User talk:PadreIslandAlex

Should I write bio article to expand a Stub from a disambiguation page?

When I seached my family name: “Lechler” on de.Wikipedia (German edition), I found a disambiguation page, with a reference to my father “Jörg Lechler.” His name is also included in another WikiPedia article, in a list of German historians. He was a noted archeologist and author who wrote numerous historical books in the 1930’s, including one that was unfortunately used as propaganda by Hitler. In recent years there have been new publications of some of his books in Germany. There seems to be a renewed interest in him, as my search found him mentioned in several websites in Germany, USA and other countries. Amazon (Germany) has quite a few of his books for sale.

His name is not linked to any Wiki article with biographical information about him. I found a small bio about him on another German website, which referred to him as one of the early pioneers in archeological research of the bronze age. He died over 40 years ago.

Should I write an objective article about his life and his writings? This could be of interest to his readers. Would this be appropriate for a WikiPedia article? I am his sole living relative; this article would be mostly from my memory of conversations with him, and a list of his publications with links to his research at universities and museums. Most of the article would have no “verifiable external sources.”

I do not want to spend time to write and research an article, if it will be deleted for not meeting WikiPedia standards. (I would also have to write it in English, then do a partial translation, and ask Wiki editors to finish the translation, as my German vocabulary is limited.)

What would you advise? Is this worthwhile, or should I leave it alone? (Pleez don't bite the newbie.) PadreIslandAlex (talk) 16:56, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, as long as he meets the notability guidelines, and you have enough reliable sources to back everything up, sure. Just be careful to keep your article neutral, as you have a bit of a conflict of interest (he's your father). Sorry if I'm throwing out links at you, but just take a few minutes to read the first two especially--and then see what you think you should do.  — fetch  ·  comms   17:07, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry to give conflicting advice, but I'm afraid "most of the article would have no verifiable external sources" makes this a non-starter: one of our primary policies is Verifiability, which includes: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth&mdash;whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." Some more advice shortly. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 17:09, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A good way to decide whether an article would be possible would be to consider the advice of an experienced user in User:Uncle G/On notability:
 * "When writing about subjects that are close to you, don't use your own personal knowledge of the subject, and don't cite yourself, your web site, or the subject's web site. Instead, use what is written about the subject by other people, independently, as your sources. Cite those sources in your very first edit.  If you don't have such sources, don't write."
 * See also Amnesia test which explains the same idea. I think that approach will let you decide whether an article meeting our requirements would be possible. You own memory of conversations would not be admissible, because of the policy No original research. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 17:24, 11 June 2010 (UTC)