Talk:Harvey Molotch

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This page is clear and lucid. Of course, it's also propaganda for the person being depicted. The smirking photo points to his role in crafting, not a biography, but an autobiography and all the limits therein. However, his hand is also hidden, suggesting that the pages in Wikipeida hide their biases by hiding their authors.

While the above comment is understandable, it is wrong. As one of the authors of this article, I can assure you that Molotch no hand in it, and had no idea that it was being written. Without Molotch's cooperation, the article took a great deal of time for the authors to construct. It is meant to be an objective introduction to Molotch's diverse corpus of influential work and our sense from many readers is that it succeeds. With regard to the photo referred to above, it was obtained from Molotch's publisher (the photographer signed the necessary release) and once again Moltoch had no role in its acquisition. (Jsmith24 (talk) 16:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC))

I am in agreement with the original author: this really does smack of "self promotion"; whether written by the subject himself, or a proxy fanboy. Whether intentional, or not. It reads like the extension of a publicity blurb such as might appear on the back of a mass market paperback. I am sure that Molotch is a competent sociologist in his field, but his "discoveries" are not exactly revelatory, and his contributions are all either qualified so as to render them untraceable as to actual impact ["helped create", "helped overturn", "helped introduce"], or wildly overstated ["studies that have reconceptualized power relations in interaction", "overturned conventional wisdom", "(helped) reverse the course of urban theory"]. This type of entry serves as a good test for the role of Wikipedia in professional biography. It's also the kind of stuff that should be limited to an entry on Facebook. I, for one, vote "NO". — Preceding unsigned comment added by FMERKIN (talk • contribs) 21:08, 25 February 2014 (UTC)