Logics

Thanks!

Thanks for letting everyone know that one has to start a userpage to be considered established on here. I really appreciate it. It's an very odd phenomenon that this is what it takes to be validated. Oh well... SamSpellman 18:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

you are MOST welcome! i think it's totally outrageous that someone seems to have made it a personal crusade to squash information about a vital creative force. i mean... did you read the updated version of the GH article? why in the world would 12 universities feel the need to have their work in their libraries if they weren't notable? that in itself makes the notability issue moot, don't you agree? Inspectorpanther 18:57, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

12 out thousands of universities worldwide would, in my opinion, sooner be an argument for a lack of notability than for the presence of notability. Anyway, see the notes I left you on my user page. I also don't see why you removed my former comment...but then again this is your talkpage. Chelman 20:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

to ambush commander

thanks so much for your objectivity. i fully appreciate your constructive commentary on the GH AfD. you seem to be the only voice of reason in a hotly contested debate. the interesting points that the GH article has brought up alone should be criteria enough to warrant it being listed on here... hahaha! all of the other AfDs i peeked at in the past seemed to die without a whimper, with the exception of the infamous chase one. and now this!

however, i am rather puzzled by the derogatory labeling as a "meat/socketpuppet", which i assure you i am not. i have been using wikipedia since its inception and this was the 1st time that i found something of interest on here that i felt impassioned enough about to break my vow of privacy and comment on. i am not a colleague of GH. i am my own seperate entity and would like to be respected as such. why is it that all the new users are being designated as puppets? not everyone has the hang of how to navigate on here. it's easy enough to search for data but not so easy to figure out how to edit properly. must a novice editor be slandered as being a puppet for being wiki-inept? i am confused about this. any comments you have will be greatly appreciated. again, thank you for your objectivity and for your time. Inspectorpanther 21:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

To your wonderings about sockpuppets, look no further than the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion#Sockpuppets are bad:

Unfortunately, (vandalism aside) such cases are notoriously hard to distinguish from good-faith contributors writing their first article or from anonymous users who finally decide to log in. If someone does point out your light contribution history, please take it in the spirit it was intended - a fact to be weighed by the closing admin, not an attack on the person.

Because of our past problems, opinions offered by new or anonymous users are often met with suspicion and may be discounted during the closing process. This decision is made at the discretion of the closing admin after considering the contribution history and pattern of comments. In practice, civil comments and logical arguments are often given the benefit of doubt while hostile comments are presumed to be bad-faith. Please note that verifiable facts and evidence are welcome from anybody and will be considered during the closing process.

Continue to contribute to the discussion in a civil manner and you should gain some credibility. Alas, it is a somewhat smudgy to your usernames Wikipedia career (I started off making small and noncontroversial edits), but stick to the facts and the logic, and I assure you, people will be reasonable (or, at least, I hope so). You're fighting against a strong bias developed from the fairly obvious meatpuppet attack on the page. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 23:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

GHava article

Sorry to say this, but now it's really terrible. A list of quotes from magazines does not an encyclopedia make. Try moving those quotes to the talk page, and talking more about the founding and directions of the group on the main page.

I wish I knew another good similar article to point you to as a template, but I'm not familiar enough with the field to give you a reference there.--SarekOfVulcan 01:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

(In response to this comment) Thanks for trying to be constructive about this, but the fact of the matter is I don't think your organisation is going to meet the guidelines for notability. Although those are guidelines and not policy, I've already explained why I personally follow them (because it's not worth the effort of external Wikipedians to monitor the page and make sure its subject doesn't edit it in a way that violates NPOV), and I suspect many Wikipedia editors feel the same way. Even though the edit Sarek refers to (and I referred to in my second and final change of vote) only lasted a short time, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about - once the external scrutiny of the AfD process is gone, there's little incentive anyone to monitor the page and correct these kinds of mistakes. Hope this won't put you off editing Wikipedia though, I'm sure your experience in art would be extremely valuable to this project - just not by writing about yourself. --Last Malthusian 17:04, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• thanks for your great feedback. however, i can swear to you in a courtroom that i am not a member of GH and i did not originally author the article. i am a frequent user and devout fan of wikipedia. when i heard about the AfD through collegues of mine in the art industry who were knowledgeable about the collective, i came to see what i could do to help. it is rather disheartening that this 3rd degree of separation puts me in the realm of meatpuppet. it's odd that people have to be total strangers before they can be viewed as qualified to contribute to an article. thanks again for your time. Inspectorpanther 18:48, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

GH avisualagency isn't a company that is famous enough yet, that's why it's non-notable (NN) as the other's have said before. If it isn't famous enough, then it isn't worth an article. Notable enough would probably be something that would fetch thousands or millions of google search hits or is known well enough by thousands or millions of people. I had this problem with my first article; it wasn't notable enough, so I understood that and let it get deleted. It has nothing to do with the quality of the article. - Rudykog 18:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Graphic Havoc

Well, first thing to understand about any advice I give you is that, unlike a great many people, I do believe that deleting an entry in full and starting anew is a legitimate form of clean-up when used in certain circumstances. Anyway, looking at the entry as it currently exists, I have the following things to say:

1. Have their exhibitions been limited to galleries (which in my understanding means the art's for sale), or have they had art in any museums (which in my understanding means the art's not for sale)? If the second has happened, mentioning that would be good, I think.
2. To me, the word "agency" connotes "advertising agency". Is this an ad agency or did they just choose a name that makes me think they are?
3. Regarding the name, I'm not certain that the current article location is the best one. If it's avoidable, I think it's best to keep things like the trademark symbol out of article names. So, unless the name in full includes that symbol, I say leave it out of the article name; indeed, I'd suggest just moving it to Graphic Havoc. For that matter, the spacing/non-spacing of "a visual agency" is currently inconsistent throughout the entry. For instance, in at least one case it's "a visualagency". Regardless of how many ways they identify themselves and other people identify them, I think it's best that the article simply state all the variations at the start of the article but then use only one throughout the rest of the article (with the obvious exception of things like saying "Graphic Havoc changed its name to GH avisualagency").
4. Have they won any sorts of awards?
5. Regarding the quotes that were taken out, I agree with taking them out if only because they made the entry so much more difficult to read. At the same time, a sentence like "Graphic Havoc have received press coverage in the Village Voice, Creative Loafing, and the Authoritative Journal Of Noteworthy Art," in each case having the [1] sort of link to any online proof of such coverage (which isn't strictly necessary: after all, there still exist paper periodicals, books, and academic journals) is a way to inform the reader that the press coverage happened without bulking up the article.

Thing is, the notability issue on this one's really murky to me; while I do believe we should have a strict standard regarding what is and isn't encyclopedic (and thus is and isn't worthy of coverage in Wikipedia), I'm having trouble gauging it in this case; I'm also having trouble settling my mind on whether or not I think this qualifies as vanity or advertising. The example I use for art is always Richard Frooman. A perfectly factual, verifiable, neutrally-structured, concise prose article could be written about him. However, that doesn't touch at all on the question of whether or not it should be written.

Anyway, none of that probably helps much, sorry. As for the accusations of _puppetry going around, the best way to defuse them's to make edits to articles totally unrelated to the entry in question. Even if they're just minor edits correcting spelling on stubs that haven't been edited for half a year, it demonstrates that you're here for more reason than just to take a side in that one dispute. Which, of course, everyone likes to see.

And as far as people writing about themselves or those they've had close dealings with, it's not outrightly prohibited (the policy/guideline regarding it is at WP:AUTO). I've done it myself, actually, in the case of Don McPherson. It's just that people will be wary of you trying to insert a particularly positive (or negative) tone into the article. To use current events, Siegenthaler has every right to edit the article about him to keep out falsehoods and add relevant details, but he doesn't have the right to edit the article about him to have it say how great a guy he is. I think the best thing to do is just disclose whatever relationship you have with the article subject (within reason! obviously you don't need to do the whole Spaceballs line), and it might be a good idea to limit the way and extent to which you weigh in during any disputes about the article.

Ok. I hope something in there was helpful. -The Literate Engineer 18:13, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll look over the article later this evening and give you any advice I can. Tom Harrison ^(talk) 18:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Dear Inspectorpanther: Imagine my surprise! I found a Prefuse 73 album cover that GH avisualagency did artwork for in a great book I have called "The Greatest Album Covers of All Time". Seems to me that this is a very strong indication of notability. I knew I had seen that name in something recently. It stood out to me because I actually own and love that album. Anyway, I just added it to the article. Hope that helps. Please let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with. Best, Sam SamSpellman 19:41, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

thoughts

Notability: I apply the guideline pretty rigidly, others are more flexible. My feeling is something either meets the standard for notability or doesn't.

Writing: I try to imagine an interested high-school student reading the article. I imagine him reading "works within the overlap of art and design to explore the collaborative process and its effects on both fine art and commercial design." and thinking (in my fantasy-world of polite, articulate students), 'What does that mean?' I can't edit that into something he would understand, because I don't understand it myself.

There just doesn't seem to be much substance. Maybe it's that the subject has little intrinsic interest for me, but it reads like a sales brochure; and I'm not even clear on what the product is. Some kind of commercial artwork? Graphic design? Management consulting for artists? I wish I could be more helpful. If I thought the page could be edited into some useful form, I would not have voted for deletion. Tom Harrison ^(talk) 20:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Hello

i read your comment on the GH avisualagency AfD page and saw that you have extensive experience on here. i am trying to contribute to the GH article but everyone on the discussion page keeps giving me the wrong advice. most insisted that i have to prove notability, then they said that it was wrong to list articles about the collective. i don't know who to believe as they all keep leading me astray. if you could please offer me any advice on how to make the article better or make any adjustments yourself i would sincerely appreciate it. even if it does get deleted, at least i will have known that i tried my best to make it a better article. thanks so much.

Thanks for your message on my talk page. The article looks good to me and I think it has been greatly improved. However, I am completely unqualified to judge notability here, because I have never worked in the design field. Looking at the AfD, it seems clear that the article is going to get axed. Maybe you should copy some of the important parts and userify. Also, assuming the article does get deleted, it could be resubmitted in the future if new facts come to light- such as major awards, commissions, listing on stock market, other event that makes it notable or controversial (such as being on the front page of the NY Post). All the best. -- JJay 20:21, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

AIW

Thank you for your generous support! --King of All the Franks 04:39, 23 December 2005 (UTC)