User talk:Johnebert

Hello
Ive been meaning to fix up your article a bit. Assuming that you are Mr. Ebert, is there anything you think needs fixing? I will try to get references for information in this article, and may trim some unreferenced content. I have read some of your books (and met you at a reading years ago) and am reasonably familiar with this subject area, but anything you can add or request adding thats referencable would help (including associated articles). WP doesnt have very good articles on this material, and too much is unreferenced or overly POV, which isnt necessary, even though its challenging at times to write from a neutral point of view about it. sincerely,Mercurywoodrose (talk) 17:46, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, yes I am Mr. Ebert. There was some biographical information on this page about me that has been deleted I guess because it wasn't referenced. The new book on celebrity culture is coming out on June 1st and it would be nice to have a quote from it on the page. The article doesn't say that I worked for five years as an editor with the Joseph Campbell Foundation and it doesn't say what my influences are: Joseph Campbell, William Irwin Thompson, Marshall McLuhan, Oswald Spengler, Rudolf Steiner, Jean Gebser, et. al. Ideally, it should say something about my work being a cross-pollination of comparative mythology with media studies. And if it could give cross references to my You Tube videos, that would be great. Thanks for your help! Johnebert (talk) 02:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Please read the Wikipedia guidelines on notability and try to ensure that the article in question includes citations establishing the significance of this person (who is yourself!) - this is a general requirement and implies no judgment on your books, which are no doubt quite interesting reads! hgilbert (talk) 22:46, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

What I find "curious" is how under "External Links" on movie pages, such as, for example, The Book of Eli, there are found external links to pages like RottenTomatoes or other movie review sites. I'd be curious to know what privileges these other sites to have links to movies under "External Links" but not sites like "cinemadiscourse.com" which I edit. The taboo on You Tube links I understand, but I don't see any difference between the "validity" of a site like cinemadiscourse and RottenTomatoes or IMDB. What up? Is Wikipedia guilty of a double standard? Or does it just receive financial "contributions" from such "commercial" sites? --Ebert

February 2010
Welcome to Wikipedia. One or more of the external links you added in this edit to the page Being John Malkovich do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. You may wish to read the introduction to editing. Thank you. Uncle Dick (talk) 21:31, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Pretty much the same goes for the link you added to Rudolf Steiner. While interesting, the link is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. hgilbert (talk) 22:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

In fact, all of your edits for today have been reverted. Do not link to your youtube videos, and do not link to your personal website under external links. Darrenhusted (talk) 22:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Interesting authoritarian tone for a site that is supposedly "democratic" in nature. See also my note above regarding the apparent double standard for links on Wikipedia. --Ebert
 * I'm sorry, but if you think Wikipedia is a democracy then you need to read this. The edit which popped on my watch list was this one where you added your own review to the EL of The Book of Eli, which I rolledback. The list of external links has been agreed over a long amount of time and with much discussion (much, much, much discussion) at the film Wikiproject. On your page John David Ebert there is a link to your website, so adding that link to any film articles (particularly as an EL) is self promotion on your part. Film articles have a set format; under EL is is usually the official site (as long as it is live), RT, imdb, BOM, Allmovie and Metacritic. Those sites have been agreed, by consensus within the project. By adding your own review to the EL it would appear to most editors that you were simply trying to move traffic to your own page from a page with a low average of 5,000 viewers. While I have no doubt your reviews are fine they cannot be direct linked from Wikipedia. We receive no money from the sites linked and they receive no uplift in traffic as all links out of Wikipedia have "nofollow tags", meaning they do not register on search engines, and so do not affect rankings. If you want you could try to argue your case at the film project, but you probably will not win. If you want to edit plot summaries or typos then no one will have a problem, as the encyclopaedia is built one edit at a time, but naked attempts to insert links to your YouTube videos (which are not linked for copyright reasons, in most cases) or your own site will be reverted, and continued self promotion will be seen as vandalism. I would suggest any further questions you have about links or linking can be answered at the film project talk page. Darrenhusted (talk) 23:18, 26 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the hard tone of the above; it is always a challenge understanding an existing, complex political system - which is essentially what underlies the content of Wikipedia. There are actually good reasons to accept well-recognized authoritative sources and to ask that a source that is not yet so recognized achieve this recognition outside of Wikipedia before being included here. What lies behind this is a realization that a collection of non-professionals is not in a position to evaluate authors' works. One solution, of course, would be to accept everything, but it turns out that in our modern society that opens a lot of doors most people want to keep closed - imagine every article on Wikipedia expanded 20-fold with everyone's opinions and arguments about these opinions - at that point you have a forum, a blog, anything but an encyclopedia. The alternative solution - the one chosen - is to accept that there already exist several very well-established means of evaluation of works: academic journals, book publishers, media publishers, and so on. These groups are quite expert at what they do, and they are diverse (there are many different journals, diverse publishers, many kinds of media organizations); the path to acceptance leads through their doors. This system is not perfect, but most people agree that it's better than tohu-va-bohu. In any case, the latter already exists - it's called the world-wide-web. hgilbert (talk) 13:03, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

All right, guys, thanks for the info. I appreciate your going into detail on it. --Ebert —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.62.62.234 (talk) 22:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Sockpuppet Investigation
Hello - you have been nominated for a sockpuppet investigation. It is located here. Thanks. BlueSalix (talk) 14:30, 22 January 2014 (UTC)