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Revision as of 13:23, 4 July 2005

Anon edits removed

An anon editor slipped in a paragraph about her contact with certain homosexual men in Hollywood. The casual social contacts of Hollywood celebrities are usually considered as gossip, which is not encyclopedic and the edited content demonstrated no relevance to her artistic career. I've removed it, am watching this page and will routinely delete such content until it can be cited from peer-reviewed secondary sources as having anything to do with her career. Note: Gossip may be suitable for an extended, book-length biography, where balance and context can be controlled. A short encyclopedia article, however, can be quickly distorted and overwhelmed with such details (which I suspect the anon already knows). Wyss 1 July 2005 10:09 (UTC)

Sorry. The information added to the article is taken from a new biography on Natalie Wood by Gavin Lambert. The book clearly is a reliable source. The author coedited the film magazine Sequence with Lindsay Anderson, was the editor of Sight and Sound and wrote film criticism for The Sunday Times and The Guardian. He is the author of four biographies (On Cukor, Norma Shearer, Nazimova and Mainly About Lindsay Anderson) and seven novels. He's known Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner for 40 years. His book, Natalie Wood: A Life includes interviews with the people who knew Wood best, for instance, Robert Wagner, Warren Beatty, Paul Mazursky, and Leslie Caron. The author, himself deeply involved in Hollywood's gay scene, writes about the sexual dalliances of Wagner and Wood and their friends, both gay and straight, and clearly says that they "had many gay friends" throughout their life and that Wood frequently dated gay men in Hollywood circles including director Nicholas Ray and actors Nick Adams, Raymond Burr, James Dean, Tab Hunter and Scott Marlowe. Wood even did her part for gay history by supporting Mart Crowley in a manner that made it possible for him to write his play, The Boys in the Band, which was praised as "the first truly honest portrayal of the lives of contemporary homosexuals". Therefore, the passage you deleted should be reinstalled, as Natalie Wood's contacts to Hollywood gays played a significant part in her life. 80.141.228.219 1 July 2005 21:26 (UTC)

Sorry, while I don't question this particular source on this latest edit, you're trying to distort this article in relation to unverified "gay gossip" or whatever which you've been trying to slip into the Nick Adams and Elvis Presley articles. Wyss 2 July 2005 08:27 (UTC)

Did you mention that what you call unverified "gay gossip" is part of the reliable source cited above? Why are you so keenly interested to delete this important information? Presumably because you don't like the idea that Nick Adams was gay, which is proved by several independent sources, among them the Wood biography by Gavin Lambert. The fact is that you are deeply involved in an edit war concerning the article on Nick Adams and that your only "contribution" to the Wood article is the removal of what I have written. See also Talk:Nick Adams.

Do you read my posts? Wyss 2 July 2005 10:14 (UTC)

Examples of user Wyss's offences against Misplaced Pages guidelines

"Be respectful to others and their points of view. This means primarily: Do not simply revert changes in a dispute. When someone makes an edit you consider biased or inaccurate, improve the edit, rather than reverting it. Provide a good edit summary when making significant changes that other users might object to." (See Misplaced Pages:Resolving disputes)

User:Wyss repeatedly made a simple revert thereby deleting a whole passage I have added.

Only "Disputed statements for which a credible source has not been provided may be removed from Misplaced Pages articles. The disputed material should generally be moved to the article's talk page, to give an opportunity for editors to identify sources for the material." (See Misplaced Pages:Cite sources)

User:Wyss has deleted important additional information that was supported by a reliable source cited on the discussion page.

"Disputed information which, if verified, would remain in an article, should be placed on the article's talk page. Potentially useful information ought to be retained — and by placing disputed information on the talk page, you give other users the opportunity to find sources to support it, in which case the information could be re-inserted into the article proper. This guideline does not endorse or mandate that all unsourced information must be removed: it is recognised that some information is self-evident and that a source for it might not be necessary, or that something may be true and accurate but as-yet unsourced. However, it does make clear that users who, in good faith, dispute information to an article may remove that information and, where, if verified, the material would be suitable for the article, paste it to the talk page." (See Misplaced Pages:Cite sources)

User:Wyss did not place the disputed passage on the article's talk page. He totally deleted it.

"If you should be inclined to delete something from an entry, consider whether or not it may be profitable to check the facticity of the content first. Of course, if material is factual, i.e. substantiated and cited, be extra careful about deleting. An encyclopedia is, inter alia, an organized collection of facts, so consider each fact provided as potentially precious. ... If another editor provided a fact, there was probably a reason for it that shouldn't be overlooked. Of course, it is not true that everything an editor adds must be preserved. But be careful about deleting substantiated, relevant material." (See Misplaced Pages:Check your facts)

User:Wyss deleted material which was substantiated and cited (i.e. proved by a current biography written by a reputed author). He was not extra careful about deleting. His only argument was that "casual social contacts of Hollywood celebrities are usually considered as gossip" and therefore not encyclopedic. In fact, these contacts were not casual.

"Those who write articles likely to be deemed in need of fact checking, for whatever reason, should expect to assist by providing references, ideally when the article is first written. Because of this, it's important to make it easy to verify the accuracy and neutrality of your content." (See Misplaced Pages:Verifiability)

"For an encyclopedia, sources should be unimpeachable. ... anything we include should have been covered in the records, reportage, research, or studies of others. In many, if not most, cases there should be several corroborating sources available should someone wish to consult them. Sources should be unimpeachable relative to the claims made..." (See Misplaced Pages:Verifiability)

User:Wyss did not provide references that Natalie Wood's contacts with Hollywood gays were unimportant. Instead, he deleted, without sufficient reason, a substantial paragraph dealing with these important contacts.

User:Wyss should also read what is written on the Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources page:

"When reporting on objective facts, Misplaced Pages articles should cite primary and secondary sources whenever they exist."

"Editors may only use information that has been published in some form already by a credible publisher, so that we can offer that publication as a citation."

As every reader can see, I have cited an important published secondary source on Natalie Wood's life. There is no need to delete a whole paragraph proving that she frequently dated gay men in Hollywood.

Anon, your only interest in this article is to slip in a mention that Wood hung out with gays now and then (as have countless other people in Hollywood) for the singular purpose of subsequently using her social contact with Nick Adams as a way to infer that Mr Adams was gay. There is zero documented evidence Adams ever demonstrated homosexual behavior. Wyss 2 July 2005 22:36 (UTC)

No, this is not the main point. The main point is that Natalie Wood was in close contact with several gay men in Hollywood circles (including Nick Adams, Raymond Burr, James Dean, Tab Hunter, Scott Marlowe, and Nicholas Ray) and that she supported these men which played a significant part in her private life. She even supported gay writers such as Mart Crowley in a manner that made it possible for him to write his play, The Boys in the Band (1968). According to reviewer Clive Barnes, this play was the "finest treatment of homosexuality I have ever seen on stage." All this relevant information should be mentioned in the article. 80.141.219.71 2 July 2005 23:20 (UTC)

• Here, the anon uses the standard tactic of trying to wear me down with repetition of mostly factual but slightly distorted material which has little or no bearing on this short article. His ultimate goal by the way is to support an assertion that Elvis Presley was gay. Wyss 2 July 2005 23:27 (UTC)

Natalie Wood's relationships with Elvis Presley may indeed be mentioned in the article. As a restless on-screen companion of James Dean and an off-screen date of Elvis, she was much admired and envied by young girls during her lifetime. One of her judgements of Elvis was, "He can sing but he can’t do much else." I think this is also relevant information. 80.141.201.244 2 July 2005 23:42 (UTC)

• Here the Anon in effect concedes his interest in the Presley article. Note that the quote has been carefully selected... presented out of historical context, it contains an inference of impotence. Meanwhile, we're no longer talking about Natalie Wood. Wyss 2 July 2005 23:46 (UTC)

A comment on sources

A similiar issue to this one came up on Abraham Lincoln, when a very recent book came out entitled The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. The problem here is that adding such new and controversial information, which is espoused by one and only one very recent work, tends to be assigned a much higher degree of weight than those sources for which there are multiple sources and verifiability is much higher. I would like to make a suggestion: create a "Natalie Wood: A Life" section of the article. In one or two paragraphs, say what you feel is relevant, and make it clear that these are the contentions of Gavin Lambert. I can see that the alternative here will most likely be an edit war similiar to what happened with Lincoln. It is important to remember official policy: Misplaced Pages:No original research, and in the same vain, to understand that we can't give undue weight to brand new books that are themselves original research. func(talk) 3 July 2005 15:30 (UTC)

Sounds helpful to me, although the anon will attempt to link the phrases Nick Adams and gay, since his only interest in this article seems to be promoting a like assertion in the Elvis Presley article. Nick Adams dated Natalie Wood. There is zero documented evidence that Nick Adams was gay. I'd have similar objections if someone was trying to assert Nick Adams was a CIA agent or moonlighting physics professor by citing published hearsay (for example), since there is no documented evidence of those activities either. Balance and context are overwhelmingly important in biographical articles, especially when they're short and even more so when the subjects' personal lifestyle choices are characterized. Wyss 3 July 2005 15:42 (UTC)

Yeah, I've just done some edit history searching. The anon is a POV warrior of the first degree, and does not appear to be editing in good faith. func(talk) 3 July 2005 16:09 (UTC)

As Wyss responded to my warning about 3RR by bad-temperedly asking why I didn't get involved in "mediating", I've looked at the article, and have decided that the anon's text is perfectly reasonable, and that Wyss's removal of it isn't justified; I've therefore replaced it. If the claim is that one of the people listed as having been gay wasn't, then there'd be reason to remove that name, not the whole paragraph and a bit. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 3 July 2005 21:05 (UTC)

What do you mean by reasonable, Mel? Certainly it's reasonable in the sense of not being nuts, but I see nothing unusual in "being in close contact with several gay men", no reason to describe The Boys in the Band here, and a bizarre lack of informativeness in "supported X in a manner that made it possible for him to write Y" (did she pay him money, let him live in a spare room, or what?). Bored by revert wars, I'm not reverting to Wyss' version (good though I believe it to be); but I am cutting the most absurd addition. -- Hoary July 4, 2005 02:56 (UTC)

Thanks Hoary and thanks Func. Your calm, rational presence reassures me that, at least, this isn't a complete waste of time. Wyss 4 July 2005 06:14 (UTC)

Disregarding Wyss's use of "calm, rational" to mean "agrees with me", I agree with Hoary that the anon's addition needed editing — I just don't agree with Wyss's insistence on deleting it wholesale. I don't think that Func's comment helps, being no more than an attack on the anon. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 4 July 2005 11:28 (UTC)

Mel Etitis, what about your mistaken remark that I have another WP account? Wyss 4 July 2005 13:23 (UTC)