User talk:PCMorphy72/Syd Barrett genealogy

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Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Syd Barrett genealogy[edit]

Reply #1 to Chiswick Chap[edit]

This submission doesn't sufficiently explain the importance or significance of the subject. See the guidelines on notability. Please provide more information on why the subject is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia, and support it by citing published sources that are reliable and independent.

Hi. This was my first new article and I submitted it before to finish it, generating confusion. Now I've accomplished it. You ask me "why the subject is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia". I've added a line in the beginning of the article, hoping it helps to answer: "Knowing something about his relatives was subject of research for many of his biographers, but the interviews was annoying for him and the subject indiscreet for his family." — Preceding unsigned comment added by PCMorphy72 (talk • contribs) 17:20, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Chzz[edit]

Not neutral (e.g. "Knowing something about his relatives was subject of research for many of his biographers, but the interviews was annoying for him and the subject indiscreet for his family. After his death the research on his personal life doesn't hurt him no more"), opinion not fact (see WP:OR, WP:SYNTH), and does not show why the subject (viz. the geneoalogy of this person) is notable - wikipedia does not present original research

I understand that family trees are not commonly used by biographers and rarely seen in biographies of such important persons as Syd Barrett is. But I guess that who knows how mammoth he was maybe understand the mine would be a good first attempt to do such family trees for many other important persons. After all the mine is done in a complete form. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PCMorphy72 (talk • contribs) 17:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reply #2 to Chiswick Chap[edit]

This submission doesn't sufficiently explain the importance or significance of the subject. See the guidelines on notability. Please provide more information on why the subject is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia, and support it by citing published sources that are reliable and independent.

(also in User talk:Chiswick Chap/TalkArchive2012#Your review at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Syd Barrett genealogy)
I think some replies to your statements are already in the name of my subject, splitting it in two parts: Syd Barrett and Genealogy:

Q1. This submission doesn't sufficiently explain the importance or significance of the subject. See the guidelines on notability. Please provide more information on why the subject is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia.


R1a. If you mean the importance of Syd Barrett please read I've given you some introduction in my second post above, but you haven't reply yet. I've given a number of Barrett biographers in the article other than Luca Ferrari, but it seems it is not sufficient to you: perhaps the Syd Barrett Wikipedia article may help.

Chiswick Chap reply:
Hi, thank you for the information. Since I've already declined the article twice, and haven't changed my opinion, I feel it will be best to leave it for one of the other AfC reviewers to consider: I shall not be involved further. However I can tell you what the reason is: notability. This key concept in Wikipedia's rules (WP:N) means that each article has to show for itself why it's worth including in a global encyclopedia. However worthy a dozen closely related topics, notability can't be inherited. Thus for instance, however important genealogy is, or a man's father or son or grandson, it doesn't make the man notable. The only thing that can do that is reliable independent evidence. If such exists (I have no opinion on the matter) then the reviewers will accept the article. If they mistakenly are persuaded to accept an article which plainly isn't notable, that article will undoubtedly be deleted in the Articles for Deletion process, generally very quickly. Mistakes may occasionally be made but they are generally soon rectified. I hope this helps. with best wishes Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


R1b. If you mean the importance of a genealogy that is not about Napoleon, or some sovereigns or neither Donal Duck where at least each member in the family tree has a certain "notability", you have to take a look at these 2 following Wikipedia articles as example, to understand that it isn't necessary that all the ancestors have to be notable:

It's recall my recently submitted article on Syd Barrett's father Max Barrett, although he was a notable pathologist. Seeing its Julia_Lennon#External_links you see a subject similar to that one into my article, which is perhaps too "pioneering", but of which you have declined the submission (the [1] website has dead in 2011 but you may take a look here: [2])
Seeing its talk pages Talk:Barack Obama, Sr.#delete article, Talk:Barack Obama, Sr.#Notability and Talk:Barack Obama, Sr.#intro you may see the issue has been exhaustively discussed, but at least such articles still exist in Wikipedia. The controversial issue was recently discussed also in the Wikipedia Help desk).

If you still don't think a genealogy is so important (or significant), please take a look at this excerpts from the Wikipedia article on the word "Genealogy":

The pursuit of family history tends to be shaped by several motivations, including the desire to carve out a place for one's family in the larger historical picture, a sense of responsibility to preserve the past for future generations, and a sense of self-satisfaction in accurate storytelling.

— Ronald Bishop, In the Grand Scheme of Things: An Exploration of the Meaning of Genealogical Research,, Journal Of Popular Culture 2008 41(3): 393–412

Genealogists try to understand not just where and when people lived, but also their lifestyles, biographies, and motivations. This often leads to knowledge of migration trends and historical socioeconomic conditions.

According to some sources, genealogy is one of the most popular topics on the Internet.

— Genealogy.com, Recent Maritz Poll Shows Explosion in Popularity of Genealogy

The Internet has become not only a major source of data for genealogists, but also of education and communication.



Q2. Support it by citing published sources that are reliable and independent.


R2a. If you mean to cite each person involved in the family tree, I think it would be too long to give a source for each person there. After all that family tree is given as image and the cited Ancestry.com is known as very reliable: you have just to search a person there with some given data (e.g. year of birth) and you will get information with relative sources like censuses and other official documents, very well detailed. In my new attempt for submitting I've added the Ancestry.com citation even for a section where it was missing (Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Syd Barrett genealogy#Main family tree), however a single reference for all those persons may be related to a too long and rather complicate process, different from an ordinary citation, but, again from the Genealogy article in Wikipedia, you may see how these things change: With the advent of the Internet, the number of resources readily accessible by genealogists has vastly increased, resulting in an explosion of interest in the topic. (Grow Your Family Tree in Salt Lake City – Genealogy is the Fastest Growing Hobby in North America).

R2b. If you mean to support by citations my statements like "Knowing something about his relatives would have been a subject of research for many of his biographers" I've thought it was implied by the number of biographers increasing in the years, like the other information I gave like "he gave his last interview in 1971" which are included in the related article Syd Barrett, as well as the names of some of his biographers, however I've edited the article (the new attempt) citing the books written by the mentioned biographers, in the pages where the genealogical information is more evident, hoping it will be sufficient for the submission. The statement "had to use a restrained style to get a few further such indiscreet information from his family" should be easily inferred from the differences from the information and the style of the second biographer (citation 2) with the third one (citation 3)

R2c. If those "reliable" and "independent" are referred because of the few sources like the Alessandro Cospite's one (for e.g. the Ancestry.com source see above), please note that apart for the intro and the first section, the other sections are full of citations. Now I've add a citation even for the last sentence (To be discrete I've omitted the Ian Barrett's myspace personal page, which is public, as further source). Anyway, if the problem is a specific source or a specific section please let me know.


If you still don't think so, please say me if you think that something in that articles (Syd Barrett and Genealogy) has to be changed, or at least give me a reply.

PCMorphy72 (talk) 21:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Replies to Shearonink[edit]

The majority of references do not seem to be published reliable sources, the geneaology sources are user-edited. Also this submission has not proven that the subject is notable.

(also in User talk:Shearonink#Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Syd Barrett genealogy question)
Hi. I'm pretty sure that the only sources you may object about their reliability are no more than 3: i.e. the references numbered 5, 7 and 12. Instead the main problem of the article is actually its notability. So, to be sure, I would like to ask a simple question you may answer with yes or no:
Do you have considered the notability issues I've reported in User talk:PCMorphy72/Syd Barrett genealogy?
(there you may also understand why you shouldn't have to consider the Ancestry.com source, numbered 4, as "user-edited"). PCMorphy72 (talk) 09:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Shearonink reply:
I actually did read User talk:PCMorphy72/Syd Barrett genealogy before my Review.
The issues with this submission:
  • Ancestry.Com is an user-edited site & their Licensing agreement says that the information cannot be republished.
  • Late Night Syd Barrett Discussion Room is a discussion board, therefore it is also an user-edited site.
  • Find A Grave(discussed at the above site) is also an user-edited site.
  • MyHeritage.Com is also an user-edited site.
  • Flack Genaology is copyrighted...do you have written permission, sent to OTRS, to use information from that website?
  • Ref#1 only links to a book listing.
  • The descendants are not direct descendants, they are either stated to be collateral descendants or siblings. As such, they would not seem to have a measure of notability on their own and are not public figures, so to assert claims of notability and that this subject should be the object of a Wikipedia article, of an article in any encyclopedia, at the present time seems tenuous at best.
  • The neutrality issues brought up in other Reviews {"but the interviews was annoying for him") have not been addressed.
  • The notability of this particular subject as brought up in multiple Reviews has not been sufficiently addressed. Seemingly idle curiosity about the relatives of a public figure is not enough for a Wikipedia article. It might be enough for a discussion on a forum, it might be enough for a musician's fans to post about on some fan site, but in my opinion this draft has not explained why this particular subject should be in Wikipedia.
I declined this submission. In its present state I would decline it again. If you think that this submission will be accepted then submit it again, I will not review it a second time. Shearonink (talk) 17:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My reply:
Thank you for you long reply, also for giving me the opportunity to reply to all your objections. Unfortunately I don't agree to either one of them, or better I consider them wrong, or inaccurate at best.

  • Ancestry.Com is an user-edited site & their Licensing agreement says that the information cannot be republished.
  • Flack Genaology is copyrighted...do you have written permission, sent to OTRS, to use information from that website?

Ancestry.Com is an user-edited site in the sense that users may arrange the information, but that information is easily verifiable in the same website and even ultra-reliable.
Now let's go to their Licensing agreement:
3. Limited Use License
 You may access the Website, use the graphics, information, data, editorial and other Content only for personal family history research. Republication or resale of any of the Content or other protected data is prohibited.
I may agree with the use of their "Content" (or with the "republication" of it, since I'm sure you would consider Wikipedia a publication, though I'm not sure of that) but an extracted information like the name of one's father shouldn't be such Content. I have a pair of examples: a site which distinguish information by "Information" for its copyright, and an hypothetical situation where Ancestry.com claims that the Obama Sr's grandfather name is copyrighted. In other words a copyrighted Information doesn't mean that it is a secret information. To better understand I excerpt this sentences from a blog: First of all we need to understand that copyright protects the form or way an idea or information is expressed, not the idea or information itself.
Being sure those sources are not sufficient for you I report some wikilinks:
Feist v. Rural#Ruling of the Court

copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself.

Wikitravel: Copyright details

In general, it's not possible to copyright information itself -- just the expression of that information.

Wikimedia: Avoid Copyright Paranoia

All of it.


  • Late Night Syd Barrett Discussion Room is a discussion board, therefore it is also an user-edited site.

Yes, it's actually an user-edited site but I've used that citation only for the existence of a research, no matter if it's not reliable. Since Wikipedia doesn't want user's original researches (although anyway such users exist), I've wrote in my article just this sentence: "an extensive research was did in 2012 by a forum user, at the moment that research leads to the conclusion that they were not related until their 10th generation."

  • Find A Grave(discussed at the above site) is also an user-edited site.

[www.findagrave.com] was discussed in that forum, not in my article, and even in that forum it had no importance for the core of the research.

  • Ref#1 only links to a book listing.

Look better, there are links and the photos have comments there. Although in Italian the photo comments was sufficient as source for my sentence "So biographers like Luca Ferrari, who started in 1985 to try to meet him". In the link UN EPILOGO INASPETTATO (un estratto) you may understand why I wrote "try to meet him" and you may have also the answer to your next objection.

  • The neutrality issues brought up in other Reviews {"but the interviews was annoying for him") have not been addressed.

Looking at the link UN EPILOGO INASPETTATO (un estratto) (in Italian) you may see that since 1985 it was very annoying for him. However it's generally a well-known issue and an address should also the main article to which my article is referred: Syd Barrett (furthermore linked the line before my statement). You may find how neutral the information is here:
Syd Barrett#Withdrawal to Cambridge

Reporters and fans still travelled to Cambridge to seek him out, despite his attempts to live a quiet life and public appeals from his family for people to leave him alone.

— BTW the source is the same I've listed as reference #13 in the article

Many photos of Barrett being annoyed by paparazzi when walking or biking, from the 1980s until his death in 2006, have been published in various media.


  • The descendants are not direct descendants, they are either stated to be collateral descendants or siblings. As such, they would not seem to have a measure of notability on their own and are not public figures, so to assert claims of notability and that this subject should be the object of a Wikipedia article, of an article in any encyclopedia, at the present time seems tenuous at best.

Perhaps you will remove I've stated each to be a sibling or a son of a sibling, but unfortunately you don't want I add the adjective "collateral" to the section title (and I don't think it would be more correct), perhaps you would want to remove from all Wikipedia biographies the siblings's names who are not notable when they are named in the biography. You talk as like as I would have written an article for each of the siblings: notability should be for the whole article itself. I don't care what seems tenuous to you but I will talk about the notability issue of my article in the next answer.

  • The notability of this particular subject as brought up in multiple Reviews has not been sufficiently addressed. Seemingly idle curiosity about the relatives of a public figure is not enough for a Wikipedia article. It might be enough for a discussion on a forum, it might be enough for a musician's fans to post about on some fan site, but in my opinion this draft has not explained why this particular subject should be in Wikipedia.

Before you, more than "multiple", they was just a pair of unsuitable reviewers. Although you have stated you have read my answers above to Chiswick Chap (who declined twice, Chzz was the other one, who you know), obviously you haven't understood that genealogy is not "idle curiosity about the relatives". If we agree to let Wikipedia grow, why a genealogy tree Wikipedia article for Donald Duck and not one for other public figures like Syd Barrett?

See my reply at my own talk page.Shearonink (talk) 00:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Messages to Wctaiwan[edit]

(also in User_talk:Wctaiwan/Archive_2#Syd_Barrett_genealogy) Hi. Some weeks ago you helped me (I've reported all here :-) : User talk:PCMorphy72/Max Barrett ). You also persuade me to write with my own (tiring) words and now that article on that interesting person was submitted: Max Barrett. I made even some further related (and very detailed) articles: Henry Roy Dean, Raymond Horton-Smith Prize and Cambridge Philharmonic Society. Now I have a problem with the last related article in my mind. I admit it has some notability problem, but I think it has to be considered carefully. Well, also Max Barrett was suspected of lack of notability, but I was sure it deserved the article. BTW the reviewer who declined for the last time my (tiring) re-edited was the same who declined the Max Barrett article because it had just one reference as source (do you remember?). I've posted a message at the help desk:
Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Review of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Syd Barrett genealogy — Preceding unsigned comment added by PCMorphy72 (talk • contribs) 15:32, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I need to go now, but I'll get back to you later. wctaiwan (talk) 15:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the delay. I looked at the draft and the discussions—the help desk thread, your talk page responses and what Shearonink wrote on their talk page. I'm afraid I pretty much agree with those who have already responded, and there isn't much I can add to what they have already said. In particular:
  • You definitely can't use those diagrams from Ancestry.com. Facts are not copyrightable, that's correct, but the design and photos are.
  • User-contributed information is pretty much always unusable (except in extreme cases, for example, an article about an image macro citing the forum post that first included the image), even when clearly labelled as such. This is because we aim to publish facts, and research by individuals that hasn't been vetted is simply not reliable enough.
  • You need to watch out for tone and synthesis issues. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia should ideally not make a single connection that hasn't been made by a cited source. You said "The statement "had to use a restrained style to get a few further such indiscreet information from his family" should be easily inferred from the differences from the information and the style of the second biographer (citation 2) with the third one (citation 3)."—this kind of inference may be fine elsewhere, but unless someone specifically said "biographers had to get more information from his family" or something to that effect, you can't say it on Wikipedia. We report on what others have said. We don't analyse what they have said ourselves.
I understand you're frustrated, after having expended so much effort on writing the article and responding to reviewers. However, in this case you may just have to accept that the article isn't suitable for Wikipedia—you could still say, take the results of your compilation to a fansite for Syd Barrett. I imagine it'd be fascinating to fans.
One final point on the issue of notability of the genealogy of famous persons: They are not independently notable. An analogy would be Steven Chu and the fact that he is Chinese American. Chu is notable, so is the topic of Chinese Americans—but we wouldn't have an article on "Steven Chu's ancestry", instead, we mention his race in our article on Chu. Similarly, what you can consider doing here is to expand our article on Syd Barrett with a section on his family, using information and sources from the reliably sourced (i.e. not user contributed or inferred) portion your draft.
Please don't be too discouraged. Wikipedia's purpose and rules can seem alien to new contributors, and missteps are common. Thank you for trying to improve what we have, and I wish you better luck in future attempts. wctaiwan (talk) 18:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. I like your way of talk, especially because you haven't gone to review the article (I think one should be interested in the subject of the article before to review it).
I've understood everything you have said. Yesterday those reviewers annoyed me, especially that one who was there to "help" the users, but actually he was there to say me I don't see Wikipedia in the right way. I'm not so frustrated now, the article was already been appreciated by the fans, but please let me leave a pair of replies.
If I change the format of the rectangles used by Ancestry.com and I remove that line about the inference (after all I had added it to justify the notability as some reviewer desired), it would seems that you wouldn't have too many problems with the submission of the article, apart for the example you gave me with Steven Chu. Your idea of a section on the Syd Barrett article is fine, and well understandable, and in fact I've already thought it in the past, but the article is just too long for a section there (even if I had just removed the diagrams): more or less it's the same reason why a discography article of such artists appears as a separate article, and I've just thought that a genealogy is important if not as a work of someone at least as an important "section" of his personal biography (I understand this would be a new aspect for wikipedians, then I've asked for some expert/enthusiast about genealogy), then I simply imagine a such section wouldn't sound good for a reasonable long article on Syd Barrett, but I'm thinking about it… I just hope someone (or you, if you like it) will think about it in the future.--PCMorphy72 (talk) 18:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'll address specific points:
  • The other reviewers didn't do anything wrong—they declined your article based on Wikipedia's guidelines, and the only reason I haven't done so myself is because it wasn't submitted for review at the time I looked at it. The genealogy of Syd Barrett is not independently notable, so it was declined. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, and isn't meant to be a comprehensive collection of details. Such information would be of more interest to websites dedicated to Syd Barrett.
  • Unless you can show that Syd Barrett's genealogy is a topic of scholarly research due to some exceptional reason (for example, in the case of haemophilia in European royalty), the topic is not independently notable. Therefore, the article would not be accepted regardless of what you remove or change...
  • Looking at your draft, it seems like the section on descendants may have some useful information, specifically a general description of his family and their comments about him. I would encourage you to add that to the article on Syd Barrett, should you choose to. Outside of that, most of your article is the research of a fan. Privacy concerns (his family are largely not public figures and may not want their life detailed) aside, the information is again probably more suiatble for a website dedicated to Syd Barrett—due to the amount of detail and to issues with some of the sourcing, as mentioned in earlier responses from others.
  • In very rare cases, if some aspect of someone's life is independently notable (for example, presidency of Barack Obama), we would have a separate article on that aspect. But in the case of Syd Barrett, an expansion as described above would be fine.
I'm afraid I don't have much additional time to devote to this issue, as school is picking up for me (this reply took rather long to write). The most I can say is that I sympathise with your desire to expand our coverage, but beyond what we have suggested (expansion of Syd Barrett with the relevant part, taking the information elsewhere), there isn't much more we can do or say to help with this particular issue. If you need help with other things, I suggest asking it at the help desk, which is patrolled by many other helpers. Good luck. wctaiwan (talk) 17:28, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again for your reply. I don't think you would have been obliged to review the article without a voluntary carefully reading, in all cases without a lot of excuses when, I repeat, I know the main issue is about the notability (especially because of the "amount of detail", as you say) and of course I don't want to make notable what is not notable through a sum of two subjects independently notable. So I can say that if you would had declined the article with such new argumentations about notability, then probably I would have understood and looked for new ways… Friendly I can also say that I don't agree with you in two points: "The other reviewers didn't do anything wrong" and the fact that "issues with some of the sourcing" made the article unsuitable (as I replied, just three minor sources were questionable in my opinion, and nobody has proved the contrary so far), I hope you will understand these are different points of view. Thank you for your kind suggestions and also because you are the only one who liked my desire to expand "your coverage", though I just don't think Wikipedia is an own concept of the reviewers (or of people different from me) as someone seemed to think. Goodbye. --PCMorphy72 (talk) 19:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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