a week ago, and he's ignored me, but he has no problem dimissively blanking out material with no explanation to back up his claims. That is vandalism. As for citing sources, well, the source that shows that he is a regular contributor to Peter David's blog is that blog. I've provided links to three random blog entries showing this. As for the characters that were and were not named after him, the source for that is Tim himself (I think he knows, for example, how his own middle name is spelled). I've asked him to chime in on this page to corroborate this, and if you want, I'll email Peter David to ask him do so as well, if you wish. But if you want to delete entire sections, you have to PARTICIPATE in the discussion. Not just delete it and then ignore others when they wish to discuss the matter with you. Nightscream 17:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Since [[User: Nightscream[Nightscream]] asked me to chime in, I'm chiming.
Let me begin by saying that I'm still a definite Wiki rookie, and as a result I'm not especially comfortable trying to say too much here.
That said, I'll agree that I'm having trouble seeing how most of this fails the NPOV test, but I'm having equal trouble seeing why some of it makes sense to put in the article. Taking each point specifically:
1) The "Ensign Lynch" question, I think, is valid. Considering that both IMDB's listing for "First Contact" and Wiki's own article on it reference Ensign Lynch as being a reference to me, it seems worthwhile to point out that (a) it's believed to be true by many and (b) I've denied it.
2) The "Professor Lynch" question -- would be relevant and NPOV, I think, if there were a source for it other than me. As is, I think saying "Lynch has said this" brings the reference dangerously close to if not over the "vanity" border.
3) The "Dr. Wykoff" bit might fail the OR test (if the only source of the details is me in private e-mail), and in my opinion fails a deeper test: the "why would anyone think it was a reference anyway?" test.
4) The fact that I'm frequently on Peter David's blog: I agree that it's NPOV, and I think it's probably sourced -- but like #3, I'm not sure why it's worth including. For one, unlike the rest of the article it's by no means guaranteed to remain true; and also, why would it be relevant? To whom?
For what it's worth. Me, I'd just prefer that the bordering-on-edit-war come to an end.
TimLynch 02:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Nightscream on this. Although Jrp has helped preserve this wiki article and bring it up to standards, I do not believe that edits adding facts that are and can be cited should be revertedwith seemingly no reason other than a claim of NPOV violations. Although Nightscream is somewhat related to Lynch, it does not dismiss everything he writes as a violation of NPOV since he can provide references. Either an explanation to why the edits keep being reverted other than "NPOV violation" should be provided, or the reversions should stop. Flypanam 03:20, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not unreasonable and I don't want to sound that way. I'm just concerned about the interjection of non-encyclopedic facts by someone who obviously as a bias. Normally, it wouldn't matter but I am concerned that too much fancruft will just lead to another AFD run and I don't think any of us want that.
  • My thought is that the note about ST:FC should be shortened. The hunt for characters named after Mr. Lynch in ST books isn't really noteworthy. Let's keep the note about Ensign Lynch from First Contact, plus the denial, because that made it into IMDB and is frequently (incorrectly) cited. I don't even see the connection to "Wykoff", but the text pretty clearly states that it's not related and so I don't see why we list it.
  • As for Peter David's blog, I don't see this as being noteworthy in and of itself. Yes, we can verify it by checking that the blog has comments or entries from Mr. Lynch, but verifyability doesn't imply notability.
  • And finally, let's keep the bit about Jeopardy! and WBSM, but it would be nice if someone could cite an episode guide.
Yes, I see the irony of my criticising an article which I lobbied hard to keep, but I'm only trying to keep what we have as notable and verifyable as possible. Including too much fandom could detract from the valuable contributions that Mr. Lynch has actually made. I apologize if this has come off too harshly before. JRP 04:29, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

This is one of his students and fellow Star Trek afficianado, Matt. I checked with TWL on friday and everything except the Ensign Lynch character was quite accurate.68.167.71.87 22:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)Skeeterx868.167.71.87 22:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not now, but soon...

If there's ever an article on Timothy Lynch, assistant director of the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies, there should be a disambiguation page and refer made ;) RahadyanS 13:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)