Talk:Peter May (writer)

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COI issue

In all innocence, I contributed to this article. I thought as Peter May's web master that I was well equipped to contribute to an article about him. But as has been pointed out to me this has given rise to the problem of a conflict of interest.

In my defence I made no attempt to hide my identity, and I took great pains to write objectively. As a writer by profession, I took this very seriously.

I believe that the article is a fair representation of a notable person. He is an award-winning writer. His novels are published in the UK the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Norway, Russia, China, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Switzerland and others. He is one of the most prolific Scottish television writers with more than 1000 TV credits.

I didn't embellish his biographical details in any way. And I have cited further references to help the article's credibility. But I fear that making any other contributions will only exacerbate the COI problem. So it seems obvious that I should refrain from contributing from now on. Janice.hally (talk) 15:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Janice, it's nothing personal, it's simply part of our WP:COI policy that strongly recommends family members of notable subjects avoid editing those articles... You could, however, happily suggest here on the talk page articles which may support the notability of Mr May and leave it to other editors to decide whether they are worthy of inclusion? Seems a reasonable compromise? The Rambling Man (talk) 15:55, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. You're right. The thing is, I've looked at other author sites, but I'm still struggling to understand exactly what kind of reference is best in this particular case. For example this site... http://www.prix-litteraires.net/prix/745,prix-intramuros-du-festival-polaretco-de-cognac.html

is an official French Literary Prizes site which lists that Peter May won the Prix Intramuros in 2007. Is this the sort of reference which should be cited to back up the mention of the prize in the article? Janice.hally (talk) 17:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to be dull, but we have (yet another) policy about reliable sources. I guess you need to spend a few moments getting through that before you can decide whether your reference meets the policy. If so then I'd advocate its use in the article! The Rambling Man (talk) 17:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, on my reading of the policy on reliable sources, I think it does fit. But what is the correct thing for me to do, now? Sorry to be so stupid about this, but it's my first time going through this process. Do I just leave the suggestion hanging here on this page. Or is there a special form of words, or layout, I should use here? Janice.hally (talk) 17:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No need to apologise, it's a little daunting with the number of policies and the volume of people coming and going here to analyse (it feels like) your every move. Firstly, yes, here's a good place to alert others to good references. Also, no harm in notifying editors directly on their talk pages. They can then check the sources meet their own interpretation of the policies and, if need be, include them. I reckon that's the best way forward! The Rambling Man (talk) 17:21, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

De-listing possibility?

I submitted this article for assessment by the WikiProject biography, and I made sure that they were aware of who I was, and the COI thing, and the whole history, so that they could give it proper attention. Now I see they've checked it over and assessed it as "start-class", does that mean that the the consensus is it's now okay on the verification and NPOV side of things? If so... is it possible that those warnings at the top of the article might be removed by someone with the power to do so? Burntfingers (talk) 16:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit of May 25th

A lot of good tidying up of extraneous code was done, but there are quite a few problems in terms of the content...

"EARLY LIFE" - the flow of the text has been chopped up - and it doesn't make sense to have the sentence about being married here. It doesn't belong "early life".

"TELEVISION CAREER" - starts with "May was asked to adapt the book", but doesn't mention what book. This followed on from the piece of text two paragraphs earlier. Having separated it from the sentence that explained it, it really needs to be re-written to make sense in the new section.

"The Standard and Squadron" have been lumped together in a link that doesn't go anywhere, and wouldn't go anywhere. These two separate drama serials would not be put together in a single article.

The weasel words should just be cut out. They are lifted from the author website and the text needs to be completely re-written.

"WRITING" - May wrote more than 500 hours of television drama, so why open a new section called "writing"? This section appears to be about May's books. However, May was writing books while he was working on television, so I'm not really sure why two separate sections should exist.

The previous awards section had too much prominence, but it was a style problem rather than a content one. It's perfectly reasonable to list the awards in the way that other novelists are listed, and not correct to cut it out altogether.

"BIBLIOGRAPHY" This section was previously called "BIBLIOGRAPHY AND WRITING CREDITS" but when it was reduced to "BIBLIOGRAPHY", the list of television writing credits was deleted. Perhaps there was an intention to make a se[arate section with "TELEVISION WRITING CREDITS"? But this didn't happen and the television writing credits seem to have been cut completely. Taking the television credits away leaves May's writing history incomplete. May has a substantial body of work as a television writer. There are very few British television writers with more than 1,000 writing credits. This is certainly worth recording.

"REFERENCES" The inline citations don't link to the reference list. The reference list section is blank and is in the wrong place (bottom of the page and separate from another duplicated list of references place).

All in all - quite a number of problems. I'd like to suggest a complete clean-up of this article - here's a draft I'd like comments on Peter May (writer)Draft Page Please have a look at it. I'd like to know what people think. Burntfingers (talk) 19:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, given the problems that I spoke about above, and since no-one seems to mind, I went ahead with an edit that I proposed. I went through the article providing correct inline citations for everything. The references are all checked and dated. And they're properly done so that the REFLIST now works. I removed weasel words and went through meticulously checking that it's all from a NPOV. I added relevant facts. I've learned a lot more about Wikipedia now - particularly the style conventions for biography and writers - so I really think I've done it correctly in spite of my connection with the subject. But please check the article for NPOV and keep an open mind about the edit. I'm obviously not going to make a habit of this. I just wanted to see a better job done of the article.

sorry forgot to sign the above Burntfingers (talk) 09:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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