Talk:Ewan Morrison

COI tag (December 2022)

Feels like something a publisher would write; major chunks were added as the first edits by User:catfish pete who says they work in publishing. FlagSteward (talk) 01:54, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I have worked on the text and attempted to neutralize it. Looks like several of the sources were author-provided biographies; at least, I found the same text in several places. I have added better sources where needed. Rublamb (talk) 18:02, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

This still reads like a press release from a publisher, not like an encyclopedia article. The list of everything he's written down to shopping lists is the quintessence of WP:NOTRESUME. This article needs serious revision by a non-fan - David Gerard (talk) 12:12, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@David Gerard: I am not a fan--I had never heard of him before randomly selecting this article to edit for the GOCE February blitz. I picked this article because I have worked on many author articles and have a sense of what they should contain and how to recognize publisher-released puffery. Unlike many GOCE editors, I don't just copy-edit but also dig into the sources and add or remove content. I cut a lot and added a select list of articles that are all in major publications. I say select because there are at least double that number that I found online. I agree that the list is long and would not have an issue with it being streamlined. However, I disagree with completely cutting the list just because it is long. It is pretty typical to list an author's contributions to major publications for writers. With regards to the article reading like a resume or something that comes from his publisher, I can assure you that the article is now an assemblage of content from articles that were not released by his publisher. There are still a few sources that need to be replaced IMO--biographies from reliable sources that are probably based on author-supplied infomation. However, those are just being used to support facts which is allowable. I will take another pass at it and reduce the the list of publications. I appreciate a second set of eyes looking at this--it was a magnificant work of puffery when I found it. Although I now see it as improved, I can understand your concerns. Rublamb (talk) 13:21, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

"select lists" are not objective, and everything beyond books is just a RESUME-like list. We routinely cut these. So I've cut it again. This is an encyclopedia, not a CV repository - David Gerard (talk) 13:25, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Okay. I cut the pre-existing anthology list; I agree that those are not significant. I have trimmed the article list to include a sample of articles that are related to his life or his novels. "Selected works" or "Selected publications" is the section header commonly used to designate an incomplete list of works. It could just as well say a "Partial List of Publications" or "Incomplete List of Publications", but that is not the Wikipedia norm. I used to use "Publications" but was corrected several times by other editors when going through the GA process; I am fine with the simpler version, "Works" if that is your preference. Rublamb (talk) 14:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

You're repeatedly putting in your own personal idiosyncratic list of articles. WP:NPOV is policy. What is the neutral criterion here? - David Gerard (talk) 18:13, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I find the opposite to be true—that you are pushing your opinion that this information is of no value. Here is why I believe it is important to include a selection of his articles for newspapers and magazines: Morrison is not just a novelist. He also also a cultual commentator who regularly contributes to pretty much every major newspaper in the UK. This is a role that he began after college, sometimes as a documentary maker and sometimes as a writer. This aspect of his career is written about by others; in some cases, others write pieces about what Morrison writes, suggesting that these articles are not only widely read but also a key component of his notability. Furthermore, Morrison's articles inform his novels, films, and television documentary work and vice versa. Since he is an "experiential" novelist—the equivalent of a method actor—there is a continuity between these works. I get that you do not like this author and find an article about him to be distasteful in some way. But as a neutral editor who had no prior knowledge of Morrison, I found plenty of sources to back the inclusion of this content. Rublamb (talk) 20:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I strongly suggest that you submit for a third opinion instead of continuing to delete content from this article. I have been more than willing to consider your opinions and made significant changes to this article accordingly. You seem unwilling to compromise and allow me to make some decisions about an article that I have been working on as a neutral GOCE member. I would get it if this was a past project of yours, but since you have not put in the time (as far as I know) to look at the sources and to understand how this list fits with the subject, I think it only makes sense to trust the option of the editor who has done so. Rublamb (talk) 20:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)