Talk:John Edgar Wideman

Removed "Films" section
I removed the following section (quoted in its entirety) because it was contributed by an IP address associated with California Newsreel. Maybe the information should be included somehow, but I don't know. If it is relevant and worthy of inclusion, I leave it to the regular contributors to this article to determine how it should be included and put it back. -- ke4roh 02:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I strongly disapprove of this editorial move as you deprive readers of a useful reference.
 * Should the name of a novel be removed because the publisher updates the bibliography? Batailla (talk) 10:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Films

 * Documentary: "John Wideman In Black and White: volume 6" distributed by California Newsreel

Possible Racism?
I've read Brothers and Keepers, as well as a piece he wrote for the New Yorker in 1996 about his son. Both seemed to have a heavy anti-white slant. Should this be mentioned? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by GreatRedShark (talk • contribs) 22:45, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

Copyright problem
This article has been reverted by a bot to as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Multiple possible incidents of vandalism
Unregistered users have carried out apparent vandalism on this page approximately 15 times by removing one particular section without explanation. If there is something objectionable in that section then the users should state the rationale so that it can be openly discussed and resolved on its merits; otherwise we have to assume that this is vandalism. Should steps be taken to protect this page or initiate other corrective action? 850 C (talk) 00:32, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Brown University?
"professor at Brown University," says this article. But is it true? The Brown University does not know him, look at their website, please. Maybe he is at Princeton (according to Perlentaucher, a German literary platform). --Peewit (talk) 15:35, 24 March 2017 (UTC) No, they are wring, too. --Peewit (talk) 15:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC) Ah, he is "professor emeritus" at Brown University, that's it. I changed the link to the special website. --Peewit (talk) 16:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Content and Organizational Changes
Hi - I've just made substantial edits and updates to the John Edgar Wideman page. A lot of the text I changed was actually text I had added back in March 2019. But I felt the article needed a fuller rendering of Wideman's story, for any casual reader looking to understand it, as well as some more organization to make info easier to find. For that reason, I created new subject headings in addition to adding text. I also added citations where they seemed necessary.

I have looked everywhere for free, non-copyright-protected images of Wideman, and so far have only come up with the photo of him from Look magazine in 1963. If you know of any others, it would be great to see them included.

Also, some websites claim that Wideman's book Brothers and Keepers won an award called the "DuSable Museum Prize," but I can't find any evidence that such a prize exists. If you can shed any light on this, it would be appreciated.

I hope this is helpful. If you notice anything else missing or incorrect, please proceed as you see fit. Thanks! IbIANTiA (talk) 17:19, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Better term than "Family tragedy" for family members commission of murders
Euphemizing the conviction of two family members—a brother and a son—as "family tragedies" in two separate section titles is odd… and dead wrong, on a number of levels. While surely it was difficult for Wideman's family to have two convicted murderers amongst their ranks, the real "tragedy" in each case was not the suffering of their killer's family, but the death of their victim. And while I understand that from Wideman's perspective, his brother's and son's crimes may have seemed "tragic", it's an inappropriate use of the term in Wikivoice.

By way of analogy: Neither Chesa Boudin's nor Leonard Boudin's biography describe Kathy Boudin's murder of Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown as a "family tragedy"—let alone the title of a section about her crimes. Would an article on Carolyn Bryant describe a section on Emmett Till's murder a "family tragedy"? Was the murder of Nicole Brown a "family tragedy" for OJ Simpson—or a "personal tragedy" for his close friend, Robert Kardashian? We could take it further: surely a murderer's conviction itself is a "personal tragedy" for the murderer—but for what should be obvious reasons, we wouldn't do so in Wikivoice.

I'm changing it to the far more informative, factual, and NPOV: Wyoming, brother's murder conviction, literary success and Massachusetts, son's murder conviction, prolific period—but am, of course, open to better suggestions. Thanks! ElleTheBelle 19:49, 27 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your input. I'll defer to others on whether your edit is the better approach. To me, it's clunkier but doesn't substantially change things. I just want to point out two things, however. One is that you're committing an error of logic: in the examples you cited, the people were all perpetrators of a crime--they either committed murder or made a false accusation that led to murder, etc. But Wideman has not committed a crime or caused one to be committed, so you're not comparing apples to apples. Wideman is not like OJ Simpson in that sense. His situation has been to have close family members commit terrible crimes that landed them in prison, which literally fits the definition of tragedy, i.e., an event that causes great suffering or distress. Your contention that the word "tragedy" should not apply to a criminal's family is very much your opinion, not a neutral POV. Second, re: your edit summary, you also seem to misunderstand WP:REVONLY. It's not a shield that prevents other editors from reverting your edits unless they have a discussion with you first. Any editor is free to revert an edit whenever it's warranted. I hope this helps. IbIANTiA (talk) 22:39, 27 September 2022 (UTC)