User talk:Sobconly

Welcome!

Hello, Sobconly, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Graham87 02:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Sources

Hello, it would be nice if you could provide sources for your additions to Robert C. O'Brien (author). See [[Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners with citation templates for help on how to do that. Graham87 02:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I have replied to your post at Wikipedia:Help desk#Robert C. O'Brien. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:16, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Sarah, I agree with the reply at the help desk – if the information can't be cited to a publicly available reliable source then it shouldn't really go in the article. A reliable source in this case would most likely be anything written in a newspaper/journal/magazine about your father, or any publicly available text about him either written by him or someone close to him. However, I've poked around at the article and the sources I can find, and made the followwing changes (along with other minor expansions):

1. I've changed the listing of your mother's name to "Sally" because that appears to be the name she was most commonly known by. (Until today I had no idea that Sally was a shortened form of Sara/Sarah!) It's the name she uses in her biographical sketches of your father, at any rate.
2. According to the Z for Zachariah article, both Sally and Jane helped to complete the book. This is referenced to the "About the author" section in the book itself, so I've noted that in Robert's article.
3. For now, I've removed the text that you added about the connection between Robert's glaucoma and his visit to the NIMH which inspired Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. By accident, I discovered that it's contradicted by Nicholas Tucker's afterword to the 1994 edition of the book, which quotes your father on this point (but doesn't say where the quote came from). Memories can get frayed; it can happen to anybody.
4. I've removed the reference to him working with "Nathan Forsythe", whoever that is. This appears to be a remnant of vandalism from February 2010; the editor also added that Robert married Sarah Palin, among other nonsense.

If I'm wrong about any of these things, let me know. Keep in mind that literature isn't my primary interest (though Z for Zachariah was one of my favourite books that I read in high school); the article about your father is only on my watchlist due to how often it gets vandalised, which is probably a back-handed testament to the popularity of his books. I'll notify Seoulseeker, the primary editor of the Z for Zachariah article, about this discussion. Graham87 08:38, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Re: Z for Zachariah

Hello Ms. Conly. I run a small reading and writing program in Victoria, Canada. I've been working on the Wikipedia article about Z for Zachariah and slowly doing research for an article to submit to journals about the story. When I first studied this story several years ago and began discussing it online, I was very surprised to find that no one else saw the narrator as unreliable. I would love to find out if there are any notes of your father's left which could shed light on the narrator, literary references, the apparent structure of ironies, and the story's themes. Thank you very much. --Steve Lyne Seoulseeker (talk) 17:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)