User talk:BX
I had edited under a dynamic IP (64.85.214/217) from 2009 until 2018.
This account was created in 2016 and initially was to utilize page moves and article creation without burdening others.
Since mid-2018 I no longer use an IP and edit with this account exclusively.
--BX (talk)
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A very belated response
[edit]Hi. Just dropping by to say that I read your message on my talk page from a couple of years back. Sorry I didn't respond at the time but after several years out of the game I am back editing Wikipedia again. Just wanted to say that I really appreciated your message. It's amazing to me that something I did may have played a small part in you contributing to Wikipedia for so long. Jenks24 (talk) 09:27, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
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Removal of baseball obituaries and other sources
[edit]Hi BX -
I am troubled by your mass removal of external links to many reliable sources in baseball biographies. Here are some examples:
1. In John Clarkson, you removed a link to his obituary in The New York times. This is about as reliable a source as can be found for a biography. You appear to have removed it simply because the image of the obituary was hosted on thedeadballera.com. This was a web site that meticuously collected obituaries on baseball players, made pdf images of the actual obituary, and then hosted them. The real source, however, is The New York Times' rather than the site hosting the PDF image. I believe it is seriously detrimental to Wikipedia to be mass removing NYT obituaries simply because of the web page where the PDF image is hosted. Alternatives to striking it include (a) reformatting it as a normal in-line citation as I did in the Clarkson case, or (b) where possible, doing the same plus substituting a citation to the url on the NYT web site. Either of these options is preferable to striking any trace of the player's NYT obituary. The same issue applies to Sam Crawford, Red Corriden, Pea Ridge Day, Steve Sundra, Ping Bodie, Buck Herzog, Red Donahue, and Red Kress.
2. In the Ray Oyler article, you struck an external link to a book published by the Indiana University Press on grounds that it was a "personal web site". Obviously, a book published by an academic press is not a personal web site. You really need to review these sources more carefully before striking them and characterizing them as a "personal web site."
3. In the Muddy Ruel article, you struck citations to three articles from Baseball Digest. You did so with the edit summary: "rmv personal website." Obviously, Baseball Digest is not a "personal web site. To the contrary, it was the longest running baseball magazine in the US and a reliable source. Such reliable sources should not be stricken and certainly not on grounds that it is a "personal web site."
4. Obituaries from other reliable sources were also deleted at Tom Burr (Chicago Tribune), Dorothy Stolze (San Francisco Examiner), Pea Ridge Day (The Sporting News), Ray Oyler (Seattle Times), Larry Corcoran (The Newark Eagle), Bob Ferguson (The Sporting Life).
5. In Pea Ridge Day, you struck the link to the entry for Day at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, an on-line resource published by the Central Arkansas Library System -- not a "personal web site".
6. In Willard Nixon, you struck the link to Nixon's entry at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.
I spent a good part of my day correcting these removals. I see that there are hundreds (thousands?) of additional removals that you made in recent months with the same edit summary ("rm personal web site"). From some prior collaborations on Negro league bios, I know that you are an excellent editor. My purpose in leaving this long message is to (a) alert you to the issue, (b) ask you to be more careful in deleting further external links, and (c) ask that you look back over your prior deletions to correct any others that are like in kind to those noted above.
Cbl62 (talk) 01:58, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- I wasn't planning on editing this week so I'll look at this over the weekend. Rgrds. --BX (talk) 17:36, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Hello, @Cbl62:! Sorry for the delay, busy IRL. I wanted to go through each one but haven't had time so I'll touch on the bigger picture. First, I was trying to be transparent by posting this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Archive 51#baseballbiography.com where I did mention thedeadballera.com. The canned summary "rm persoanl website" was initially used when cleaning up the EL per WP:ELNO; I should have used better edit summary language but instead just relied on autofill.
- Obits don't belong in the EL, and are not ideal for refs. Obits in the EL is a discussion better held at WP:ELN for outside input, but it is my belief per WP:ELNO and WP:NOBITS (just an essay) they are not appropriate. Also, data held at a personal website (which deadballera is) is not appropriate either -- link to the original host -- but as it is an obit it is not appropriate.
- I really wanted to give this more attention so I'll add more later. Rgrds. --BX (talk) 21:45, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the reply. Two responses:
- 1. Obituaries from high-quality sources like The New York Times or other major metropolitan dailies with tight editorial control are actually among the most vauable biographical sources that we have on baseball players. Indeed, the essay you cited (WP:NOBITS) is concerned with family-published death notices. It opens with the following point: "Obituaries published by high-quality reliable sources are often treated as valuable sources for articles on deceased individuals, since they provide a broad overview of the subject's life."
- 2. If your concern is instead simply that they don't belong in the "External links", then the solution is to move them to another part of the article. What is problematic is simply removing them. Simply removing them deprives the article of a valuable source. Cbl62 (talk) 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)