Talk:Jaron Lanier

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Sven Birkerts (January 17, 2010). "Rage against the machine". The Boston Globe.

Cleanup

I've recently begun cleaning up this article, starting with the lead section and working my way down and then back up again to expand it. Preliminary changes are as follows:

Moving all basic, non-quote citations out of the lead and into the body where they belong (per WP:LEADCITE)
Removing any sources and replacing them with better ones (for example, an about page on Cato Unbound's website.[1]) While this is a helpful overview, it was written by their editors as a promotional piece in 2006. On Wikipedia, we want to focus on more reliable sources for BLP's. Recently, an editor tried to "mimic" the wording of this citation instead of relying on biographical articles written by disinterested third-parties.
At least one editor continues to add "retired filmmaker" to the lead section, not understanding that Lanier was joking about Wikipedia's editors in a sarcastic manner.[2] It is important to understand that Lanier is not a retired filmmaker, nor was he ever a "filmmaker" or known for being a filmmaker. If the editor in question would like to add this to the lead section, then they will need to find secondary sources about its importance. Since there do not appear to be any, nor has any other biography referred to Lanier as a "filmmaker", one should not add it back. The most recent edit added "onetime experimental filmmaker" to the lead, however, aside from the sarcastic/humorous interview with Lanier that the editor used to base this observation[3] (which is considered a primary source) there is no secondary source that calls him a "onetime experimental filmmaker". Wikipedia BLP's should be very careful to follow what the majority of sources say on the subject.

More on the way. Viriditas (talk) 02:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further note about the above: It has come to my attention that the use of the Edge source is not only disputed, but it is published by Lanier's agent,[4] making it a self-published, primary source, and less than ideal for summarizing anything about the subject. I have spent the last day looking through multiple biographies on Lanier; none of them refer to him as a "filmmaker". Viriditas (talk) 07:59, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Plagiarism and copypasta

I'm finding a lot of material that has been cut and pasted directly into this article from either Lanier's website or other sites without inline citations or quotes. I'm removing them as I find them, but it is looking like the entire article needs to be checked out and rewritten. I'm very surprised that this sorry state of affairs was allowed to continue for this long. Viriditas (talk) 07:41, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]