Talk:Shaolin Kempo Karate

Sourcing and photos
Two things:

1. Does anyone have any great information on the early days of SKK when Villari was just putting his system together? It would be great if this was a deep, robust article with good sourcing.

2. Does anybody out there have personal photos from the 60's, 70's or 80's of some of the key players in SKK? It would be great to have pictures of Fred Villari, John Fritz, Mark Grupposo, Dave Boise, Charles Mattera, Jim Brassard, James Bryant, Robert Nohelty etc... from back when they were young and before bad business ripped some of these guys apart.Kurtsayin (talk) 23:42, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

a bit promotional?
I'm a new editor and I have a potential conflict (I practice this style at a competing school) so I don't want to jump right into editing this article. However, I'm a bit concerned about promotion and the way the article revolves around the "Villari's Self Defense Centers" brand - eg the usage of the brand logo as a symbol for the fighting style and the singular focus on Villari's school. Discussion of the system's founder is right and appropriate but the business aspect seems excessive. Also a potential accuracy issue - the passing reference to "United Studios of Self Defense", which indicates that it "later bec[ame]" the Fred Villari school. United Studios of Self Defense still exists as a major Shaolin Kenpo franchise with dozens of studios all over California and in other US states as well. I have little doubt I could find RS on this point - even a quick Google search turns up newspaper references to USSD schools in various states. In contrast, I'm having trouble assessing the total reach of the Villari's schools, but they seem to be predominantly in the northeastern US? Again, a bit promotional to suggest SKK is "primarily" taught by this one school. Lastly, references 3, 9 and 12 to Villari's site appear to be dead links. Jbuatti (talk) 22:10, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree. There's a mixture of dead links, primary sources, and secondary sources of dubious reliability for the purposes of establishing notability.  And most of it has no source at all:  it's just someone's idea of a freeform essay on the topic, from personal knowledge (or wishes).  As for the USSD, that might be matter of the exact scope.  If it's just about the VSDC that'd be fair enough, provided that's made clear, and that they're independently notable.  USSD don't seem to use the exact phrase "Shaolin Kempo Karate", albeit it does seem to be closely related.  But both seem to be essentially substrands of American Kenpo (or Kenpo more broadly), and I'm inclined to think that they should be basically upmerged to there.  109.255.211.6 (talk) 20:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)