Talk:Timothy Parker (puzzle designer)

flag for neutral point of view

This article appears to be an autobiography. Article creator appears to be linked with subject, and edits from IP addresses 71.166.47.202, 72.83.128.23 and others have contributed largely to this one article; one has contributed 10 times only to Timothy Parker article, another only to this article, and to "Merv Griffin's Crosswords" to add that Timothy Parker was the puzzle producer, etc.

Wikipedia User/Editor Arcenter -- who created and has made extensive edits to only the Timothy Parker page -- appears to be Timothy Parker himself. See the URLs (www.arcenter.com) in the following newsgroup posts made by Parker, for example:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.puzzles.crosswords/MckVUTkPdUA

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.puzzles.crosswords/R7Rf1IptLNg

Further, Parker's Wikipedia photo is credited to Arcenter as "Own Work."

Is there a way to ban Arcenter/Parker from further editing his own page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:FE4F:D200:E970:1753:2884:FA47 (talk) 15:25, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

flag for accuracy

I just undid two changes stating that Timothy Parker has two sons and that one is a semi-professional street fighter in Mexico. Ref stating that he has a son and a daughter: [1] The rest of this article should be evaluated for accuracy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.251.108.100 (talk) 22:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be on here? http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal-is-unfolding-in-the-crossword-world/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:36DF:56F0:D0D3:2310:BE4A:5D76 (talk) 06:18, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Content Dispute

Arcenter and 71.179.21.197 - Please explain here why the content should be removed, instead of causing an edit war. ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 14:43, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia User/Editor Arcenter -- who created and has made extensive edits to only the Timothy Parker page -- appears to be Timothy Parker himself. See the URLs (www.arcenter.com) in the following newsgroup posts made by Parker, for example:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.puzzles.crosswords/MckVUTkPdUA

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.puzzles.crosswords/R7Rf1IptLNg

Further, Parker's Wikipedia photo is credited to Arcenter as "Own Work."

Is there a way to ban user Arcenter/Parker from further editing his own page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:FE4F:D200:E970:1753:2884:FA47 (talk) 15:26, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Dear Timothy Parker

Dear Timothy Parker (aka Arcenter and 71.179.21.197, etc). Please stop editing your own autobiography.

Allow me to quote the immortal Will Shortz:

Will Shortz, the puzzle editor for The New York Times, was taken aback by Parker’s replications. “I have never heard of something like this happening before,” he told me. “This would never have come to light except in the electronic age, where you can track these things.” He added: “To me, it’s an obvious case of plagiarism. It’s unethical, and I would never publish a person who plagiarizes another person’s work.”

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal-is-unfolding-in-the-crossword-world/

Update: the New York Times itself has weighed in:

Will Shortz, who has been The New York Times’s crossword puzzle editor since 1993, says that crossword ideas and elements are occasionally repeated by accident. But the similarities highlighted by FiveThirtyEight made it “clear it’s plagiarism,” he said.

“When the same theme answers appear in the same order from one publication to the next, that makes you look closer. When they appear with the same clues, that looks suspicious. And when it happens repeatedly, then you know it’s plagiarism,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/business/media/questions-raised-over-crosswords-seemingly-copied-from-the-new-york-times.html

Editing

I've semi protected the page against editing to help deter the edit war. Now as far as the allegations go, we need to remember that these are just allegations at this stage. There's just enough reporting to where this would merit a brief mention in the article, but we should refrain from phrasing things in a way that make absolute judgement calls on what happened since that runs the risk of running afoul of WP:BLP. We're not the ones that make this sort of call and at most all we can say is that some claims were made, Parker refuted them.

I would also like to ask that comments on this talk page be kept civil. If there is COI editing going on then we need to deal with it calmly so that we can all say that things were handled properly from start to finish. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:25, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Drafted by Pirates

Since the citation for the fact that he was drafted by the Pirates at the age of 16 is pretty obviously based on information Mr. Parker provided himself, can that be flagged as non-verifiable, too? I guess based on the brouhaha over the past few days, I don't quite trust his word on this matter.