Talk:Brian Bonsall

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I have removed material from this article that does not comply with our policy on the biographies of living persons. Biographical material must always be referenced from reliable sources, especially negative material. Negative material that does not comply with that must be immediately removed. Note that the removal does not imply that the information is either true or false.

Untitled[edit]

Please do not reinsert this material unless you can provide reliable citations, and can ensure it is written in a neutral tone. Please review the relevant policies before editing in this regard. Editors should note that failure to follow this policy may result in the removal of editing privileges.--Docg 23:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

July 2008 headlines for sources[edit]

— pd_THOR | =/\= | 19:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Test[edit]

123 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.185.225.222 (talk) 05:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia people are just mean and angry[edit]

This guy has a lot of acting under his belt, but almost the entire article is about every single little detail of his problems with the law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.186.247 (talk) 02:25, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hoax[edit]

A hoax article at usmagazine.us (not the real website of US Magazine, btw) has been created to spread rumours about the article subject. (The hoax is repeated at a fake TMZ website as well.) Please do not repeat the hoax here. Thanks. --NellieBly (talk) 17:04, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've proposed that site (and its three friends) for the Wikipedia blacklist. Shouldn't be controversial. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:09, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. I've asked for page protection for this article too. Last time I looked, there were only two sites, so I can see the possibility of persistence. --NellieBly (talk) 17:13, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There's Ebuzzd and OKMagazine, too. Not directly linked to this story, but others like it. All part of the same web. RIP Newman. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
www.usmagazine.us was registered yesterday and also reported the death of Seinfeld's Wayne Knight and possibly Chumlee from Pawn Stars. It looks like a cheap knockoff of US Weekly magazine. Unfortunately, the news of Knight's death hit Facebook's "Trending" feed. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be picked up much elsewhere. Eauhomme (talk) 17:27, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of Legal Troubles and Substance Abuse[edit]

I am Brian Bonsall and I hereby request that you remove this section under the "right to be forgotten" ruling set by the Court of Justice in May 2014. I am no longer a public figure, and I have no plans to return to acting. I am trying to get a job, and this section makes it impossible for me to work and support myself. I have NO money from my acting career and NO residuals, so by leaving this here, you will be making me destitute and homeless. Please honor my request. Also, Marijuana is now legal in Colorado. I don't mind the acting part, and the part about the bands, but please remove my legal troubles. Thank you, Brian.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.227.60.9 (talk • contribs) 05:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is based in Florida and works under Florida law. That ruling was in Europe, and regarded Google results. No direct connection.
Wikipedia relays many verifiable and notable facts about many current and past public figures, in a neutrally worded way. It's also not censored, provided the info is already public information.
Marijuana is more legal now than it was in 2010, but that doesn't change what happened then. Any employer who would hold that against you can Google your name to find many outside sources about your crimes, regardless of whether Wikipedia kept it. So if it's as big an employment issue as you say, it's a bigger problem than we can solve here. Good luck, though, personally.
Feel free to voice any Biography of Living Persons concerns at the BLP noticeboard, if you disagree with the advice. There you'll have more ears, and may find a workable solution quicker than on this talk page. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:52, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The problem here is WP:DUE, and I think that this section is excessive. It lists the problems in a newsy style which does not really add significantly to the context of the article. This could be trimmed per WP:ADAM.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 05:51, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • In January 2013, Wikimedia moved its primary hosting to Ashburn, Virginia.[1] This means that Wikimedia content is held on servers under US jurisdiction, although there are also servers in the Netherlands.[2] The real issue here is whether a litany of court appearances and convictions is necessary. It probably isn't, and should be trimmed. Brian Bonsall should have a look at WP:AUTOPROB if he is concerned.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 11:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ashburn, Virginia. Seems nice. Thanks for the update! InedibleHulk (talk) 03:40, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia must not give credit to any law anywhere in the world pushing for censorship of its articles. If that means burning the Netherlands server and increasing access times for Europeans, so be it; but I have seen no proof that what that server does is even covered, since it is essentially just relaying information as countless servers on the internet do.

While the IP address above makes a heartwrenching claim that does urge us to be careful about how we treat people, we cannot possibly accept that every time a comment is left saying "Honest, I'm so and so" that this will be the truth, because people would certainly abuse it just to play mind games on us. It's possible to start a more verifiable communication with the Foundation as directed at Wikipedia:Contact us - Subjects. Of course, none of this means we have to keep an unreasonable version of an article, but our purpose ought to be to report history, not cover it up. Wnt (talk) 16:44, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It was striking to me to compare Bonsall's page with Jennifer Lien's, who has had much more notorious run-ins with the law. But on Lien's page, all of her issues are confined to one or two sentences. If this is fair for Lien, it is certainly fair for Bonsall, whose issues have been much less severe. I adjusted Bonsall's page to be consistent with Lien's. Jestertrek (talk) 21:13, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Jestertrek: I have reverted your changes, the removal of information was done on consensus. You need to open a new discussion and gain consensus to have it reinstated. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:38, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@FlightTime: For the record, little or nothing was removed, just rearranged/edited to be two sentences instead of five. Jestertrek (talk) 16:00, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Removal[edit]

I went ahead and removed all of this because it is way too detailed and out of step with BLP values to list court appearances and arrests exhaustively. As far as I can see, none of these incidents resulted in a custodial sentence. For a non-famous person, a DUI incident or arrest for possession of marijuana is worth a few paragraphs in the local newspaper, not a major write-up in their biography. This type of incident needs to be handled with care, with the author asking "Does this really add something important that the reader needs to know?" "But it's true!" also applies here. There was too much trawling to create this section and it is not nearly as prominent in a web search on Brian Bonsall's name.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:09, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Undue if we consider him a famous child actor. Due if we consider him a famous former child actor. The entertainment media likes that angle, and (to an extent) we mirror the sources. Of course, they go a bit overboard with their storytelling and treatment of fame. But is it neutral to make that judgment call ourselves, or should we just reflect the reality?
I find it amusing how you also removed the only sourced claims about anything here, but I don't feel strongly enough against it to argue. If Wikipedia was the sole place for info, rather than just the top search result, I'd be more defensive. Prominent online if you combine his name with a term a cautious human resourcer would.
Still better than what they'd find for poor "Brian Bosnell". Remember to print clearly on applications; the dead can vote in America, but that's about it. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:37, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Some of it is undue to the point of trivia, eg "in 2004, he was arrested under suspicion of drunk driving" cited to E! News which someone has gone to the trouble of finding on the Wayback Machine here. I am open to debate on whether any of this should be put back, but it would have to be made much shorter and not read like a list. Is there anything that you think clearly needs to be in the article?--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 05:31, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, arrests without follow-up aren't too important. Everyone's suspicious sometimes. Innocent till proven guilty. Pleading guilty counts as proof enough, and the public should know about all violent crimes, not just the hardcore cases. I'd keep those, in a perfect encyclopedia.
Change the header to just "Legal issues", maybe, and leave what goes on in his own mind and body where it belongs. Instead of detailing his probation violations, just note he had "several" or "a few" and let the reference do the unabridged work, for people that into celebrities. No need for the first sentence; the header's the introduction. Other pointless words like "however", "coupled with", "after more than a year", "stated that". InedibleHulk (talk) 09:06, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We should keep more than half the material, concerning convictions and sentencing, but by usual standards probably not arrests, though as mentioned the verbosity can be reduced. We have a cognitive dissonance here because of the conflict between our innate sense that everyone should have a fundamental human right to employment and basic living conditions, and the governmental agenda that people with even minor convictions be stigmatized, that the stigmatized (even non-criminals) be denied a chance to make a living, and that the inevitable resulting crime against humanity of people dropping out the bottom of the system should be applauded as a sacrifice on the altar of Social Darwinism. That we cannot fix here, though fix it we must. What we have to do here is to uphold the right of our readers to freedom of inquiry, to learn the relevant material from the existing sources without censorship, because with as many rights as we lack we can't give away more. The harder viewer will say that it is not Wikipedia's role to help someone get a job by lying about a criminal background on the application; and if an employer doesn't even ask they presumably won't be reading Wikipedia to find out, and so there is no circumstance in which we cause harm that is not the intent of society as presently misruled. Wnt (talk) 16:56, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
NHS boss on £250,000 a year fired after colleague discovered he had been jailed for armed robbery is a remarkable true story from the UK in 2013. It would undoubtedly have helped the person concerned if mentioning the conviction had been deemed "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed" in line with Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González. It has some relevance here, because although Brian Bonsall has had several run-ins with the law, he has not held up a bank or killed anyone. In cases where a conviction resulted in a fine, a suspended sentence, probation or a prison sentence of less than 28 days, there needs to be careful consideration of whether mentioning the conviction really meets WP:BLP. Even with all of the run-ins with the law removed from the Wikipedia article, a person could still find out some or all of the information in a web search. Also (although I am not an expert on US law), employers are able to run background checks where this type of material may show up anyway. There is specific advice for Colorado here. The main issue for Wikipedia is writing BLP articles conservatively, and the material removed in this edit was excessively long and detailed.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 11:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Birth Year[edit]

Article says 1981, infobox says 1979. I don't know which one's true, but that's a thing. 2001:5B0:2444:B0B8:4487:FEE8:FA45:94C9 (talk) 22:55, 22 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1979 in the infobox may have been introduced in a past edit and nobody noticed it. The online sourcing is consistent in giving 1981.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 05:41, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Marriage October 2017[edit]

Re this edit: judging by this tweet, he has got married in the last day or so, but it isn't ideal to use social media as a source. It would be better if it was in a secondary reliable source, but you can't have everything.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 12:49, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Age query[edit]

@Ianmacm: "At the age of five, he won the role of Andy Keaton on the sitcom Family Ties". Bonsall is a December baby. Wouldn't he have been four when cast and first appearing? Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 04:19, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bonsall appeared in seasons 5–7, and season 5 first aired in September 1986. He can't have been five at the time of winning the role, although he would have been soon afterwards. I think what the text is trying to say is that his first major role is when he was five years old, which is broadly correct. In the episode "Be True to Your Preschool", Andy Keaton is intended to be a five year old.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:54, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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