Talk:William Bascom

Articles issues tags

The article was tagged for notability, lack of sources, original research, and sources in third-party publications. I appreciate the efforts to make Wikipedia more scholarly, but I wish the user had read the article and the notability guidelines more carefully before tagging this article (it's extra time-consuming steps like this that keep me from contributing more to Wikipedia, and presumably others). As for notability, Bascom meets all 6 of the notability guidelines for academics [1]. The article is sourced with two independent sources, together written by four of the top folklorists of the 20th century, one of which was published in the Journal of American Folklore, the top scholarly publication in the field. If there is any original research in the article, the user should point it out. Everything stated here can be found in the cited scholarly article and book. I might add the scholarly article was a featured obituary in the Journal of American Folklore, an honor reserved for only the most notable and prominent members of that field. Bruxism (talk) 04:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I just scan the article. I see the references are cited poorly, (well, it shows some notability, but more needs to be done), and yeah. —BoL 04:36, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Now you're wasting my time, so I'm getting annoyed. Please do more than "scan" the articles. In response to notability, here are the 6 criteria for "academic notability":

1. The person is regarded as a significant expert in his or her area by independent sources.
2. The person is regarded as an important figure by independent academics in the same field.
3. The person has published a significant and well-known academic work. An academic work may be significant or well known if, for example, it is the basis for a textbook or course, if it is itself the subject of multiple, independent works, if it is widely cited by other authors in the academic literature.
4. The person's collective body of work is significant and well-known.
5. The person is known for originating an important new concept, theory or idea which is the subject of multiple, independent, non-trivial reviews or studies in works meeting our standards for reliable sources.
6. The person has received a notable award or honor, or has been often nominated for them.

1. Significant expert. Bascom was the recipient of a featured obituary in the chief peer-reviewed scholarly journal of the field. He was the director of the anthropology museum at one of the top five anthropology departments in the U.S. Author of at least 6 scholarly books and editor of 3 others. Taught at Berkeley, Northwestern, and Cambridge. 2. Important figure. See above. His articles are read today in graduate courses in folkloristics and anthropology as basic texts. 3. Published significant and well-known academic works. See above. 4. Collective body of work. See the list at the end of the article. Anyone in the field would recognize that as significant. What more are you looking for, exactly? 5. Important new concept. See "four functions of folklore." Also see his article on "Prose Narrative." Scan those. 6. Notable award or honor: Pitrè Prize, which unfortunately doesn't have an entry yet, I will concede.

So much for notability. Poorly cited? I listed in proper bibliographic format the two sources that were used so far for this article (actually, the previous editor left out the publisher of the book, so I'll add that). It's a start-class article, nothing more. It does not have individual footnotes for every fact in the article, but then, most articles in Wikipedia don't either, so your tag is not helpful. I'm removing it again. Bruxism (talk) 05:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

References