User talk:Pturnley

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Peter Turnley
The stuff above is of course mere boilerplate, though well meant. This time, it's a single human (me) communicating.

I guess you're Peter Turnley, and that's why I slapped a warning "Autobiography" template on the result of your re-creation of Peter Turnley. I didn't like to do this, but really I had little choice. The article reads like a press release. By press release standards, it's not particularly puffy, but it's puffy all the same.

Here's a typical chunk of it:


 * Turnley began his now more than thirty years of photography of street scenes in Paris, which resulted in a highly acclaimed book, PARISIANS, published by Abbeville Press in 2001. After graduating from the prestigious Institut D’Etudes Politiques of Paris with a graduate degree in International Relations, he began working as the assistant to the famous French photographer Robert Doisneau in 1981.

Annotated version thereof:


 * Turnley began his now more than thirty years of photography of street scenes in Paris, which resulted in a highly acclaimed -- Who acclaimed it highly, and where? -- book, PARISIANS, published by Abbeville Press in 2001. After graduating from the prestigious -- No, we don't say that places are prestigious, even if they are prestigious. -- Institut D’Etudes Politiques of Paris with a graduate degree in International Relations, he began working as the assistant to the famous -- Same as for "prestigious", above -- French photographer Robert Doisneau in 1981.

Here's a very tentative rewrite:

Turnley began his now more than thirty years of photography of street scenes in Paris, which resulted in the book Parisians, published in 2001 to favorable reviews. After graduating from the Institut d'études politiques of Paris with a graduate degree in International Relations, he began working as the assistant to the photographer Robert Doisneau in 1981.

(Publication details for the book -- publisher, ISBN, etc. -- can go below in the article.)

In principle, anyone could rewrite the article in this way. In practice, however, there's a sorry lack of interest in most photographers among most editors of Wikipedia. I could do it myself, except that I have my hands full with (a) "real life" and (b), while at Wikipedia, an effort to transform the article Jacob Riis from a perfunctory article to an informative and good one. (The article is already fairly long, is now dreadful, and will probably become worse before it becomes better.)

What I could find time to do with Peter Turnley is remove what's easily removable ("prestigious", etc) and slap "citation needed" flags on a lot of other material. The result would look hideous.

What I suggest instead is that you quickly go through the article, back up any assertion of achievement that you can with an independent source (whether web or printed), remove any other assertion of achievement (at least for the short term) and also remove anything that looks like praise. The result is likely to look very dry, and stiff with footnotes, although perhaps not as extreme as "my" article Chris Steele-Perkins. Once you've made what in encyclopedic terms would indisputably be an improvement, the best thing to do is to keep out of the article itself, other than to correct straightforward errors introduced by others, whether these errors seem to be the result of benign ignorance or of (yawn) vandalism. Thereafter, if you'd like to suggest a change, or if others change the article in a way that you don't like but that isn't indisputably wrong, comment in the article's talk page but don't change the article itself. (If nobody pays attention, you can leave a message on my talk page.)

Of course, if you'd like to improve article on other photographers, please do. I'm satisfied by the articles on a total of perhaps three photographers, so there's certainly a huge amount more work to be done. And there are still plenty of photographers who are both excellent and fairly well known yet have no article whatever. (John Swope is one.)

I hope you take this in the amicable spirit in which it was intended and that Peter Turnley becomes an article that fully suits an encyclopedia and also satisfies its subject. -- Hoary (talk) 08:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)