Talk:Richard Hammar

Cleanup required (January 2016)

My primary concern with this article is that it is filled with information that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. For example, I don't see the importance of the statement that "Their lawnmowers cut the grass at differing lengths." Indeed, the 'Early life' section could be reduced to a few sentences. The indiscriminate inclusion of non-encyclopedic information really obscures the issue of Mr. Hammar's notability.

Also, while I'm sure that the author and contributors to this page have acted in good faith, I'm a little worried that the article's author might be too close to Mr. Hammar, as some of the personal details in the 'Early life' section would probably be known only to close relatives (see WP:COI). For example, the full birthdates of his children and the details of Mr. Hammar's courtship are very intimate details, and I would be surprised if anyone outside of the immediate family knew them. Moreover, no attribution is provided for these details. (As an aside, in this era of rampant identity theft, it seems dangerous to post their full birthdates on Wikipedia for all to see.) Likewise, in the career section, there's an unsourced statement which claims knowledge of his subjective mindset ("Recognizing the importance of accounting and tax expertise in his work...").

I might take a stab at implementing these edits, but since they are quite substantial, I thought that it would be prudent to see what other people think. I envision this article being about one medium-length paragraph long, and even then, I would want to reassess Mr. Hammar's notability. Astro4686 (talk) 22:21, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I decided to delete some of the extraneous material. However, since there hasn't been a discussion yet, I'd understand if someone would prefer to revert my changes and then discuss what I'd like to see changed with this article. Despite the outcome of the earlier AfD nomination, I do not think that the article does a good job of clearly articulating Mr. Hammar's notability, mostly because it still reads like a resume. Astro4686 (talk) 07:51, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Now that much of the unnecessary information has been removed, I am becoming increasingly skeptical of whether this article fulfills Wikipedia's notability requirements for biographies of living people. I am tempted to renominate it as an AfD unless someone can make his notability clear in the text. The career section reads like a resume; it's poorly sourced and basically just lists his major achievements. I'd really like to see independent sources which describe why he is notable. Astro4686 (talk) 22:27, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Article has been extensively revised. I removed the COI and notability tags because the current version of the article has been heavily edited in the time since I added those tags. I am satisfied that the rewritten article no longer raises COI concerns. As for the issue of notability, I'm not convinced that Mr. Hammar meets WP:N, but I don't think that he is so clearly non-notable as to merit an AfD renomination. Astro4686 (talk) 01:10, 6 April 2016 (UTC)