Talk:Michael Asher (explorer)

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Talk:Michael Asher (explorer)

Mike your life is incredible —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.152.108 (talk) 09:01, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Improvements

 * "Material about living persons added to any Wikipedia page must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality, and avoidance of original research."

The article is poorly sourced and somewhat promotional. Much of the ref.s are what the subject writes about himself; see Verifiability. Many of the edits are by un-registered accounts (IP addresses) with minimal edits on other pages which suggest possible Conflicts of Interest. Nedrutland (talk) 09:03, 11 October 2021 (UTC)


 * As above, many citations refer to what the subject writes about himself, when they should be independent of the subject ('third party'). Asher has had some prominence in de-bunking other writers' claims (Lawrence and the Bravo Two Zero writers) which should indicate the dangers of relying on first-party accounts.


 * Also, many citations use 'bare URLs';
 * "A 'bare URL' is a URL cited as a reference for some information in an article without any accompanying information about the linked page. In other words, it is just the text out of the URL bar of a web browser copied and pasted into the Wiki text, inserted between tags or simply provided as an external link, without title, author, date, or any of the usual information necessary for a bibliographic citation or helping to fix external links that no longer work because the linked web pages or complete websites disappear, change their content, or move without HTML redirection—so-called link rot."


 * Both these issues should be tackled before the tags ('refimprove' and 'bareurls') are removed.
 * Thank you. Nedrutland (talk) 07:20, 16 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Each of the 'bare URLs' I have checked geolocate to Nairobi (where the subject lives) which suggest a connection to Asher. (Plus, in May and June 2021, there were edits by 'Michael asher') Nedrutland (talk) 08:03, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Request for additional editorial input
As above, I have concerns about this page; lack of third-party sources, bare URLs and probable conflicts of interest. I am spending a disproportionate share of my editing time on a subject of no particular interest to me, so invite other editors' participation. Nedrutland (talk) 07:56, 18 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I've cleaned up the sources a bit - COI aside, the main problem is the over-reliance on self-published content. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:17, 18 October 2021 (UTC)


 * RFC is not to get people to help improve an article, it's to get opinions from people who haven't been involved with the article. Typically used on article talk pages when there's a dispute/proposal that cannot be resolved by current participants. What you want, I think, is just to leave a message on a relevant WikiProject talk page, or maybe even the talk page of a related article. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 12:30, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. This is not a proper RfC. I've renamed it what it actually is, and will post a notice at WP:BLPN which will hopefully draw the requested additional editorial input.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:34, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I have to ask: how many reliable, independent sources are there? Enough to satisfy notability? If yes, should we just start over based on those sources? Woodroar (talk) 01:11, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, though WP:Notability is the main question, isn't it?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:02, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, or at least the first question. If the subject meets GNG, we can discuss what to do with the article later. Woodroar (talk) Woodroar (talk) 22:46, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Sourcing
I did some extensive flagging of sources. The Kenya Past & Present quotes, which support a large chunk of the article, are from an interview the journal editors did with him (article link here, so they've got real WP:V problems. Also, the journal doesn't look to be peer-reviewed, so I doubt anyone fact-checked his interview claims.BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 19:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)