User talk:Pirateman dan

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. I look forward to your contributions. Again, welcome! Matt (Talk) 04:30, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Joseph Merrick
Hi Danny, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thanks for your comment on my talkpage explaining your play. There are a couple of issues worth thinking about here. There is the question of whether or not the play meets our guidelines for inclusion and should have an article of its own. There is also the question of whether or not it should be mentioned at the Joseph Merrick article.

Firstly, should it have an article of its own? The guidelines we use to determine whether topics should have their own articles, refer to "notability". This has quite a specific meaning here at Wikipedia, so please don't take offence if I (or anyone else) suggests your play isn't "notable"; it's not a judgement on its quality or importance exactly, just how it meets those specific criteria. One of the most important ways oof determining notability is if the topic has had significant coverage in reliable, secondary sources, that are independent of the subject. A good example would be a review of the play in a newspaper. We also have some more topic-specific guidelines such as Notability (films), for films. I'm not sue that we have one for theatrical works/plays, but that might give you some more ideas of what we'd be looking for. If the play has won any major awards, that would probably make it "notable" enough. Now, I haven't looked a great deal into this, but a quick google news search of "Merrick" plus either your or Judy Wolfson's name didn't turn up any results. The ordinary google results did, so I know it exists!, but I'm not sure that we have the "significant coverage in multiple, reliable secondary sources" that we need. If you can find any, of can think of any other way to meet the guidelines, please let me know. Having said all that, if the play is deemed notable, it's really best that you don't create the article yourself. We have a conflict of interest guideline that doesn't forbid you from doing so, but it is strongly discouraged. It would be better to either request an article be started at Requested articles, or if you had the idea for the the content of the article, make a submission at Articles for creation. Please bear in mind all I've said above though, because articles frequently get deleted if they're not thought to meet the notability guidelines, and that can be very discouraging!

Now, as for the Joseph Merrick article! Articles go through various stages of development, and for some articles, it would be acceptable to add little snippets of information, as long as they're backed up by references to reliable sources. However, as articles develop and improve, I suppose we try harder to monitor what is added to the article, to avoid it being swamped by indiscriminate information or trivia. Again, please don't take offence as I'm not referring to your play in particular! As I'm sure you can imagine, there are lots of things that could be inserted into the Joseph Merrick article, such as songs where he has been mentioned. We simply can't list them all. If the song (for example) has an article, it might be appropriate to say that it was inspired by Merrick, but for the article about him, we have to stand back and think, how relevant is this other thing to him? That's why, if you look at the article, there is mention of a major academy award-winning film by a major director (the film being the main reason a lot of people have heard of him), as well as a major award-winning play, and the main biographies of him. There is also a TV movie mentioned, because it was based on that play, but that mention may be removed. At this point, I would not be inclined to include mention of your play here because I don't think it has huge relevance to Merrick himself, or rather, to our understanding of Merrick. I am considering starting an article about the depictions of Merrick, as I think there might be enough material (a whole book on this: Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters). So, it's possible that your play could be mentioned there. Out of interest, you might like to look at Gunpowder plot, which previously contained material about the plot "in popular culture". This has now been moved to Gunpowder Plot in popular culture, and I think this might be an option for Merrick. Anyway, I hope my explanations help, sorry for writing so much! By the way, if you still really don't agree with me not including the play in Merrick's article, please feel free to bring it up on the article talkpage at Talk:Joseph Merrick where other editors may weigh in. Please let me know if you have any questions. Regards, -- Beloved Freak  11:16, 15 November 2010 (UTC)