Talk:David Ferguson (impresario)

Banner tags
The slew of banner tags was returned in June with the edit summary "Re-add tags removed without actually fixing the issues". I have removed some of the tags because they appear completely inappropriate to the current article.

The WP:PEACOCK tag appears to still be appropriate with phrases like "influential Southern California hardcore band" and " the controversial Annoy.com" making regular appearances throughout.

I am not seeing anything currently that indicates major issues involving WP:BLP tag - Can someone clarify? If those issues have been addressed the tag can be removed.

I am not sure about "conflict of interest" - if it relates to the statement I read above on the talk page that someone went to a library to research because he is interested in this article topic - then the tag is completely inappropriate but if I remember from my last visit here many months ago, someone related to Ferguson or someone involved with a legal matter involving Ferguson has been editing the article, the tag is correct -but may be removed if consensus is that any POV content that editor added has been addressed and is now presented in a 3rd party sourced neutral point of view.

Not being overly familiar with the subject, nothing jumps out as being unbalanced, so I have removed that tag - Please provide rationale if I have missed something.

Verify sources tag - Uwishiwazjohng indicates above that he has done that. I hope to be able to revisit the sources to confirm that the claims in the article are supported by the sources so that tag can be removed. (Or some other third party editor can do so as well if they have better access)

I will leave a note at the editor who re-added the tags to ask for clarification. -- The Red Pen of Doom  17:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've made a number of edits to the article to remove peacock terms and posted quotes from third party sources to improve the content of the article. I agree with editor TheRedPenOfDoom about the WP:BLP tag, I too think it should be removed.  --deb (talk) 00:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * After having made edits to address the WP:Peacock tag, per previous discussion with The Red Pen of Doom, I have removed the appropriate template. --deb (talk) 06:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I have read all the sources listed for this article and they are reputable and reliable. Per discussion with The Red Pen of Doom  on this page and comments by User:Steve Dufour at the WP:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard:"'I think the article is fine and the tags unjustified. It could hardly have more or better sources.' User:Steve Dufour 17:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)" therefore, I've removed the two corresponding templates: 1) disputing factual accuracy, and 2) citations that do not verify the text.  --deb (talk) 06:24, 17 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I have removed the violation of WP:Biographies of living persons template, per discussion on this page with The Red Pen of Doom .  There are no violations present, therefore the tag is unwarranted.  I've also removed the WP:COI banner since there is no indication of an editor working on this page with a COI.  The multiple issues banner has been removed because it is no longer warranted.  deb (talk) 04:40, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Article issues
I was asked to weigh in on the article issues tag, and I've finally got a few moments together to be able to do so. Here's my thoughts:

COI
 * Well, here's just some of the history:
 * User:DrJamesX accused me of having a COI (although no basis was given for the accusation).
 * User:DrJamesX accused User:Uwishiwazjohng of having a COI (due to editor saying that they didn't like subject).
 * I believe that User:DrJamesX has a COI as he is writing a biography of the subject.
 * User:Annie999 accused User:Uwishiwazjohng of having a COI.
 * User:Debora999 (who I'm sure is as unrelated to User:Annie999 as User:DrJamesX is to User:JamesHX) accused me of having a COI.
 * So I'm not sure how anyone can say that no one thinks that there isn't some conflict of interest happening in this article.

peacock disputed, blpdispute
 * At one point, this article was titled David Ferguson (promoter). "Impresario" is very clearly a peacock word, unless someone can find solid sources where other people have called him that.
 * You're soaking in it!

citecheck, self-published
 * Once again: this article should not have ANY references to scans of articles hosted on punkrockorchestra.com. None. Every single one of them is a violation. Those references need to go, and anything in the article based on those references needs to go. And I'm sure that again, it's entirely coincidental that those articles were all posted to Ferguson's website (see here) right before User:DrJamesX added each to this article (handy that, eh?).
 * Note that some of the quotes currently in this article were removed at one point when the third-party version of the articles were linked to instead of Ferguson's own scans—that's because those quotes were not in those others. Why, I don't know, but it does mean to me that there are questionable things in this bio.

primarysources, refimprove BLP
 * If you get rid of all the articles linked to Ferguson's own website, or everything that's based solely on his say-so, you're left with a whole lot of not much. OTOH, it would be an excellent starting point for the desperately-needed rewrite.

That's my take as to each of the above tags, and why I think that they should be returned to the article. — Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 05:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for responding, the rationale for each of the tags does indeed appear valid. -- The Red Pen of Doom  05:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Recent History
There is a need to repost some of the discussion that has occurred since I first began editing this article on June 5, 2009 because it has been archived and the content is relevant to the discussion. The article was changed to re-add banners (and some extras) before I had finished updating it for clarity and accuracy on June 16, 2009; I responded to the user's talk page and was reported to WP:ANI, the Administrators' noticeboard/Incident page. The following was User:DoriSmith's justification:


 * Okay, one thing at a time:
 * The sum total of what I've written on your talk page is uw-tdel1 and ani. That's it. If you have an issue with the standard templates, then that's your issue with the standard templates.
 * I didn't say anything about you having left off a signature, because I don't care.
 * I strongly object to your saying that I "follow you and revert your changes." That's calling WP:Wikihounding, and I have not done that. I objected to one change you made, and when I edited the page I modified a few things (not just a reversion). That's it. An apology would be nice.
 * The problem with the David Ferguson (impresario) article is just what I said above: too many SPA editors, and too few good citations. If you took out all the primary sources and the refs that link to Ferguson's own web site, then we might have a shot at a decent article. But try to do that and "Wham!" the flying SPA monkeys swoop in. Have you read through all the talk page archives?
 * And once again, no, I am not in the article in any fashion whatsoever. I just hate having this kind of biased and made-up crud in any WP article. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 04:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

And then I requested editors' input during the editing process at the WP:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard, which was followed by the remarks below:

I would appreciate someone looking at a page I'm trying to clean up: David Ferguson (impresario). It's been tagged with many templates and I'm not sure if they're all appropriate. I think this article needs experienced Wikipedians to compare the templates to the contents of the biography. Thanks-- --deb (talk) 02:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the article is fine and the tags unjustified. It could hardly have more or better sources.Steve Dufour (talk) 17:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Snort... Steve, of the refs on there now, how many are self-published? How many only exist on the subject's own web server? How many are solely based on the subject's own claims without any fact-checking? How many statements are actually disputed by other sources, but any mentions of that were edited out? How many statements are about things that companies did, not Ferguson himself? How many of the refs, when checked, turn out not to back up what they're claiming?


 * If the article was edited to only contain facts based on verifiable, neutral, third-party reliable sources, all you'd have left is a stub. The refs as they are now are utter crap, and when the refs are crap, so is the article. That's why the tags are there—readers should be warned that much of what's there is dubious, at best. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 22:13, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

This discussion has been moved to the article's talk page Talk: David Ferguson (impresario)   --deb (talk) 22:38, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

June 2009 ANI report
I just want to add that this is, in my opinion, not a WP:NPOV description of the situation by any stretch of the imagination. I invite anyone interested in this to view the original at WP:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive546—although why anyone would want to, I have no idea. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 03:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Response to Current Template Issues
I'll address these issues in the order they were posted by User:DoriSmith

COI

I don't know anything about the people on the list in User:DoriSmith's post of 07-21-09, including User:Annie999, (we may have the same last name--but no relation.) Clearly, there's no COI on my part.

peacock

I've worked diligently to cleanse all peacock terms. Regarding the term impresario--this is not peacock, it is a WP:category.

disputed, blpdisputed

User:DoriSmith disputes the content of the article because of the sources, but these have been conformed to meet Wikipedia requirements, so this template should not be present.

citecheck, self-published

I've done a great deal of research in libraries, as well as online, to verify and improve the sources cited in this article. The citations are legitimate and verifiable (i.e., Forbes, NPR, People Magazine, et al.) Citations that linked to the Punk Rock Orchestra website have now been replaced with citations from the original printed versions (i.e. Rolling Stone Magazine, National Lampoon, IBIS, et al.)

primarysources, refimprove BLP

See above. These are major publications with professional journalists who wrote under the supervision of an editor; therefore, because of the magnitude of the sources, the presumption is that the facts were checked in the normal journalistic process.

I have restored the article to User:Tabletop's edit (July 20, 2009 version) in order to recover the lost text and references so that I could continue improving the citations. Further, I believe a false claim of consensus is being made--therefore I would appreciate more input on the current version. deb (talk) 09:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Once more, with feeling
I feel like I've written this same thing several times now and shouldn't have to do it again (read the archives, please!), but here I go anyway:
 * COI
 * This tag should stay due to:
 * As I said above, "** User:Debora999 accused me of having a COI."
 * As I said above, User:DrJamesX added information to the article based on scans hosted on punkrockorchestra.com. I don't believe that he magically knew that these scans were uploaded there; consequently, I believe that there's a relationship between User:DrJamesX and the subject.
 * As I said above, "I believe that User:DrJamesX has a COI as he is writing a biography of the subject."
 * End result: I think that we should either keep the COI or delete everything contributed by User:DrJamesX. I think the former is simpler.


 * Peacock
 * User:Debora999 wrote above"Regarding the term impresario--this is not peacock, it is a WP:category."Category:Astronauts is also a category. I'm against adding that to the article as well unless there are verifiable reliable sources that say he's an astronaut. If there are no secondary sources that refer to the subject as an impresario, then it's clearly Peacock language and should be labeled as such.


 * refimproveBLP
 * Clearly, I think that this article could stand some improvement. I've gone into detail about this over the last year, but I'll give just one example from the current version of the article:"Through IFUC, Ferguson has maintained his involvement in anti-war protests, an activism which dates back to his student days at the University of Miami in the 1960s."At no point in the article is there anything about IFUC's anti-war involvement. Consequently, there's a statement here about a person with no supporting evidence whatsoever.


 * citecheck
 * The article currently says:"Ferguson had also arranged for Pop Art icon Andy Warhol to speak at the campus in 1968, an event that led to a professional association between the two."—but if you read the two articles, nowhere in them is this connection made. NY Arts just says that the two were "long-time friend[s]". The latter says that, "Decades ago, often working closely with Andy Warhol and his Factory of Superstars, Ferguson produced concerts for the likes of Iggy Pop, the Avengers, and the Cockettes"—with no reference to how they met. So this could be or, but I figured that citecheck was a better fit.
 * As it says at WP:SYN, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Editors should not make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article to reach conclusion C."


 * primarysources
 * Looking at that SF Weekly "Pen and Ink" article again, it's clear to me that this is a primary source. Policy says "Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge." However, if you look at the last letter to the editor on this page. it's clear that that particular SF Weekly article can not be considered to be "reliably published," and that at least some misrepresentations were made by a representative of the IFUC.
 * Another example of a primary source is Ferguson finds unconventional fits him just right from the SF Chron. Again, there are none or few secondary sources to back up these statements.

I'd like to state that my above examples are not all the problems I have with this article—just short examples to illustrate particular issues. Just because I didn't cite a issue above doesn't mean that I'm okay with it now.

And one more point: when mentioning "recover[ing] the lost text and references", does that mean references like this?""Because that's exactly the type of reference this article does not need any more of. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 03:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with you on the Bode Cartoon; I deleted the reference. deb (talk) 06:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on David Ferguson (impresario). Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110715145717/http://www.radiostarstudios.com/discographies.asp?offset=84 to http://www.radiostarstudios.com/discographies.asp?offset=84
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070427174450/http://www.acfnewsource.org:80/art/punk_orchestra.html to http://www.acfnewsource.org/art/punk_orchestra.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 21:32, 23 January 2016 (UTC)