Talk:Chris Merritt

Inappropriate edits

The following paragraph has been removed quite rightly removed from the article:

"During his career, Merritt has been given the advise and direct help of not only his wonderful and talented managers and agents...Dr. Rudolf Raab of Agentur Raab-Vienna, Elisabeth Crittenden and Andrea Anson of CAMI-New York, Michel Glotz of MusicaGlotz-Paris, Tom Graham of IMG-London and Peter Bloor-AskonasHolt, London...but also of three people who figured especially large in offering help and advise at the beginning of his career; Matthew Epstein, Beverly Sills and, above all, Marilyn Horne."

This is an encyclopedia article, not the place for the subject or his associates to make personal statements. All such additions will be removed, as will any addition which can be perceived by a neutral reader as hype or PR. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms for guidance. In addition, the referencing in this article is appalling. At least 80% of the content is unsupported by any independent sources. To editors here who have any affiliation whatsoever to Merritt (either personal or professional), please read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Autobiography for guidance when editing under these circumstances and follow it scrupulously. Articles here will always have to conform to Wikipedia's policies on content, verification, style and formatting – not to the subject's desired image or marketing goals. Voceditenore (talk) 08:49, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

The following IPs have repeatedly attempted to add this material:

• 84.156.92.29 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 84.156.94.201 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 84.156.76.177 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 84.156.92.147 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)

– Voceditenore (talk) 12:33, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Better referencing

This article could use better referencing. As such, I am suggesting the following sources:

• Elizabeth Forbes (2008). Laura Williams Macy (ed.). The Grove Book of Opera Singers. Oxford University Press. p. 319-320.
• Giorgio Bagnoli (1993). The La Scala Encyclopedia of the Opera. Simon and Schuster. p. 251.
• "Opera Tenor Chris Merritt 'paid his dues'". The Hour. November 22, 1989.
• Stephanie Shapiro (February 22, 1997). "Merritt repaying debt to a teacher Benefit: The acclaimed opera star found his calling thanks to a high-school music teacher in Oklahoma. Now history is repeating itself in Pikesville". The Baltimore Sun.
• "Chris Merritt". Metropolitan Opera Performance Archives.
• Paul Gruber, ed. (1993). "The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera". W. W. Norton & Company.
• Matthew Boyden (2002). The Rough Guide to Opera. Rough Guides.
• Clyde T. McCants (2004). American Opera Singers and Their Recordings: Critical Commentaries and Discographies. McFarland.
• Here are several articles related to Chris Merritt in The New York Times

I hope this inspires some improvements. Best.4meter4 (talk) 03:57, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

It's pretty obvious from this edit summary, that the article's subject using a range of IPs all of which trace back to Deutsche Telekom in Germany has been repeatedly attempting to over-write the article with his preferred versions—unencyclopedic, promotional, repetitious, full of unreferenced assertions, appalling formatting, naming all of his agents (one of them twice) etc. etc. I have consequently tagged this article for having a major editor with a conflict of interest. Until this person stops their constant disruption and engages with other editors, this article will remain in its dire state. No one will want waste their time trying to improve this unencylopedic mess, only to have it repeatedly over-written. Voceditenore (talk) 16:37, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Please cite the 'repetitious' assertions. Please cite the 'twice-named' agents. Thank you. signed: 84.156.92.147 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.156.92.147 (talk) 17:37, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Well for starters:

"Managers and agents of Chris Merritt have been Dr. Rudolf Raab of Agentur Raab-Vienna, Elisabeth Crittenden and Andrea Anson of CAMI-New York, Michel Glotz of MusicaGlotz-Paris, Tom Graham of IMG-London and Peter Bloor-AskonasHolt, London."

followed two sentences later by

"During the institute's end-of-studies-program concert in 1977, Merritt was heard by many European agents. It was the Viennese agent Dr. Rudolf Raab with whom he collaborated for representation."

Listing his agents like that is completely inappropriate and frankly irrelevant. I see you have now changed the second instance to something even worse:

"He was heard in a presentation-concert by an agent (who must remain nameless) who sent him out on an audition tour through Austria, Switzerland and Germany."

As for the rest, you only have to look at the additions of material like this, this, and this to see what I mean. Listing virtually every single colleague in every performance and replete with phrases like

"All these performances and debuts, mentioned here, are the performances which brought him international attention and marked the beginnings of a very successful career."

and

"In addition to his vocal studies there, Merritt trained in acting with Carveth Osterhaus, dance with Conrad Ludlow and Joy Feldmann, costume, wigs and make-up with Lee Danser and performed under the watchful eye of Dr. Ray E. Luke, conductor."

Listing the names of every single teacher from his piano teacher when he was 7 to the person who taught him wigs and make-up belongs in an autobiography, not an encyclopedia article. Worse yet, none of it is referenced. It all demonstrates precisely why you should read the guidelines at Wikipedia:Autobiography and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, and more importantly, follow them. Voceditenore (talk) 18:34, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I understand your viewpoint. I am no sure I understand how-and-why you are the one who decides what is relavent and what is not. In that it should be 'encyclopedic', I would think that all facts surrounding events should be listed and not be judged by one single person as being relevant or not relevant. I would think you, as overseer, would be 100% neutral. However, I have tried to pare things down in the first several paragraphs under 'career'. I look forward to your ajudication of same. Thank you. signed: 84.156.92.147 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.156.85.35 (talk • contribs) 19:46, 13 March 2014‎

Hi there. First off, User:Voceditenore is not the only editor who has expressed concerns about this article. Multiple editors have expressed concerns, all of whom are members of WP:WikiProject Opera and edit articles in this content area frequently. In terms of making editorial decisions such as content relevance, that decision is made by those editor(s) who contribute to the article. No editor, not even its creators, can claim ownership of a wikipedia article. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which anyone can edit. As such, articles are ultimately written through collaboration among editors. Wikipedia is essentially made up of a community editors, and like all communities, the wikipedia community has established laws and guidelines which help make it successful at achieving its purpose; which in this case is writing a high quality encyclopedia. The wikipedia community has developed these laws and guidelines through exhaustive and lengthy community discussion over years which editors are strongly encouraged (and in some cases required/enforced) to follow. Voceditenore was merely pointing out to you some of the necessary community guidelines which are not currently being followed at this article. If you choose to ignore these guidelines it is possible that your IP address could be permanently blocked from editing wikipedia, so I strongly recommend you read them.

In addition to the two relevent guidelines above, I am also concerned that this article does not meet the standards at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. This article needs reliable secondary and tertiary sources to verify all of the content. Primary source material from the article's subject in unacceptable. Think of writing a wikipedia article like you would a college research paper. Wikipedia has a policy of no original research, which means we only accept content which can be verified by sources like newspapers, journals, books, etc. We do not accept content from sources directly linked to the article's subject like a personal website or from the agent managing the artist. The idea is to create an article that is of high academic quality (i.e. accurate, neutral, informative, and interesting). In my opinion this article needs a complete rewrite containing only content found in reliable sources like the ones I listed above. All content should be sourced by using inline citations. Unsourced content (ie content without inline citations) is likely to be removed without question, particularly in an article about a living person like this one. For an example of a quality article on a well known singer which follows these guidelines, see Kathleen Ferrier. Best.4meter4 (talk) 20:11, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

84.156.92.147, as 4meter4 said, articles are produced and maintained in collaboration. Three other experienced editors had reverted your addition of Merritt's acknowledgement to his agents and advisors before I did. I was simply the first one to spell out why here on the talk page. Since you haven't registered an account and use constantly changing IPs, it's impossible to discuss with you anywhere else. Over the past year, there have been several experienced editors expressing our broader concerns about this article. One editor did quite a bit of clean up work on it last June [1], although the poor referencing and the listing of information which has not been previously published is still very concerning. I suggest you read Wikipedia's policy on No original research. It's one of the five pillars of Wikipedia and non-negotiable. I appreciate that you further pared down some of this material, but that's only the beginning. However, in cases like this, many experienced editors are likely to restrict themselves to simply keeping an article from getting worse rather than actively improving it until the article's subject (or their agent) steps back from attempting to edit the article themselves. It's just a waste of our time. On a personal note, I have 8 years experience dealing with opera singer articles on Wikipedia which have been written or extensively edited by either the subject or their agents. Trust me, what they invariably produce is an article which has been so obviously written to enhance the subject's image that it actually ends up detracting from it. Voceditenore (talk) 18:59, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

As a long-time editor also a member of WP Opera, I support the above statements by the two editors who have posted comments above. This is not simply one editor having problems with the article as it now stands. Viva-Verdi (talk) 02:59, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Editor 84++++: Take a look at what I've done to a few places in the article. Viva-Verdi (talk) 03:39, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

#1: Added in-line references. This involves research. Do some digging online!!

#2: Added Wikilinks to some names and titles. Try it and then test to see if you get a blue link!!

#3: Cleaned up some of the convoluted and repetitive language; no need to repeat Merritt's name all over the place. You can simply say "He" from time to time.

Residence

Chris Merritt does not live in Pikesville, MD. He lives in Hamburg, Germany. www.chrismerrittgesangsunterricht.com. How can this be corrected?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.156.88.65 (talk) 19:25, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I have moved the above IP's comment from the Inappropriate edits section where it was a non-sequitur to this new heading. The Pikesville, Maryland statement was within a marked quote from a 1997 newspaper article. But I agree that it was potentially misleading to the reader. There was also no reason for such a lengthy and convoluted quote. I have shortened it to a paraphrase of the essential information re his high school music teacher. Voceditenore (talk) 19:49, 29 April 2014 (UTC)