Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-05-5//Jim Haskins

Where is the dispute?
Jim Haskins and secondarily James Haskins

Who is involved?

 * User:Peter Napkin Dance Party
 * User:Stoshmaster

What is the dispute?
Hi there. I am hoping you can help with a dispute which has cropped up on the Jim Haskins article. I noticed about a month back that the article was conflating the deceased African-American children's book author James Haskins with the still living radio presenter Jim Haskins. (James Haskins is often credited as Jim Haskins in his books.) I went ahead and split up the articles more properly, which left the Jim Haskins entry quite... pithy.

A user named User:Peter Napkin Dance Party put back some incredibly non-notable info on the site (stuff about Haskins' ethnic background, the fact that he is nearsighted [!], and some decontextualized and unenlightening "quotes"). You can check the article history if you're interested in seeing them.

User:Peter Napkin Dance Party at first refused to accept that James and Jim Haskins are two different people! In essence, he insisted that the author faked his death and moved to Ohio to become a radio host. O-kay... I've tried to be civil about all this; you can read our exchanges on the Jim Haskins talk page.

What would you like to change about this?
The way the Jim Haskins article currently stands, as an obscure radio host who had recently lost his job, I put up a notability tag; in my mind, it would be more correct to have both "Jim Haskins" and "James Haskins" refer to the same person, e.g. the deceased author.

How do you think we can help?
User:Peter Napkin Dance Party has since begrudgingly admitted that the two Haskins are "probably" two different people, but at this point I think we need somebody to step in. Would you be willing to be that person? Much appreciated. -- stoshmaster (talk) 17:07, 5 May 2009 (UTC)