Talk:John Moschitta Jr.

Guinness Record
Hidey ho. :) I must say I was made aware of John's holding the Guinness record as of 1990, but that Steve Woodmore took the title after that. Has John absconded it back? Is there a way to verify this at the Guinness book? Neither their online edition nor the most recent printed copy I have lists their record standings for speed talking. I mean, I know they keep the record they just like to play hard to get with some of them that are less scintilating from time to time. ;) Jesset77 23:27, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Changes
User 216.73.194.28: Firstly, please do not delete sections of this article without giving reasons for their removal and secondly, if you do remove something as relevant as the new record holders details from the section it was listed, be sure that it is still noted somewhere relevant in the article. Otherwise your changes come across as vandalism. Robvanvee (talk) 17:13, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * User 216.73.194.28: I see your vandalism persists! If I didn't know any better I would have to assume you are John Moschitta or some one close to him! Robvanvee (talk) 12:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

User JMthe2nd: Regardless of whether you are John Moschitta, Jr. or not, this page is of a public person. The page itself does not belong to you or anyone in particular and is part of public domain and therefore belongs to everyone that is part of Wikipedia. Anyone may edit this page but removal of relevant content purely because you don't agree with it, or because of personal issues relating to its content, is frowned upon. Please refrain from removing pertinent information relating to the topic. Your compliance would be greatly appreciated. Robvanvee (talk) 11:21, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Someone should really insert a citation for the disputed sentence. Formerip (talk) 19:00, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Restored old content
Hi, I restored a lot of the old content on this article. I did this because it seems that it was deleted simply because it was uncited. Given that the content that I restored was neither contentious nor hard to verify or cite, lack of citation seems like an insufficient reason to reduce the article to a shell of its former self. Instead, requests for citations should be (and have been) added. I have done this restore in a way that does not destroy improvements that have been made to the article since then. I know that the restored content has other problems, but I still think this is a better article. Alweth (talk) 16:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * And I reverted. WP:BURDEN is pretty clear on this point.  The content was challenged.  The burden is on the editor wanting to re-add the content to provide sources.  The response cannot be to just re-add it without sources, and just say that references would be easy to find. Singularity42 (talk) 18:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Singularity42 is very correct here. unverified information about living people is never a better article. Note that in addition to WP:BURDEN and WP:V, WP:BLP also apply here. Note that the info is "challenged" in that it is not common knowledge available to everyone; it's specific details that require proof. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your feedback. You two have cited WP:V and WP:BLP, in support of the reversion. I do not see how they support the reversion. Perhaps you could point to or quote the specific sections that you think are relevant? It seems to me that they do not support your action. For example, WP:BURDEN says, "When tagging or removing material for not having an inline citation, make it clear that you have a concern that there may not be a published reliable source for the material, and therefore the material may not be verifiable." Yet I doubt that you are claiming that there is no reliable published source for the material. The content has not been challenged (nor is it likely to be) in the normal English usage of the word "challenged," and I am unaware of any special Wikipedia meaning of the word. Also please remember the difference between "verifiable" and "verified." Finally, I think television shows and movies are are published reliable sources for their own credited roles. Please correct me if I am wrong. Given the above, I suggest that we remember WP:PRESERVE rather than simply revert. I would love to hear another opinion on this. Alweth (talk) 18:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If you need to hear the words, I am explicitly and directly challenging the material. I don't know who John MOschitta, Jr. is. I don't know if I'd recognize him, and I certainly wouldn't by name. Thus, any alleged facts about him are non-obvious, and thus I would like evidence that they can be verified. In my experience, editors regularly add all sorts of material, including on entertainers, on things they think they've read somewhere, or that they vaguely recall seeing. Thus, I do not actually believe that the information is accurate unless there are citations attached. However, you raise a good point on the tv/movies: we don't need strictly need a citation for those, so long as we are certain that he appeared in them. Someone who has a copy of the program or movie who could verify that he is listed in the credits would be fine; however, simply seeing a tv show and "recognizing" him would be insufficient. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:53, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * My understanding of the way Wikipedia operates is that sources don't have to be double-checked unless you have a reason not to assume good faith, in which case I would think the correct action would be to check one of the sources, not revert the edit. General experience of editors jumping to conclusions is not enough reason to not assume good faith. I would be glad for you or any other concerned editor to double-check these sources, but until someone does I think we should assume that they're good. In any case, I would ask the above editors to take a less drastic and more constructive action than simply reverting the whole edit. Alweth (talk) 12:09, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * What sources? We don't have any--that's the problem. Qwyrxian (talk) 12:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The television shows themselves. Alweth (talk) 13:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If you have personally seen the shows and can vouch that he was in them (and you are 100% it was him, not some other "fast-talker"; ideally, you've seen his name in the credits), you're welcome to re-add them. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you're the more experienced editor between us, but I am pretty sure that's not the way Wikipedia works. We assume good faith. An editor made a series of claims that happen to contain their own sources. Those sources don't have to be checked by another editor to be acceptable. WP:VERIFIED is not a thing. The fact is, by naming a published reliable source, the claims are WP:VERIFIABLE, which is the requirement. If another editor should take the time to check those sources, that's great, but that's not the requirement. Alweth (talk) 15:54, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a borderline issue. The problem is, I know of all sorts of cases where someone adds Person X to a cast list. Sometimes, the person was legitimately in the show/movie, but not important enough to be listed (not relevant here as this is Moschitta's page). Sometimes, they think it's that person, but it turns out they were wrong, because they were just guessing based on who they thought it was. And sometimes, it's just someone adding some random lies for vandalism purposes. Thus, all I'm asking is that someone who has actually seen the shows come here and state, "Yes, I saw the credits, and he was in them". Or that they've seen the back of the dvd box. This would be different if we were talking about Brad Pitt, who's obviously instantly recognizable...but this is a fairly minor celebrity. Plus, there's other problems with this specific text. Moschitta did not, as far as I know, have a "starring" or "recurring" role in any show. Again, I'm speaking based upon what I could verify, and that's that Moschitta is someone who's brought on to shows for his specific, special talent, not as a regular character. So when I see claims that clearly run contrary to common sense, I'm forced to question them. I also question the claims about Nickel Flicks--it was on 3 times a day? On a network that barely even existed at the time? And really, really doubt that someone who edited Wikipedia happened to watch and remember an episode of $25K Pyramid, including the identity of a contestant and how much money the person won. So either that information came from some source somewhere (in which case, we need it), or it's purely fictional. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that, overall, I don't trust the information there. Yes, we AGF, but, as people often say on WP:ANI, AGF is not a suicide pact.
 * Having said all of that...I think some of it could go back in. The commercial work, I'm willing to AGF, given that this is primarily what Moschitta is known for, and it doesn't contain the less believable stuff. I also took a look, and found verification of both the Clio award and the 10 Classics in 10 Minutes (the latter, maybe not reliably sourced, but close). I'm getting too sleepy to actually format those properly (2:30am here), so I'll re-add that section tomorrow. Qwyrxian (talk) 17:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your willingness to respond more moderately to this issue. It is to your credit. However, regarding how to apply which relevant principles, it seems that we are still at an impasse, and I would like to put in a request for comment or third opinion--whichever you think is appropriate. Alweth (talk) 09:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I've re-added much of the commercial info. Some of it I tagged with cite needed templates. In particular, the awards and recognitions need to be cited--otherwise, anyone could add any award to a WP article and say, "It's true, trust me". That's obviously not how WP works; after a reasonable amount of time, I'll remove those which are not verified. The early television work I won't add, because I actually don't believe it's verifiable. First of all, I searched for it myself, and can't find it. Second of all, I doubt that actual records exist in any publicly available form of who competed on every game show back in the 1970s. In other words, I am actually upping my criticism of that section specifically from WP:VERIFIED to WP:VERIFIABLE. But, as for the rest of the tv/film work, when I think about it, we can probably use his IMDB page. While IMDB isn't always reliable, it's generally held to be reliable for cast lists/appearances. Looking at that page, it's probably to long to include here; we should consider making a John Moschitta, Jr. filmography article and just linking that here. The problem is that that means making a table, and I just hate working with wikitables--the formatting drives me nuts. But I would definitely support the idea of someone else doing so. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Thank you. I'll put some more work into the article too. Alweth (talk) 17:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)