Talk:Ezra Kire

Contested deletion

This article should not be speedily deleted for lack of asserted importance because

Ezra Kire is a notable New York City artist, having sound scanned and sold tens of thousands of physical copies of records, and probably hundreds of thousands of digitally format records, between his two bands Leftover Crack and Morning Glory. Leftover Crack has been on (and still is on) a few different major-indie record labels. (Epitaph Records, CA, Fat Records, CA. and Alternative Tentacles, CA. Strangely, even though he is the chief co-song writer and arguably the second most important member in his band, he is the only mamber without a Wikipedia page dedicated to his own name. Why the bassist, drummer, and 2nd guitarist in Leftover Crack all have their own pages when they are only minor characters in the band, and Ezra doesn't, seem weird and not right. I am writing this page not for his personal gain, but because there is a fair amount written about him on the internet which is not true, as he shuns interviews, and being his close personal friend i can set many things straight. And it is good for Wikipedia too, being a credible source of information, this can be the one place people go to find the truth. Frankly i don't see why this article would be deleted. I tried to include as many credible references as possible, remain neutral, and i took my time researching and writing it. please contact me with any questions at (redacted) thank you, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mananasbananas (talk • contribs) 10:46, 19 November 2011‎

The problem is, when you say "being his close personal friend i can set many things straight", we can't accept that sort of information here, because of our policy on verifiability - everything in an article has to be capable of verification in a reliable published source. I've edited the article to remove some of the most obvious original research, and some of the references which didn't verify what was claimed - see WP:GOODREFS. You ought also to read WP:BLP and WP:COI. Sorry, but there is rather a lot wrong with this article...  —SMALLJIM  00:43, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Smalljim, -OK, i did your recommended readings and have tried to improve the page considerably, but have a few questions perhaps you could help me with: 1) Do the sources have to be immediately verifiable online? I used several magazine interviews as references, but included the information from the physical copies of the magazines. Two of them are major, still in-print magazines and probably have online back-issues somewhere with these articles, but is it enough just to list the "off-line" info? I was very specific, noting the dates, issue numbers, pages, and even paragraphs where the artist verified the page's content. 2) I have filled in where you marked citations as best i could find them, but how do i verify something like "the artist moved back from Sri Lanka..."? That is common knowledge, i would think. And since private documents like travel papers, licenses, etc. can not be used, what could i use to prove this? What do people normally use in a case like this? And finally: 3) Can i use the actual record liner notes of an album to verify information? For example a citation is need after "Steve Albini engineered the Fuck World Trade record"; can i put in there to just read the record insert of Fuck World Trade where he is credited? And how would i list that? Online somewhere? Can i use major seller's websites like Amazon.com?

Thank you for your time and response. It means a lot to me that this page stays up, with the facts. I'll continue to do what i can to have it meet the Wikipedia standards and so have it removed from the deletion list. Best regards, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mananasbananas (talk • contribs) 08:38, 21 November 2011‎

To quickly answer your questions: 1 & 3. No, references don't need to be online. All that's required is that the information is available in a reliable published source, and that can include magazines, books, album covers, etc. Though, of course, some sources are better than others, as described in WP:IRS - note especially the third part of this section of the guide.

2. Unless the details of Kire's childhood are published somewhere, you simply can't include that information in the article. Personal knowledge or unpublished interviews can't be used, because of the need for verifiability as I explained above, and especially not in this case because of our policy on Biographies of living persons.

Finally another reminder about conflict of interest. The only reason anyone should want any topic to remain here is because it is notable enough for the encyclopedia to cover it, not because of any personal affiliation with the subject - so "it means a lot to me that this page stays up" carries no weight, I'm afraid.  —SMALLJIM  14:32, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. After writing something on a talk page, you should end it not with your name, but by typing four tildes like this: ~~~~ which will automatically add your user name and timestamp. We also indent responses by successively adding colons, as you'll see when you edit this page.  —SMALLJIM  14:32, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Smalljim, Thank you for answering my questions. I am learning, (i hope)! I edited the page again removing anything at all that could not be verified. I'll continue to make this page more acceptable if you find anything further wrong with it. (There are other topics i wish to write about in the future so hopefully i'll be expert at this soon, thus saving you a lot of grief). Of course i totally understand that what it "means to me" to promulgate this article militates no consequence, i was more adding that in to let you know i'm grateful for your time in the matter. Best regards, Mananasbananas (talk) 09:02, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I reckon you're doing well - thanks for tidying the article up. There are still a few issues though - that citation you added after "Revolution Rock" doesn't confirm that Kire called the music by that name, nor does it confirm that if he did, that The Clash's music was the reason - it's a perfect example of that mountaineer/Everest case in WP:GOODREFS. The other big no-no is using the band's Facebook page to "verify" that Kire plays all those instruments: the problem here is obvious, I think - anyone can claim anything on a website that they themselves can edit (or can get edited). It's not such a problem using Facebook to confirm that he's working on a children's record because that statement isn't so self-serving. WP:SELFPUB explains what is and isn't acceptable with these sort of sources. Hope this helps  —SMALLJIM  21:01, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Smalljim, OK, i went over this again and absolutely everything in it is now 100% veifiable. Anything i could not find direct reference to has been removed. I understand the problem with referencing Facebook pages and being self serving, so only two FB refs are used, where they seemed appropriate. In the 5 paragraphs of this article there are now 20 references. One quick question: how do i ad additional topics to the article, such as discography? Thanks again for your time.Mananasbananas (talk) 05:51, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

You appear to have done a good research job here. I haven't checked all the refs and I'm not going to now. If you like, though, you could improve the layout of the references to a more standard format - see WP:REFSTART or the fuller WP:CITE for details. As for adding a discography, I think the best advice I can give is to look at some similar articles - preferably those assessed class B or above - and copy the way they're treated there. Category:American punk rock musicians might be a good place to start looking. Hope you decide to work on some other articles too. Good luck!  —SMALLJIM  17:44, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, I will definitely check out your recommended readings and try to further improve this article. I do have one more question: under what standard are Wiki articles scrutinized? While researching some wikipedia article for format info i have noticed that some articles have far fewer, or far more, references than others. As a totally random example: Rob Reiner, the film director and actor, has a multiple page write up with only 3 or 4 cited references. Is this because he is a very notable figure and so most of his biography is considered common knowledge, thus making it less disputable? Or do different articles come under different criteria for acceptance? Just curious. Your time has been much appreciated. Mananasbananas (talk) 05:05, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

No, there aren't different criteria. It depends on how much work has gone into them, indicated by the article's quality. Some older articles have got away with fewer references because Wikipedia hasn't always had the emphasis on full referencing that it does now. That Reiner article, for instance, was a very early one - it was created over 10 years ago - but I've stuck a "more references required" tag on it anyway (not that that's likely to make much difference for a few more years). Of course all the more notable topics already have articles here, so it's more important now to prove the notability of new ones. Wikipedia:New pages patrol explains how they are scrutinized. But with 6,824,221 articles, you can be sure there's a lot of junk lying around.  —SMALLJIM  20:03, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Mike House

This is Mike House (like a house). Would an editor kindly consider changing my name spelling? 2603:7000:4401:D7E4:1F7:274A:E9C0:EFD3 (talk) 04:29, 19 November 2022 (UTC)