User talk:SLBloom

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Welcome![edit]

Hello, SLBloom, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or click here to ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Fiddle Faddle 17:02, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Your submission at Articles for creation: sandbox (July 20)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time.
Please read the comments left by the reviewer on your submission. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.
Thank you for your
contributions to Wikipedia!
APerson (talk!) 18:51, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Robert Bloom (2) (February 15)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by CraigyDavi was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved. —CraigyDavi (TC@) 09:26, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

AfC notification: Draft:Robert Bloom (2) has a new comment[edit]

I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:Robert Bloom (2). Thanks! Primefac (talk) 15:30, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Robert Bloom (2) (April 4)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted because it included copyrighted information, which is not permitted on Wikipedia. You are welcome to write an article on the subject, but please do not use copyrighted work. Onel5969 (talk) 16:04, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Teahouse logo
Hello! I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering or curious about why your article submission was declined please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Onel5969 (talk) 16:04, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Robert Bloom (2) (April 17)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Stuartyeates was: You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.
Stuartyeates (talk) 23:58, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Teahouse logo
Hello! I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering or curious about why your article submission was declined please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Stuartyeates (talk) 23:58, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Robert Bloom (2) (May 4)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Timtrent was: You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.
Fiddle Faddle 12:37, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Teahouse logo
Hello! I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering or curious about why your article submission was declined please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Fiddle Faddle 12:37, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback[edit]

Hello, SLBloom. You have new messages at Timtrent's talk page.
Message added 17:03, 27 August 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Please just do the work. See my talk page for a fuller reply Fiddle Faddle 17:03, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback[edit]

Hello, SLBloom. You have new messages at Timtrent's talk page.
Message added 07:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

You need to learn humility if you are going to ask people for help. You also need to realise that you need to march to the beat of Wikipedia;s drum, not your own, if you are to get this draft accepted. Fiddle Faddle 07:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

MfD nomination of Draft:Robert Bloom (2)[edit]

Draft:Robert Bloom (2), a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Robert Bloom (2) and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Draft:Robert Bloom (2) during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Fiddle Faddle 08:18, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You need to learn how Wikipedia works[edit]

It is an encyclopaedia. It is not a magazine nor the repository for very pleasant biographies. It requires cold facts. We report what others have already recorded. We have very precise rules for what is and is not acceptable.

With regards to your asking me to be your errand boy, I have done so. The reply from the other editor whose name you so dislike is on my talk page, where they explain what was done.

Now, please, actually do the work on that very verbose draft. Fiddle Faddle 15:24, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be militantly disregarding the fact that the deletion discussion is just that, a deletion discussion.
You found my talk page easily enough. You posted a lot of unclear material on it, so unclear that I had to ask what you wanted. You could easily have asked the other editor a question on their talk page, but you chose mine, and for no reason other than that I have told you what work needs to be done on your verbose and inadmissible draft before we can accept it
There is no Wikipedia board. There is no management, no oversight, no peer review, just editors co-operating to create articles in an agreed framework. That has been agreed by consensus. There is no-one to appeal to.
If you feel a review has been incorrect or incompetent then you have two routes open to you. One is the Teahouse and the other is the Articles For Creation Help Desk. You have links to each of this in abundance. Please use them. I suggest most strongly that you ask a brief question about your draft. Going off at a tangent about what you believe Wikipedia ought to be will doom any conversation to failure.
Want a new direction for Wikipedia? Go to WP:VP and suggest it there. Your job there is to convince other editors and to form a consensus for your direction. I predict that you will fail (0.999 probability) because everyone else who has attempted to do this has failed.
Wikipedia is Wikipedia. If you feel the gentleman qualifies for an article then you need to write for Wikipedia. The draft you have created does not meet our needs. IT will not be accepted. Or, if it is accepted, it will be rent asunder very quickly. Indeed, as a draft, any other editor is entitled to pick it up and knock it into shape.
If you have a message for Fuhghettaboutit go to their talk page and give them that message. Perhaps you might tell them why you have been disparaging about their user name, now in multiple places. It is not at all polite of you and they deserve your apology. Fiddle Faddle 22:52, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

howdy[edit]

I've also commented at the discussion, about the draft. I believe Robert Bloom satisfies wiki-notability, and the draft-article will be kept. However, as User:Timtrent is trying to point out to you, if you want to write prose for wikipedia, you have to write prose in the wikipedia fashion, until and unless the wikipedia rules are modified. As I explained over at the discussion-page, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Robert Bloom (2), there are ways (theoretically) to get the wiki-rules modified. But your particular proposal is not a new one, and has failed to gain traction in the past. Mayhap you will be to one to change wikipedia's fundamentals, and if so, more power to you, I will be happy if your suggested changes are enacted, and the new wiki-policy in September 2015 and beyond, is that we can write attractive inspiring prose, and no longer be restricted to neutral just-the-fact-prose.

  In any case, User:Timtrent aka User:FiddleFaddle is very much incorrect, with respect to one specific point: it is not at all necessary for you, User:SLBloom, to learn how wikipedia works. In other words, if you do not wish to mess with reading the bazillion wiki-policies, and you do not care to pay attention to what your fellow wikipedian-editors are telling you, that is 100% entirely your WP:CHOICE. Wikipedia is fundamentally a volunteer effort, done be people that want to be doing it. You want to write a biography-article about Robert Bloom, and that desire is fundamentally what qualifies you to be a wikipedian. That is a good thing. Of course, WP:CHOICE only goes so far; you can choose whether you want to read the wiki-policies, and you can choose whether you want to have polite wiki-conversations on the talkpages. But you cannot choose to ignore what other folks here think indefinitely, since this is the Encyclopedia Anyone Can EditTM ... if somebody disagrees with the prose you are using, then they can delete it, all of it, with just one click. So eventually, you have to either get consensus aka local agreement, that what you are doing *is* actually absolutely on a universal scale an improvement, or accept that you won't be making that particular edit. Of course, if you are right and they are dead wrong cannot you just FORCE them to listen to you, by saving your obviously better version over and over until they give up? No, see WP:EDITWAR. Not something you want to get involved with.

  But to return to the main message I'm trying to get across here, it is your WP:CHOICE what you want to work on here, and what you want to let slide. If you want to work on a draft-version of Robert Bloom, and ignore what other people say when they review the draft, then you will never get it into wikipedia mainspace, and out of draftspace, but you can keep on stubbornly working on the draft, as long as you meet the minimal draftspace rules about not violating copyright/libel/slander/advertorial/etc laws. If you instead want to get a relatively-neutral version into mainspace, and then force your own book-references and your own sense-of-life prose into mainspace, that too will be your choice, although it won't last long I expect, since mainspace (visible to search engines and thus putting wikipedia's public reputation on the line) is much more strict about WP:NOTPROMOTION than draftspace.

  Anyways, I'm happy to answer any questions you have, and try and show you how to get what you want to get, properly accomplished. I don't guarantee success, and in particular, as Timtrent aka FiddleFaddle mentioned, changing the wiki-policies in the way you wish to change them will be an uphill wiki-battle, one that makes getting your Robert Bloom draft accepted into mainspace look like a cake-walk. But I'm happy to show you how things are done. I'm helping a long-shot presidential candidate right now, get their article properly sourced, and rewritten. They started with about fifty thousand words, and it has now been cut down to just over 500 words of neutral boring just-the-facts prose. We are slowly and gradually expanding from that core, as we analyze the extant sources, one by one with WP:NORUSH. And although you are having a bit of a problem with writing dry neutral just-the-facts prose, mostly because you want wikipedia to be different NOW immediately when in reality it will take significant effort to change what wikipedia is-qua-is, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that it is much harder to be a political candidate for the highest office in the land, and stay wiki-neutral about the prose one is writing. But this candidate is managing to do it, mostly by letting other disinterested people write they prose, whilst they concentrate on supplying the sources, and making suggestions on usertalk pages. Once the article about Robert Bloom is in mainspace, you will be in a very similar role, see WP:COI.

  So my advice at the end of the day is, choose your battles carefully. Don't bicker about whose username is cooler, sheesh! Don't ask for help with a bunch of scarequotes. If you want to get your article accepted, then work collaboratively to get it accepted, and if you don't understand something about some obscure wiki-policy, then ask nicely for help at WP:Q venues like WP:TEAHOUSE or the live-help-chat or similar. If you get the explanation, but you don't like the explanation because you think the wiki-policy is misguided, then there is a place to discuss that sort of rule-change-proposal, as well... but don't try and get wiki-policy changed at a place where it cannot be changed, like your AfC draft or the MfD discussion-page, because that is like sending an army to attack a blue-water navy, it just flat won't work. Similarly, if you want to get a message to some particular wikipedian, then just ask that particular wikipedian directly for their help. Saves time and hassle for everyone.

  If all this bureaucratic red tape is annoying to you, well, you aren't the only one, it drives me nuts.  :-)     So I'll be happy to join your wiki-mission, to get some of the bureaucratic hassles pruned back, even though I don't think we will actually have much chance of accomplishing anything tangible. Most of the stupid red tape, was not put in place without careful thought toward Improving The Encyclopedia, and thus cutting it back is tough. Along those lines, see WP:BATTLEGROUND, which is a reminder that the *point* here is to write articles, and improve-qua-improve them, no more and no less. Arguing about this wiki-policy, or about that wiki-bureaucracy, is NOT the point. Sorry about the long message, but I do hope it helps. p.s. If you want to reply to me here, you are free to do so, but if I don't respond promptly, please leave me a reminder on my own page so I get the orange-notification-bar, which you can do by clicking 'talk' in my signature, clicking 'new section' at the top, typing me a short note, and clicking save. Timtrent aka FiddleFaddle is going on vacation tomorrow, so they won't be responsive to questions and such for first part of September. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:28, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, my dear 75, I don't mind if SLBloom learns how Wikipedia works or not. Equally, I don't mind of Robert Bloom has an article or not. Wikipedia will be useful to people with or without an article on Mr Bloom. He appears to pass our notability threshold, thus seems to merit an article. The thing is, if this editor wishes to succeed with an article about him then they need to write for this medium.
If one writes for Vogue one uses the Vogue house style. The Huffington Post has a style, as does Caravanning Monthly, Scouting Today, and all other media, periodicals, learned journals, and encyclopaediae. This is the thing this editor is refusing to hear.
Our role as reviewers is to seek to ensure that an article will not immediately be subject to one of our deletion processes when it is accepted. That is why we push it back to the author. We want to accept articles. I have nominated this draft for deletion precisely because I want to accept it. Obviously this is a paradox. At present it is unacceptable. It contains fluff and clutter and is a paean of praise, not a simple, factual and flat article. I could do the work myself to rip the unacceptable from it. I would feel unable to accept it at that point and would submit it for review myself, I think, because I would be involved with it and would have lost my objectivity. Even so I would have found the wheat in the chaff and edited this to precisely the type of article we require but that this editor does not want.
I would also have fed the editor a fish rather than taught them to fish.
If I cared about Mr Bloom having an article then I would not care about the fishing metaphor's outcome. Instead I care about Wikipedia's overall quality. Fiddle Faddle 17:05, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Pants on fire, you do too want User:SLBloom to be a wikipedian, otherwise you'd never pull out that fish-parable.  :-)     I've met too many other 75's, but you can call me 75.108 if you like, I also respond to "hey you" and the singular they. p.s. Why do I get the sinking feeling you, dear FiddleFaddle, are amongst the avid readership of that eclectic list of publications, whose house-styles you so glibly listed? Caravanning Monthly??? My apologies; upon reflection, per pillar four, I've struck this not-very-nice question, about your off-wiki preferences    ;-)    A thousand pardons, I beg of ye. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:39, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, 75.108, I would like everyone to enjoy being and becoming a good wikipedia editor. It pains me when folk refuse to listen to and accept what they need to do. If SLB doesn't like fish and will neither catch nor eat it then, unless someone else rips out the unverified and unverifiable material and flattens the tone, RB will not have an article for the foreseeable future. That is neither good nor bad. It just 'is'. I care, you see, but not that much. Fiddle Faddle 07:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RB bio--thank you[edit]

Hello, I appreciate very much your remarks about my submission. I would like to go live with the prose style submission (modeled on the entry for Leonard Bernstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and other Wiki bios that are as detailed and written in lively prose style). I do not fear the editing that this invites from the public. The who, what, where, and when are indisputable and the why and how are carefully referenced.

As per Wiki editors' instructions, I've already removed most of the photos and documents originally submitted, although I find is difficult to understand why a telegram sent to Robert Bloom in 1938 by H. Leopold Spiltany, the personnel manager of the newly forming NBC Symphony, would need to have written permission from the Spiltany estate (which probably does not exist) to be used in a Wiki bio. And similarly the photo of Toscanini autographed to Bloom more than 70 years ago. But, not having time or temperament to take on a Wiki battle, I removed them, although I do feel that this is a disservice to the public. The biographers of Leonard Bernstein and Eleanor Roosevelt apparently had resources (time, money) to handle this issue that I do not have so I have chosen to let that slide.

On the other hand, I am not willing to follow the editorial request to list the top dozen or so pupils of Robert Bloom (presumably those who earned the most money in the most prestigious positions) because the fact that he placed 142 of the 150 pupils he taught into professional positions is a noteworthy fact in itself, and my providing links to those pupils will provide historians studying Bloom's teaching career an aide to future research, commentary, and historical preservation. (Already two doctoral dissertations have been written, so this is likely to go on indefinitely since Bloom was a pioneer in his field.) You do not limit lists to the dozen or so most popular films of John Williams or most often performed compositions of Aaron Copland; does it make sense to limit a list of former pupils who have become professionals? Doing so eliminates the documentation of a line of succession that is broad and deep. One editor wrote that only former pupils who currently have a Wiki page could be considered for the list. Does this make sense when documenting a teacher whose career began in 1930?

As for more subjective details re the how and why, to take one example, is it good biographical writing to simply state that Robert Bloom was a founding member of the Bach Aria Group (the hearing of which was called "one of the great aesthetic privileges of our time" by a newspaper reviewer) without giving details of its founder and patron, William H. Scheide, who for 34 years spent 2-3 million dollars each year of the fortune he inherited from his grandfather's pioneering work with Standard Oil in the 19th century? Scheide's aesthetic and spiritual mission, which was sympatico with Bloom's own mission, shaped the landscape of American culture for over a half century. How and why the Bach Aria Group did what it did is central to Bloom's entire career as a performer and teacher; the touring and recording were certainly factors in his recruiting for his teaching at the Juilliard School and the Yale School of Music in addition to generating hundreds of concerts and recordings that were deemed, and here I paraphrase, one of the great aesthetic privileges of the time.

 The message above was:  Revision as of 14:48, 30 August 2015 (edit) (undo)  SLBloom (talk | contribs)  
Hello again User:SLBloom, I've added a timestamp to the bottom of your nice note. I will skip answering your specific questions, except to say that WP:NOTINHERITED applies to your ideas about Scheide as the precursor and the 142 students as the legacy. None of them should be mentioned in an article about Robert Bloom, since *they* are NOT the same specific topic as "Robert Bloom" ... until and unless there is a truly-and-fully-independent WP:SOURCE which explicitly and specifically makes WP:NOTEWORTHY mention of Schiede's relationship to Bloom (and of EACH of the 142 students and their relationship to Bloom). Wikipedia is not run on logical deduction, wikipedia is run on neutrally reflecting what the wiki-reliable WP:SOURCES actually say nothing more nothing less dry boring cold hard facts period the end.
&nbps; &nbps; That said, it very much *is* a dry fact that Bloom founded the Bach Aria Group. It very much is a dry boring cold hard fact that the group was called quote "great" unquote in one specific year, and wikipedia's article on Robert Bloom should very much mention that factoid, but that is all, no WP:PUFFERY beyond dryly reporting what the WP:SOURCE actually factually said. I will leave the rest of my reply-slash tutorial in a slightly poetic-license form, which *is* permitted on usertalk, if not permitted in mainspace-article-prose.
Stanza Numero Uno: WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS .... .... -- -->>
  • while you are free to request that your draft go live immediately, I believe you will find the WP:MERCILESS editing it will immediately receive to be a most severe shock.
  • I'll try to prep your system for this transition
  • with the following bulletpoints
  • in particular, there is absolutely positively zero chance that the Robert Bloom wikipedia-article will look *anything* like the Eleanor Roosevelt wikipedia-article.
  • why not?
  • very simple
  • wikipedia's wiki-laws currently mandate dry boring just-the-facts prose written in a neutral tone, that summarizes what the wiki-reliable sources actually say


Stanza Numero Dos: WP:V .... .... -- -->>
  • how many wiki-reliable sources are there for RB? I count two band-reviews 1960 and 1980, two obits 1994, and two solo-reviews 2000 and 2001.
  • why doesn't the "Robert Bloom: The Story of a Working Musician" count?
  • it was edited by a relative, and written by associates, see WP:COI
  • how many wiki-reliable sources are there for ER? literally thousands and thousands of newspaper-pieces, and entire books (by fully independent authors/editors/publishers) have been written
  • what is the problem with the prose in the ER article?
  • nothing -- because 99.4% there is backed up, to the nines, by fully independent commentary in the fully independent wiki-reliable sources (newspapers/teevee/radio/books/magazines/peerReviewedAcademia/etc)
  • why does the ER article have so many pictures?
  • because her spouse was a four-term POTUS, and every government-agency-photograph ever taken, is public domain under copyright, by federal law
  • why cannot the STYLE of the ER article be retained, with all the neutrally-phrased yet still swooning praise (balanced by neutrally-phrased yet still cutting criticisms) be copied?
  • because wikipedia is about substance, as reflected in the wiki-reliable WP:SOURCES, not about style, as reflected in the quills of wikipedians like myself and yourself


Stanza Numero Tres: WP:5 .... .... -- -->>
  • why cannot the STYLE of the breathtakingly positive aria-reviews and soloist-reviews, merely be copied straight into wikipedia?
  • because that would be a pillar three copyright violation, WP:5, wikipedians have to summarize the sources in their own neutrally-phrased formally-toned boring dry just-the-cold-hard-facts-prose
  • why cannot the TONE of the breathtakingly positive aria-reviews and soloist-reviews, be loosely paraphrased into wikipedia?
  • because that would be a pillar two neutrality violation, WP:5, wikipedians have to summarize the sources in their own neutrally-phrased formally-toned boring dry just-the-cold-hard-facts-prose
  • why cannot the PILLARS of wikipedia simply be altered, so that a flattering positive sense-of-life biography can be permitted?
  • because that would be a pillar one encyclopedic violation, WP:5, wikipedians have to summarize the sources in their own neutrally-phrased formally-toned boring dry just-the-cold-hard-facts-prose because this is an encyclopedia nothing more nothing less
  • why cannot the OFFICIAL EDITORIAL BOARD of wikipedia simply be pushed into doing these things anyways?
  • because being pushy is a form of pillar four violation, once again see WP:5
  • why cannot we simply ignore all these rules, and make this draft go live anyways?
  • actually... we can. There is even a pillar, that says so. Pillar five: Wikipedia has no firm rules. WP:IAR -- If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.


Stanza Numero Quattro: WP:IAR .... .... -- -->>
  • so then, the draft can go live?
  • yup
  • just in the state it is in, lovingly crafted, a glowing memorial to the honorable musician Robert Bloom, without removal of the non-independent cites, without removal of anything?
  • yup
  • and then nobody will dare touch it, since it is being done per the fifth pillar?
  • nope, sorry, it will be modified, as explained as WP:MERCILESS
  • but wouldn't the article on Robert Bloom improve the encyclopedia, and thus, can we not just ignore all rules? including WP:MERCILESS and also WP:OWN as well as WP:COI in this case?
  • that is not what pillar five says
  • how is the draft-article about Robert Bloom, somehow *not* an improvement to the encyclopedia?
  • it does not use an encyclopedic tone , which isn't improving the encyclopedia, self-evidently
  • it uses non-independent promotional cites , which aren't improving the encyclopedia , because the encyclopedia is an encyclopedia not a vehicle for promotion
  • it contains poetic license rather than just cold hard dry boring facts , which again fails at improving the encyclopedia , because the encyclopedia is an encyclopedia of fact and thus not a vehicle for fiction
  • it contains many sentences which are not backed up strictly by WP:SOURCES such as newspapers, books, teevee, radio, magazines, academia, governments, et cetera. Many of those sentences don't seem to improve-qua-improve the encyclopedia-qua-encyclopedia.
  • well, all those critiques might be true, but should we WP:IAR such small details, and just keep the draft the way it is, since it cannot be *truly* improved in any way?
  • no, to improve the encyclopedia we should remove all uncited sentences , or if not remove them , cite them to a WP:NOTEWORTHY mention of exactly that factoid in a wiki-reliable fully-independent WP:SOURCE
  • what about sentences that are not 'factoids' and are instead poetic license, or cover the sense of life, or are something besides dry boring cold hard objective prose? we should leave those bits, right?
  • no, to improve the encyclopedia we should delete all that stuff
  • what about sentences that are backed up by self-published material, unpublished material, material published by employers, material published by kinfolk, can we at least retain those bits?
  • no, to improve the encyclopedia we should delete all that stuff, with the possible exception of BASIC biographical-demographics details, such as date of birth and city of birth, but in this case the WP:RS obituaries have such details, so we can delete all the non-wiki-reliable non-truly-independent sources completely -- and without loss of *any* encyclopedic material.


The Final Stanza: WP:ANYONE .... .... -- -->>
  • so in other words, once the draft-article is moved from draftspace, and made live in mainspace, the first thing that will happen is that 90% of it will be deleted?
  • yes, see WP:MERCILESS, and see WP:SPIP
  • what is the point of having the article live in mainspace?
  • that Robert Bloom will have a dry boring just-the-cold-hard-facts description of his life and work, which will benefit[vague] the readership by giving[citation needed] them the objective truth,[dubious ] and letting them make up their own minds about Bloom
  • what is the point of having the article stay in draftspace?
  • it can be a good learning environment, where editors that have a connection to the topic of the article in question, come to understand the way wikipedia works, and how the much-harsher-mainspace environment works
  • so is the current draft-article, helping the encyclopedia?
  • arguably it is not, because until and unless User:SLBloom comes to terms with the idea, that in order to be a wikipedian, one must interact with all manner of other strange wikipedians, with their own proclivities and their own strange ideas and their own oddball wiki-laws and their own long-fought-over wiki-traditions, then it seems pointless to let Draft:Robert Bloom (2) suffer away in draftspace, never to make progress towards AfC-accept for go-live.
  • in other words, the draft-queue, and the draft-review-system, is not intended to build high-quality articles
  • live mainspace is the correct location for building high-quality articles
  • the draft-queue, and the draft-review-system, is intended to build high-quality-wikipedians, that have learned something of the wiki-traditions, and can function in mainspace on their own without help
  • see also, the parable of teaching a woman to fish (aka become herself a rugged individualist wikipedian), as opposed to giving the woman a fish (aka writing the article for her), or moving wiki-heaven and wiki-earth (aka re-writing the pillars for her)


Apologies, this was not my finest work. But I hope you found it illuminating, even if a bit disheartening, perhaps. Lose ye not hope! Wikipedia has a very strange wiki-culture. It would behoove you to listen to what User:Timtrent is trying to tell you. They are not picking on you. They are not messing with you. They are trying, like the old wise somewhat-grumpy somewhat-oddly-monikered hermit sitting on the boulder, to explain the wiki-verse to you. It is a good place. You seem well-suited to being a wikipedian. That is why we are trying to help you. We don't care about the Robert Bloom article, and paradoxically, that makes us exactly the people most qualified to write dry boring neutral cold hard just-the-facts prose, about Robert Bloom... because we don't know him, have never heard of him, and thus don't suffer from any inherent ingoing bias. We are doing our derndest to teach you the ropes around here, not because we are especially desirous of the Robert Bloom BLP-article going live, but because we especially desire to have more high-quality wikipedians.
    You, to be specific, could become a high-quality wikipedian. You obviously care about quality. You obviously care about history, culture, art, and the transmission of those things to future generations. You even care about improving the wiki-rules, so this place is not such a pain. You are a potentially great wikipedian. But to be a wikipedian, you must run the wiki-gauntlet: besides having a strong desire to transmit the history of art to the readership, you also have a pretty strong desire to transmit the hyperlink of the book edited by Sara Lambert to the readership, and to transmit a particularly-glowing biographical sketch of Robert to the readership. The question is, which of the desires will turn out to be the main one? Is intransigence a virtue? Yes, if it is in the service of an objectively-demonstrable improvement-qua-improvement to the encyclopedia-qua-encyclopedia. You've got the skills, and you've got the desires, all you need is to decide: what exactly you really want. WP:CHOICE is sometimes a wicked taskmaster, but one is before you. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:32, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Okay, your express wish to go live has been granted, and editing by the public has commenced. The cuts were harsh and deep, but necessary to reveal the essence. I was there for a portion, but the bulk of the work (so far at least) was done by a member of wiki-project Classical Music, named User:Francis Schonken, and by the oft-renowned User:Timtrent (aka FiddleFaddle). There will be considerable churn in the first year or so, until the article settles down to a relatively-stable state, but of course, as new press-coverage and academic WP:SCHOLARSHIP is published, those ongoing works ought to be integrated into the body-prose. At the moment, the wikipedia-article has been stripped to the essentials, and is ready for upgrades.

  p.s. On your specific question about William H. Scheide, the answer is that, no, he doesn't belong in the Robert Bloom article, because the article is about Robert Bloom, not about Scheide. Wikipedia *can* have an article about Scheide, so long as that article passed WP:42 and is properly WP:SOURCE-compliant. And if there is talkpage-agreement that the linkage is relevant, we can put a See Also from Robert Bloom#See_also over to William H. Scheide#Philanthropy. Make sense? We already have articles about many of Scheide's activities,[1] where he is WP:NOTEWORTHY, such as Bach Aria Group, the Scheide_Library (see also Terrace_Club#Notable_alumni), and several sentences[2] from an anon[3] of Iowa who was interested in Scheide (and Joshua Rifkin) circa 2007, see the article on a Bach piece Bach-WV#50. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Update[edit]

For completeness:

Information icon Hello, SLBloom. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Robert Bloom, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

  • Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
  • Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
  • Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Wikipedia's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. In order to stop the fragmentation of discussions over several pages, and while there's an obvious WP:COI involvement, I suggest you edit Talk:Robert Bloom and only that page fortwith for anything regarding the Wikipedia biography of Robert Bloom (use {{Request edit}} on that talk page to propose edits to the biography). Only if things can't be settled there WP:COIN would be an alternative. (Yes, I moved the biography from draft to the encyclopedia) --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:46, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia takes quality control very seriously. Experienced wikipedians have distilled from the draft you wrote the only facts that are borne out by references in reliable sources. As you will see, perhaps have seen, the biography is substantially shorter than your original submission. Please resist the temptation to edit this article directly. You are entitled to request edits (see the preceding section regarding editing with a conflict of interest), but are advised to stand well back from editing the article itself in a direct manner.

Thank you for contributing the gentleman's details to Wikipedia. It is the better for having them present.

If you have further facts that are borne out by references please suggest them on Talk:Robert Bloom, ideally in a new section, stating the reference.

If you wonder what qualifies as a reference here, the best definition, despite the gentleman's death some time ago, is from that for a living person:

"For a living person we have a high standard of referencing. Every substantive fact you assert, especially one that is susceptible to potential challenge, requires a citation with a reference that is about them, and is independent of them, and is in WP:RS, and is significant coverage. Please also see WP:PRIMARY which details the limited permitted usage of primary sources and WP:SELFPUB which has clear limitations on self published sources."

Using these tough criteria will almost guarantee the inclusion of any fact you wish to have added to the article. While we do relax the rules for a person who died some time in the past, since you have a conflict of interest, I advise that you hold yourself to the highest standards. Fiddle Faddle 19:22, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

question about dates , for work with Stokowski[edit]

Hello, SLBloom, if you could comment here I would appreciate it -- Talk:Robert_Bloom#philadelphia_orchestra_job-title_.2C_plus_Stokowski_questions. Now that the article is directly-inline-sourced, and is "boring" prose, we can start improving (or restoring as the case might be) the historical details. Feel free to respond on the Talk:Robert_Bloom page, or if you have questions or concerns you can click 'talk' next to my signature, click 'new section', leave me a note and click 'save'. Thanks, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]