User talk:Ger Apeldoorn

Welcome!

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December 2013
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Willie Lumpkin has been reverted. Your edit here to Willie Lumpkin was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (http://www.allthingsger.blogspot.nl/search/label/Willy%20Lumpkin) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If the external link you inserted or changed was to a blog, forum, free web hosting service, fansite, or similar site (see 'Links to avoid', #11), then please check the information on the external site thoroughly. Note that such sites should probably not be linked to if they contain information that is in violation of the creator's copyright (see Linking to copyrighted works), or they are not written by a recognised, reliable source. Linking to sites that you are involved with is also strongly discouraged (see conflict of interest). If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 22:03, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Welcome
In fact, Ger, I was thrilled to see your name! I've known of your work for years. Welcome!

I've no doubt you'll get the hang of the plain-vanilla, straightforward tone that Wikipedia (like any encyclopedia) takes. For example, we can't say "recently," "now," "currently" and similar words, magazine-style, since the text has to be timeless &mdash; what is "recently" on Dec. 30 won't be "recently" next June.

And optimally (though heaven knows there are a lot of people who edit Wikipedia improperly), we don't make assumptions about, or extrapolations from, the cites we footnote; that's considered original-research. We can say literally no more than what the cited source supports. I'm glad you understand that was the reason for commenting out the Dec. 21 claim until we can find a reliable-source citation that says explicitly it was the last strip. (I'll check Maurice Horn's encyclopedia of comics ... or we can even say something like, "Historian Ger Apeldoorn believes the strip ended on Dec. 21, 1958," though for the reason given below, it's better if someone other than Ger Apeldoorn says it.)

Now normally, personal blogs aren't allowed as sources. However, blogs by recognized, published authorities such as yourself are allowed. I would only caution that Wikipedia frowns on excessive self-citing. A little self-citing generally is OK, since there's no reason to automatically disqualify our own scholarly writings and treat them differently than others'. But citing only ourselves will send up a red flag to other editors and to admins.

If you're citing from a printed source that's not online, don't forget to include the article's title. I noticed that the cite for your article from Hogan's Alley #17 left it out. Also (and this isn't a rule, just good practice), when you cite from a printed source, which often can't readily be looked up, I find it's helpful to future editors to quote the pertinent passage in the footnote.

Now that I'm aware of your blog, I'll be citing it myself. You have a long history of doing important historical research about comics, and I hope I can help you get the hang of Wikipedia! With great regards, Tenebrae (talk) 14:41, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Also, we can't cite forums, comments sections or anything else like that, so I'll need to remove the reference to the Yahoo Timely/Atlas forums. The policy links in the big Welcome box above can explain in more detail. --Tenebrae (talk) 15:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Happy to be here!
I am glad you made this page for me. Or someone did, anyway.

I will use all of your tips in my next entries. I will certainly find the title of the Hogan's Alley article and possibly even add a quote. Itis a problem that a lot of the really good research in this area is done in blogs and yahoo groups. I would suggest that the blogs of Michael Vassallo and Ken Quattro are quotable as well. At least where it's about subjects they have published books and article about as well.

I tried for about a year to get other to contribute stuff from my blog, but all efforts failed. In the end I am the only one who knows where all the strands are and how they connect. I will try and quote others as well as my own blog. But like with the Yahoo group sample you quote, there is no printed quote for the information on Dick Ayers' work files. Now that in itself was not a major point, so I'll let it go. But in other cases I will certainly look to see if I can say something like 'noted Timely-Atlas historian Michael Vassallo has said that artist Dick Ayers' private records show that he worked on T-75 in the week before Joe Maneely's death'.

But any guidance is welcome. Most of the really interesting stuff on my blog is about strips and cartoons no one else has bothered to write about. For instance, I have much to add and/or correct about Alvin Hollingstworth. Rule of thumb here is that I will not try and add starting and ending dates to every newspaper strip I have found. In fact, most of that information can easily be found in Alan Holtz book, which should be at every library anyway. But if there are mistakes or misconceptions I can use those dates to change that. But how do I do that without referring to my own blog, where the actual comics are on view as 'proof'. Worse still, what do I do if I have evidence of Hollingsworth working in partnership with another AA artist (Sargent) on two completely different projects in the late fifties when I haven't even written about it on my blog. Remember, we are talking about stuff I have visual evidence from...!

Anyway, your guidance here is a big bonus and I will get a lot further than I would have done without it. Hey, I can use Lambiek as a reference, can't I? Many of their facts (and scans) come from my blog anyway.

Why bother, you may ask. Well, I started my blog to fill what I see as a palpable hole in both comic book and newspaper strip history. Many comic book historian don't research the fifties enough because they are overly focussed on superheroes. Many newspaper strip historians are of a generation who worship the thirties and forties so much that they neglect the fifties. That way, they idea has emerged that the fifties were a wasteland, while I think they were not. Getting the facts about the fifties out there is my main goal in all my efforts (including my contributions to the Atlas Tales website and the Grand Comics Database).

There may also be artists I would want to create an entry for, like Jack Betts, the talented artist who did so many newspaper advertising strips for Johnstone and Cushing. I have been contacted by his daughter, who told me about his unknown and unfortunate death from a mugging gone wrong in the late fifties.

More later, I am sure.


 * A pleasure, Ger. One quick thing: It's protocol to add a dash and four tildes ( -- ~ ) after a talk-page post. When the post is published, this adds the handle of the user posting it and the time and date.


 * Vasallo, like yourself, Mark Evanier, Blake Bell and others, have written books and articles about comics history, so as far as Wikipedia policies and guidelines go, we can certainly quote from their blogs / websites. We still cannot quote from forums, BBoards or comments sections, though; the reasoning is that there's no way to tell who's really posting ... the best fakes are the ones that look most real.


 * We use the Lambiek Comiclopedia all the time, as well as Jerry Bails' and Hames Ware's Who's Who and, perhaps most invaluably, the Grand Comics Database (to which I also contribute!). Lambiek and the GCD are the two biggest sources for the Alvin Hollingsworth article, so if you and they contradict each other, great care has to be taken to present facts in a balanced way that avoids issues of undue weight and favoring one's one viewpoint. I'm sure that won't be a concern once you get the hang of it! --Tenebrae (talk) 19:27, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

In the case of Alvin Hollingsworth it will be more additions than contradictions. As most cases will be, by the way. As I said, most of the faulty opinions about the fifties are based on a lack of information. I am having a ball here, already looking around to see what I can do. I see that the Gill Fox entry is hugely underwritten. I might get out my issue of Alter Ego and do a completely new piece, using factoids and dates I have found (like his Here Comes The Major strip for the shortlived Family Comics, a presold comic section with all new strips made for supermarkets in California which ran for eleven issues in 1960), using lot of quotes. a dash and four tilds you say, huh? Like this maybe -Ger Apeldoorn (talk) 21:05, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Absolutely, with the signature! See? You're becoming an old hand at this already!


 * Yeah, I guess the last time I touched the Gill Fox article was in 2010, though other editors have been by there since. I think there's a link to the Alter Ego interview with him already in the article, which can be moved up from External links to References. (Do you see how to do multiple references to the same footnote without writing out the footnote multiple times? If not, I'll show you.) One caution: It's generally best to build on / correct what's already in an article rather than do a complete rewrite unilaterally. Trust me on this.


 * Go to it, Ger! --Tenebrae (talk) 23:21, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!
A compliment from one of our premier comics historian means a lot! Great way to start the day! With great regards, Tenebrae (talk) 14:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)