Talk:Erik Olssen

New page
Kia ora, a new page for consideration. Constructive feedback and suggestions most welcome. Realitylink (talk) 22:41, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion of conflict of interest
Re the suggestion that I have a conflict of interest in regard to the subject, I have never met Olssen in person or any professional capacity and have no connections with his place of work. While we did have some interractions by email and one phone call, these were mostly introductory. Olssen saw some of the draft work, but any suggestions made were carefully scrutinized by myself and I retained full editorial integrity in making changes. I would suggest there is no conflict of interest and certainly no conscious effort on my part to promote the subject. I will spend more time over the next few days checking any language that may give that impression. I accept that the quotations need simplifying and reduced and will spend time on this as well. Realitylink (talk) 00:03, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's highly unusual for Wikipedia editors to contact the subject of their articles. To give the subject an opportunity to comment on draft text, even as a volunteer and if no changes were made in response to those comments, puts those contribution under suspicion of being biased in favor of the subject. If changes are made, the editor is acting as a de facto agent of the subject, who has a strong conflict of interest. And in fact the overall tone of this biography is typical of articles that have been paid for or written by employees or friends. Other editors have no way to audit or evaluate changes that may or may not have been made off-wiki in response to off-wiki comments, so I would recommend either not doing that or posting copies of the communication on this talk page if there are complaints or suggestions. -- Beland (talk) 20:37, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, fair points made.Realitylink (talk) 22:45, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * With regard to the suggestion that I have a personal or professional relationship with Olssen that may have resulted in a conflict of interest, I reiterate this is not so and respectfully suggest that the tag on this talk page please be removed.Realitylink (talk) 08:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Tags on the article
I have done considerable editing on the quotations and feel that the tag could be removed. I will look at doing this in the next day or two pending further discussion. For the other tag, I am wondering if folks could give examples of promotional language, inappropriate external links or text that suggests the point of view is not neutral. I am happy to have a discussion about this. Realitylink (talk) 22:18, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your work trimming quotations; I've dropped the "excessive quotations" tag. Other problems have become clearer in the remaining material, so I've added some new tags. Just to sanity-check concerns about length and number of quotations and whatnot, I looked at Rachel Carson and William Gibson, which are featured biographies. (If you can find a historian listed in Featured articles, that might be even more useful for comparison.) In comparison, this article leans way too heavily on Olssen's own writings, and as a result the prose in places reads kinda like he's talking about himself in the third person. I've not read the entire article in detail, but in the sections I've checked I didn't see any negative reactions to or disagreements with any of his work, and glowing reviews are quoted, so it seems there's a problem with neutrality. Overall, the article is too long, both because of excessive detail and because of going off topic. We mostly care for the purposes of this article about Olssen himself and the details of his life. Though to some degree a summary of what he wrote is helpful, given academic research and writing is his profession, a biography article looks more at say, how Olssen shaped his profession and people's views of New Zealand history (to the degree that he did so), and does very little of retelling history. Specifically:
 * In the section "Book reviews and media contributions", we don't need a summary of every comment Olssen has made in a review of someone else's work; simply listing those works is sufficient.
 * In the section "Further journal articles", it's unclear that we need a summary of the article if it hasn't been commented on in secondary sources, which are lacking for some of the entries. If not mentioned in secondary sources, I would limit coverage to at most one sentence describing the topic if it's not clear from the title. If mentioned in secondary sources, I would limit coverage to at most one paragraph.
 * Most of the section "Political career of John A. Lee" is off-topic and should be moved to John A. Lee.
 * Most of the material in the section "National history: social and political developments in New Zealand 1880–1920" is not about Olssen, and should be moved to articles on the history of New Zealand.
 * The section "Provincial history: Otago 1800–1920" is largely off-topic; other than perhaps a one-sentence summary and mentions of Olssen himself in the context of historiography, content should be merged with History of the Otago Region.
 * -- Beland (talk) 22:25, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, accept those points, although some of those sections may need slightly more than one sentence! I will take much of that on board and see where it goes.  Good feedback, much appreciated.Realitylink (talk) 22:39, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I am working on doing considerable editing as suggested above and will look to move some of the text and references to other pages. Good advice.  Tomorrow morning I should have the summarised article completed ready for consideration and possible removal of the tag.Realitylink (talk) 04:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Substantial summarising of the article completed. Perhaps one of the tags could now be removed. Looking back over the article, there is actually quite a few secondary sources with commentaries and opinions about his overall work and publications.  Granted, at this stage they are mostly complimentary, but I will go back in and have a re-re-read and see if there are other comments that are more critical or questioning. That might help manage the other two tags.  Realitylink (talk) 02:58, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have done quite a bit of work on secondary sources and getting a variety of opinions and views on his work. Over the next day or so, there are a couple more entries I will make and by then, all the tags should be able to be removed.Realitylink (talk) Realitylink (talk) 18:07, 31 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I think the tags can be removed. I have significantly reduced the size of the article and removed considerable material that was seen as not relevant. Extra secondary sources have been added, and along with a reassessment of some of the critique previously there, it no longer depends heavily on primary sources and is more neutral.  Unless there is further discussion, I would like to remove the tags in the next  day or two.Realitylink (talk) 04:49, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This article certainly has gotten a lot shorter, which is excellent progress. Thanks for your work on that! Checking the results, though, the entries in "Book reviews and media contributions" haven't been trimmed down to citations, there are still summaries in "Further journal articles" that don't cite any sources other than Olssen. The sections on John A. Lee and "National history" are still just summaries of the history, and don't cite any sources that say why Olssen's work was notable or illuminating or misleading or...anything. The end result is that the article reads somewhat like PR for Olssen. -- Beland (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for your feedback - I can see the essence of what you are getting at and will process the suggestions and be open-minded and reasonable in making good-faith edits to improve the article. So it is looking likely that the sections Lee and National history will need to go?  Citations only for the other contributions would be a pity, but again, I will have a look at them - this is easier enough to do.Realitylink (talk) 00:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Hopefully changes made today will suffice for the tags to be removed.Realitylink (talk) 01:24, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It still seems mildly gushy, but I've read it too many times. I'll see if I can get a third editor to put fresh eyes on it. -- Beland (talk) 22:48, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * (Posted a request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography. -- Beland (talk) 22:52, 21 June 2024 (UTC))

Stealth quotations?
There are a number of places in the article where square brackets and single quote marks are used outside of quotations. I'm wondering if this text is copied verbatim from sources and the quote marks are missing, or if this text can be rephrased to remove the square brackets. Double quote marks are always used for the outermost marks, per MOS:DOUBLE. -- Beland (talk) 20:57, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Ah, yes, I will check those. My understanding is that square brackets indicate text within a sentence has been omitted? If they are before a quote...not sure what I was intending to do then, but happy to remove them of course. Single quote marks outside of quotations should not be there, agreed. Will have a look later. So the primary sources one is interesting. Obviously he has published a great deal so it is hard not to show his work as a source of his ideas? This is a good concept to unpack here and I am would appreciate your input. I am comfortable to shorten the article, although I think the headings help.  Realitylink (talk) 22:14, 28 January 2024 (UTC)