Talk:Robert Stewart (saxophonist)

Getting the facts right

Professor, if you have evidence that I lied to you, I would like to see it.

I must insist again that accusations don't help your cause, and they poison the discussion. From the beginning, you have been calling anyone a racist who changed this article, an article which belongs to no one, which need not exist at all, and which is essentially a gift for Mr Stewart. It could just as easily be deleted. Wikipedia doesn't owe you anything. From the beginning, the difficulties have been on your end. I don't know EddieHugh and NYActuary personally and have never talked to them or emailed them or communicated with them beyond Talk Pages. But my experience on Wikipedia has been that they are professional, reasonable, and scrupulous. If you are an educated person and you can't see that, I feel sorry for you. Communication doesn't get far if there is an assumption of bad faith. None of us is out to get you or anyone else. The three of us have explained the rules to you repeatedly during the past year. These rules can be verified in the documentation. We have repeatedly provided relevant links. But you have insisted on doing things your way.

What you are calling obsession is the diligence and perseverance that editors must have to do a good job. Take a look at other articles. Click on the View History link at the top of the page. Often you will find the same username repeated. That's not obsession. It simply means that person has done a lot of work on the article and has made many edits on different occasions. That's good. It shows discipline and hard work. Some articles need a lot of work. That's not a value judgment or an insult. It simply means work needs to be done to get the article in line with Wikipedia's rules and standards. That's a normal day on Wikipedia.

Instead of trying to find citations that say "the legendary John Coltrane", why can't you just delete "legendary" and move on? Why isn't that an option? It would be a lot easier. People are free to like Coltrane's music or dislike it. Or they can like him without calling him a legend. It's an opinion, not a fact. So what? You are free to think what you want, but you are not free to tell Wikipedia how to write articles. Wikipedia has rules. Why is that so hard for you to understand? I'm not being sarcastic. I simply don't understand the resistance, belligerence, and stubbornness. Why do you repeatedly resort to personal attacks?
–Vmavanti (talk) 18:23, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Browserwarning

My browser (chrome) warns me not to visit the "official website"/ref Therobertstewartexperience.com. Anyone else? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:25, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Fine for me. It has scans of some of the articles used as sources here, so is useful for that. EddieHugh (talk) 18:05, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Fine for me too, now. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:21, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:COPYPASTE

Between this article and amazon.com, about the author: [3]. I don´t know who was first, and it may be less obvious now, but still pretty obvious. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:06, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

He almost certainly wrote both (self-published book blurb: "This is one of the boldest books in modern history"; "a brutally honest masterpiece"; etc.). EddieHugh (talk) 18:03, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, but that bit isn't in this article, at least. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:19, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Solved by EddieHugh. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:35, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

The way is clear

@Vmavanti and EddieHugh: Thank you for trying to clean up this article, and for politely putting up with a fair amount of abuse while doing it. You are a credit to Wikipedia. You can now put the article into shape with a free hand. The user Professorreason has been indeffed and the COI arguments have been archived. --MelanieN (talk) 09:57, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree, thank you to you both. Alex Shih^Talk 10:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Piling on. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:09, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks all for your help. I'll probably go back to it in a while to get it looking more like a biographical article, if no one else jumps in first. EddieHugh (talk) 17:59, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome, MelanieN and Alex Shih. I'm glad it's settled.
–Vmavanti (talk) 21:38, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

...I've now gone through the article to the degree that I'm going to. It's a messy mish-mash, but there's enough there for someone to build from if interested. Lots of citation needed tags; someone with a stricter brush might prefer to sweep away the content that has them, but my best guess is that it's not inaccurate (although 'played with' could mean anything from 'sat in during a jam session for one number' to 'was in the band for months'). I haven't seen most of the old print sources, so can't vouch for them stating what the article asserts they do. Scans of some print sources are on Stewart's website. EddieHugh (talk) 16:57, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Did some of his article (before you changed it) come from Amazon? or did the Amazon material come from Wikipedia, or neither?
–Vmavanti (talk) 19:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

One of the two first, I´m fairly certain, but it´s moot for now. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:47, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Good work. I wish there was a better WP:LEADIMAGE. The images in the article are good for many things, but not that. Something like at Wynton Marsalis or Chico Freeman would be good. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:34, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

IMO this article contains way to many names, but jazz is not my forte and I'm not sure which names would be sacrilege to remove. How about the Blood on the Fields names, since that has it´s own article where they can be found? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:24, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Jazz articles usually have many names because jazz musicians often record with different musicians from album to album, and tour with different musicians from year to year. Lots of flux, mobility, and experimentation in jazz, and that includes personnel. But jazz also seems like a small world where everyone knows each other, even between countries. There are also sessions musicians, though there are fewer today, especially in pop music. It's possible to get jazz degrees in college, something that began in the 1970s, and there are more music schools than ever, which means more musicians are looking for work. Another reason for the names could be the attempt to establish notability. It might look like name dropping, and sometimes it is, but the names are supposed to be of people the subject of the article has worked with, i.e. made albums with or toured with, preferably more than once.
–Vmavanti (talk) 19:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the infobox image. In light of what's happened, it strikes me as being ironic at best. I like the one farther down, though it's dark.
–Vmavanti (talk) 19:31, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

IMO it´s not any better as leadimage, but now we´re in very subjective territory. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:54, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

As a (probably) final follow up, I've now seen copies of some of the old, paper-only sources, and it doesn't surprise me that they don't support what's in the article. e.g.:

• "Stewart also joined the Los Angeles-based group Black-Note for an eight-month stint, and performed with trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis and drummer Brian Blade that same year.[8]" That source doesn't mention DM or BB, and states only "Briefly a member of the Los Angeles-based quintet Black Note..."
• "He performed with Roach's full ensemble a few months later.[6]" The only mention of Roach in that source is: "has already played with such jazz stars as Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, The Harper Brothers..."
• So, there's enough material available to assemble a reasonably good, well-sourced article, but the best approach would be to get rid of everything that's currently in it and start again using the sources properly. I lack the motivation to do all of that for this article. EddieHugh (talk) 16:12, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Help me out here

I´m reading the JazzTimes review of In The Gutta at [4] (#5 at that page).

• Is it based on one song (Get Out) on that album?
• What does BP and DL stand for?
• I´m taking this cliparchive at therobertstewartexperience as authentic, I see no problem in using it as a cite for the WP:RS that are reproduced there. Would that be wrong? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:39, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Update

After the most recent intervention by the subject of this article / professorreason / an IP editor, I've now gone through all of the usable online sources that were in that version of the article, and added them as sources to the existing article as required/possible. (Please note that AllAboutJazz allows musicians to upload information about themselves – see here – so the Stewart biography page there should not be used as a source.) I've also cut all but one of the remaining citation needed tags and all of the info that was flagged in that way. The main text of the article in its current state is thus reasonably well sourced. No doubt lots of info is missing, lots could be found and sourced, etc, etc, but there's no more facebook/amazon/large-scale tagging. EddieHugh (talk) 21:33, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Very well done, thank you. I've looked for something besides WP that says he was born 1969, but not even his own webpage does that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Also, I wonder a little about the leadimage since it also was published in the last item here [5], whatever that is. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:12, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

BTW, if "Years active" in the infobox means as musician, the article states that he stopped that in 2016. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:17, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

According to AllMusic [6] he was born in 1918, which shows everyone how reliable that site is for dates. The image info states that he held the rights to it and uploaded it himself – a publicity shot, presumably. EddieHugh (talk) 22:18, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Aha, he is a vampire! Cool pic, though. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:21, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

The discography section is largely uncited, but it may not be a big problem, much is cited in-text. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:27, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I've been talking to the new IP (not the blocked one, the later one) on my user page. I made a few edits to the page and he seems much happier now. He is giving me the credit for making the page acceptable to him, but I think you guys did most of the work. -- MelanieN (talk) 21:52, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@MelanieN:, I admire what you're trying to do for him, but I'm taking a much more cynical/hard-headed approach. The 'final pupil of Dizzy Gillespie' source you added was a cut and paste (with a little editing) of part of Wikipedia's article, Dizzy Gillespie. Why was "Robert Stewart (saxophonist)" listed alongside people such as Miles Davis? Because it was added by an IP editor who didn't know how to format wikilinks properly. That IP editor's entire history was adding things about... Robert Stewart. And that IP editor was... you've probably guessed, see User talk:98.210.204.148, the very one just blocked for the latest dump of info on this article. He's aka Robert Stewart, Professorreason, etc. The sources suggest that Gillespie let him sit in once. That's it. The hyperbole then grows with every iteration of the story / every Wikipedia edit he made. We've done what we can to make this article not bad, but indulging him is unnecessary. EddieHugh (talk) 01:14, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Eddie. Regarding your deletion of the material regarding Pharoah Sanders and Dizzy Gillespie [7]: I realize these are not traditional Reliable Sources, but I thought they could be used for verification of a fact. Yes, the Jazz in the Bay announcement is not a Reliable Source and includes a lot of puffery, but about Pharoah, not Stewart. It seemed harmless as a valid reaffirmation of Pharoah’s relationship with Stewart (i.e., first mentor). If you can’t accept that, I will add “mentor” to the existing mention of Pharoah. As for the Dizzy Gillespie reference, I found that via my own research, not any previous Wikipedia material, and there is no such thing in the Dizzy article now. But I see what you mean about the original source at Wikipedia for that item. How you traced that as the source for the Dizzy centennial event announcement beats me; I must say the kind of scrutiny and research you are applying here seems unusually severe. At least I have a Reliable Source for his performing with Dizzy [8] and I will use that. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:48, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Actually I don't see a good place to mention Dizzy. -- MelanieN (talk) 17:11, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

OK, I found a better newspaper source for Dizzy so I added him back. Our friend still wants a mention of Donald Byrd, but I can't find any independent sourcing for a connection with Byrd. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:21, 17 November 2018 (UTC)