Talk:Robert Steadman

Untitled

This article was listed for deletion on 26 October 2005. The discussion was closed with the result keep. This article will not be deleted. You can view the discussion, which is no longer live: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Steadman. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:28, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

• Archive 1 (October 17, 2005 to November 7, 2005)
• Archive 2 (November 4, 2005 to March 8, 2006)

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Letter in the Daily Mail

I presume this is the same Robert Steadman who accused Wikipedia of being "far from encyclopedic", "litted with inaccuracies", "bordering on the outright trivial", "a joke, a broken experience and one which, if Alan Johnson had any sense, he wold recommend that students avoid" in today's Daily Mail? ^Tom_Phil 18:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

• I wonder if by any chance this is the same Robert Steadman who has a letter published in this morning's edition of the London Times (page 18 - "Wiki Whacking") - while as in every organization there is scope for improvement - to use the articles on religion (always a controversial subject), as an example to make the sweeping statement that Wikipedia is a failed experiment is to rubbish thousands of very good and highly accurate and informative pages on a diversity of subjects. The statement in the Times' letter that many articles are controlled by cabals inserting certain viewpoints is again untrue. The letter mentions Wikipedia having pages on "...every droid or blob ever to appear on star wars" - so what? - so long as there are articles on as many notable people as possible does it matter greatly whether they are on porn stars or daleks - so long as the truly notable, great and notorious are there also. If wikipedia has one great flaw - it is that it does not have an active public relations department to counter negative claims made in the national press. Apologies to all readers if this is not the same Robert Steadman of Matlock, Derbyshire who penned the Times letter. Giano 07:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't really think there's anyway of finding out if it is the same person. Jimmy acts as the sole public relations guy. ~ UBeR 20:58, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe that David Gerard also does some sort of "handling the media" types of duties in the UK, you might want to mention it to him. Since said user was confirmed as having made heavy use of socks to edit this article, it's almost certainly the same person (hence solving the mystery of why we have such a lengthy, detailed article on such a borderline-notable individual: exactly the sort of self-promotion that's another significant problem with Wikipedia, if it comes to that). Of course, this was only uncovered when he was so incautious as to start blatantly vote-stacking on controversial AFDs, with someone with checkuser involved on the opposing side. Oops. It was a long-standing suspicion before that, though. Likewise, he seems to have significant "form" when it comes to stirring it on online fora (though of course the Steadman socks trotted out the "you'll never prove it's me-- I mean, him!" line). Alai 16:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• If that is the case, should his Wikipedia activities and letters to the press etc noy be included in the wikipdia biography, they are obviously part of his life, so without them the biography is incomplete. Obviously the published, signed and addressed letters can be cited as references. Giano 16:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The Daily Mail have published a response to Robert Steadman's letter that I sent in defence of Wikipedia in yesterday's edition. For those who did not see it, I pointed out that only a small number of articles are actually affected by the disputes Steadman refers to, that the width of topics is a benefit, and that it is a valuable tool provided that it is used in conjunction with other sources. ^Tom_Phil 10:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)