Talk:Paul Lavers

Unverified personal-life claims

I don't want to get into an edit-war with User:Jack1956, but by any objective standard he has made unverified edits of personal-life claims and should be removed summarily under WP:BLP.

Jack1956 did replace one link to the search-form page for an ancestry site, which is disallowed as going to search results pages, such as links to individual website searches, search engines, search aggregators, or RSS feeds. But another remains.

And take this sentence: "Paul Lavers was born in Bristol in 1950, the son of Frank Lavers and Josephine Lavers (née Richards)." The cited source, his official bio, does not give a birth place or birth date; does not give his parents' names; and does not give his mother's maiden name. So ... I have to ask, how is this a proper citation? I invite Jack1956 to discuss.--Tenebrae (talk) 21:38, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• That is my mistake. I am in communication with Mr Lavers, who confirmed his parents names and his date of birth. See here for confirmation of his date of birth on his website http://website.lineone.net/~plavers/scrapbook.htm The email he sent me has been forwarded to Permissions as it includes permission to use his image. I'm sure if I ask him he will also confirm the dates of his marriages and the names of his spouses, etc, etc. How would you like me to cite this?

In addition, links to Census Records, births, marriages and deaths, etc, are cited by reference to official documents on the Ancestry site on many articles on Wikipedia. I have never seen a rule that says the site cannot be used. Perhaps you would be so kind as to provide a link to where this is stated? Jack1956 (talk) 23:42, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Jack.Thank you for responding. It's not that ancestry sites can't be used, as far as I know; and ancestry sites certainly can have public pages, such as this one. It's that search pages can't be used. I provided the link above to WP:ELNO.

Also, an email from Mr. Lavers falls afoul of the policy on original research. Wikipedia is only supposed to use WP:SECONDARY journalistic / academic / reference sources. Permissions only applies to images; claims, particularly BLP claims, need to be available to other editors.

Surely someone of Mr. Lavers' stature must have biographical information about him somewhere publicly available. At the very least, would he object, do you suppose, to putting this contested information on his official website? That would solve everything neatly and efficiently.--Tenebrae (talk) 19:37, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi again, I have managed to work around things by finding alternative sources for the disputed facts. The only one I'm having problems with at the moment is his parents' names. He is busy rehearsing for a new production at the Royal National Theatre at the moment, but when the run ends in May I'll ask him if he can put these on his website. Best wishes Jack1956 (talk) 20:00, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

That's wonderful — thank you! In the meantime, rather than deleting, I'll simply add a citation request to the sentence with the parents' names. Who knows? Another editor with access to different sources might even come by and add it! And may I say what a collegial and collaborative process this talk-page discussion was. My compliments to you.With regards, --Tenebrae (talk) 20:13, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Except ... the scrapbook doesn't say 1950, and nothing says 16 April 1950. Did I misinterpret? --Tenebrae (talk) 20:15, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Also, here's a link re: deleting the deprecated persondata fields: [1]. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:17, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The 16 April bit was added by someone else and I'm happy to lose it. The scrapbook says he was 5 in 1955 giving a birth year of 1950, which was confirmed by the now deleted Ancestry citation. Jack1956 (talk) 20:22, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Ah! Thanks! I'll add that to the quote field so other dummies like me won't gloss over it!   : )  --Tenebrae (talk) 20:24, 13 April 2016 (UTC)