Talk:Herb Ringer
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Notability, reliability, plagiarism[edit]
This struck me as a very strange article. It's about a photographer, but there's no claim of any notability beyond write-ups and reproduction within a single local newspaper. Still, I tried to keep an open mind as I read it, looking for notability among the family gossip and so forth.
The article in the state in which I encountered it said among other stuff:
- Ringer from the start used 35mm cameras while he later purchased a large-frame (2 1/4 inch) camera. When Kodak introduced its Kodachrome color film in 1946, he was one of its first customers and used it exclusively.
That struck me as very strange, for two reasons:
- I'd never heard a 2 1/4 inch camera referred to as "large frame". I guess "large format" is what's intended, but "large format" starts above 2¼ inch, which is called "medium format". Putting aside the matter of what is and isn't conventional photographic terminology, the context seems to be the 1930s or 1940s, a time when there was nothing "large" about 2¼ inch, which was the commonest size.
- Famously, (Eastman) Kodak introduced Kodachrome in the 1930s.
I thought I should look at what's given as the source for other information in this article. Most of those assertions that are sourced were sourced to
- Stiles, Jim (December 1997). "A Wonderful Life: The Story of Herb Ringer". The Zephyr. http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/herb/ringrbio.html. Retrieved on 18 December 2008.
The link was dead, but web.archive.org has various versions of the page, of which the most recent dates from late 2006 and is here. I looked in it for "Kodachrome", and here's what I found:
- From the beginning, he used 35mm cameras with excellent optics and later purchased a large-frame (2 1/4 inch) camera. When Kodak introduced its Kodachrome color film in 1946, Herb was one of its first customers and used it exclusively
Two observations.
- There's a remarkable similarity here. Well actually Stiles's article has been copied, and copied without any acknowledgment. That is, plagiarized.
- It's clear that, here at least, Stiles doesn't know what he's talking about. He's very careless at best in his description of a camera for 120 film, and he's plain wrong about Kodachrome.
Therefore Stiles's article should be treated with scepticism -- it hardly seems reliable. And, like any source that's not unambiguously in the public domain, any quotation should make scrupulous use of quotation marks, etc. -- Hoary (talk) 01:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
- I didn't cut and paste. I feel I was scrupulous within the bounds of fair use as to using Mr. Stiles article as a source. I'm no camera expert and am sorry I didn't do a bit of research on the claim about Kodachrome, etc. Probably best to take our the mis-information, and also scrutinize the rest of the piece. I have been under the weather and may not be able to tweak it for a few days. I hope that is acceptableDgabbard (talk) 23:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
- I never had a chance to do the reworking of the entry, and now the great pooh-pahs of Wikipedia are slating the entry for deletion. It is sad but I am not going to make a fuss. Maybe in 20 years Herb Ringer's life will be well documented enough that the powers that be deign to allow him an entry. Dgabbard (talk) 17:13, 1 September 2009 (UTC)