Talk:Harvey Konigsberg

Should not be deleted
I can't understand the thinking behind deleting this entry. The aikido world is small, but in it there are "notable" members, and Harvey Konigsberg surely qualifies. Indeed, as the article says, there are not many Americans who have done what he has in the field. In addition, he is a renowned artist. He is certainly deserving of an entry.

Given his age, he doesn't have much of a presence on the Net, so some secondary sources may be hard to come by. The information presented here is accurate, however. ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Furtom (talk • contribs) 21:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm personally on the fence on if it should be deleted though leaning towards "delete." My main concerns with the article are
 * Copyright violations - the article is largely copy/pasted from two copyright sources: http://www.woodstockaikido.com/instructors.htm and http://www.aikidoonline.com/ArtGallery/harvey/gllry_hk.html.
 * Lack of notability - while 7th dan in Aikido is a fine thing in Aikido and Konigsberg sensei is thus notable within the Aikido world it's a detail of interest to a very small percentage of the population. His his art career appears more notable though as much of it is pre-web the references will need to be dug up the old fashioned way.
 * Lack of verifiability:
 * The 7th dan presumably is awarded from Aikikai and yet is not mentioned on http://www.aikikai.or.jp nor does the USAF (or aikidoonline) maintain a list of high-ranked instructors. I added a reference to Konigsberg being listed on Aikiweb's list of High Ranking Non-Japanese Yudansha though don't know if that qualifies as "independent" in the larger scheme of things.
 * "long and successful career as an artist" says who?
 * "famous Whale series of paintings" says who? Is it famous now? Google finds zero references to this other than the Wikipedia article.
 * Inspection of Google's news archive finds nine articles that could be used as references with all of them pertaining to his art career.
 * Parts of the article, particularly the list of art exhibitions, smack of commercial promotion that's not appropriate for Wikipedia. Someone who is familiar with art should look at this and trim it down to prose that mentions the genuinely notable exhibitions. Wikipedia prefers prose over lists - see Manual of Style.


 * My personal thought on this is that Konigsberg sensei is not notable per Notability (people) and that the article content, once the copyright violations are fixed, should be moved to either the AikiWeb AikiWiki and/or to www.aikiwiki.org where Konigsberg sensei would qualify as "notable." Verifiable and reliable references for notability do not need to be on line. But, any citations need to have enough detail that someone can get the news article or book being cited. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 00:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Either Wikipedia has entries on martial artists or it doesn't. If it does, Konigsberg should be among them. All martial artists are only of interest to a small segment of the population. Should all but Chuck Noris and Bruce Lee be deleted? Entries in the aikiwiki can and should be more detailed, but a small general entry here seems justified. This is a guy who has interacted and affected hundreds, if not thousands of aikidoka (in my observation).


 * Your correct, however, that the article can and should be improved. Some of the bits do, in fact, sound like promotion and should be taken out and more sourced material is needed. I'll work on it.Tom F. (talk) 01:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If you took out their movie-star careers then I believe none of us would ever have heard of Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, Steven Segal, etc. unless you were involved in their martial arts. While Norris and Lee made great contributions within their organizations/arts I don't think it was enough to make them notable to the outside world. It probably shows that the general priorities are wrong but as we are writing for Wikipedia we need to follow its standards and not our personal beliefs on what should be included.


 * Getting back to Konigsberg, I took a look at the Bernath/Miller interview to see if there's something that can be included in the article and then we can change the interview from an external link to reference. Unfortunately, nothing obvious came to mind. This is exactly the sort of thing that works well for Wikipedia though as it's an independent/verifiable/reliable source. Good luck with the editing - I need to catch up on some work but will check in later. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 01:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Konigsberg article should not be deleted
I may be comming in very late in the discussion, but I wish to add my voice to those who feel that it is important to retain the Konigsberg entry. I am the eye witness source for the information that follows.

In 1969-70, during their brief residence in Montreal, Konigsberg and his exquisitely beautiful wife Patricia gained some cachet as part of the informal anglophone creative arts circle which included Canadian luminaries Irving and Aviva Layton, Leonard Cohen and Mordechi Richtler. Some of Layton's poetry of the time makes indirect reference to the Koenigsbergs. If for no other reason, this scholarly rational should be sufficient for retention.

Derajderaj (talk) 17:58, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Irving Layton
Irving Layton's name is misspelled. 96.52.251.194 (talk) 16:16, 6 December 2021 (UTC)