Talk:StankDawg

Notability

Why does this attention whore get a page all to himself? And how has he affected the hacking scene that greatly? He seems like a new age n00b to me. ( Anonymous comment posted 19:43, September 5, 2005 by 70.67.163.34)

• Those who can, do. Those who can\'t, cry \"n00b\". --Jscott 17:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

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Stank's probably had more direct influence in the "hacking scene" than any "famous" hackers (mitnick, poulsen) ever have.

--Othtim 06:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

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Plenty of non-notable people have gotten short speaking slots at Defcon or HOPE.

WP:N -notable people have independent, notable secondary source validation. Where are his? It appears as if this person is notable primarily for having a podcast. I've never heard of "techdecisions" --- a peripheral mention on an insurance industry IT trade pub? Tqbf 02:49, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Things that need sourcing

I'm going to strip out the following things if they aren't sourced reliably:

• "Worked for various companies and large institutions"

• Guest instructor for professional certification company --- which one? Cite sources.

• "Reportedly found himself getting annoyed"

• BR Magazine (actually, I'm going to AfD this if it's not sourced and notable)

• Appearances on radio shows --- because he founded BinRev, this would be implied, so the explicit reference leaves the impression he's been on the public airwaves. Which shows?

• "volunteer webcasts, presentations, or Q/A sessions to private corporations.". Cite sources.

• "many television interviews for local news channels in the state of Florida,". Cite sources.

• "routinely bringing thousands of downloads, and inspiring over a dozen other cyberculture and "Hacker Media" shows and podcasts.". Cite sources. Also, "thousands of downloads" is in the noise floor for Internet content.

Rename

This article should be renamed "David Blake". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tqbf (talk • contribs) 01:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:NPF

Per WP:NPF, this person may be notable enough for a WP entry, but is clearly not generally well-known. Therefore, "editors should exercise restraint and include only material relevant to their notability".

Subject's high school and siblings are not relevant to his notability, and therefore don't belong in the article.

--- tqbf 23:31, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, by an extremely strict interpretation of WP:NPF yes, but I'm not sure that that's the intent of that guideline. My understanding of NPF is to avoid information like, "He has a dog, he really enjoys watching reality shows on TV, he used to doodle a lot, and that's how he got into art in the first place, he has several self-published pamphlets about how to grow tulips, etc." Some simple biographical info (parents, schools attended, workplace) is the kind of thing we're going to want in any article no matter what. I tend to look at it like an interpretation of WP:AUTO -- there are some things that even the subject of an article is welcome to change/update on their own biography: "you should feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself, such as marital status, current employer, place of birth" So when it comes to those kinds of things, I see no problem with including them in a bio, even if they're not directly relevant to notability, and as long as there is no reasonable concern that the information is incorrect. --Elonka 01:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you'll lose this argument:

1. You're arguing with the plain wording of WP:NPF, which I quoted.
2. Your examples of NN content fit the content I removed ("grew up in X, moved to Y, went to Z high school")
3. Those same examples are damaging to the subject's notability as a whole, since "self-published pamphlets on tulip growing" aren't far from where this subject rests in the WP.
4. A quick survey of other security experts in the WP shows very few examples, even in highly notable subjects, of high school attendence. See, for example, Steve Bellovin, Theo de Raad, Paul Kocher, or even Mark Abene, who was most notable during his high school years.

Care to address any of those points? Appreciated! As you know, the subtext here is that I think this article is innappropriate for the WP period, a case which I think will be easier to make when the article is scrubbed of indefensible content.

--- tqbf 02:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't care that much, so if you want to insist that the information stay gone, and no one else cares, then fine. But to answer your points: Cutting down the size of one article, because other similar articles haven't been expanded, is not a particularly compelling argument. By that logic, you would take any {{stub}} tagged article, and cut down the rest of the articles in the category to match?

Regarding "damage to Wikipedia", I see nothing that would cause damage, by having information about someone's parentage and the schools that they've attended, or where they've worked. We're not talking about a full resume or pages and pages of trivia, we're talking about a few sentences of biographical information to give context about someone's life. Or in other words, it's interesting to readers (at least I found it interesting), and no damage is being done to Wikipedia by leaving the information in, so why go to the trouble of removing it? --Elonka 03:54, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

You misread me. I'm not talking about "damage to WP", which I agree will chug along with or without my efforts. I'm (confusingly, I agree) referring to the implicit argument about whether this "StankDawg" person should be in the WP, leaving the misleading impression that there is a security community that sees 2600 authors are peers to Steve Bellovin or Paul Kocher, both of whom have received less attention in WP than StankDawg, for reasons passing understanding.

With regards to "should high school affiliations be in bios of random security people", I rest my case on the clear wording of WP:NPF and the precedent of the highly non-random, highly notable security experts who do not have this level of trivia in their bios.

Glad we can agree to move on. Let's.

I cut out a lot of stuff from this article today (I'm doing it in tranches, waiting to see if anyone cares or contests). What do you think of the removals? Some of this is your content.

--- tqbf 06:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Some of it yes, but I'm also being very cautious how much I participate, since I'll admit a possible COI, as I've been a guest on Blake's show. But even allowing for that, I'm in agreement with you that much of the information that was in this article about Blake (not to mention in Digital DawgPound) was dubious and should be removed. Where I'm contesting, as I mentioned above, is on the biographical info. Including the name of someone's schools is pretty standard biography stuff, and I can't see as mentioning where he grew up, is going to cause a conflict or increase his notability. Yes, I've read WP:NPF, but I think we have to be careful about following the intent of the policy rather than getting over-specific on the wording. Someone's birthyear may not be "directly relevant to their notability", but it's still standard practice to include such information in biographies. The main purpose of WP:NPF, which is a subset of WP:BLP is "do no harm". My interpretation of this is that we should avoid adding negative information to the biography of a living person, and that we should also avoid using excessive positive information (because that may mean that they're using Wikipedia as a promotional device). But in terms of biographical information, I see that as neutral information: It's neither harming them nor helping them, and it helps give a more well-rounded version of the article. Again, I agree with you that removing the long list of blogs is a good idea, as that tightens up the article and makes it more ship-shape. But I still think removing the biographical info made the article weaker, not stronger. And I'd still like to see that information returned. But I'm not going to edit war about it. --Elonka 17:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying regarding the other edits. With respect to the biographical details --- we've retained the subject's birth date and his college alma mater, even though attending UKY and Florida Atlantic don't establish or support notability. What we have now is a relatively typical biographic snapshot of a marginally notable subject, which seems appropriate to me. I hope it's apparent that I was trying to be careful with what I removed. --- tqbf 17:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Would you be willing to accept a compromise of including information about his family, parentage, and the name/date of his high school graduation? In other words, add: "the oldest of three children. His father was an engineer, and his mother was a secretary and homemaker. Because his family moved a great deal, he attended multiple schools, but finally graduated from Oldham County High School in Buckner, Kentucky in 1989. He then moved on to the University of Kentucky ..." --Elonka 18:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't feel like there's a dispute we need to compromise on here. My issues with this article are twofold, and I think you'll agree with at least one of them:

1. David Blake is, at best, marginally notable (I don't concede that he's notable at all, and will eventually AfD this article again when/if my removal of unsupportable references and details are complete and stand for a few months), so I think any coverage of the subject comes at a cost to the clarity of the WP --- this is my reading of WP:NPF, and why I'm hoping to scrub the article down to notable facts.
2. Notwithstanding the above, David Blake's coverage in the WP is unbalanced compared to the stub-like coverage that security experts of far more notability have received. The extensive biographic treatment Blake is given here leaves a WP reader with the impression that his bio was written by friends as a favor, not crafted by serious editors with an eye to WP's coverage of computer security.

I offer what I think is a productive response to your compromise:

1. We take the language you have proposed
2. But only after we mutually select N (say, 4 each) other people in the the "security experts" category and provide them with comparable biographical detail.

This addresses my concern (2) from above, improves the WP drastically, and "improves" the David Blake article for you.

We don't have to do this right this minute (although I'm willing to). --- tqbf 18:54, 12 October 2007 (UTC)