David Shankbone is traumatizing notable authors David Shankbone s attitude toward authors who don t like the photos he s taken of them is bossy and bullying He takes disastrous photos of authors Taking more unflattering photos could hardly be possible See Edmund White A M Homes Francine Prose Kathryn Harrison Mary Gaitskill It s gotten to the point that authors he hasn t assaulted yet with his camera are afraid to go to readings for fear he ll be there waiting for them I don t spend much time on Wikipedia but when I come upon an author s page with a terrible photo I now know it s been taken by David Shankbone I became curious about how these authors felt about the photos he d taken of them so I went and looked back in the history of a couple of them First I checked in the history of A M Homes and sure enough someone tried to take down the Shankbone photo possibly even A M Homes herself or someone close to her saying it was not a good photo and he repeatedly put it back I also looked in the history of Sharyn November and she herself had an exchange with him on one of their talk pages saying she preferred another photo of herself instead but he would not let her have her way and I don t remember the details but his attitude was unpleasant and bossy She quickly backed down sweetly A few days ago I came upon yet another disastrous author photo by David Shankbone and decided to Google his name because I ve been thinking that sooner or later an article will inevitably come out in the print media about authors frustrations with this offensive photographer I wanted to see if any articles had been published yet about it I didn t dig very deeply but did find that on February 18th 2008 lots of Wikipedia editors wrote about their frustrations with David Shankbone in a section called Does Wikipedia want David Shankbone or should we just tell him to leave to the point that he promised he d leave Wikipedia he shouldn t make promises he won t keep he didn t even leave for one day as far as I can see from his list of contributions All those posts from upset people have been deleted from Wikipedia but I was able to find them by going into the history of the page Wikipedia Administrators noticeboard Incidents Authors are not the only celebrities Shankbone has upset I came upon discussions on Wikipedia about the actor Mike Farrell who was upset by the photo Shankbone took of him but Shankbone insisted his photo stay up on Farrell s page it has now been replaced by a much better photo taken by someone else And I m sure it s happened to countless other notables Many notable authors who are distressed by their photo will just remain quiet and try not to look at their Wikipedia pages either because they don t know how to take down photos and post messages on Wikipedia or because they fear that fighting David Shankbone will be futile and will only increase their distress Authors are often shy and insecure about their physical appearance Why make it worse And why be stubborn and nasty about it to the few authors who do muster up the courage to request that an unflattering photo be taken down As with any contributor to Wikipedia David Shankbone should have no right to assert that his photos take precedence over the photos of others especially when more appropriate pictures are available and copyright free He claims that he has allowed better pictures to take the place of his but this is clearly not true in many instances given the way he fights to retain his pictures even in instances when any reasonable third party observer would agree that another picture is either better or more appropriate for the article David Shankbone might be using Wikipedia to try and make a career for himself and maybe that s okay but he s hurting a lot of people along the way I am an author with a few published books and there is a page on me on Wikipedia That s why I care about this issue I m appalled at what David Shankbone is doing to authors As I don t know the best place to post this message I m posting it in three places David Shankbone s talk page Jimbo Wales talk page and Wikipedia Administrators noticeboard Incidents