Talk:Marisha Pessl

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Birthplace?

Can we get a more specific location than "near Detroit"? I don't think it's right to list her birthplace in the infobox as Detroit if it actually isn't. 68.40.65.164 01:04, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removed section with weak sourcing

I removed the bit about her playing French horn on an album for a few reasons, which I'd like to detail here. I'm open to serious discussion about this, but please note - I removed it because it was completely unsourced and it was re-added by someone with a clear agenda of stalking my edits and insulting me. There is good reason to believe that this is a well-known usual suspect who has been obsessed with me and my family for years. Please don't restore his work without having a very good reason to do so.

Now, regarding the tidbit that I removed. It was originally unsourced and was added originally way back in 2008 in this edit. Because it is a "cute factoid" we should be cautious about later casual mentions of it in otherwise reliable sources due to the well-known problem of "citogenesis". So let's examine the 4 sources. The most impressive is perhaps the original research of actually linking to the liner notes which doesn't actually support the claim - the name given there is different.[1]. Another is a very dubious and tabloidy listicle called "11 of the Hottest Female Writers in the World" from a website called "TheRichest" - not the sort of thing that we would normally consider a reliable source - and the writeup there reads like a regurgitation of the Wikipedia entry.[2] The date of the article, it should be noted, is significantly after the unsourced 2008 addition to Wikipedia. The archived link to The Daily Beast returns a page that doesn't even mention this factoid at all, and so hardly counts as a source. [3] And finally we have the only source that would in any way seem to support the claim, here: [4]. The main problem with this one is that the factoid is mentioned as an aside in a list of facts easily culled from Google/Wikipedia and so there is good reason to be concerned again about citogenesis.

In my judgment, in a quality encyclopedia, none of this rises to the level that we should insert it. It doesn't seem particularly important to her biography, although it is as as I say a "cute" fact that adds color. As we know, such facts tend to be repeated endlessly in the media whether true or not. We don't have to go along with it and should wait until there is a more thoughtful confirmation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:13, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Including the birthdates of each child is over the top

Including the birthdates of each child of this writer strikes me as way too much information, which should instead be proportionate to the subject of this article.