Talk:Tomasz Schafernaker

Category
I notice he's been placed in the "British People of Polish Descent" category, surely incorrect if he was born in Poland??GiollaUidir (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

He may hold dual nationality, I think his mother is British. 88.17.84.48 (talk) 16:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Gaffes section
I think the section 'Gaffes' should be reconsidered as WP:UNDUE weight. I think this is particularly true in light of the most recent one, raising his middle finger, which seems completely harmless. It is true that the BBC apologized for it, and reported on it. But is it encyclopedic? The other one - referring to the Outer Hebrides as "nowheresville" is probably noteworthy. I'm primarily concerned that the 'gaffes' section is currently about 1/3 of his biography.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:48, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Quite a few of the pieces of information here are unsourced. The one about the outer hebrides for example have no source, his five drivers license attempts and his BBC nickname likewise. It does seem like one aim of the article is to make fun of him - including by adding information that may not be true. Also the leadmentions that he is renowned for his gaffes - the sources do not mention that this is his primary reason for being famous.·Maunus· ƛ · 13:57, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Commended in, citing the effort put in to gain the driving licenCe. --Non entity (talk) 01:50, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Trivia in any article, and especially BLPs, is hard to justify. Collect (talk) 13:58, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Mostly agree, although sourcing isn't really an issue - this can support the "Nowheresville" bit, for example. The question is basically how much weight we want to give things like this. A good idea might be to expand the rest of the article so it's less important, assuming we can find something worth adding. Alzarian16 (talk) 14:05, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Surely Wikikipedia is not going down the path of having a "Notable bloopers" section? If exactly what Schafernaker does in his reports is significant (and if there is a secondary source), the section should be on how Schafernaker presents his reports, and I suppose some amusing items might be mentioned. However, the gossip style of presenting a section on silliness should be ruled out somewhere in WP:NOT. My suggestion would be to remove this section from the article until someone has sufficient WP:DUE material about the style of Schafernaker's reports to write an encyclopedic section. Johnuniq (talk) 01:47, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, Johnuniq. I changed the heading from "Notable errors" to "Notable bloopers" because to meet, an "error" sounds like a serious problem with his work, as opposed to a "blooper" which is cute and funny.  But it is unclear to me that any of this is relevant at all.  I won't remove it yet because I do think there is a case to be made that this is a relevant part of his career - but if that case hasn't been made, and if there hasn't been sufficient additional material added anytime soon - I think it should be removed.
 * I also disagree with his magazine cover being listed under "Personal Life" - it was magazine cover, that isn't personal. I suppose the suggestion might be that he's gay because he appeared on the cover of a gay magazine?  But that hardly makes sense.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:58, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice to see you are taking a hands off approach Mr Wales Wythy (talk) 20:11, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

A new approach
I moved both the magazine cover and the "bloopers" to a section called "Trivia". I'm not super happy with that, but I think it is better. To explain my thinking here.

This man has a career that is, as far as I can tell, quite successful and something he is surely proud of. He runs a risk now of the media turning one gaffe into an obsessive focus on other gaffes, such that things that he does are reported on widely, even if the same thing, done by another anchor, would be ignored as not interesting. I don't think we have to follow the sources blindly down that path - although if it does develop that his entire career is based around gaffes (tv weather forecasters often have fun personas, so that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, I guess) then of course we should report on it thoughtfully.

But for now, a couple of random reports seem too little to make this stuff be 1/3 of his biography.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:03, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that it's better, but I don't like "Trivia" as a section header. Perhaps "Incidents" or something similar would be an improvement. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:05, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I think there is a national issue think here, in the uk such things are part of weather reporters notability even though it is basically trivia. This finger pointing issue was reported all over the British channels and is the kind of thing I don't think the subject would want removing, thats a locals view, I am neutral about its removal.. Off2riorob (talk) 18:18, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree with that too, to an extent. I'm from the UK too, and the most recent incident is the only thing I'd really heard of him for. Typing "Tomasz Schafernaker" into Google offers four suggestions related to these seemingly trivial events, so removing them altogether probably isn't the best idea. How much to cover and how to present them are another matter. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:24, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Google also covers "Batboy" from the Weekly World News - yet somehow I doubt that it meets notability requirements for WP .   BLPs really, really need substantial excision of such stuff.   Major excision of such trivia. Collect (talk) 12:35, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yea, lets take it out, it was only a fleeting issue already long forgotten. The whole trivia section or leave the bare chested comment, it is quite unusual for weathermen to appear on the front of adult magazines. Off2riorob (talk) 12:45, 21 August 2010 (UTC)Off2riorob (talk) 12:44, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, this has now been removed "per talk page" (a month after the discussion finished!). I'm a little concerned at the idea that we're now at the stage of removing verified, neutrally-written information from BLPs purely because it could be taken as negative. We should go where the coverage goes, and the majority of the coverage for this guy relates to these three incidents. In fact, if you remove the sources relating to the "trivia", he would fail WP:BIO because only one is independent, and it doesn't provide significant coverage. By removing the information on anything negative, we're creating a biography that's biased in his favour - which, although obviously better than one biased against him, is still biased. A few sourced sentences about the incidents in the context of his career aren't going to make the article worse IMHO. But apparently I'm in a minority of one in thinking that, so I guess you three have consensus. But I wonder how long it'll be before someone who hasn't read this adds the material back in... Alzarian16 (talk) 17:41, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Personal Life
Is he married? (Coachtripfan (talk) 18:30, 9 September 2013 (UTC))
 * Is he straight? David1776 (talk) 19:52, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Does he dance with the Devil by the pale moonlight? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.10.217.121 (talk) 23:18, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Gay alcoholic
He wasn't hungover - he was still under the influence.92.12.137.113 (talk) 17:54, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Acting career?
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2480102/ describes him as "an actor, known for Years and Years (2019), The Unexplained Files (2013) and UFO Europe: The Untold Stories (2012)". Shouldn't the article say something about this? 2A00:23C8:7B09:FA01:3D47:4725:F187:E6F (talk) 15:42, 9 December 2023 (UTC)