Talk:John A. Powell

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Notability[edit]

As it stands the article does not appear to me to assert notability. Three sources have been used:

a biography appearing on the www.thehistorymakers.com website which appears to be based on an interview with the subject and therefore fails the "intellectually independent" test,
a biography appearing on the University of Minsota website under whose auspices the subject founded the Institute on Race & Poverty, therefore this biography cannot be assumed to be "intellectually independent" as it is likely to have been written in collaboration with the subject to promote the IRP,
a quotation from the subject taken from the website of another organisation with which he is associated.

I don't see any "secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject" as required by Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Basic_criteria. I've therefore reinstated the notablilty tag which was first placed on the article in July 2009 and removed without explanation or substantial improvement in its choice of sources. If anyone can find sources that meet the requirements (and to judge from the activities described in the biographies, they must exist) please add them to the article and we can discuss removing the notability tag. -- Timberframe (talk) 12:56, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The tag has gone missing again, but still seems applicable, and no reason has been given for its removal, so I've re-reinstated it. Andrewa (talk) 13:53, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

named professor = notability; if you have a notability concerns take it to AfD, but you may look bad. Duckduckstop (talk) 20:23, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No action. Page was already moved to John A. Powell which was an option that had support in the discussion. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

John powell → john powell (educator) — The lower-case name conflicts with the differently-cased "John Powell" page, interfering with search. 76.173.50.78 (talk) 18:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

Support but it would be better to move it back to John A. Powell from which it was moved last month, or john a. powell as he appears in two refs[1][2]. Station1 (talk) 23:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Any additional comments:

Move to John Powell (educator)? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support by analogy with E. E. Cummings (OK not quite an exact analogy but close enough in my submission). – ukexpat (talk) 18:34, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but E. E. Cummings doesn't require parenthetical disambiguation. Wouldn't it be better at John A. Powell, which is a redirect here anyway? Station1 (talk) 22:43, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cummings also didn't consider his lower-case name to be "correct", and went so far as to notify the one publisher who tried it that his name was formatted "E. E. Cummings". ("Let it not by tricksy" were his words, I believe.) A better analogy would be bell hooks, although she's not disambiguated from any other "Bell Hooks", so it's still not entirely helpful. -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:45, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Title[edit]

Shouldn't the page title be in lowercase? Sea Captain Cormac 17:33, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Capitalization needed.[edit]

While I think this guy’s insistence on using lower case letters for his name is a silly affectation, that’s his business and hey, e.e. cummings did it, so who cares?

That said, when his name starts a sentence or paragraph it should be capitalized like any other word. In those cases his vanity should not be observed over basic rules of English. I thought I’d put in the suggestion before editing it in that fashion to see if anyone has a reason to keep it in its current incorrect form.

I agree. I think as a courtsey in the opening section, but also as a encyclopedic piece of information it's worth saying that he chooses to write his own name in lower case. However English Wikipedia is an neutral encylocpedia that has to adhere to the standard use of English grammar: which is that names are capitalised. The rest of the article follows conventional grammer (e.g. "He", punctuation, word order, syntax). Otherwise, where would it end? Can people demand different spellings of words on a third party encyclopedia? There has to be consistency. I'm going to capitalise his name (other than the opening section).Seaweed (talk) 14:47, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]