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Revision as of 18:04, 2 September 2008

Biography: Arts and Entertainment Stub‑class

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rumor removed

I have removed the following: "It is rumored that Bill Gates, whilst he was attending Harvard, discovered a copy of The Master Key System. According to the rumour, Mr. Gates was so inspired by the tome that he dropped out of school and began his computer business career, which resulted in him being the wealthiest man in the world as the founder and owner of Microsoft. ."

Rumor does not constitute grounds for inclusion in Misplaced Pages. If someone can get a reliable source, such as an interview with Bill Gates, that confirms the rumor, the information can be restored.

Looks a lot better not.

It has been since been updated again. Hope the advert code can be removed.

Globalprofessor 02:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)globalprofessorGlobalprofessor 02:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Attempted upgrade

This page contained a high level of redundncy and fragmentation. I have tried to integrate the material into a more coherent narrative and to remove duplicated links. Further comments and contributions are most welcome. cat yronwode Catherineyronwode 13:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Better sourcing on business career

I added some better sourcing on his business career, and restored the Napoleon Hill letter, whcih had been dropped, but which went a long way toward plcing his notability in full historical context. Funny how since the last time i had checked in the article had gone from 4.500 k to 1,200 k and was tagged for non-notability. It almost seems as if someone named User:hrafn has embarked upon a deletion campaign against early 20th century non-fiction authors. i saw the same sort of thing at the Wallace Wattles page recently. Hmmmm. Perhaps we have a one-track-mind editor on the prowl, someone who hates self-help, New Thought, and success authors of 100 to 50 years ago. Is that possible? If so, i wonder what could motivate such a person. Well, i fixed what i could and upgraded as i could. I'm always happy to help improve Misplaced Pages. The new citation standards are an exciting challenge to meet! Collegially, cat yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 08:50, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I see you have complained about incivility on Hrafn's talk page. "One-track-mind editor" is far from civil, in addition to the bad faith you've shown here. And refusing to allow editors to post on your user talk page is not in the collaborative spirit of the wiki. Aunt Entropy (talk) 17:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Catherine's time-travelling crusade

In her latest piece of 'wikipedia policy doesn't apply to me' editing, Catherine has copied several paragraphs off SMILE BIG TODAY.com (a very reliable source, I'm sure) without attribution, and cited to a completely different source that was written in 1909, before many of the events the paragraphs narrates took place. Little things like WP:COPYVIO & WP:V don't matter if what you're introducing is the wP:TRUTH do that Catherine? Hrafn_Stalk 10:13, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

On closer examination, this material appears to have come from a derivative source, http://ptrx.multiply.com/photos/photo/22/9, which contains even more of Catherine's additions (which, wonder of wonders, are likewise generally not contained in her cited sources). Hrafn_Stalk 10:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Your mistake. The information came from the book cited, not from the three or four web pages that also quoted from the same book. It was also previously on Misplaced Pages, from whence the other sites may well have copied it. I will now restore the material that you erroneously throught was a copyright violation, with a clearer explanation of its source, so that you can understand its provenance. catherine yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 21:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Do not accuse your fellow editors of committing illegal acts. You have now gone past gratuitous personal insult and into libel and slander, impinging on my ability to secure employment as a freelance writer. This is intolerable and will be treated as such. catherine yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 22:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Not "from the book cited"

As this dif demonstrates, Catherine cited the statements "Hannel's great hit, The Master Key System, written in 1912, when he was 46 years old" & "The book was heavily promoted in the pages of Elizabeth Towne's New Thought magazine The Nautilus, and by 1933 it had sold over 200,000 copies worldwide." to 'Walter B. Stevens (1909). St. Louis: History of the Fourth City". St. Louis: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.'

How could this therefore come "from the book cited" when it was written three and 24 years, respectively, before these events took place?

Well, obviously that cite was a paste-and-copy mistake. The data came from the haanel.com page. Thanks for finding it. I shall fix it. --cat yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 04:47, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Except that neither of these statements is found in that source either. Also, haanel.com probably isn't the most reliable of sources (anonymous authorship of much of the material and commercial rather than scholarly motivation). Hrafn_Stalk 06:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

You are corect; the "greatest hit" line is not at haanel.com -- it seems to have originated at Misplaced Pages, long ago. The date, however, needs no citation -- it is the publication date and that's that. Likewise, one needs no citation to do the math and figure out how old Haanel was at the time.

Interestingly, haanel.com is NOT, as you so blithely state, "anonymous." It was written by C. W. Evans-Gunther, as stated right on the main page, and uses a whole stack of primary and secondary sources, all spelled out, for its documentation. Here they are, since you seem to have missed them (some are web site links):

Ancient Arabic Order of the Mystic Shrine
Book of St. Louisians, 1906
The Canadian Biographical Dictioanry and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men, Ontario Volume, 1880
Castle Gardens website
ChicagoGenealogy.com
Diana and Gayle's Tipword-Soward Files
Dunn-Pinson Genealogy Files
Grand Lodge of Missouri
Latter Day Saints Family Search website
Rootsweb (several Lists, especially StLouis-MO)
It would be difficult to list all the folk on various Rootsweb Lists who sent information or images but without them a good part of the article would have been impossible. Special thanks to them.
St. Louis City and Missouri Directories, from 1871 to 1946
St. Louis - History of the Fourth City, Walter B. Stevens, 1909
St. Louis Library (to whom go many thanks considering their workload)
United States Census Reports from 1850 to 1880 and 1900 to 1930

I did not see anything "commercial" at the haanel.com site, either, as you charged -- no mention of items for sale, no prices, no method of payment, no shopping cart. It contains links to a publisher's web site at another domain, but they are not even affiliate links. You seem to have superficially skimmed the site, drawn a mistaken conclusion, and brought it here, expecting to convince others. You have not convinced me. I recall that you deleted this good source site a while back, during your wild slicing of the Haanel article from 4,00-plus to 1,000-plus bytes, right before you announced your intention to see it deleted on the grounds that Haanel was not notable. But the site looks well researched; it is non commercial, it is credited to an author who in turn credits sources and has done a great deal of research in books as well as on the web. cat yronwode 64.142.90.33 (talk) 08:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

On closer examination, Catherine is however correct that this website copied this material verbatim from an old (and wholly unsourced) version of this page in November 2007 (as did Catherine herself). I have therefore sticken the WP:COPYVIO complaint. Hrafn_Stalk 03:24, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as i can tell, the haanel.com site did not copy Misplaced Pages, but the Misplaced Pages page at one time credited the haanel.com site. The "greatest hit" line is all over the web now, not just at one site, and seems to have come from Misplaced Pages; i do not know who wrote it. cat yronwode 64.142.90.33 (talk) 08:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for admitting your error and for striking through your allegations that i committed deliberate copyright violation and plagiarism as part of a so-called "Copyvio Crusade."

Unfortunately, a strike-through is insufficient as the title you gave that section repeats the accusation and thus endangers my empoyability as a freelance writer. As such, it constitutes libel. I have asked the Wiki oversight admins to remove this entire section.

You have also accused me of deliberate copyright violation in the Haanel article on Talk:The Science of Getting Rich, an entirely unrelated page. That too is unaccetable and must be removed.

You are using Misplaced Pages to publish libellous accusations against me. Accusations of plagiarism and a deliberate "crusade" of copyright violation cannot be taken lightly by an author. I intend to pursue this matter until the libel is removed. I want you to realize WHY i am doing so: you crossed a definite legal line in your escalating campaign of verbal abuse against me when you used your assumed position of authority as my fellow editor to damage my hirability as a freelance writer.

I could delete the material on both pages, but i am firmly opposed to anyone but the author of a post deleting his or her material from a talk page. It is up to you -- or to the Oversight admins -- to get the material removed. If you are a person of any integrity, you will understand why i insist upon this.

cat yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 04:47, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The structure of your edits (short lines of even length, making it clear that the material was copied from somewhere) and the existence of this material elsewhere on the internet made a prima facie case for WP:COPYVIO. That closer examination later disproved this does not make the original accusation "libel". Given your continual haranguing of me (on multiple talkpages) for attempting to see that WP:V is enforced, your complaint of an "escalating campaign of verbal abuse against " is decidedly WP:POT. Hrafn_Stalk 06:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, dear Lord. The short, even lines came about because i had been edit-conflicted so often that night that i decided to edit offline, using an html text editor called BBEdit. It has a wrap function that i set by default at 65 characters because i have a congenital eye condition called nystagmus that makes it very difficult for me to read long lines of type. (Drop on over to the Yahoo group ann-list and meet a few of my narrow-column friends if you think i'm lying.) I forgot to turn off the default hard-wrap function in BBEdit when i dumped the text into the Wiki window, so it came back hard-wrapped. I soon corrected that, as it caused some coding errors with the wiki media software.

I asked you days ago to "please slow down," over on the Wallace Wattles talk page when you called me "rude" for no reason, but you have only become more agitated and hostile since then. Stop, please. Relax. Take a good long, serious look at yourself, hrafn. You are making foolish errors, one after another, working from a state of hyper-vigilant suspicion that is leading you off-track. You call an obviously signed web site (with a public email address, no less!) "anonymous" and say that it is "commercial" when the domain lists nothing for sale and accepts no method of payment. You make unfounded and dreadful accusations against your fellow editors and justify these claims because you are unaware of that a person's need to use a narrow column-width is often a sign of limited eye function and to your mind, narrow columns can mean only one thing: a "prima facie" sign of plagiarism!

I mean, really: You accused me of of the serious, bannable-from-Misplaced Pages, totally illegal offence of plagiarism for no other reason than that i used a 65 character line length text editor which i need in order to see well enough to type.

I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. It is not only a clear assumption of bad faith, it reflects very poorly on your powers of logical deduction.

I hope that by thinking this over and slowing down, you can develop a more positive outlook toward our collaboration here.

catherine yronwode

Ahh, so it is not "rude" to call somebody a "DESTROYER", "lazy and "a bully", as you did here. This is a wrinkle on WP:CIVIL that I hadn't previously been aware of. Hrafn_Stalk 16:52, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Catherine, you need to stop with legal threats, as they will get you blocked straightaway. And you need to assume good faith if you expect it from others. (This would have been posted to the editor's talk page, but she refuses messages on her talk page) Aunt Entropy (talk) 18:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

1. http://www.haanel.com

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