Talk:Philip K. Dick

"Insurance nurse"

What would an insurance nurse be, and why would one be sent out in the circumstances described in the article? nonky 22:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

external links

Project Gutenberg has four of Philip K. Dick's short stories now. http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a33399

Gweeks (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Obsolete

The 2009 release date for the biopic may already be inoperative, but it surely will be if not replaced before 2009 ends. A tag on that sent will then indicate "[dated info]", and start pointing here. If it's changed, whether before or after, a note added to this section would be an efficient bit of collegiality.
--Jerzy•t 21:50, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I've removed this hidden comment from the article:

A 3-y.o. self-serving press release about a future film is no longer credible when the release date is less than a year away and there is no independent confirmation. (IMDb may not be presumed indpt, but they've updated to pleading ignorance.) If something better can be found, add a ref & update the enclosing template

The talk page (here) is the appropriate place for such discussions to take place, not in hidden comments in the article itself. I've left a pointer to this page in its place. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 19:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

• Seems good, Ed, tho i'm making it a section lk.
  --Jerzy•t 08:06, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
  

"Year in literature" links

Anybody think the hidden links to "xxxx in literature" ({{lty|1982}}) add anything? I propose removing them per WP:EGG and WP:OVERLINK. --John (talk) 04:38, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

John, are on about this again? First, these are not Easter eggs, they hide nothing. You click on a linked year in a literature-related article, and you are sent to an article about that year in literature. just as if you clicked on a linked year in a general subject article, it sends you to an article about that year. That's precisely the same functionality, so there's nothing whatsoever that is hidden. Second, yes, they do add something, they give the reader the ability to get some context about a book's publication year (if they want to), the kind of broad context that would not be appropriate for direct inclusion in the article. Third, as far as I know there is still an RfArb open concerning date linking, and I believe we've been asked to hold off on linking and delinking dates until they finish considering the case and post their results.

Given all that I see no reason to make changes here. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 04:46, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

• A notice of this discussion has been posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 04:50, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
• A notice of this discussion has been posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 04:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
• A notice of this discussion has been posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science Fiction. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 04:54, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

From WP:OVERLINK under Year Linking "they contain information that is germane and topical to the subject matter" and few of these links meet that criteria. So yes they should be removed. Blithely adding "year" or "year in literature" links purely on the basis the year applies and the subject is literary is NOT enough. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 09:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:OVERLINK, YIL is way overlinked. Remove all wikilinks, keep the year-links preceded by a book. feydey (talk) 09:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Link to www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pkdick.htm

An editor has been deleting a ref to this site, saying that it's spam, but when I go to it, I get an essay on Dick. Are we seeing different things, or interpreting the same thing differently? Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 20:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The editor in question left this comment on my talk page, which I'm transferring here, since I think the discussion should take place here.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ is not a valid source according to how I interpret Wikipedia:Reliable sources.

*Articles should rely on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.

*Self-published sources are largely not acceptable, though may be used only in limited circumstances, with caution, when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.

This webpage doesn't say what the author's qualifications are or even where the material came from. The main purpose of the webpage seems to be links to Amazon.com.-Crunchy Numbers (talk) 20:16, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Transferred by Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 20:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe the bone of contention is the two prominent affiliate marketing links to Amazon on the page in question. The editor's comment on your talkpage is irrelevant because this link is not being used as a source for the article; per WP:ELMAYBE, appropriate links include "Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources."  Skomorokh  20:26, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

You're mistaken, it is being used to reference the fact that Dick spent most of his career in poverty. I'd say the editor question has a point; it doesn't look like a reliable source to me, interesting little essay though it is. --John (talk) 20:35, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with John's assessment of the situation, although CrunchyNumbers deleted it with the edit summary that it was spam, it turns out that his argument is actually that it is not a reliable source, which is, of course, paramount since it's being used as a citation. (I think there's no really good argument that it's spam, so it could be used as an EL. CrunchyNumbers should be more careful about making his edit summaries accurate.) Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 20:54, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, the link in question is not the one highlighted above, which is the site's home page, but http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pkdick.htm. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 20:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The author of the essay is Petri Liukkonen:

Who is Petri Liukkonen?

abstract:

You may not have realized that the website you visit frequently for concise biographical information on world authors is coming from an obscure Finnish library near the Russian border! Meet Petri Liukkonen, Director of The Kuusankoski Library, Finland.

article:

April 29, 2008 — When doing research for an article on a particular author I discovered a website that you all probably know about and refer to frequently—books and writers at www.kirjasto.sci.fi/

The troubling thing that day was the piece on the author I was researching had several typos and I wanted to notify the webmaster to notify the editor of the site.

To my surprise a lovely, apologetic e-mail came back from Mr. Liukkonen thanking me for the corrections and describing—actually showing me—the Eastern Bloc-styled library where he has spent the past seven years working on an alphabetical calendar of author biographies, as he says, "to escape the boring duties and responsibilities." But anyone can see this is a labor of love.

The site gets 69.44 million hits per year and 9.74 million unique visitors per year. Authors Calendar was awarded the Finnish Writers Association Prize in April on "Book and Rose Day."

Since English is not Petri's native tongue he has managed to get some texts corrected by a native speaker who looks at the spelling and grammar. When I communicated with him today he said he was in the office on his day off, writing about the Korean poet Ko Un [you heard it here first]. Stay tuned for my barrage of questions on this life work of Petri's. ...

So, not a world-class authority, but also not a pajama-clad blogger either. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 21:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, not a "self-published" site - it's copyrighted by "Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto, Finland" which translates as "Kuusankosken City Library, Finland". It's sounding more and more like a reliable source. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 21:09, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

It seemed like spam to me since there were Amazon.com banners and there are so many pages with no explanation of the author's qualifications, experience, etc. A google search of "www.kirjasto.sci.fi" site:wikipedia.org turned up 348 articles. It could very well be many people independently linking to the pages on this site for different wikipedia articles but it seemed like spam to me since the links were consistently hidden as refs. My guess is they wouldn't last long as external links. Can't we just use what ever source is listed at the webpage? If no source is listed then why trust it? I still don't understand how this site would not be considered as self published just because it mentions a library. Is this a personal library? If it is a public library why is the website not at the main site of the library? Why has a library allowed him to place commercial banners on the site?-Crunchy Numbers (talk) 04:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Many sites are Amazon associates, and the vast majority of reliable sources we accept (eg. every single commercially published newspaper or magazine) have advertisements on them. The essays on the page are original essays not copied from elsewhere, so we cannot hopscotch back a source, and they were used as refs because they were used as references. Sure, we should determine whether we want to accept this librarian's work as reliable or not, but that has nothing whatsoever to so with it having Amazon bugs on it, and your insistence on attacking it as spam is not only irrelevant, it's unhelpful to that determination. Please stop, there is no evidence at all that this is spam. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 04:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes websites like this are useful, for example, librarian David Dodd's unique and professional Annotated Grateful Dead Lyric archive currently hosted at UC Santa Cruz.[1] I would tend to see Petri Liukkonen's site like Dodd's, however Dodd did publish his work in 2005 (ISBN 0743277473) and I'm curious if Liukkonen has taken it to the next step. I wouldn't be against using a link to Liukkonen's site in either a note or a further reading section, but the "poverty" statement needs to be sourced in the body, not just the lead (lead is a summary) and when we do that, we need to be using standard reliable sources per Crunchy Numbers. Viriditas (talk) 12:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

KSMO

KSMO is now a radio station in Missouri. Was it when PKD supposedly DJ'd there? Or were the call letters reassigned? brain (talk) 16:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis? KSMO was out of San Mateo, California from 1947-1952.[2] In typical Dick fashion, it is historically unclear if he was ever on the air. Viriditas (talk) 21:39, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

PKD-related cfds

There are 2 current PKD-related cfds here and here. Occuli (talk) 14:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Films, order of

I am changing the Films section to be in chronological order, using the dates given.