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I recall, many years ago, seeing a 45 from the 1950's by Joey Adams. The songwriter's credit on at least one of the sides was "Cindy Heller," thus verifying her birth name. In addition, I seem to recall her in 1968 doing a gossip segment on WABC-TV in the months prior to the launch of Eyewitness News (check New York-Metro editions of TV Guide from 1968 to get all the details before putting in one way or another). —Wbwn 18:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Heller was her stepfather's not her birth name. See Thrive NYC 2006 article.
Note that the subject appears to be following this article closely, and unreferenced content must be removed immediately, is in all biographies of living persons. T L Miles (talk) 17:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Please make sure you read and understand the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy before editing this article. T L Miles (talk) 17:37, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Things are Sticky at Icky Wiki

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The subject of this article recently (2008-10-22) wrote a piece in the New York Post, containing the following[1]:

I told [Jimmy Wales] my own personal listed information is factually incorrect and I can substantiate its inaccuracies with legal documentation.

Totally unfazed, he said, "People should use it for background - not as their primary source."
I explained the misinformation on my site is not only outrageous but hurtful.
Even more totally unfazed, he said, "Sometimes those sorts of things can be posted by someone who doesn't like you."
He ultimately agreed to a re-edit.

That was two months ago. He did nothing.

This seems very strange, seeing how concerned Jimmy Wales is with WP:BLP. But in any case, it's hard to address the problem directly since she doesn't mention which information in particular it is that offends her. For the moment all we can do is make sure that all information is backed up with reliable sources.

Also, I learned that Lindsay Lohan has a tatoo. Lampman (talk) 09:45, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Early life and personal life - sections removed

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I've removed this early life section for now. Reasons:

  1. The subject of the article declares this material to be "inaccurate" [2]
  2. Although sourced, the source is a transcript of an interview with the subject. The direct testimony of the subject that the material is "inaccurate" is stronger than a transcript of something she's supposed to have said. Thus the source can no longer be considered "reliable and accurate" - it may be, but there's more than a little doubt. Where we're unsure of the source, and the material is contentious, we remove per BLP.
  3. Information about her parent's divorce when she was one year old, is hardly critical to the article.
  4. There's something wrong with such personal trivial being at the top of an article, before the pertinent information about her fame and achievements.

I hope that makes sense. --Scott MacDonald (talk) 16:03, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've also removed the personal life section on the same grounds. Can we discuss this before anything gets replaced.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 16:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This seems very reasonable to me. If the subject objects to biographical details, and the sources are just her talking about them, then it's probably better to remove all the biography and focus on career (or even the referenced opinions of notable commentators), than to start removing specific elements of the biography which we fear/guess might be controversial. In the end, this person's biography doesn't shed much on their career (except for her marriage, which all the sources -- and she herself -- credits for her getting writing gigs). T L Miles (talk) 16:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a slippery slope to allow any person to censor their own article simply by making vague allegations. This is after all a very public person, whose personal life is central to her public persona (she is a gossip columnist). All she said was "I told him [Jimmy Wales] my own personal listed information is factually incorrect and I can substantiate its inaccuracies with legal documentation." There was no mention of what the offending information was. WP:BLP says only that information should be relevant and well sourced, it doesn't say that subjects should be allowed to censor their own pages.
Maybe Wales should be contacted over this, he might have some more information if she in fact contacted him personally. Then that issue could be dealt with specifically. Scalpel, not hatchet, and so on. Lampman (talk) 07:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the cat's out of the bag! According to this:[3] the contentious material was not her biography at all, so that was removed to no avail. The problem is the age, according to herself she is not an octogenarian. I'm gonna go ahead and reinsert the biography part, since that was not the issue. At the same time I will remove any references to her age and d.o.b, per WP:BLP, since it is unsourced and the subject seems to object to it. I think this proves my point above about the futility of panicking and removing all biographical material at the faintest media criticism. BLP is about proper sourcing, not about pleasing the subject at any cost.

I will also contact Mr. Wales about this. I'm reluctant to bother him, since all sorts of people run down his door over any minor issue, but here it seems he is the only one capable of actually shedding some light over the issue. Lampman (talk) 15:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for reference

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Everyme 16:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Those are already given above. I don't think they can be used for reference though, per WP:SPS. Lampman (talk) 16:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In any event I find it hilarious that a gossip columnist is complaining about the accuracy of an article about her. I can't believe no one has yet mentioned the intense irony here. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:03, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the article from The New York Observer that claims Adams is 83:[4], but Adams herself assumes they got that information from Wikipedia. Not unlikely; that's how a lot of lazy journalists pretend to do their jobs these days. Lampman (talk) 19:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Huffington Post [1] posted a screen shot of Cindy Adams' voter registration, which they attribute to Cityfile [2], as proof that she was born in 1930, and thus is 78 years old. I didn't want to go ahead and add this information myself, as there is some controversy about it and I'm relatively new to Wikipedia editing, etiquette, guidelines, etc. Just FYI. Spiderjeru (talk) 02:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up. I went ahead and added it, shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully this will settle the matter. Lampman (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reverted. Look this is a BLP issue, in which the media and Jimmy Wales have opined. Let's not have people putting it back because one source seems valid to them. Wait until there is a clear consensus, leaving this little bit of information out for a few days/weeks or even months is not going to hurt, whilst jumping on the biography of a living person may well hurt them and us.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this isn't just "one source", this is a copy of an official U.S. government document. Also, the subject did not object to this, she objected to 1925 as her d.o.b, so this should validate her claim. But I guess there's no harm in waiting a little longer. Lampman (talk) 14:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • We should be using the age that she is publicly making a fuss about. I find it somewhat appalling that we are making such an issue out of this, especially since somebody in her life, or one of her enemies, would be more than happy to show her up if she were trying to fluff her age. And, let's face it, It's not like 78 is vastly more youthful than 83. When the SPS is the person themselves, going on public record, that should be good enough for us. Last, I don't know why anyone cares that much. This isn't Sarah Palin's article. Agree with Lampman - I think a consensus has been reached. --David Shankbone 14:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's a ridiculous non-issue, and I think most of us have better things to do with our time. But the press loves these things, and it can hurt us if we don't get it right. Lampman (talk) 15:27, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I understand her frustration. Inaccuracies happen everywhere from the NYTimes to the WSJ. I think her rightful frustration was her attempt to correct it fell seemingly on deaf ears. We had a similar issue on Michael Lucas (director), where he was born "Andre Treivas" in the USSR, but a couple mainstream sources said he was born "Andre Bregman". It was an honest mistake; that was his father's surname. But Lucas was given his mother's maiden name. He was sued in court over one of his movies and they used "Bregman" in the suit b/c of Wikipedia. He contacted me and I went and photographed three pieces of identification (his Soviet birth certificate, his Soviet passport and an expired U.S. passport), put them on the talk page of his article, and we actually had people stating that the wrong mainstream sources trump government documents (citing WP:OR. It was pretty outrageous - we were re-naming the man (there is a well-known stalker/vandal known as the "Gay pornography vandal" who is banned that has personal animus with Lucas and had a vendetta against him, who was arguing for the "Bregman" version). It's situations like these where the wisdom of WP:IGNORE is evident. Inaction, or resistance to correction, ends up making us look incredibly silly. --David Shankbone 17:12, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make it absolutely clear: there is nothing "rightful" about her frustration whatsoever. She approached Jimmy Wales about an issue with her article, but never mentioned what the problem was. He gave her his e-mail address, and said he would be happy to fix the problem if she wrote him. She never did. He wrote her, she never replied. Instead she chose to start hammering the issue in her gossip column, making false accusations against Wales and Wikipedia. Now hopefully we can settle this once and for all, and the media can stop writing about how Wikipedia is useless since - in 2,6 million articles - someone at some point got a couple of digits wrong in a date of birth. Lampman (talk) 17:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, wow, I didn't know all the facts! I made assumptions based upon my own experience (with Wiki, not with Jimbo). Is there a source for this? Because the way Adams tells it very differently, making it seem like a conversation where the problem was explained, and legal documentation offered, took place. --David Shankbone 18:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I see it on Jimbo's talk page. --David Shankbone 19:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this was how he described it when I contacted him on his talk page. I prefer to believe him over some gossip peddler. He also said he had now called her and she had promised to send an e-mail. Let's see if she does this time. Lampman (talk) 19:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
More, let's see if she corrects herself. Unlikely. I'm going to blog about the issue. --David Shankbone 20:03, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I won't ask you not to do that, but I will say that I think there's no point in it. What is unfortunately lost in the discussion above is that we did apparently have an error, an error which hurt someone's feelings. We may not like how she responded, but we are Wikipedians, and we should rise above that. Our goal is to get it right, not to win battles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:54, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/11/cindy-adams-forget-wikipe_n_142927.html
  2. ^ http://cityfile.com/profiles/cindy-adams
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Archival & updated links for the key age-related references above from 2008, in case ever needed again:

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20110429085432/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/11/cindy-adams-forget-wikipe_n_142927.html

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20081222181010/http://cityfile.com/profiles/cindy-adams

3. https://web.archive.org/web/20081231063805mp_/http://www.nypost.com/seven/10222008/gossip/cindy/things_are_sticky_at_icky_wiki_134668.htm?page=0

4. https://web.archive.org/web/20081113191524mp_/http://www.nypost.com/seven/11112008/gossip/cindy/fame_isnt_always_pomp__glamour_138142.htm?page=0

—173.56.111.206 (talk) 04:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personal Data

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This woman dishes on everyone's business, and you cannot put here age down, since she objects. This is crazy! Put the gossip's age down. If she stated that 83 was incorrect; let her prove it,or leave it there. With this mentality; all celebrity's will have a blank page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Factcorrect12 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quick question

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Why do we list her mother's date of birth and death, including a link to a site purporting to confirm it in Social Security records? I don't see (a) the relevance of this to Cindy Adams nor (b) how the link proves anything interesting at all. The link tells me to search for a person of a different name, is this even her mother? (I actually don't really doubt it, but for a BLP, this level of sourcing strikes me as unacceptable.) Since there has been some discussion of her date of birth, I can't help but wonder if this isn't in some way related to that?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since the link is not a direct source, and the information not directly relevant, I've taken it out. Wwwhatsup (talk) 05:28, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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