Talk:André Aciman

Referencing.
wp:BLP/N -- Jeandré (talk), 2009-08-19t21:56z


 * .


 * Yes, there has been a complaint to the foundation about false information in the article. Publishing of those complaints are not allowed without explicit permission, but it's almost never even necessary to say that there was a complaint because simply pointing out wp:v and wp:blp works if those policies are read by the editors involved. The articles are then either referenced as required by those 2 policies, or left as a stub with only referenced information. If that fails, quoting the policies usually works. If that fails, there's wp:BLP/N to get more editors involved. If that fails editors get blocked for ignoring 2 of Wikipedia's most important policies. -- Jeandré (talk), 2009-08-20t07:04z

After careful considered I have reverted to du Toit's version. (Which hides, but does not delete the unsourced information.) While I don't have access to the OTRS, so have no idea what the complaint is about, and was reluctant to intervene since on the whole the article didn't appear overtly untrue nor unduly contentious, the lack of inline citations makes it difficult to verify the details, yet it was also easy for me to see the that some of the details were not in the sources mentioned (e.g. his speaking Greek and Ladino). Now I'm not saying these are untrue, it appears from my searches that in his autobiographical books/memoirs he mentions learning Greek, but they are clearly unsourced at the moment. I had planned to go thorough the article and add back what I could verify but quickly hit a snag. Beyond the primary sources of his university profile which are already problematic, the only two sources we have are an interview in Bookslut.com and an article in a (university) student newspaper. (I've looked for more sources but can't find any.) These are hardly great sources for a BLP. I can see I'm not the only one to express concerns about bookslut.com as a RS and from reading the article on it while it may be okay for reviews, I think we have to take care with anything else particularly sourcing claims in a BLP, contentious or not. In any case, as an interview it's basically a Primary sources. Student newspapers are also problematic, and again I'm not the only one to think this Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 11, Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive45 and while not everyone agrees Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive44 it's clearly a fairly contentious issue. While neither of these are something I'm likely to normally remove, and probably not even challenge, it's not something I'm going to add either and when we have a problematic BLP, it's particularly not something I'm going to defend, particularly when it's the only secondary source (if it was just used to flesh out the details perhaps). I would note that College and university article guidelines says that student newspapers are not sufficient to establish notability which also suggests they should be used with care on BLPs. It appears he meets Notability (academics) as he's hold both a Distinguished Professor and chair role and perhaps WP:CREATIVE as his books have won awards and I think been reviewed by multiple sources, but clearly more reliable secondary sources need to be found for a good biography, and this doesn't include Amazon searches of his books nor a NY topic search which primarily finds reviews of his books and one article he has written and a photo. And while a student newspaper is one of the sources likely to cover an academic, a notable academic and writer should surely be covered in more mainstream reliable secondary sources as well. In other words, if some other editor wants to add back details, covered in one of the sources we have, I'm not going to oppose you, but don't expect me to defend it either if other editors feel it's still problematic, and don't just add everything back without properly sourcing it. All in all, I'd think the even better solution would be to find better sources, which unfortunately I can't find, and use them. Nil Einne (talk) 18:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion
I strongly disagree regarding the proposed deletion of this article. Aciman is not really notable for his professorial career but as a novelist/writer. His memoir Out of Egypt was reviewed in The New York Times as well as his novel Call Me by Your Name. Additionally, see his recent op-ed published in the Times.

This alone shows that this individual is QUITE notable. A no-name does not get their books reviewed in the Times or is allowed the opportunity to write an op-ed for that publication.ShamWow (talk) 04:17, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Here's another four articles in The New York Times by or about him: —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShamWow (talk • contribs) 2009-09-14t04:22:21z


 * Please add the best of those links (especially the ones that don't require NYT registration) to the article and remove the prod. I'll start an AfD per request from the subject. While I personally agree with Mr Aciman's position on encyclopedic notability, the AfD will probably be closed as kept because I think ShamWow is correctly interpreting the current wp:n. -- Jeandré (talk), 2009-09-15t11:08z


 * Hopefully I'll get around to posting those articles soon. I'm sure there are also valuable articles in other news periodicals and publications - we shouldn't really exclusively on the NYT.ShamWow (talk) 13:10, 15 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the prod tag. He unquestionably passes WP:CREATIVE--the novel is  a NYT Notable book of the Year & in 850 worldcat libraries ; almost certainly passes WP:PROF: Distinguished Professorship at CUNY.   All refs can be added regardless of whether they;'re available free. The NYT is available in libraries. I can not imagine that thiswill be deleted bat AfD, regardless of the opinion of the subject. Reviews of a writers books are what show him to be notable--extensive 3rd party autobio writing is not required--reviews in RSs are the ideal 3rd party sources. The current version seems to have no BLP problems.  Its not exactly that " A no-name does not get their books reviewed in the Times ", but rather that reviews in the Times and similar sources are what make authors notable.   DGG ( talk ) 06:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

For future reference
Here are the four hits for our subject from the MLA database (Sep 2009). Drmies (talk) 04:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Porter, Roger J. "Autobiography, Exile, Home: The Egyptian Memoirs of Gini Alhadeff, André Aciman, and Edward Said." Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, (24:1), 2001 Winter, 302-13.
 * Cohen, Susan D. "André Aciman (1951- )" In (pp. 28-33) Amoia, Alba (ed. and introd.); Knapp, Bettina L. (ed. and introd.), Multicultural Writers since 1945: An A-to-Z Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004. xv, 610 pp.
 * Sadock, Johann. "Ma diaspora sépharade, ou: André Aciman tout contre moi." Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, (11:2), 2007 Apr, 291-294.
 * Eakin, John Paul. "Living Autobiographically." Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, (28:1), 2005 Winter, 1-14.