Talk:Ken Mink

Eligibility?

When I was interested in this subject, I was informed in no uncertain terms that one's eligibility for NCAA sports play expired five years after one did (or would) graduate from high school, subject to a very limited number of exceptions, such as that the clock did not run while one was in the army. As the subject of this article was not in the army for five decades, one wonders how he preserved his eligibility (and I bet I'm not the only one). There should be an explanation of this conundrum. Can anyone provide one? --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 22:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Content removed from the article

I removed two sections from this article.

The section called "Later events" was completely unsourced and full of relatively peripheral details. It's all promotional in nature, and I would not be surprised to discover that it was contributed by Ken Mink (the article's subject). The removed text was:

In April 2009, Mink was selected for inclusion in the Ripley's Believe It or Not! illustration series sent to newspapers worldwide. Mink has written a book about his experiences, called Hoops Dreamer: The Ken Mink Story, and has also completed a movie script about his return to college basketball. Mink suffered a torn Achilles tendon in a Senior Olympics basketball tournament in August 2009 at Stanford University, but was back playing in national Senior Olympics tournaments five months later. In the spring of 2010, Mink averaged 35 points per 40 minutes of Senior Olympics play. He was invited by Coach Mike Sutton to be a walk-on player at Tennessee Tech University, for the 2010-11 season, but the NCAA told Coach Sutton that Mink had no more NCAA college eligibility because of the 5-4 Rule, which requires NCAA athletes to complete their four years of eligibility in five-year period.

If the Ripley's Believe It or Not item were supported by a reliable source, I think it would belong in the article. Also, if the book is published or the movie is released, they would deserve some sort of mention in the article. Also, if the Tennessee Tech item were reliably sourced, it seems like it might belong. However, the Senior Olympics details are not encyclopedic.

The "Controversy" section bothered me because I perceive it to be undue emphasis on negative information about a living person -- something that WP:BLP discourages. Here's the paragraph:

Wright Thompson of ESPN magazine did an in-depth article about Ken Mink called, "The Legend of Ken Mink". Upon doing the research for the article, Thompson found conflicting evidence regarding the alleged prank incident. Thompson contacted Mink's former roommate, team members, friends, and school faculty. Initially Wright could not find anyone who recollected the prank incident ever occurring. Thompson was finally able to find one person who corroborated Mink's story regarding the prank, however no one was named for being responsible for the prank.<ref>Wright Thompson, [http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=mink The Legend of Ken Mink], ESPN.com. Accessed August 18, 2010 </ref>)

The anonymous contributor of that text states "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources." This particular "viewpoint" is a essentially a journalist's psychological profile of the article's subject. The ESPN profile is an interesting piece that is prominently linked in the article, but I don't think that this kind of inquiry into a person's psychological make-up is appropriate in an encyclopedia article about a living person who is not a prominent public figure. --Orlady (talk) 16:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I posted a note about this situation at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard‎. --Orlady (talk) 16:50, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

The first paragraph seems like it has information I'd expect to see in a Wikipedia article, although it should be sourced. It seems like most of that information ought to be relatively easy to source. The only exception is the statement about the movie script, which is trivial. The fact that the man has a published autobiography seems highly relevant to me, especially since it might collaborate other sources.

However, the second deleted paragraph doesn't seem to server any purpose. It seems to be reporting a rumor. ESPN couldn't find definitive proof or disproof of Mink's involvement, so why waste a paragraph on it? You're right, the paragraph is biased; by putting so many words into discussing the topic, it implies that there must be something to the rumor even though there's no definitive proof. I agree that the paragraph should be deleted.

Furthermore, I think the sentence earlier in the article needs to be revisited:

IN the fall of 1956, when he was a sophomore, he left the college, because he was allegedly expelled for a campus prank that he did not commit.

This sentence has many issues. First, who is making this allegation? It seems that it hasn't been established that he was expelled; we have Mink's word for it, but the same article does a good job casting doubt on Mink's veracity. We have a source in the article that wasn't really in a position to say definitively what happened. We have a University official saying it didn't happen. Yes, there were allegations, but I think it's important to note where the allegations come from: primarily Ken Mink. Also, the sentence as written states that he did not commit the prank—a statement of fact. However, that "fact" suffers from the same lack of evidence as the second deleted paragraph. It comes from the same source. It has the same flaws. It simply is not known with any certainty whether or not Mink committed the prank; we have Mink's word, and the word of this "unofficial historian" who, to go by the article, is relying on hazy personal recollection rather than records. So: should the sentence even be in the article? If so, it needs to be rewritten; perhaps "Mink left the college in 1956; he claims he was expelled for a campus prank that he says he didn't commit." That sentence would be supported by the citation. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 17:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the first deleted paragraph, in principle one would expect it to be fairly easy to source that information, but I have been unable to find sources for most of it. (However, I'm restoring one little bit that I just found a source for.) Note that most of that material was added by a user (User talk:Kenmink) who has not responded to requests for sources in the past. --Orlady (talk) 20:00, 6 September 2010 (UTC) The bit I restored was the bit about Tennessee Tech University. As for the other items: I can't find a source for Ripley's Believe it or Not, he hasn't actually published the autobiography (see this article), and Senior Olympics participation is neither particularly noteworthy nor likely to be documented by a reliable source. --Orlady (talk) 20:18, 6 September 2010 (UTC)