Talk:Kathryn Cramer/Archive 1

message: Let me introduce you to the  template:

≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cite web template 

message: ... that you do not edit your own article. But you chose to ignore our guidelines. May you consider stopping editing your article? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  We have asked... 

message: I put a conflict of interest tag on this page, it seemed appropriate as the subject started the page and contributed most of the content.  Notability also appears to be right  on the line. --Daniel J. Leivick 03:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Notability is not in question, Daniel. See http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/20277/Kathryn_Cramer/index.aspx?authorID=20277 ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 05:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably written by her too, though. SlimVirgin (talk) 15:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Notability within the science fiction field is not in question. She is a multiple-time Hugo nominee, to name her most prominent claim to fame. She was a pioneer in hypertext; she is a name to conjure with in some circles. You are definitely verging on personal vendetta here, Slim. The question of self-editing is old news; let's all quit the griping, assume good will for parties on both sides, and concentrate on making this a better article.--Orange Mike 18:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: No, I cut your reference to your blog. Kathryn, could I ask you to stop self-promoting, please? If you would stop doing that, you'd be in a better frame of mind to understand what we mean by an encyclopedia article. SlimVirgin (talk) 15:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Also note that Who's Who is mostly never used as a reliable source for biographies in WP, due to the "vanity" aspects of these type of publications ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The notability discussion, like the recent attempt to assert that Dave Winer is not notable, is clearly consistent with uncivil personal axe-grinding and inconsistent with Wikipedia standards of fairness, civility, and indeed with the traditions of scholarship.  Jossi and SlimVirgin, for some reason, continually argue against Cramer's credentials, finding one reason or another to doubt things that are widely known and easily verified.  Cramer is incontenstibly the editor of numerous important science fiction anthologies that are widely read and influential.  This is not in question.  Cramer's NYRSF has been nominated for the Hugo award on numerous occasions.  This is not in question.  Cramer's early work in literary hypertext is not in question. There is no good faith reason for this controversy. 71.126.228.152 18:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do not misrepresent my comments. I never asserted lack of notability. On the contrary. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree notability is probably established, that doesn't mean the COI tag should go, the self promotional qualities of this article should not go without notice. --Daniel J. Leivick 18:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anyone know what is meant by "She is an innovator in the use of digital cartography for disaster relief"? SlimVirgin (talk) 19:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Jossi. I'm still not clear on the notability issue. Can anyone say exactly what she's notable for? SlimVirgin (talk) 21:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  (a) She and David Hartwell select The Year's Best Science Fiction and have done so for years, making them a leading voice in contemporary science fiction. (b) Her major anthologies on Hard SF and Space Opera have helped define current trends in science fiction and deliniate literary discourse on the future. (c) Her research in reconciling online mapping resources such as Goggle Maps with disaster-related satellite photography has appeared in major publications (e.g. Nature) and, more to the point, was of significant importance in the Katrina aftermath, as it was for some time the sole public source of information on the status of domiciles (and, by inference, their inhabitance) trapped in the flood. (d) She published an influential short hypertext fiction which appeared before the Web was invented, which has been widely taught and reviewed, and she edited other important early hypertext fictions.  (e) She's been nominated for a slew of Hugo awards.  MarkBernstein 00:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to address the last point, she herself writes that the Hugo award nominations are given to her despite the fact that she does almost nothing for the magazine. Perhaps this is irony, but it's hard to tell. Mark, I also know you know her in real life. I'm really not trying to be difficult, and I'm sorry if I'm being obtuse or offensive, but there's a distinct lack of independent third party sources here, and that concerns me. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  My question is has she been the subject of multiple verifiable article in reputable sources?  As far as I can tell she receives only a passing mention in the NY Times piece on satellite mapping, beyond that I don't see much in the way of reputable sources for the article to meet WP:NOTE she does appear to have some fans in the Wikipedia community, but the sharpness with which they respond to what really seem to be pretty well intentioned actions of  editors to improve the article makes me wonder.  I don't think anyone her has any thing against Kathryn, but I am not sure this article would pass an AFD.  This situation reminds me of a number of AFDs, where a users first action was to create a page about themselves (when they are of fringe notability), the reaction of users unfamiliar with Wikipedia is often hostility when confronted with the work of well intentioned editors.  I sure would like to see an article in some reputable publication that is focused on Kathryn Cramer, it would help me sleep better at night. --Daniel J. Leivick 03:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's what I'd like to see. Pretty well everything I've found has taken its information from Cramer  herself. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There are abundant books written or edited by Mrs Cramer. You can check Google books for example: . That in itself will make this person notable as an sf author/editor. Besides that, there are several books that mentions Cramer in that capacity. So I would not be concerned with notability issues, but with a good, simple, and NPOV article, removing any material that may not be directly relevant to her notability. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  I see that she has written plenty, but I still fail to see what has been written about her.  Writing a lot of books doesn't automatically make one notable, if these books have not garnered her enough attention to make her the subject of any non trivial articles then I can't see enough notability. Book reviews could be construed as being about the author, are there any that we could look at? --Daniel J. Leivick 04:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  (ed conf) If you follow the Google books link above, you will find books that refer to Cramer's work, not just books authored or edited by Cramer. I have not explored these in detail, though. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  She would get a Keep vote from me in an AFD. --Daniel J. Leivick 04:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Perhaps Kathryn or Mark could help out here by supplying a list of independent third-party sources i.e. independent reliable publications that have published material about Kathryn Cramer that hasn't been entirely supplied by her, or independent book reviews, as Daniel suggests. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope; the case has been made, and additional labor will not improve the article or advance scholarship, but will only lead to additional gaming.  Books (which you find reason for dismiss), journal and magazine articles (for some reason you "doubt" her role an NYRSF even though she's been nominated for multiple awards as its editor), journal articles, lectures, awards.  Fine.  Enjoy your power.  Go ahead: delete the page.  I'm sure that wikipedia will be greatly improved by your vigilance.  I have real work to do.   There is no good faith here, much less assumption of good faith. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MarkBernstein (talk • contribs) 15:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Deleting the article may be an option, by going trough the deletion process (WP:AFD, but I doubt it will be deleted. If you are unwilling to assist in making this article better and compliant with Wikipedia content policies, so be it. We will have to do without your help. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I have to question the kind of hostility that user MarkBernstein has been displaying, his first real edit to Wikipedia after registering as a user several months ago was an remark quesioning editor good faith in asking for citation and then this sarcastic remark above, I really do not understand where this come from I can't imagine how one would find asking for citaion on a subject created article could be construed as an outragous bad faith action. Nor do I see the skeptism that other users including myself have as to the notablity of my subject as bad faith.  In my experience which is admitadly brief subjects who create articles about themselves are often on the edge of notablity (this article most likely passes) there is nothing wrong with looking into it carefully to ensure that Wikipedia is not used as a promotional tool. --Daniel J. Leivick 17:48, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know Bernstein, nor can I speak to his actions. I am familiar with Cramer's work in the field, though we have never met; and like other Wikipedians who know her, I am puzzled by the extent to which the tiniest element of the article about her has been met with what we perceive as unusual hostility by people with no background in the field where she is most notable. We may be more sensitized to this, due to the long history of her online demonization by bloggers opposed to the ideological positions her blog takes. Where is the assumption of good faith? --Orange Mike 21:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The assumption of good faith, Mike, dissipates quite quickly when the this person calls editors that responded on a posting at WP:COI/N "semi-anonymous people acting like jerks", making sarcastic comments about "mind group", posting an attack piece in her blog in which he called these editors "a pack of officious trolls", and being dismissive to all comments made by others. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Also note that the current version of the article, edited by people that care about this project, is a much better, more factually accurate and more neutral article that the one Cramer herself created. I would invite you to rather than make value judgments on the work of others, that you help make this article better, if as you say, you are proficient on the subject. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Conflict of Interest

message: I do want to take a moment and express thanks for the actual time you are putting in to try to do a good job however it is you define that. I can see that you are trying to be reasonable within your frame of reference whether or not I accept that frame of reference. Now on to my disagreements . . . 
First of all, I challenge publication in NYRSF as "self-publication" in the sense of vanity press. For a number of years, publications in NYRSF were listed in the MLA bibliography (some may still be, though t hey got way behind, since their NYRSF bibliographer was a volunteer), and therefore would have counted towards tenure, should I have been after that. (By the way, "Science Fiction & the Adventures of the Spherical Cow" was reprinted in the anthology Visions of Wonder (1996), published by Tor Books (ed. Hartwell & Wolf), but that probably counts as self-publication in the sense it's being used here because my husband co-edited the book and he works for the publisher.) Are you also going to delete David Hartwell's books published by Tor because he works there?
Can you cite factual inaccuracies please? Any? Typos yes, but I am not aware of any factual inaccuracies. What do you still need references for?
Someone cuts the references to my reviews in the Washington Post and then someone else declares the NYRSF stuff self-published. Oh, come on. 
So only whole articles about me in Forbes or the New York Times are thw only usable references from major media? (I didn't give you the full list by the way. There was also Le Monde, The International Herald Tribune, the Telekom Presse (do you read German?), Corriere della Sera, the Xinmin Weekly (in Chinese). And I could go on . . .
Also someone cut the image I created that was the cover of the February 16th issue of Nature in connection with my involvement in digital cartography and the description of my involvement with that. However did that happen? How many times does one need to make the cover of Nature magazine before it is notable? (The same issue also contained my first scientific publication in relation to the same subject matter.) KC Pleasantville 23:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are promoting youself, your family, and your friends. Longstanding trusted unpaid volunteers are trying to make this article verifiable and encyclopedic rather than either brilliant original prose or an advertizement (we are neither). Your attempt to "move" SF bios to another wiki was met by its main people on its talk pages with concerns over verification of the authors' identities (needed to be verified due to the proposed inclusion of information sourced from the contributing authors) and thus the need for such material to not be part of the anyone-can-edit wiki database but be a seperate enterprise from the Speculative Fiction DataBase wiki. You have joined a nortorious group (Wikipedia Review) that has caused huge emotional pain among our contributors. WAS 4.250 23:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Regarding the cover of Nature, as per WP:FAIR, covers of books, magazines and the like can only be used to illustrate the articles about these items. That is why it has been removed.  And our "frame of reference" with which you seem to disagree, is called Wikipedia:Policies. You may want to read these. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The reason some of the newspaper articles were removed is that they were repetitive. The New York Times did an article on the use of Google Earth to help disaster victims. You were one of a large number of people who posted some disaster images to your blog, as I understand it. The NYT interviewed you and included a brief quote. That article was then copied by other newspapers, not entirely, but in substance. Therefore, there was no point in repeating it. If there are other articles that say something different, by all means supply links. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: That passage was mainly refering to Ahasuerus's comment at ISFDB's Community Portal discussion at Author_Bios. About WR: I apologise for not being more clear that I was warning you about WR rather than anything else. I tend to not spell things out in as much detail as I should. Sorry. WAS 4.250 19:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes, but the interviews are all about the same issue. You hosted some images on your blog and some reporters took a quote from you about it. We have no idea that they called you; you may have contacted them first for all we know, so that's irrelevant. What we look at is what was published, no more. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factually Acturate???? good faith? 

message: Lquilter, a quote from a notable author about the importance of NYRSF might be a helpful addition to New York Review of Science Fiction, and might help convince the editors here that the magazine is more than "desktop publishing". --Akhilleus (talk) 17:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, and thanks for the suggestion. I did pull out a review of the journal from a library review journal, and will continue to mine the various discussions & databases for discussion or references to NYRSF.  (Will do a MLA search later today.)  I've been working on the NYRSF article because, apparently as spill-over from this debate, that article was PRODded. I removed the PROD & have been fleshing things out. I have to confess, that I hadn't really anticipated having to defend inclusion of academic & critical journals in wikipedia.  And surely people see the problem here: that academics and noted figures publish in important journals, but rarely comment on them directly, in published sources. It's an academic reputation thing, and to my mind, is one of the sorts of problems we should be addressing in Wikipedia:Notability (academics) or related projects. Notabilty for an academic journal is simply not going to be evidenced by published quotes about the journal; but rather by the quality, reputation, and influence of the journal.  Anyway I'm working on it there too. --lquilter 20:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely one of the things that establishes whether a literary magazine is notable is whether it publishes notable authors. A stroll through the index of NYRSF turns up an impressive list of contributors--Brian Aldiss, Daniel Pinkwater, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, John M. Ford, Michael Swanwick, Walter Jon Williams, George Alec Effinger, Roger Zelazny, and Frederick Pohl are just some of the authors I noticed. This doesn't fit the profile of vanity publishing. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Establishing notability

message: Why are we talking about the criteria used for the Hugo semiprozine award? NYRSF obviously meets those criteria, it's been nominated over and over again. But the definition of "self-published" we should be interested in is Wikipedia's definition, not Worldcon's. WP:V doesn't give a firm definition of "self-publishing", WP:RS is better--"A self-published source is a published source that has not been subject to any form of independent fact-checking, or where no one stands between the writer and the act of publication. It includes personal websites and books published by vanity presses. Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published,..."
NYRSF currently lists three editors, Cramer, David Hartwell, and Kevin Maroney. So I suppose it can be claimed that if Cramer publishes essays there, "no one stands between the writer and the act of publication". Can't the same thing be said of newspaper editorials, letters from the editor, and so forth? What we're really trying to determine, I think, is if the NYRSF is vanity publishing, and I think it's very clear it's not. Aside from the Hugo nominations, which suggest that the magazine is prominent within the field, one can look at the index and see that most of the contributions aren't by the editors. For example, in issue 48, there are contributions by such notable authors as Samuel R. Delany, Frederick Pohl, and Robert Sheckley. If NYRSF were a vanity publication, I'd expect the majority of contributions to come from Cramer, Hartwell, and Maroney. Furthermore, this publication is cited on Google Scholar, and is held in the collections of about 40 college and university libraries in the U.S., as found on Worldcat.
None of this seems to fit the profile of a vanity publication. However, even if NYRSF is, by Wikipedia's definition, self-publishing, I note that self-published materials can be used as sources of information about the author. If we list the essays individually, the only way the NYRSF is being used as a source is to note the essays' existence, which seems well within allowed use. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You really don't understand the way these nominations work, apparently. Most Hugo voters don't know she was on the board, nor care. The zine is what gets the nomination, and any connections the editorial board has are totally irrelevant to the Hugo voters who make the nominations. Heck, until this whole foofaraw started I didn't remember she was on the NYRSF board, and I've been a subscriber for a decade. Her essays are substantive and insightful, regardless of where I read them.--Orange Mike 19:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: section break

message: This article includes citations for very basic biographical details, like degree and parentage; this is not the norm in biographical articles. See, e.g. WP:AUTO ("As long as it's not involving grandiose claims ... a personal website can be used as a reference for general biographical information.") and WP:V ("Self-published sources and other published sources of dubious reliability may be used as sources in articles about themselves . . . so long as the information is notable, not unduly self-aggrandizing, and not contradicted by other published sources.").  For all of this information, I would suggest that a single inclusion of the relevant website under "references" would be sufficient, and it is unnecessary to footnote each and every individual point. The "references" section is there for precisely that purpose: to list references used in the article as a whole.
Having every sentence and clause individually footnoted is simply an obvious sign that the editing has been contentious. However, it detracts from the article's readability or usability to have a footnote after every half sentence or sentence (and in my mind is a hallmark of the fact that editing & referencing are still in a fairly juvenile state in wikipedia generally). --lquilter 06:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sourcing styles are a matter of judgement. You wish to take into account isues of standardization (norms) and readability. That is good. But there are other concerns to be taken into account that can mean that a good experience Wikipedia editor might, for this article, judge that in-line citing every fact is a better choice. This choice of sourcing style is often made for articles that see a lot of debate on the details, for articles with a history of biased editing, and for articles with sources that are debateable for some reason (perhaps the source is useable for some assertions nut not others). Since Wikipedia articles can continue to be edited, choices need to enhance the process as well as the product. Tying in specific sources to specific assertions helps future editing and the future product (article). Temporarlily increasing readability by removing specific in-line ciations can result in future versions of the article losing the generalized (non-specific) sources and changes in the assertions that now appear possibly unsourced - a worse article. WAS 4.250 19:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I understand the problem and the larger debate, and thanks for pointing it out here -- I didn't acknowledge it in my comments. Can we agree that a "References" section, with very basic & important references, is appropriate for basic biographical facts?  For instance, one shouldn't really have to have separate footnotes for the birth date and the death date in a biographical article; that's a basic biographical fact that's covered in a general reference listed under "References".  I'd simply suggest that parentage and degrees earned are that sort of basic biographical detail.  I would completely agree on citing things that are in any way controversial, disputed, or would naturally call for a reference because of level of detail or confusion or other issues.   ...  Even the (few) well-sourced articles on wikipedia don't have individual references for basic biographical facts.  So it seems a bit off to me. (This is a relatively minor point, I know; but reading this article and seeing footnotes after those basic biographical details suggests a level of editing conflict that is higher than even George W. Bush. Which you have to admit is pretty absurd.) --lquilter 20:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that in general, and also specifically in this case, it is better to leave in-line cites rather than to convert them to a non-specific reference. WAS 4.250 21:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  refs & citations 

message: Man that's an awful picture! I realize I've been off the SF Con circuit for 10 years or so but surely Kathryn doesn't look like that all the time! I remember her as being very skinny but still quite the Babe.  Isn't there a more flattering photo available? Heck, if need be I'll scan one of my own photos of her and upload it just to get rid of th e present photo.  of course, my photos are circa 1988 to 1992.LiPollis 03:15, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: unflattering picture

message: I object to the removal of this categorization. I am referred to in John Clute & Peter Nicholls's Encylcopedia of Science Fiction (CD Rom edition) as a "spikey and erudite critic". I have been nominated umpteem times for the Hugo award for best semiprozine for my co-editing if a literary critical magezine on science fiction to which I am also a contributor. All essay references to such were removed inappropriately by editors associated w/ Jossi who deemed NYRSF to be "self-published." See NYRSF index.
I also wrote the chapter on Hard Science Fiction for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction published by Cambridge University Press. ANd I wrote the year in review essays for two Nebula volumes (ed. James Morrow).
It is hard to see why Jossi would feel it necessary to remove the categorization. He is fully aware of earlier versions of this entry and of the material deleted from it by him and by his associates. Pleasantville 22:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I put the SF Critic and SF fan categories back in earlier today. I think they're fully justified by the material in the article, which doesn't even mention the Cambridge Companion. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

text: On this one, but they're justified on Mr. Hartwell's as well; I'll make the change there too. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jossi's removal of the Category Science Fiction Critic