Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Elvenscout742/Jeffrey Woodward critique: Difference between revisions

User:Elvenscout742/Jeffrey Woodward critique (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Page violates WP:UPNO, WP:UP#POLEMIC, WP:FAKEARTICLE, WP:ATTACK, WP:SOAP Tristan noir (talk) 04:29, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: User Elvenscout’s page belongs on his personal blog, perhaps, or in a literary periodical as a review of the author he critiques. It has no rightful place on Wikipedia due to its violations of the above policies. His "critique" is long on opinion but short on citation.

A few easily verifiable distortions of fact employed by Elvenscout on this polemical page follow:

1)He states that the author of the book he critiques is self-published and implies that Lulu, a POD printer, is the “vanity publisher” whereas the Library of Congress online catalogue clearly lists the publisher as Modern English Tanka Press (an independent literary press), not Lulu.

2) He asserts that “the page on Lulu.com where the book could be purchased...as of 2012-10-3” no longer exists and speculates that “the self-publisher who posted the book for sale on Lulu took it down in response to a deletion discussion on Wikipedia.” But the item, despite Elvenscout’s speculation, is still available via a simple title search under The Tanka Prose Anthology at the Lulu.com site (the URL cannot be provided here as the site is blocked by Wiki), where Elvenscout claims he could not find it, and is (and was always) available here via its publisher, MET Press.

Note that the publisher of record (per the Lulu and MET Press sites), in accord with the LOC catalogue, is Modern English Tanka Press and not Lulu as Elvenscout represents. You may also wish to read the review on the Lulu page cited above by an Owen Hughes, perhaps a pseudonym, whose specific language and criticisms mirror remarkably those offered by Elvenscout on the page here nominated for deletion. The date of said review is Oct 15, 2012, less than two weeks after the date Elvenscout claims he could no longer find the book on Lulu.

3) Elvenscout directs the reader to the Introduction to the anthology he is deriding and invites the reader to review “Woodward’s assertion...that the Japanese are incapable of studying and classifying their own literature.” The author asserts nothing of the kind, as any reader of the introduction will discover on his own. If the author has said anything “extremely offensive” about Japanese scholarship in this introduction, Elvenscout should point it out specifically. I can locate nothing to justify his tendentious claim.

4) Elvenscout writes, “I could go on further in discrediting Woodward's writings, and probably those of everyone else involved in the so-called ‘tanka prose’ movement, for their ignorance of Japanese literature.” Elvenscout here proceeds from his previous misleading statements and attacks upon one author to an attack upon “the so-called ‘tanka prose’ movement,” to an accusation of “guilt by association,” as it were, against a group of writers who practice a literary form or genre that E. is here pontificating against.

5) He closes his curious critique by noting that he addressed the same “in an email…to Woodward” and that he has “yet to receive a reply.” Both claims are probably unverifiable. But if the former is true (that Elvenscout included this in an email), then perhaps the recipient’s silence or the recipient’s answer disappointed Elvenscout sufficiently to motivate him to self-publish his critique here. I know this is mere speculation on my part but it is speculation consistent with the type that Elvenscout practices in this critique (see point 2 above). Whatever the circumstances may be, any private exchanges between Mr. Elvenscout and Mr. Woodward are of no relevance or interest to the Wikipedia community.Tristan noir (talk) 07:13, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - The page was created 25 September 2012‎ and listed for deletion 17 November 2012‎ (about two months after creation). The reason the page was created was to list "reasons why this author is not a reliable source of information for inclusion in Wikipedia" regarding Japanese literature. Wikipedia:User pages allows user space to be used to prepare requests such as at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Two months is more than enough time to prepare a WP:RSN request. It is time to make the WP:RSN request, if needed, to allow the issue to be resolved. Otherwise, the user page becomes nothing more than a place to hold a grudge, import a personal conflict, carry on ideological a battle, or nurture hatred which are disallowed per WP:NOTBATTLE. As for the statement on the page,

  "For the record, I am not being a douche bag and attacking someone on my private Wikipedia page behind his back. These critiques were originally written in the second person and appeared in an e-mail addressed to Woodward."

  that means User:Elvenscout742/Jeffrey Woodward critique violates WP:COPYVIO and the page should be blanked while the MfD proceeds. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 12:21, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]