Who Are Neal Schon’s Ex-wives? By [insert clever pseudonym here]
This post is in line with our new "not every blog entry has to involve exposure of Wikipedia-based criminal activity" policy. Hopefully this won't cause too much disappointment among our readers...
I will be basing my comments on this version of Neal Schon’s Wikipedia biography. The first thing you notice when you look at it is a big ugly warning that “some of this article’s listed sources may not be reliable.” That warning has been there since 2013. For ten years, this biography about a famous musician has had potentially unreliable sources and no one has bothered to deal with it. Or, if they did, they thought the warning was pretty, so they just left it there.
In the section about Schon’s early life, it says his full name is Neal George Joseph Schon. It isn’t. It’s just Neal Joseph Schon. No George. There’s a source given for this, a 2011 book called Don’t Stop Believin’: The Untold Story of Journey by Neil Daniels. That’s not where the “George” comes from, though — it’s not even in the book. The “George” was added by an anonymous IP editor in 2011. The other edits by the IP were of similar quality — as Wikipedians would say, “vandalism.”
It is true that WPians can say "look, we fixed the error that you pointed out thus proving wikipedia works!" but alas the error is spread all over the net before the damage is done.
It is true that WPians can say "look, we fixed the error that you pointed out thus proving wikipedia works!" but alas the error is spread all over the net before the damage is done.
A lie will go round the world while truth is trying to figure out whose house they woke up in and what happened to their other shoe.
Unread postby tarantino » Fri Jun 09, 2023 6:27 pm
There is a user NealSchon(T-C-L) who made just one edit, to the Neal Schon bio. He added Neal's work with Bigfoot to the lede. Amusingly, ten years after that edit, Don't Stop Believin' is used in the Smallfoot trailer.
A correction/clarification (to the statement "Spouses and children are a standard thing to include in a biography"): It has not actually been routine to include the names of non-notable minors in biographies for quite a while now. Depending on the editors they often get removed from older biographies in passing even if included in a source. See BLPNAME and the footnote (quoted below).
This is generally interpreted by the community to include the removal of names of non-notable minors from articles about their notable family members, such as when a notable individual births or sires a non-notable minor. Notability is not presumed or inherited with extremely limited exception (such as heir to a throne or similar).
BLPNAME is also used to remove spouse names where the marriage is very short and doesnt result in children, its interpreted as 'not significant'. But you see that less often. When you do see it, it is almost always in a biography where the subject has been racking up the marriages.
So the lack of inclusion may be an editorial decision here, one that does actually have a policy base.
Last edited by Anroth on Fri Jun 09, 2023 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It is true that WPians can say "look, we fixed the error that you pointed out thus proving wikipedia works!" but alas the error is spread all over the net before the damage is done.
Nine-plus months later, I'm amazed my correction actually stuck. Not because I thought I could be wrong--while that's always possible, following the bread crumbs, I'm confident that fact was Citogenesis that took off--but just because Wikipedia is Dysfunctional AF and I expected to be reflexively reverted due to being an account with (At the time) a total of 2 edits to its name prior to that making a "correction" to a sourced statement.
It is true that WPians can say "look, we fixed the error that you pointed out thus proving wikipedia works!" but alas the error is spread all over the net before the damage is done.
Nine-plus months later, I'm amazed my correction actually stuck. Not because I thought I could be wrong--while that's always possible, following the bread crumbs, I'm confident that fact was Citogenesis that took off--but just because Wikipedia is Dysfunctional AF and I expected to be reflexively reverted due to being an account with (At the time) a total of 2 edits to its name prior to that making a "correction" to a sourced statement.
I don't think Wikipedia is as revert-happy as people assume; if they were, then stuff like the plausible but wrong name would have gotten reverted in all likelihood.
I don't think Wikipedia is as revert-happy as people assume; if they were, then stuff like the plausible but wrong name would have gotten reverted in all likelihood.
About half of my first edits to non-English Wikipedias were reflexively reverted moments after I made them.
“Wikipedia is like an old and eccentric uncle. He can be a lot of fun — over the years he’s seen a lot, and he can tell a great story. He’s also no dummy; he’s accumulated a lot of information and has some strong opinions. … But take everything he says with a grain of salt. A lot of the things he thinks he knows for sure aren’t quite right or are taken out of context. And when it comes down to it, sometimes he believes things that are a little bit, well, nuts.”
I think it's more a case of "A Wikipedia article is the work of a single ignorant conspiracy theorist, or a team of neutral subject-matter experts, or anything in between".
“Wikipedia is like an old and eccentric uncle. He can be a lot of fun — over the years he’s seen a lot, and he can tell a great story. He’s also no dummy; he’s accumulated a lot of information and has some strong opinions. … But take everything he says with a grain of salt. A lot of the things he thinks he knows for sure aren’t quite right or are taken out of context. And when it comes down to it, sometimes he believes things that are a little bit, well, nuts.”
I think it's more a case of "A Wikipedia article is the work of a single ignorant conspiracy theorist, or a team of neutral subject-matter experts, or anything in between".
Pulling a made-up statistic from nowhere, I'd guess that less than 10% of ignorant article creators are conspiracy theorists. And well-intentioned cluelessness is frequently harder to spot, with the potential to do much more damage.
A correction/clarification (to the statement "Spouses and children are a standard thing to include in a biography"): It has not actually been routine to include the names of non-notable minors in biographies for quite a while now. Depending on the editors they often get removed from older biographies in passing even if included in a source. See BLPNAME and the footnote (quoted below).
I think that's probably a good thing, but you're talking about names of children, not the existence of children. Does Neal Schon have any children? Yes. How many? Apparently he has 5 kids. Done.
Grats to Jake, Zoloft, et al. for keeping up the twice yearly schedule. If I had anything interesting to write about I'd be sure to pitch in, but my wiki-life is significantly more boring than the stuff typically blogged about.
EDIT: On second thought, something about the clogged toilet (metaphorically, as far as I know) that is COI edit requests could be written, but I generally think about things for about too many moons before I get around to doing them, so no promises I'll be the one to write it.
Grats to Jake, Zoloft, et al. for keeping up the twice yearly schedule. If I had anything interesting to write about I'd be sure to pitch in, but my wiki-life is significantly more boring than the stuff typically blogged about.
EDIT: On second thought, something about the clogged toilet (metaphorically, as far as I know) that is COI edit requests could be written, but I generally think about things for about too many moons before I get around to doing them, so no promises I'll be the one to write it.
I had COI edit requests in my rotation for a bit, but between the horrible requests and the pushback from other editors on good requests it just wasn't worth any time. I did help get Batista's height sorted, though. Then that led to a discussion about "billed weight" for wrestler articles written from a kayfabe POV.
Unread postby tarantino » Mon Jun 19, 2023 3:00 am
On a related note, Rob Reiner(T-H-L)'s middle name is not Norman, according to someone claiming to be his manager. The meatheads guarding his article don't buy it because they say " Britannica, LATimes, and Hollywood Walk of Fame disagree." Those sources seem to date back to 2014 at the earliest, however his wikibio has used Norman as his middle name off and on since at least 2009 when the indefinitely blocked Pizzamaniac09(T-C-L) added it.
On a related note, Rob Reiner(T-H-L)'s middle name is not Norman, according to someone claiming to be his manager. The meatheads guarding his article don't buy it because they say " Britannica, LATimes, and Hollywood Walk of Fame disagree." Those sources seem to date back to 2014 at the earliest, however his wikibio has used Norman as his middle name off and on since at least 2009 when the indefinitely blocked Pizzamaniac09(T-C-L) added it.
On a similar note, how old is Kenneth Copeland(T-H-L)?* *My sources tell me he will assassinated by the Deep State very soon, so obituary writers will need to know when he was born. That's assuming they don't replace him with a mind-controlled double, of course.
We'll never know. The Bible says the Morningstar is older than the foundations of the Earth itself, so they couldn't have calendars when Copeland was born because calendars are all based on the orbit of Earth around the Sun.
If I had anything interesting to write about I'd be sure to pitch in, but my wiki-life is significantly more boring than the stuff typically blogged about.