Talk:List of Shakespeare authorship candidates

New one
Apparently Kadir Mısıroğlu has come up with the view Shakespeare was a Muslim called Şeyh Pir (Sheikh Pir). It's only on youtube in Turkish for the moment, but worth keeping an eye out for.Nishidani (talk) 08:16, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Recent WP:SPS additions
, welcome to Wikipedia. It seems that you are editing this page by adding info from your own selfpublished publication. Per WP:SPS and WP:SELFCITE, please don't do that. If your SAQ-ideas get covered in WP:RS at some point, inclusion can be considered cited to those sources, but not based on your own writing. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Ping again, I did it wrong the first time. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:14, 26 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I am delighted that my edits have interested you. My series was already cited on this page, I simply edited the citations so that they use the correct Wikipedia citation style used across most of the rest of this page, and include all 5 of the underlying authors my study attributes as being behind the "Shakespeare" pseudonym. It is not self-promotion, since somebody else has already promoted me and I am simply correcting an error in their understanding of my research. The original version suggests that my study only credits William Percy as the author behind the "Shakespeare" byline, when in fact Volumes 1-2 of my Series, Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus, give computational-linguistic evidence that attribute the various "Shakespeare" texts to the different ghostwriters I specify in my edit. I am a "subject-expert" in this field, as I have previously published two scholarly books with McFarland (Rebellion as Genre and Formulas of Popular Fiction). I would very much like to understand the rules of editing on Wikipedia, so I can make other changes that my research has corrected in the errors with the current British Renaissance attributions. I hope we can have a discussion so that we understand each other here. The data regarding who I credit as authors of specific texts (including the corrections I am making to this "Shakespeare" authorship page) is available for free to the public here: https://github.com/faktorovich/Attribution. It cannot be impossible for a researcher and subject-expert to make edits on Wikipedia regarding the subjects one is an expert in; the rules you cite are vague as they do not forbid the mention of all self-published books, nor do they forbid all self-citation; I followed the rules as they are written. The goal is editing the relevant pages with truthful and accurate information, isn't it? So why would you want to undo all edits, if proper citation requires them? And please clarify what you are trying to do with the "pings". And clarify why you have deleted the original citation of my study that was previously added by another user, thus deleting all mentions of my research, instead of correcting the citation to be accurate with my edits? Are you saying you are retaliating against me for correcting errors by deleting all references to me by other users? Faktorovich (talk) 21:22, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * , WP:SPS directs editors to use caution when citing self-published sources by an established subject-matter expert. I couldn't find any reviews by other experts in that field of the self-published book or your methods of attributing authorship, or any indication that they have cited it, which would add weight to your conclusions; can you direct us to any evidence that your conclusions are accepted by the academic community? Schazjmd   (talk)  21:51, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * If these ideas were first published in October last year, there's probably not any reactions yet. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:55, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for talking. There was absolutely nothing technically wrong with your citations. WP:SPS mentions books, WP:SELFCITE mentions "material you have written or published". Your McFarland books  does not seem to indicate that you are a "subject-expert" on SAQ. WP:EXPERTS may give you some context, but please believe me when I say that you should not insert your own selfpublished research in WP-articles. You may not have intended it as self-promotion, but your name appeared 4 times in the article text so it seemed that way. Looney only appears once.
 * WP is not meant to be cutting edge. The goal is to be a fair summary of WP:RS, as defined by WP. When Marjorie Garber or James S. Shapiro has commented on your SAQ-ideas, or they are commented on in a review of your book in The Guardian, then we have something to cite. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:53, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * On pings, see WP:PING. I deleted the original citation because WP:SPS (I see you updated your commented while I was writing). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:01, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * FWIW, this edit is not just a cite fix, but also added three names to the list based on the same source. And seconding and : prolific writing is one thing, getting cited is another thing. We don't prohibit self-citation if done with fully considering WP:due weight. And one indicator for due weight is mention and discussion in secondary reliable sources. Secondary sources from established peer-reviewed academic publishers are the backbone of content creation in Wikipedia. –Austronesier (talk) 22:13, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Still, mastering the Harvnb-thingie is impressive. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:16, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Dear Austronesier: You state: "but also added three names to the list based on the same source". I have to clarify why your point supports my argument and not the need to delete my additions. The "same source" is my book, "Re-Attribution", which tested all of the currently "Shakespeare"-attributed texts and re-attributed them to 5 different writers: Percy, Jonson, Sylvester, Harvey and Byrd. Thus, Wham2001's edit back on December 18, 2021 that my "source" claims all texts attributed to "Shakespeare" are the work of only Percy as the sole candidate, is incorrect. Jonson was previously added to the list of candidates, so I did not add a line for him. I edited the Percy line to reflect a credit to him only for "most" of the "Shakespearean" tragedies, and I added separate entries for Sylvester, Harvey and Byrd for the specific "Shakespeare" texts my computational-linguistic "source" credits to them individually. This would be like if a page stated the US has only had 1 president, failing to mention the other 45 presidents, and the author of a textbook on American history edited the page to include entries for the other 45 names, only to have these changes deleted, and then even the mention of the 1 president deleted as well in retaliation for this author complaining that his book has been misunderstood. Faktorovich (talk) 23:04, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

The main website for my BRRAM series explains where it has been cited and covered in the media: https://anaphoraliterary.com/attribution. Coverage in the press includes an article in Yahoo News/Wichita Falls Time Record News (https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/life/2021/10/30/quanah-authors-method-aims-re-attribute-hundreds-texts/8550470002/). I have done interviews about my findings with LibraryThing, and Armed with a Book blog. And Volumes 1-2, 3, 4 and 10 were reviewed in the Midwest Book Review: https://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/dec_21.htm. I have published an article about my computational-linguistic author-attribution method in the Journal of Information Ethics: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/imprint/journal-of-information-ethics/. I am scheduled to give public talks about my Re-Attribution series as a featured speaker at the Imaginarium conference, July 8-10, 2022, Louisville, KY: https://www.entertheimaginarium.com/2022/01/19/imaginarium-2022-proudly-welcomes-anna-faktorovich-as-an-imaginator-guest/, and at the School of Liberal Arts of Uttaranchal University, India, February 7, 2022, 10pm CST: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeP4SIMP9JssTry5yaob9ft-E5Iwj8OvUJ1E2x5OI7vaPMcXQ/viewform. This series is cataloged in the World Shakespeare Bibliography and in the Play Index (EBSCO). There were 651 comments about my series and findings in a LibraryThing discussion: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337240. There are 34 previous citations in scholarly books and articles of my research on different topics, including linguistics and literature-structure, listed in Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dJD72pMAAAAJ&hl=en. 34 citations is sufficient to make me into a "subject-expert", as I have been cited as an expert in 34 different scholarly books (and these are just the ones that link to Google Scholar). This entire "List of Shakespeare authorship candidates" page is described thus: "all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider them to be fringe theories with no hard evidence, and for the most part disregard them except to rebut or disparage the claims." If this entire list is made up of unsubstantiated "fringe theories", why would only my theory need to meet the benchmark of being "accepted by the academic community"? In began some of the theories I have perfected in this series in my McFarland books: Rebellion as Genre is about the erroneous categorizations of sub-genres, and the structural ingredients that distinguish texts into genres (a point that I apply in my distinction in structural patterns between the Jonsonian "Shakespearean" comedies and the Percian "Shakespearean" tragedies), as well as about linguistic authorial traits such as usage of Scottish dialects (which I have expanded to the study of author-identifying linguistic patterns), and Formulas of Popular Fiction is about the structure of various genres or how fiction is built and what distinguishes plagiaristic or formulaic from original fiction (I apply this in the current study in explanations of plagiaristic echoes of segments, lines, words etc. in texts by shared ghostwriters in the series). My two McFarland books have been cited in around 20 different books, according to Google Scholar; this is more citations than most of the other claimants in this list have received for their research. I only inserted my name in citations where it was bibliographically necessary according to Wikipedia's style: I added 4 previously unmentioned "Shakespeare" candidates, and each of these had to be supported with a citation to my book, which is listed only once in the bibliography; if my book had only added 1 "Shakespeare" candidate, I would have only cited my book once. It is absolutely untrue that all of the other "candidates" on this list have been commented on in the "Guardian" or by "Shapiro" or any other insiders in this field. Here are some of the other citations that you have accepted as sufficient: 1. Amini, Daniela (28 February 2008), "Kosher Bard", New Jersey Jewish News. 2. Kathman, David; Ross, Terry, The Shakespeare Authorship Page. 3. Lang, Andrew (2008) [1912], Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown, BiblioBazaar, LLC, ISBN 978-0-554-21918-9. How exactly are my series that is composed of 14 volumes so far inferior to the guy who posted an idea in the New Jersey Jewish News? I look forward to your further explanations. So far you have not said anything that would logically explain your deletion of Wham2001's insertion of a citation for my series, or my edits to fix this citation to the correct Wikipedia format. Faktorovich (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2022 (UTC)


 * @Faktorovich, I think you are mis-reading the article history. I made two edits on 18 December.   was to delete a duplicate entry from the bibliography.   was to copy into the article a number of sources which had been left behind when content was imported from Shakespeare authorship question by another edit at some point in the past. I don't see that I mention your work in either of those edits. Could you post the diff of the edit that you are commenting on above?
 * On the broader note, Gråbergs Gråa Sång's summary of how Wikipedia policy applies to this situation appears to me to be correct. I would humbly suggest that if you can make your arguments more concise, and break them into shorter paragraphs, they are likely to be more digestible to other editors.  I have not read your replies in detail because they are long and difficult to read, and I am feeling tired and lazy this morning; however, if you are to obtain consensus for your edits, you will need to persuade other equally tired and lazy editors to your point of view.  Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 09:25, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Wham2001, thanks for replying, see, 2 nov. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:57, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Aha, thanks! Yes, that's not me.  I will take the liberty of pinging @Thmazing to join the discussion since their edit is being discussed.  Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 11:06, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Apparently I need more coffee too, I didn't see the difference... Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:15, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Noting here as well that Percy is back in the article, at least for now. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:26, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * There were several small edits made around December 18 that ended up with the first citation for Percy after this date. If @Thmazing was the one who added the Percy entries, I'm glad we figured this out.
 * I am going to attempt to break my arguments into shorter paragraphs and to explain my point of view more clearly. The version that is up for the "Shakespeare Candidates" page today does at least add the Percy credit back in, but deleting the fact that I explain this attribution in Volumes 1-2 of the series and not merely in the article with the Wichita paper is obviously illogical. Faktorovich (talk) 18:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

 * Please consider WP:TEXTWALL, it's a factor in these discussions. Paragraphs can help readability. HOWEVER, per WP:REDACT, don't change your posts after someone has replied to them. Just consider this going forward.
 * Your website is WP:SPS, and generally not useful per that, WP:EXTRAORDINARY and, from your angle, WP:SELFCITE. Even if you find this counterintuitive and wrong, it's an important part of WP-structure and it's by design and by purpose.
 * The Midwest Book Review appears WP:USERG.
 * Journal of Information Ethics could very well be of use. Does your article bring up the topic of this WP-article? I'll resume in a bit. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:13, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Thmazing cited my website, https://anaphoraliterary.com/attribution/, in his initial entry for William Percy on the page. I corrected this error by instead citing the title of the book where my attribution to Percy appeared, Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus, which was published by Anaphora Literary Press.
 * While I am the owner/director of Anaphora, a publisher publishing a book they also wrote while also publishing over 300 titles by various other authors (as I have) is not classified as being in the same category as self-published books by an author who only publishes themselves or only publishes a single book they wrote. My category is that of author-publishers, as I explain by describing the publishing companies started by Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Virginia Woolf, Herman Melville, Dudley Randall and Alice Walker in The History of British and American Author-Publishers (https://www.amazon.com/History-British-American-Author-Publishers/dp/1681143739). If you are going to have a policy against all author-published content, you have to bar Dickens, Woolf, Moby-Dick etc.
 * The rules for WP:SPS state: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert." I included a list of my credentials in my previous response to prove that I am a subject-matter expert.
 * As for "WP:EXTRAORDINARY", the entire "Shakespeare Candidates" page is made up of only "extraordinary" claims of authorship; this is how the page is introduced, so pointing to any one of these claims as being unacceptably extraordinary would require an editor explain what separates my claim from all of the other claim, and if this separation is at all negative, or is instead far more substantiated with evidence than the other claims.
 * As for "WP:SELFCITE", self-cited materials are "allowed... in the third person". I am the only researcher who has proposed the attributions to Percy, Byrd, Harvey, and Sylvester for "Shakespeare" texts according to the "Shakespeare Candidates" page and my research of this subject; thus, outside the media coverage I have had on my study, there cannot be any other sources I can site besides my own Volumes 1-2 of the BRRAM series. The bibliographic structure of the "Shakespeare Candidates" page is to name the: 1. candidate, 2. the texts attributed, and 3. the researcher and source that created this attribution. Since I added 4 candidates with my BRRAM series as candidates, the logical citation would be to add 4 separate entries for each of them with the specific texts attributed to each and with a citation at the bottom with a citation in references and a bibliographic note with publisher information (as I had done in my initial edit): Faktorovich, Anna (2021). Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus. Anaphora Literary Press. ISBN 979-8-49958-765-2. Since @Thmazing cited my study/ website first by adding the Percy credit, I was not self-citing when I edited the page, but rather correcting errors in @Thmazing's citation by adding the full bibliographic entry with specific credits to all true authors I credit in my study. If instead this was a page about Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and you had cited Einstein's blog and miss-explained the theory, and Einstein went in and corrected your misunderstandings and cited the book and not the blog that describes the book; would you also delete Einstein's edits due to "self-citing"?
 * "Midwest Book Review appears WP:USERG": What about MBR appears user-generated to you? The names of the reviewers are listed with the reviews. My name does not appear among the names of reviewers for my own titles. So your reasoning is simply untrue and incorrect.
 * This article was already published: “Publishers and Hack Writers: Signs of Collaborative Writing in the ‘Defoe’ Canon”. Journal of Information Ethics. Fall 2020.
 * This article is forthcoming in Spring 2022, or a bit later: “Falsifications and Fabrications in the Standard Computational-Linguistics Authorial-Attribution Methods: A Comparison of the Methodology in ‘Unmasking’ with the 28-Tests”. Journal of Information Ethics. Faktorovich (talk) 19:15, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The book is also selfpublished. No, per WP:SPS you are not a "subject-matter expert", the "relevant field" of this WP-article being Shakespeare.
 * Midwest Book Review: "Ever wanted to be a reviewer? Learn how you can become a volunteer reviewer for the Midwest Book Review! We cannot pay volunteers, but volunteers do retain copyright and full ownership of their own reviews." That is WP:USERG. If your new Journal of Information Ethics article says something on-topic for this article, possibly it can be used here, when it's published. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:19, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * If your public talks generate any WP-useful coverage, we can use that coverage. Librarything is WP:USERG.
 * It is quite possible that there is other stuff that should be weeded from this article, see WP:OTHERCONTENT. WP is imperfect, and "you have accepted as sufficient" often means nobody has bothered to check if this is good enough. Wikipedians only notice things they notice. WP:BOLD is the law of the land.
 * That said, I think the Times Record News article can be seen as good enough for this article (reasonable people may disagree), like New Jersey Jewish News it's not selfpublished. I'll add William Percy to this article based on it. That someone has suggested him as a SAQ-candidate is not in itself extraordinary (but WP:DUE also matters), what would be extraordinary is a WP-article stating somewhere something like "In 2021 it was conclusively shown that William Percy is the actual author of most of Shakespeare's tragedies."
 * For the interested, discussions also at Dispute_resolution_noticeboard and Help_desk. Pinging @MarnetteD, @Xover, @Drmies, @Jenhawk777 and @Valereee if you feel like having an opinion. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:55, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Looks like a good source summary. If the topic of the article was theories that have been discussed in the scholarly community, the Times Record News wouldn't cut it as a source, but it seems to be independent so I agree that it can be used to verify the existence of the theory about Percy. The other authors proposed as the "real" Shakespeare are all sourced to the SPS, so those shouldn't be included. The Journal of Information Ethics article is called "Publishers and Hack Writers: Signs of Collaborative Writing in the "Defoe" Canon" and doesn't mention Shakespeare. --bonadea contributions talk 12:39, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Please don't be insulted that I forgot to ping you. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not quite that touchy :-) --bonadea contributions talk 12:46, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Svenskarna äro ett beskedligt folk. Percy added. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:08, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * If you read the Times Record News article you have accepted as a credible source, it says: "Anna Faktorovich says her computational-linguistics authorial-attribution method has revealed that six men: William Percy (son of the assassinated 8th Earl of Northumberland), Ben Jonson, Richard Verstegan (exiled Catholic publisher), Josuah Sylvester (official court poet), Gabriel Harvey (Cambridge rhetoric professor) and William Byrd (music/poetry publishing monopoly patent holder)—wrote all of the tested literature." This points out that my BRRAM series credits the 284 texts I tested from the Renaissance to these various ghostwriters. The article specifies that Percy is responsible for most of "Shakespeare's" tragedies; thus, the entries I added for Sylvester, Harvey and Byrd for other "Shakespeare" texts to the "Shakespeare Candidates" page are necessary to create an accurate credit. The "WP:DUE" or due-weight cannot be used to discredit 3 of my attributions, while choosing to credit only Percy, as all of these are given with equal certainty in my BRRAM. There are 698 pages in Volumes 1-2 of BRRAM that support my conclusions with overwhelming evidence, whereas the New Jersey Jewish News article seems to be referring to vague ideas about Judaism in authorship and is not a computational-linguistic study with concrete evidence. Most of the candidates listed are cited only with the scholarly books where these attributions were made, and the only difference between these other books and my books is that mine were published with an independent press (Anaphora Literary Press) and not by one of the insider academic presses. My edit did not add this line: "In 2021 it was conclusively shown that William Percy is the actual author of most of Shakespeare's tragedies." My edits were a re-wording of what another Wikipedia editor had already said about my findings; I did not word any of the candidates I added as being any more credible than any of the other candidates that were previously listed on this page. Faktorovich (talk) 19:36, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Per Drmies and Jenhawk777, I'm ok with skipping Times Record News too, it's not that great, we can wait for better. TRN stated "applied it to 284 texts including all of William Shakespeare’s plays. ... has revealed that six men ... wrote all of the tested literature." That language doesn't make it clear who is supposed to have written what. Percy gets more text later. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:30, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I find it very difficult, with the wall of text here and an entire internet, to properly assess whether the Faktorovich book should be cited here. It is self-published; the author is the editor in chief of the press. Adding an Amazon link is of course a no-no, and it adds to the impression that we have COI/promotional editing here.Way too much here is as clear as mud--I can't find a decent, regular CV, evidence of continued academic employment, reviews of past publications (like Radical Agrarian Economics: Wendell Berry and Beyond) in peer-reviewed academic journals. The Google Scholar results are replete with entries from a journal that is run by the subject. The two books mentioned in the Amazon blurb, The Formulas of Popular Fiction and Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson are published by McFarland, whose reputation is, how do I put it, not consistently reported as high, and JSTOR reports no reviews (only mentions as having been published).I'm not a Shakespeare expert, and it may be that there are dedicated journal that discuss the 2021 book, but of course it's only 2022, but really, so far I don't see why this book should be cited. The basic fact of "Independently published" already discredits it. So it might be too early--but as long as it's too early, why cite it? I don't think an article from a local newspaper is enough to bring it in via the backdoor, if you will, and I really don't like the whiff of promotional editing. Drmies (talk) 16:28, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with everything Drmies said. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:52, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * All of the bibliographic entries on this "Shakespeare Candidate" page have purchase links such as, https://books.google.com/books?id=hh5pV-G-XtoC, https://books.google.com/books?id=DdjhN1wO6tYC, and https://books.google.com/books?id=Uo8XAwAAQBAJ&q=science+of+shakespeare#v=snippet&q=science%20of%20shakespeare&f=false. All of these links are "COI/promotional", if a link to my book on Amazon is this. If you don't want to add a purchase link specifically and only for my book, you can link to the free website (https://github.com/faktorovich/Attribution) where I provided the data that supports my attributions, including this specific table that explains the structural and linguistic distinctions between the "Shakespeare" texts: https://github.com/faktorovich/Attribution/blob/master/Shakespeare%20-%20Data%20Table%20-%20Structural%20Elements%20in%20Shakespeare%20-%2010-3-2020.xlsx. I don't know why Google Books has only added around half of the 14 volumes in the BRRAM series (including Hamlet: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hamlet/EGzVzgEACAAJ?hl=en and Thirsty Arabia: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Thirsty_Arabia/CDLNzgEACAAJ?hl=en), but not the other half including Volumes 1-2 that include the central scholarly study. You can add the link to the "Shakespeare"-bylined Hamlet or Percy's self-attributed The Thirsty Arabia instead of linking to Volumes 1-2: Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus; I include sections in both of these two play translations where I explain how Percy's style differs from Jonson's, Byrd's, Harvey's and Sylvester's, so these can also be used as sources for the other candidates.
 * My latest CV is in my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-faktorovich-6063812b/detail/overlay-view/urn:li:fsd_profileTreasuryMedia:(ACoAAAZIpiYB9FNnThC8_mPts2SFYWgsZgqI0mk,1635481008618)/ I am self-employed as the publisher of Anaphora Literary Press; I have been running this company since 2009; would you ask the Director of Penguin/Random House if he/she was also recently employed in academia? I did work in academia for over 4 years, but I don't plan on returning to teaching in the coming couple of years. I'm an independent researcher - by not having to teach, I have the free time to perform the type of research that has resulted in the 14 volumes in BRRAM so far and around 14 more volumes are forthcoming in a year or so.
 * My Google Scholar citations for my McFarland books include citations in a Rowman & Littlefield book (https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wuh3DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=2ZvH2eZ5iz&sig=_7-Qy43xqanLP_wLGesFLklWxMs#v=onepage&q&f=false), in a scholarly article on JStor (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26636727) and a Bristol University dissertation (https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/248917271/Final_Copy_2020_05_12_Mercer_L_PhD_Redacted.pdf) among others. Faktorovich (talk) 20:03, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The moment a Google Books link is deemed to be the same as an Amazon link is really the moment where...no, I'll stop here. I have to run anyway. Drmies (talk) 20:06, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I have published Anaphora Literary Press books by different authors both on the Google Books platform and the Amazon platform; the two are rivals and as in this case occasionally don't distribute all of the books created on the other platform. Both of these make money by selling books published by themselves or by other book printers/ distributors. Both include LookInside features. And in most other ways there is no practical difference between a Google Books and an Amazon link. I would be delighted to debate this point if you can run back in to continue the argument. Faktorovich (talk) 20:22, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, here is the Google Books entry to an OUP book by Gary Taylor about Shakespeare. I don't see a "Buy Me" link, which is the essence of Amazon. Sorry, but this is silly. As for the Director of Penguin, I don't think the Director of Penguin selfpublished a book that they demand should be treated as an academic publication. All these links, all these citations, they can not substitute for what really matters: independent reliable sources that argue that a book, an article, a publishing press, an academic is an expert in the field. And really, we don't, for instance, use dissertations as reliable sources here, nor do we accept the results of Google searches as evidence of notability. Drmies (talk) 21:50, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for inviting me. This is a tough conversation to follow after the fact, even with it all laid out. What's going on? I did add someone to this list a while back, but the circumstances escape me. We're trying to decide if enough people have made the claim that he was Shakespeare?
 * I'll admit I find the whole question funny because, no matter how many "notable" claims we have that someone else was Shakespeare, Shakespeare's still gonna be Shakespeare. Anyway, if there's something concrete I can do to help, please let me know.Thmazing (talk) 21:46, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Most Google Books entries (like this one: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Shakespeare/UeyVG8e9LMwC?hl=en&gbpv=0) include a "Get book" section at the bottom that include links to the different stores where the book is available for purchase, just like Amazon provides links to the different booksellers who are selling the title. Instead, the link you provide (https://books.google.com/books?id=LBDxDQAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=oup+tayler+shakespeare&source=gbs_navlinks_s) includes links to "New Oxford Shakespeare" and to the authors; when you follow these links, you are taken to Google "bibliogroup:"New Oxford Shakespeare"", and then you can choose the "Shopping" tab to see the available booksellers for this title. There is absolutely nothing uniquely less commercial about the Google Books platform vs. Amazon; Amazon is simply more appealing to users, and so more books are sold on Amazon.
 * You clearly did not read my response regarding author-publishers. Again, many top publishers are also authors (Dickens, Scott, Woolf - who ran some of the biggest presses in their countries during their time). "Demand should be treated as an academic publication"? "Academic" is defined as: "relating to education and scholarship" and "(of an art form) conventional, especially in an idealized or excessively formal way." You have not read my BRRAM series, so how can you discern it is not scholarly, or excessively formal? I would be delighted to email a link to review copies to all 14 volumes of the series to you, so you can ascertain if it is indeed academic, if you have doubts about this.
 * You are deliberately and maliciously refusing to consider the 34 citations of my work in various insider academic books (including at least one published by Cambridge University Press) listed on Google Scholar. Dissertations are books written by graduate students just before or after they are employed as Assistant Professors, and since many only publish a single book via this dissertation and only publish smaller articles afterwards; disqualifying all dissertations as an inferior form of scholarship is irrational. And you seem to not know what "Google Scholar" means, or that it is a site that collects citations and measures the h-index for scholars; these are precisely how academia measures the relative status and value of scholars; the higher the h-index the more valued the scholar's research; mine is 3, which does qualify me as an expert, as most scholars are never cited at all.
 * And BRRAM proves beyond doubt that "Shakespeare" was not a real person, but rather merely a pseudonym used by the Workshop in business transactions. Part of the proof is in the handwriting analysis, which you can see for free in this file on GitHub: https://github.com/faktorovich/Attribution/blob/master/Illustrations%20of%20Handwriting%20Styles%20-%20Percy%2C%20Sylvester%20and%20Harvey%20-%2011-29-2021.docx Faktorovich (talk) 23:14, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

 * OK. Amazon is NOT the same as Google Books. That new version may have links to go to booksellers, but Amazon IS the bookseller. Of course that is different. Author-publishers, what? How is that relevant? Yes, Sir Walter Scott was an author, and had a stake in the publishing company that then went bankrupt. I read about a dozen of his novels, with great pleasure. He has nothing to do with you. Yes, I know what a dissertation is. I wrote one myself, and I am not going to cite it here. You keep repeating the value of Google Scholar, and I keep telling you this: it is only in exceptional cases that we are going to sit around on a talk page and discuss the h-index of someone who has a long history of self-promotion. Your last paragraph, though, is most telling; you've been informed of the discretionary sanctions that can be issued by administrators for disruption in the area of Shakespeare authorship. So trying to promote your books, your literary journal, and your publishing company while possibly being disruptive in another sense as well, that may well be considered disruptive. Please don't ping me anymore--thank you. Drmies (talk) 23:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * "Drmies" does not specify either his real name or if he completed any graduate degree or dissertation on his profile, so it is inappropriate for him to claim his unproven degree means he can discredit my documented degrees.
 * I did not claim Amazon = Google Books; this would be an absurd argument; these are obviously two different companies. What I argued is that Google Books is indeed also a "bookseller" just like Amazon; I know this because I created over 200 Google ebook editions with Google Books for different writers with Anaphora Literary Press. For example, you can go to this page (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/xmTSCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-5Yybm9P1AhXzmGoFHWEqAPgQ8fIDegQIAhAI) - under "Get book", "BUY DIGITAL", "Google Play Books", you can purchase one of the titles I published with Anaphora (by a lawyer called Lynn Clarke) for $2.51. It is incredible that I have to defend this simple point, and that you don't believe a publisher with over 300 released book titles would know if Google Books sells books or not. Amazon's book printing platform is also not called "Amazon", but rather "KDP". And both Google Books and Amazon sell books they print themselves and that others printers print etc. You don't know the term "author-publisher"? It's irrelevant that some of the best authors in world-history published their best books with their own publishing companies?
 * This is a case where no matter what argument I raise (even when it's an absolute statement of fact), you feel compelled to counter it. My dissertation had a major section that was all about Sir Walter Scott (as well as my author-publishers book); so, how can Scott have nothing to do with me, an author-publisher? You either have to "sit around" and figure out what the h-index and Google Scholar citation listings are, or you cannot argue that I or anybody else is not technically an "expert" in any given field. If you do not understand or care to understand what technically defines somebody as an "expert"; then, your opinion should not have weight in disqualifying somebody who is presenting evidence of being an expert.
 * I have no idea what you are trying to say by this: "you've been informed of the discretionary sanctions that can be issued by administrators for disruption in the area of Shakespeare authorship." Administrators at Wikipedia can sanction scholars who argue the current "Shakespeare authorship" attributions are incorrect?
 * I have proven that I am an expert, that my research on this subject has been cited, covered in scholarly publications besides by own, and I have countered the various other points that have been raised. But I did not need to do any of this, as my edits yesterday were simply bibliographic and factual and corrected errors Thmazing had made when he/she made the initial entry for Percy and my BRRAM study a month earlier. The current version of the "Shakespeare Candidates" page now correctly notes that BRRAM credits Percy with most of the "Shakespeare" tragedies, but it fails to include citations for Byrd, Harvey, and Sylvester for the "Shakespeare" texts I attribute to them in Volumes 1-2 of BRRAM. The current version also fails to properly cite the name of the book where these attributions appeared: Faktorovich, Anna (2021). Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus. Anaphora Literary Press. ISBN 979-8-49958-765-2. These omissions are not a matter of self-publicizing or not (since Thmazing already incorrectly cited my research), but rather a failure to properly cite who made the attribution to Percy; citing the article in Wichita suggests the journalist who wrote that article was the scholar who made the attribution, and not the author of the 14-volumes in BRRAM (me). On your "Shakespeare Candidates" page, there are no other instances where a book has been published entirely dedicated to one of these candidate attributions, but is not cited in the bibliography; so you are opting to censor and exclude only my scholarship. Faktorovich (talk) 01:06, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:BLUDGEON. You have added 26,681 bytes to this talkpage in a short while and few people will have the inclination to read it. I know I don't, but that's me. Consider that none of the several editors that have responded to you here and at the helpdesk have expressed the opinion that your book is a good idea to add at this point. That may change if it (your SAQ-ideas in general) gets any commentary in WP:RS, but it's unlikely to change without it. WP:TOOSOON is about making an article, but the spirit applies. Who knows, in time it could appear at Shakespeare_authorship_question. But now is not the time.
 * Like Anne Hathaway said in The Dreaming: Waking Hours: "I'm afraid this house [where all the SAQ-candidates lived] is always a little crowded, but somehow we always find room for one more."Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:50, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * "To falsely accuse someone of bludgeoning is considered incivil, and should be avoided." I have not added a single byte more to this discussion than has been necessary to respond to the objections you have raised and have thus asked me to address to defend the simple bibliographic edit I attempted to make, but you blocked.
 * You have already added a citation to my "book" by adding the Percy candidate listing, you simply have failed to properly cite it with the standard format required by Wikipedia and is standard for all other candidates on this page; instead of citing the "book" itself, you have cited an article about it as if the article made this claim; this is a scholarly/editorial error that you are refusing to correct. You yourself have acknowledged that the Wichita paper is a "reliable source", so there has been as much "commentary" about my piece as about the Jewish newspaper-cited idea. And you have left my Percy candidate listing, and just failed to list the other candidates I credit with "Shakespeare" texts (Byrd, Sylvester and Harvey); I have made all of these claims in a single book, so Percy can not be on-time, while the other three candidates are "too-soon". For example, your The Dreaming: Waking Hours quote refers to a project created in 2020. So, is 2020 not-too-soon, whereas 2021 is too-soon? The simple point is that with 651 comments about BRRAM's findings in a LibraryThing discussion and other coverage, my research was noticed by one of your editors, Thmazing, who cited it (deeming it to be soon-enough), but just did not read my entire 698-page book, so he did not notice that I attributed 5 different ghostwriters with "Shakespeare" texts, and not only Percy. I am attempting to make simple rational bibliographic edits to correct this, and you guys have been raising irrational objects regarding Google Books vs. Amazon, and after I have replied to these objections rationally, you are claiming to be refusing to read any of my replies because answering your questions required me too write too many words. This is unfair and clearly requires a third-party opinion to resolve this dispute. The rational approach from an editor who is interested in solving the "Shakespeare" authorship question, would be to ask me for a free review pdf set of copies for BRRAM (which I have offered to send to anybody interested), to read the evidence (or at least to look at the handwriting sample cross-byline matches in the GitHub file I linked to earlier), and then decide for yourself if the evidence is substantial enough for all of the candidates I offer or only one of them. Faktorovich (talk) 20:09, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Btw, when you feel enough has been said and done in this thread, you can, if you want, request an independent closure of the discussion at WP:Closure requests. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:09, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Also, you stated above "And BRRAM proves beyond doubt that "Shakespeare" was not a real person, but rather merely a pseudonym used by the Workshop in business transactions." I hope you see that if your intent is to get any of that into any WP-article, WP:EXTRAORDINARY applies, to put it very very very mildly? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:26, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I have written/published 14 books in BRRAM so far, and each page offers "multiple high-quality sources"; Volumes 1-2 includes a forensic accounting investigation, a handwriting analysis, documentary records that confirm points (such as that Percy's brother's invested in his "Shakespeare"-bylined plays and that William and Henry borrowed the funds in 1593 that were then invested under the "Shakespeare" and other pseudonyms into the London theaters/troupes), with confessions of ghostwriting/pseudonym usage, and proof that the current attributions are irrational and based on minor echoes between texts without seeing the broader similarities between texts across the British Renaissance. As you criticize the ability of my research to necessitate you to edit the rest of this "Candidates" page, you haven't asked yourself if maybe reading my research for yourself is a good idea? I am continuing to offer free review copies - to be delivered the second you ask for them - just email me. My intent is to correct current errors in the attribution of British literature, and since Wikipedia is a first-stop even for top-researchers in this field, this is the place that is uniquely important to make edits in. If you agree, just take a look at the evidence, and not in the few words that can be posted in this discussion without apparently reaching an unspecified word-limit. Faktorovich (talk) 20:22, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Thmazing, welcome. In short, you added this, cited to a selfpublished book or website. User:Faktorovich, the author of said book or website, then expanded on that, and then I removed all of it per WP:SPS etc. Faktorovich objects. A lot. Shakespeare (even the obscure sub-topic of SAQ) is well covered in all kinds of WP:RS, so selfpublished stuff seems rather unnecessary. If you have any comment/opinion on this, feel free to let us know. Yep, that is funny. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear @Thmazing, In my short, you cited my author-published website (https://anaphoraliterary.com/attribution). I edited your citation by changing the reference to the website to a reference to my author-published (this term distinguishes publishers who publish hundreds of other authors in addition to themselves, as I have done with Anaphora) book where this candidate claim was made, Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus, and by adding listings for the other 3 candidates (Harvey, Byrd and Sylvester) that I credit in this book, who you missed in favor of only Percy. Then, Gråbergs Gråa Sång simply reversed all of my edits, claiming "self-published sources"; however, this Wikipedia rule includes the exception, "established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications"; to prove this exception I have provided citations for 2 scholarly books I published with McFarland, and I've published around a dozen scholarly articles on related subjects in reliable sources (Journal of Information Ethics, etc.) other than my own publishing company over the years, and referred all to Google Scholar, that lists 34 citations of my research by other reliable scholars. When I "complained" (or raised these points), he also removed your initial edit that added a credit to Percy. But when I began to "object", he added back in an edited version of your Percy candidate line, but now with a citation for a "credible" newspaper article that lists not only Percy, but also the deleted candidates (Harvey, Byrd and Sylvester); however, despite the mention of these other candidates in this article Gråbergs Gråa Sång is refusing to add separate candidate listings for them, or to add a credit for or to mention the title of the book where I made these attributions. Yes, a lot of scholars have written about "Shakespeare" and have suggested a lot of alternative candidates; this is why your list is nearing 100 candidates; the difference with my re-attributions is that they are correct and are proven beyond reasonable doubt in BRRAM. Humor is an important part of life, but the truth is more important. So I welcome you, Thmazing, and all others to ask me for free review copies of the series to check this claim for themselves. Faktorovich (talk) 20:57, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Faktorovich, please stop bludgeoning the discussion and stop posting walls of text. It is not constructive, for reasons already explained above and elsewhere. Most of the points you repeat above have already been answered; repeating arguments over and over, when they have been answered, leads nowhere. As for the theory you have proposed concerning the authorship of the works of Shakespeare, that can only be added to this list of theories if it is discussed in independent sources. That's the long and the short of it. If actual peer-reviewed publications (not authored by yourself and not published by your journal) should talk about your hypothesis in the future, then you could propose that it be added to the article, but you yourself should not add your own research, nor any references to it. --bonadea contributions talk 22:42, 28 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Bonadea, please stop attempting to silence me by accusing me of breaking the rules by talking too much. I have only repeated myself in cases where others participating in this discussion have repeated the same objections, as if they failed to read my earlier explanations as to why these these objections are wrong. My objections have not been answered. Instead, they have been: ignored, avoided, misrepresented, or otherwise dismissed without due consideration. For example, you are repeating the notion that my "theories" have not been "discussed in independent sources", when we have already agreed that the Wichita paper and other sources have discussed my theories. And if my "theories" should be added in the future is not under consideration, because they have already been added in the past tense by @Thmazing, and I am simply asking for these entries to be edited to be bibliographically accurate representations of my attribution to the other 3 candidates that have never been mentioned before, and for my book to be cited as the source. I am not attempting to add any other studies I have done on this subject to this page, but rather I am attempting to fix citation errors in your editors misunderstandings of their existing citations of my work. If you are attempting to claim that you have already over-addressed my claims, and I should stop talking about them, you can at least manage to summarize the case as it stands, and not how you wish or imagine it to be. Faktorovich (talk) 02:13, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It's up to you if you want to explore further WP:Dispute resolution. Like I said above, I suggest WP:Closure requests. I recommend you look at this as well: WP:Single-purpose account. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:11, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * we have already agreed that the Wichita paper and other sources have discussed my theories The Wichita newspaper, which is independent and not a SPS, reported on your theory regarding Percy. That's why your theory regarding Percy is included in the list. However, since that paper isn't a scholarly source, it is doubtful whether it should be used – in addition it is a primary source, so I wouldn't be averse to removing it. Thmazing (once again, if you just type a username with an @ sign it doesn't ping the user) added Percy to the list sourced to Anaphora; this was clearly a good-faith mistake of the kind that happens all the time in Wikipedia. It's no big deal, because such things are easy to fix. The mistake here was using Anaphora, which is a self-published source. Neither that, nor your book(s) can be used as sources. Please keep this in mind. When the mistake was discovered, it was fixed – and the fix was not your adding your book as a reference, but Gråbergssång's replacing the SPS with an independent source. --bonadea contributions talk 16:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Bonadea Yup, there's no more to add, I think. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:01, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, hope springs eternal, or something... --bonadea contributions talk 16:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh well. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:30, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Sounds like I'll be happy staying out of this. Thanks! Thmazing (talk) 16:32, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * We have to get rid of that WP:NOTCOMPULSORY thing at some point. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

2023 break

 * My edits were just reverted, and @Bonadea only commented on my personal talk page, instead of explaining the rejection here. So I am repeating my response here, so the public can find my objections in this public record. It has been a year since I last edited anything on Wikipedia. Since that time, I published the 6 final volumes of my 20-volume British Renaissance Re-Attribution and Modernization series. The objection previously was that the sources I cited were from publications I published with my own Anaphora Literary Press. The 3 new sources I added as citations are all from other publishers, such as De Gruyter and McFarland. And all of these are peer-reviewed scholarly journals that are respected in academia. Yes, I wrote these articles, but all of the sources cited on this "Shakespeare" page must be to articles/ books written by the people being credited with the re-attributions to these bylines. For over a year you have been incorrectly crediting me with claiming that only Percy was the ghostwriter behind the "Shakespeare" byline. As I have explained previously, and the data here indicates, https://github.com/faktorovich/Attribution, my findings re-assign the texts currently assigned to "Shakespeare" to 5 different ghostwriters, of which Percy is only one. Somebody else has previously credited Jonson as a potential "Shakespeare", but nobody has previously credited Gabriel Harvey, William Byrd or Josuah Sylvester. An editor needs to actually take a look at the findings I explain in BRRAM and on its site: https://anaphoraliterary.com/attribution and edit this page so that it correctly credits my attribution claims. There was no single writer called "Shakespeare", but rather it was a pseudonym that was shared by different ghostwriters, or anonymous texts have been previously mis-assigned to "Shakespeare". The idea that there was any "true" single author who "was" "Shakespeare" is absurd, and is contracted by the data I provide on the before-cited GitHub page. So why don't you, or any other editor of Wikipedia email me at director@anaphoraliterary.com and I'll forward a free link to the volumes in BRRAM or copies of the scholarly articles, so that you can finally understand my findings and cite my scholarly articles or the BRRAM series; thus, it would not be I myself making the edit, but rather anybody else. Since one of your editors has added my Percy assignment, it would be only rational that this editor or another editor who edits this page would want to understand the research findings better to make them clear to the public. The citations I made in this round are entirely different from those I made last time, as I added three peer-reviewed articles. It appears that you have not reviewed what changes I actually made, before assuming I had just repeated my previous citations. I do not believe Wikipedia has any policy against all self-citations, as experts in fields are allowed to cite themselves; and as somebody who has published several scholarly articles and books; I am indeed, by definition, an expert in this field. Faktorovich (talk) 19:57, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Bonadea, hope you are well. Ignoring the WP:COI, WP:SELFCITE, WP:TEXTWALL and WP:SPA aspects atm, are the sources added at selfpublished? Ping to @WhatamIdoing if you're interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:19, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping. Faktorovich added three new author claims (Byrd, Harvey, and Sylvester) and three sources.
 * The Journal of Information Ethics source (from 2022, not 2021 like the citation said) mentions none of the three authors, so we can discount that one without going into its basic lack of credibility.
 * East-West Cultural Passage (published in 2022, not 2023) is supposed to support the claim that she has attributed Shakespeare texts to Byrd. Shakespeare is not mentioned in the article, so again that's not a source that is relevant here.
 * The Critical Survey source in fact published in issue 3, 2022, and not in "spring". The source is not used in any of the citations, but I'm guessing that Faktorovich intended for it to support the Gabriel Harvey claim. (She mentions the publication in the list entry, with a citation to the Journal of Information Ethics, but that might just be sloppy editing.) I'm not able to access that issue of Critical Survey (it's embargoed for a year after publication); it may or may not mention the claim about Harvey, which may or may not be the claim Faktorovich actually wanted it to support...


 * So, ignoring the multiple errors in the citations, there are two non-sources and one possible source for the fact that she has made (one of) these claims. --bonadea contributions talk 11:23, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for looking into it. Getting SAQ-stuff into independent (of her) academic publications seemed something of an accomplishment, though of course it happens. We could look into changing the listicle's Neville-cite to something independent, should be do-able. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Request for comment on Author-Publishers, Bibliographic Precision, Dismission without Research, Definition of "Expert", Amazon vs Google Books, Self-Citation vs Citation-Correction for Self
Should Author-Publishers be distinguished from self-publishers; should we avoid dismissing scholarly texts with new ideas without first reading them; and should the definition of "expert" be specified with measurable parameters; and should self-citation be distinguished from citation-correction of a citation made by somebody else of one's own research? Faktorovich (talk) 18:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Several issues were raised but unresolved in the discussion so far on this talk-page (about "Shakespeare Candidates"), which I hope will benefit from being addressed by the larger community of editors on Wikipedia. The following is a summary of the main topics I hope to receive comments on; I discussed these in detail previously.
 * Author-Publishers: There has to be a clear distinction in Wikipedia's policies between author-publishers and self-publishers. Dickens, Scott, Woolf and most of the world's best writers across the history of publishing operated publishing companies of their own (Woolf's "Room of One's Own" is not merely about having space to write, but also having the means to publish one's own work without censorship from outsiders). An author-publisher publishes works by dozens or hundreds of different authors, as well as publishing themselves; whereas a self-published author only publishes their own work. While some projects benefit from being published by somebody other than the author, any publication by somebody other than yourself involves a process of selection that can be biased by commercial or political interests that are not in the interest of the majority of a society. For example, a publisher can be sponsored by a political party, or by a food-manufacturing company, and these sponsorships might bar them from publishing books that argue against this party or corporation. Galileo self-published his ideas on the position of the earth in relationship to the sun (and was also imprisoned for this publication by the Inquisition), and many other history-changing ideas required self-publication as well as prosecution. Cambridge and Oxford University Presses published the first editions of some of the Renaissance texts under discussion in terms of "Shakespeare" candidacy, so they are the most biased publishers imaginable on this subject, so trusting them as "reliable", while dismissing independent newly-founded publishers as unreliable is irrational. There are a lot of bad self-published books out there, but also a lot of bad publisher-published books; each text has to be judged on the merit of its interior and not merely on the name of its publisher.
 * Bibliographic Precision: The edits I proposed at the onset a few days ago were very simple and logically necessary bibliographic adjustments that if viewed without bias should not have generated any objections. What about these edit-areas can possibly be debatable? 1. The scholarly book/ article where the research is fully explained should be cited first, and not either the website where this book is summarized, or an article in a newspaper where it is mentioned (websites, and newspaper coverage are only meant as supplementary citations to be made if there is room for additional info). This is how scholarship must be cited in scholarly research, as the point is to give the publication details of the original source so that future researchers can look up to read the full study. 2. If a new study gives credit, for example, to 4 new "Shakespeare" candidates, all 4 should be listed if any 1 of them has been chosen to be listed with a citation to this study. Biased exclusion of some findings is a falsehood in scientific terms. The broader rule here is that excluding any major chunk of the findings and presenting only a fragment leads to the public's misunderstanding of the research. For example, if it was a study that discovered 4 new species of birds, but only 1 of these species was cited on a list of "New Bird Species", this would be irrational; an attempt by the original author to correct this error by adding the other 3 species he/she named should not generated an editorial reversal on Wikipedia.
 * Dismission without Research: Wikipedia's editors should have an innate interest in furthering their own and others' knowledge. While it is fine to cite some books without reading them closely, when a new book overturns the conclusions of a specific Wikipedia article. At least somebody editing this article should actually read the inside of the book in question before dismissing it as unable to meet the "extraordinary"-claims standard. The only way to determine if a claim is proven is by reading the evidence, and not by guessing what the evidence is, and dismissing it based on one's own assumptions.
 * Definition of the term "Expert": There have to be some broadly accepted on Wikipedia definition of the ingredients it takes to be a "subject-expert". These ingredients can be: PhD/another terminal degree, number/type of books/articles published, h-index, Google Scholar # of citations of one's research. The ingredients should not include if a researcher is famous or has been puffed in the "Guardian" or on the Food Network; mass-media press coverage and even a lot of pufferies of one's research in scholarly publications is a sign of a writer who has spent a lot of money on a public relations firm, and not of a higher quality of the research. All sorts of bad ideas are popular, or heavily discussed in the press. If other researchers rely on any researchers work by citing it in their own research, this is a true measure that the research is helping the progress of knowledge.
 * Amazon vs Google Books: There seems to be a pattern of preferring Google Books links over Amazon links on this "Shakespeare Candidates" page, and so perhaps across Wikipedia. Why? Amazon and Google Books both have book publishing/printing branches (KDP/ Google Play), and they both are also booksellers not only for their own books, but also for other publishers. The availability of an Amazon link, but the absence of a Google Books link therefore cannot be used to exclude a book from being cited, or from being linked to the place where more information and a purchase link to it can be found.
 * Self-Citation vs Citation-Correction for Self: There obviously need to be rules against researchers running through Wikipedia to add citations only for their own books to all sorts of articles. But if a study has already been cited by another editor, but in a manner that misunderstands the findings, there cannot be any rule against the cited researcher stepping in to correct the citation that refers to themselves. Academic journals call this redaction, or correction, or responses. If the edits are bibliographic or simple corrections of typos or major points being misunderstood, these should not trigger automatic reversals on Wikipedia. If a subject-expert can make corrections regarding books he/she and others wrote in their field; then, any researcher who has already been cited (though incorrectly) is by this very citation a subject-expert and should be able to correct any misunderstandings of their research. Faktorovich (talk) 18:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * what is your brief and neutral statement? At over 7,000 bytes, the statement above (from the tag to the next timestamp) is much too long for  to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at Requests for comment/Language and linguistics. The RfC may also not be publicised through WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:10, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * brief and neutral statement: Should Author-Publishers be distinguished from self-publishers; should we avoid dismissing scholarly texts with new ideas without first reading them; and should the definition of "expert" be specified with measurable parameters; and should self-citation be distinguished from citation-correction of a citation made by somebody else of one's own research? Faktorovich (talk) 00:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It needs to be the first thing after the tag. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:20, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It looks like you fixed it. Let me know if there is anything else I should fix. Faktorovich (talk) 00:23, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, is what Legobot did as a result of my edit. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 07:58, 30 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment. This appears to be a general question in regard to Wikipedia policy regarding the use of self-published scholarly works, rather than one specifically involving this article. Accordingly, it is misplaced. Wikipedia policy on such matters cannot be overridden by RfCs on the talk page of a single article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:09, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Please inform me where I should place a Wikipedia policy rfc of this nature, and I would be delighted to place it there. Faktorovich (talk) 16:12, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The appropriate place to propose changes to Wikipedia policy is generally the talk page for the relevant policy (Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources would probably be most appropriate for at least some of the points you raise). I would caution however that you are going to get absolutely nowhere with what appear to be fundamental changes to said policy unless you can (a) give a clear indication of what specific changes in policy you are proposing (i.e. changes to existing wording, new clauses etc), and (b) make a concrete argument as to why such changes would be of benefit to Wikipedia as a whole. To do the latter it will of course be necessary to demonstrate that you understand existing policy, and can frame any proposals around that, rather than over the specifics of a debate over whether and how your own works should be discussed in one particular article. It isn't that uncommon for newcomers, having run into problems with policies and guidelines, to seek solutions which involve revising them. It is almost unheard of however for them to succeed. There is just too much resistance to change here for anyone who has little experience of the way everything works to win such arguments. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:03, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, I re-posted an edited version of these questions at "Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources". I look forward to seeing some comments in response there. Faktorovich (talk) 04:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Clearly the advice I gave above went unheeded. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment - Withdrawing this RFC and trying again might be a good idea. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:13, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment - Withdrawing this RFC and not trying again might be an ever better idea. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:13, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * There is a duplicate of this at WT:RS, which is a better place, so I'm pulling the tag. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Debugging Shakespeare
Removed at. Per, very WP:SPS. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Gråbergs Gråa Sång ,
 * I notice that you have removed a reference to the book "Debugging Shakespeare" (ISBN: 978-9-69-289258-2) written by myself (970+ pages).
 * I am curious to know why you did that?
 * Are you suggesting that this book is somehow not relevant to the authorship issue (I assume you haven't read it). Are you also aware that this isn't the only book that I have written on the subject (there are four others, including "The bloody thumbprint of a genius...", "SALT, Salamanders and Shakespeare: Why Shakespeare was born in Nantwich, Cheshire not Stratford-Upon-Avon", "Shakespeare, Sheep and EWERs: Learn how the Bard identified his manuscripts with a watermark of a ewer and liberally used many homophones of ewer (UR-HAMLET etc)" (all available on Amazon/kindle) Decimus Erasmus (talk) 09:00, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Like I said above, I removed it per WP:SPS. You are quite correct I haven't read your book, I just looked for the publisher.
 * Per WP-philosophy, a list like this doesn't include something because it exists. Independent of, in this case you, WP:RS need to have noticed it and bothered to write something about it. Wikipedia is not about YOU may be of help. If you have something similar to Diplomat 'was real Shakespeare', then there is an argument for inclusion. Since, per what you added to the article, your idea is from this year, that may take some time. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:50, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * As it happens, for the example you chose, Henry Neville was "just another alias" of the true Bard and that is true of most, if not all, of the names previously put forward as "alternative authors". The difference here is that this particular individual, William Dakin(s), is the man himself and my book explains at length why this is so. Of course, it will be necessary for Mark Rylance (et al) to read it first and recognise the fact. He might then mention it to the BBC!
 * If Einstein had not claimed that his theory was better than Sir Isaac Newton's theory, we would not now have mobile phones that tell us where precisely we are located on earth and moonshots would miss the moon. Decimus Erasmus (talk) 11:30, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It doesn't have to be Rylance/BBC, Stanley Wells/OUP would be even better. But may take longer. And if Rylance does speak on your ideas, Ben Elton might include them in the next series of Upstart Crow. Have a nice Midsummer! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:42, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Fictional!?
@Vipavipa I was going to remove this, but afaict, the source checks out, interesting find. Consider adding something on who believed it if possible, compare Zubayr bin William. Reminds me of Rhinogradentia. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:33, 16 February 2024 (UTC)