Talk:James St. James

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Vetting refs Comment
is dead, the entire site is dead, it was previously marked as dead, and the Wayback Machine doesn't have a copy of that issue.

. Regarding this ref: it's a blog. Neither the site nor the internet has much info, so I have to assume there's no editorial oversight or independent fact-checking. That throws us entirely back on the author. The piece is signed, by Peter Jacobs. Here is his bio on the site. It gives little info on him beyond personal info (hobbies, etc.), and that he works in the education sector in some capacity. The internet describes several Peter Jacobs's (we even have an article, Peter Jacobs), but a quick check shows that none of these are him, indicating that there are several more notable Peter Jacobs's than him. Without knowing more, I can't with any confidence give this a lot more credence than, say, a forum post, so it's not useful for any purpose I'd say.

There're two things cited here, a file and the IMBD page about the film. IMBD is supposed to be shunned, and it does often get simple details wrong. We're not supposed to use it a ref, but my personal opinion is it might be OK for some things, depending on what the thing is. Party Monster: The Shockumentary I can't access of course. The film does have a Wikipedia article, indicating some notability, but I can't access the film of course and so have to go entirely on faith. (Films and video in general make usually poor refs IMO because they're hard to search). And the Wikipedia articles provides no refs. Some documentaries are good sources, but this one is labled as a "shockumentary", which kind of gives the vibe that sticking strictly to verified facts may give way to sensationalism here. It's used to ref one statement, "St. James became a mentor of sorts to Michael Alig, although at first he and the other club personalities shunned the newcomer". This is possibly contentious, as "mentor of sorts" and "shunned" are kind of opinion calls, and possibly deprecatory, as being a mentor to Alig and/or shunning people are not necessarily the sort of thing that someone would want ascribed to them.

is used to ref the assertion "St. James wrote several columns, most famously for the short lived New York City-based gay publication OutWeek during the magazine's two year life span from 1989-1991". It's the personal website of Gabriel Rotello, so we're basically taking his word for it that anything on it is true. He writes He says "I co-founded OutWeek with Kendall Morrison and served as its editor-in-chief during its heyday from 1989 to 1991... Editors, staff members and contributors included... James St. James..." and there's a link on St. James's name but it's dead. It's probably true, I don't see any reason why Rotello would lie about that, granted that he may be misremembering. It's not a particularly contentious passage I guess, although we can't say "several columns" since the ref doesn't support that.

. It's the YASLA which is (I think) an arm of the American Library Association. The website's there but the link doesn't devolve, and in an admittedly non-exhaustive search I didn't found anything on that website or elsewhere to support the assertion, which is "Freak Show was named to the American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults list".

The remaing ref is to the book Disco Bloodbath which St. James wrote. How accurate it is I don't know (books are usually poor sources, for complicated reasons), but its reliability is probably OK for some autobiographical statements (non-contentious statements of fact such as town of birth etc.) but probably not high for others.

That's it. This is not a well-ref'd BLP overall. Googling for "James St. James" is difficult because there's another much more noted James St. James (a professor and Millikin U. and murderer -- note that I ref'd that statement; contentious BLP statements like that even on talk pages must be ref'd or deleted on sight, and everyone needs to do that).

Googling various iterations of St. James I get, more or less in order, and not counting listings of his book (by Amazon etc.), I get:
 * is by St. James (a byline in The Wow Report, whatever that is); it opens "Kooky wowlebrity Lady Bunny is back..." which I'm not in any better mood having read the word "wowlebrity", something I've never done before and would just as soon have made it safe through life without having done so, but whatever.
 * interview of St. James by one "Kim Acrylic" in a venue called Punk Globe. Dubious as a BLP reliable source
 * Some quotes by St. James in Goodreads which is well-known publication (not the same a reliable, but can't hurt). The quotes are either unattributed (not good) or from his book (which is fine).
 * Facebook.
 * A site called Michael Alig Club Kids...DO NOT ACCESS THIS PAGE it will make your eyes explode. Unassessed as I refuse to try to read a site that makes Hampster Dance look like a Rembrandt.
 * A book, which may be useful.... to be continued... Herostratus (talk) 21:33, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

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