Talk:Michael Everson/Archive 1

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Everson himself wrote this?

I really think this article is written by Michael Everson himself. The other edits of the same user (194.46.84.25) hints toward the matter. Who else in the world is interested in Old Italic, Etruscan, Inuktitut, insists on writing currencies with a small first letter and likes to correct "ISO 10646" to "ISO/IEC 10646"? Roozbeh 22:20, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, Everson himself wrote this ... but in a way it's your own fault! ;-) On 17 February 2004 you told me that you had put a link to me on the Unicode page... linking to (sigh) that good old Klingon proposal of mine, which is fine and fun and all, but not really the core of my work for the Universal Character Set, which apparently is noteworthy enough for the Wikipedia. Since a couple of months went by, and since I did have a bio of sorts on my own web site, I thought I'd start with that. I cut stuff out, and put more stuff in; I learned about how Wiki editing happens, and found that when you edit one thing, often other things need to be edited. I learned and liked it so much I got a proper login. As a newbie, I apologize for not knowing that there was a policy about autobiography. With regard to the article as it stands, there is other interesting stuff about me which isn't there yet. Maybe it would be worth putting in at some stage. I note that someone has already seen it and made some minor edits, which is kind of neat. I invite interested Wikipedians to review the article with regard to significance and verifiability, as well as with regard to neutrality. Evertype 00:27, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, to my mind you're sufficiently noteworthy and accomplished to justify your own Wikipedia article, unlike some most autobiographical entries, so I'm certainly not going to propose the page on VfD! -- Arwel 12:47, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Everson's work on character encodings and the Unicode standard are of specific, but sufficiently general interest, in my opinion. -- Mike Simpson 08:47, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Everson, on the talk page, could you PLEASE stop referring to yourself in the third person, at least on the talk page? It's not doing much to sway anybody's opinion of your vanity. 205.162.51.137, 2006-07-20 08:50:15

Dysprosia's edits and Buddhism

Dysprosia made some good edits to the article, reorganizing it and deleting a sentence which reflected what I thought about my work. I wonder why she deleted "He is a Buddhist", though.

Is it possible that you are not? - Nat Krause

Not really. Buddham saranam gacchāmi. Dhammam saranam gacchāmi. Sangham saranam gacchāmi. ☺ ☸

Yes, but do you know the secret handshake? - Nat Krause 15:40, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

She removed it because she doesn't think it's that relevant. Is it? Dysprosia 00:35, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

More so than it is to Tina Turner or some of the other people whose articles contain the fact. It follows from my work in History of Religions at UCLA; I have published on Buddhist topics, and intend to do so in future. I also like to be marked as non-Catholic and non-Protestant, living in Ireland as I do.

Ah, but to adapt the well-known joke, are you a Catholic Buddhist or a Protestant Buddhist? :) -- Arwel 22:02, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

She removed it because of all the rediculous things so blatantly wrong with this MySpace of an article, the most poingiant is that you state trivial cruft about yourself like your religion, and it is cruft, as well as where you went to school and your racial background. While you are at it, why don't you list your favorite color and what kind of ice cream you like?

Everson, there are two things so utterly wrong with this article that I am amazed it's still here: 1) Your insistance that you are a celebrity worthy of a wikipedia article about yourself. You, sir, did not invent Unicode, you simply contributed to the project, as did many others, only those people don't feel the need to write resumes about themselves on Wikipedia. Your Buddhism, where you went to school, your Irish ancestry, and a whole lot of other things in this article are completely and utterly irrelevant because nobody cares at all. What possible use on Earth could anybody have for knowing you are a Buddhist? You might be deserving of a mention in the Unicode article, but that's it. You have created your own personal little MySpace profile on Wikipedia and gives rise to the question of why you need an article about yourself in the first place. Do you show it off to your friends or something?

I also notice in your links section, you even removed a link somebody added to the Unicode Consortium, which would have been the most relavent of links in that section. Everson, you know that what you are doing is simultaneously unethical, narcissistic and unprofessional (not to mention the DEFINITION of WP:NOPV violation), you do not cite sources to anything you say (you being a primary source is a not good enough to meet Wikipedia's standards) and autobiography is disallowed de jure. Get therapy or maybe even a friend 205.162.51.137, 2006-07-20 03:00:43

Toing and froing

Though his work may be of some merit, Michael Everson by no means deserves inclusion any more than does, say, Leanne Hinton. They have both accomplished things in their careers. I would also argue that this article focuses too much on M's person and too little on his personal achievements; his being a Buddhist is not relevant, nor is the list of educational institutions which he has attended. (I was planning on going to U of A because of their fabulous NAL program, but I'm going to have to rethink that). I would also argue that anybody who believes they are deserving of an article and creates one themselves is, without exception, most definitely *not* deserving of an article. If we do keep this article, it needs to be much more concise; this is an encyclopedia, not the Personals section of the Egomaniacals' Weekly.

Just thought I'd update this old, old comment: Leanne Hinton got deleted a long time ago for the same reason.--SayWhatYouMeanAndMeanWhatYouSay 16:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree a little, in that I am uncomfortable with Michael contributing so much to an article about himself. Frankly, I'd be more worried about this if it were something that happened more often, but, in practice, there are very few such cases (except for obvious vanity jobs that are deleted quickly). On the other hand, once we agree that a person merits an article about them, I'm not sure what criteria to apply as to what to say about them. Since Wikipedia is not paper, perhaps we should include as much information as we can find about all our subjects?? - Nat Krause 15:27, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree, too. Under no circumstances should users be allowed to create or edit articles on themselves. If they find a factual error, they should mention it on the talkpage and somebody else can fix it for them. If there is as yet no page for them, whether or not they are worthy of inclusion, it is not allowed for them to create such a page and it should thus be deleted ASAP or else rewritten entirely.

OTOH, I don't agree completely about including as much information about Michael as possible - his interests are certainly not relevant to his being an expert in said field. If I become famous for being the first quail to become Mayor of San Francisco County, unless my interests are a key part of my claim to fame, they're probably not relevant. The fact that Wikipedia is not paper should not be used as an excuse for inclusion of 100% irrelevant facts in articles (though I don't object to its use for the inclusion of entire articles except in a few cases). Unless his being a Buddhist somehow affects his ability to do what he's famous for, or it's what originally caused his interest, or something similar, it's not relevant. If he were a country music star and he mentioned his religion so much that people would rather suck the tailpipe of a Volvo than go to a speech given by him just to avoid the mentions of his religion, as is the case with Madonna, then perhaps it would be relevant. But TTBOMK, that is not the case with Mr Everson. Although I do not agree entirely with the deletions (which have since been reverted until further discussion by Nat), I do believe that most of them were justified and reflected a true attempt at removal of POV and irrelevance from the article. Ifoolyou 01:16, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I fail to see how a person's education and interests are irrelevant to knowing about a person's achievements. Being an "alphabetician" is a pretty weird job, and as I said, I do get asked how I got the expertise I have and how got to Ireland. Interest in Tolkien led to study of languages, that led to the degree in religions, which is reflected in my Buddhism, and all of that is involved in getting me on the path to studying the world's writing systems. Indeed my passion for languages and scripts is very much the same as Tolkien's, and without that influence I would likely have had a very, very different life and career. And I was particularly active in the encoding of several of the writing systems used with the Pali Canon, because of my interest in it. The mention of typeface design and Gaelic typography and typesetting are pretty important in getting a picture of how this particular minor celebrity got to a place where he had his minor celebrity. In fact I'm one of the more prolific Gaelic typeface designers. There's lots more about me that isn't in this article, but honestly I can't see how the rather concise run-down of education and interest are "irrelevant" here -- and what's more, people like Dysprosia edited and reorganized the whole thing earlier and didn't seem to have a problem with them. Evertype 01:47, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

You just don't get it, do you, Everson? Let's read the first four words of what you said. "I fail to see how..." Everson, it doesn't *matter* what you see or fail to see, you shouldn't have written an article about yourself, and should have *absoultely no influence on this article at all* because of your POV. You also claim that you are remorseful for writing an autobiography, yet you continue to revert nearly every single change anybody makes from the original text that you wrote, which proves you are clearly NOT remorseful and continue to support the view that it is acceptable to write autobiographies on Wikipedia. It is NOT. 205.162.51.137, 2006-07-20 08:47:09

I am not sure why "the not-logged-in version of Node" took a dislike to an article about me, but I did think that his specific comments were a bit churlish. I didn't initiate an article about me in the Wikipedia: Roozbeh put my name into the Unicode article on 11 December 2003. I supplied basic text for the article on 8 April 2004, as has been discussed above. Since then, other Wikipedians have expressed their opinion that the content was acceptable, and have edited and reorganized it and improved it (without deleting large sections of it). Many Wikipedia articles about people include information about their education. I alphabetized the list of scripts at a reader's request, and added some scripts when they got approved for addition to the standard; I am not sure why it makes Nat uncomfortable, really. As I note on my Talk page, I think it is nice being considered noteworthy because of my work, and am as happy having an article here as I was when I was interviewed in The New York Times. Having some celebrity means that people ask certain questions a lot ("How did you get to be a script geek and what are you doing in Ireland?") to which the second paragraph in the article is in part answer. Thanks to Nat for reverting the article. Evertype 11:15, 2004 Jul 29 (UTC)

It's very judgemental of you to say that Node did not like the article about you. Though that's certainly a possibility, it seems to me that he simply disapproved of the slew of irrelevance and POV that the article is full of and that he isn't a proponent of allowing even celebrities to create vanity articles.

It seemed to me that his comments and edits were rather hostile. "Personals section of the Egomaniacals' Weekly"? I did not set out to create a vanity article, as I said in April. [ME]

I do understand that your intentions were not to write a vanity article, but that is what you did.

For what it's worth, you *were* the one who made the original edit to this article. Roozbeh may have inserted your name into said article, but it was you who made the first edit to this article, and you yourself have admitted to doing that. Much of the current text is irrelevant, regardless. The fact that you are a minor celebrity rather than a "star" says to me that information regarding e.g. your education or interests does not belong on Wikipedia but rather on a personal webpage or even your Userpage at Wikipedia.

See above. [ME]

In addition, in the past I have found that you frequently characterize those who disagree with you as not respecting your authority such subjects and in many cases resort to condescension. I wish to make it clear that I respect your authority and that although I do believe I know much about scripts and encodings, I do not believe I know nearly as much about said topics as do you and your colleagues. --Ifoolyou 01:16, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for saying so (the criticism too). Perhaps what I have said here will help you see the text in a different light. For my part, I consider the article to be pretty neutral, and I consider it to be both factual and relevant. Evertype 01:47, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

Relevence aside, I would definitely agree that all the information is factual (I'll just have to trust you there, though, since I don't know you IRL). I agree that it's neutral for the most part, although I have a slight tweak: "...is an expert..." is very subjective. A good alternative may be "...has his ____ in..." or "...has done work on..." or something to that effect. Not that I believe you aren't an expert, but there is no absolute measure of expertise. I don't think it needs removing ASAP since I doubt many here would contest it, but I do think it's a minor issue to be considered. --Ifoolyou 02:54, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Irish descent

I am not sure if this is encyclopedic, but an American establishing in Ireland makes me think he is of Irish descent. Is it so? -- Error 20:33, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

He is not of Irish descent, as far as I know. He moved there because someone was offering him a job, and he started to like Ireland. roozbeh 22:07, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

You could ask.... On my mother's side of the family, I have a great-great-grandmother who was born in Pennsylvania in 1862; her father was born in Ireland. So I am of Irish descent, in addition to my having come to Ireland. Having said that, I am also of English, German, Welsh, and some sort of Scandinavian descent.... Evertype 13:41, 2004 Oct 11 (UTC)

What I meant was that you're not more Irish than anything else. I'm also partially Arab, Georgian, Turkic, etc, you mean. roozbeh 14:58, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

No, I'm not more Irish than anything else. I'm a mongrel with genetic material from northwest Europe. But this rather begs the question... Who said I am of Irish descent? Evertype 12:28, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)

Somewhat offtopic: did you really mean 1862, not 1682 or 1762 or something? I'm wondering how someone born in 1963 could possibly have had an ancestor seven generations removed born only 101 years before. That's an average age of 101/7 = 16.8 years; possible, surely, but a bit unlikely over seven generations! Saforrest 14:36, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

You're right. I have corrected the number of "greats" above. Evertype 14:24, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)

Category sort

I am sorting the Irish scientist category, subcatting all Irish scientists into one or more scientific disciplines and was stuck here, so put this in Irish linguist and cat'd irish linguist to both irish scientists and irish scholars, does that seem reasonable? Notjim 00:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Are you asking me? I'm not supposed to care. I am not sure what the difference between Irish scholars and Irish scientists is, or why some linguists are listed as scholars. You should probably talk about that on the Wikipedia:Irish_Wikipedians'_notice_board. Evertype 13:50, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not asking anyone in particular, I just don't want to annoy anyone who has a strong opinion on how to categories what it that you do. Notjim 20:49, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

John Cowan

I remove the hyperlink to John Cowan, since that (stub) article is now about a much more famous John Cowan than myself. --John Cowan 07:12, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

The price of fame, such as it is...

It's funny when the Watchlist lets me know that someone has edited this page. Today, at 14:03 and at 14:15 User 85.70.242.58 edited the pages of two porn-stars. Then at 14:18, this same user felt that it was important to change "Michael Everson... is an expert in the writing systems of the world" to "Michael Everson... is a self-styled expert in the writing systems of the world." Well, I'm sort of curious to know what criteria are supposed to be applied to the use of the word expert... and following that wikilink one finds: An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge, technique, or skill whose judgment is accorded authority and status by the public or their peers. Experts have prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field. Don't I qualify? One might look at the 200+ character and script proposals I've written in the last decade. Or the New York Times article, where other people use the word. Who descides that a person is not "allowed" to acknowledge his expertise in a field? Sounds like false modesty to me, which is why I don't engage in it. I'll leave it to fellow Wikipedians to decide whether to revert, of course. Evertype 15:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Everson, while I had nothing to do with the particular edit you are talking about, the idea of the value of an editor's contribution being based solely on their previous edit of the pages of two porn stars doesn't make their edits any less relavent. You are clearly a "self-styled" expert, you've called yourself lots of very unmodest compliments. You should have never written an article about yourself in the first place, and you reverting others edits cements the idea that you still consider there to be absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. You are not the god of an article about yourself. 205.162.51.137, 2006-07-20 03:25:09

Call for Second VfD

It's time we voted on nuking this a second time, this time noticing these points:

• Michael Everson reverts any modification to the page from his own personal writing, be it addition or subtraction, even when factual information is added
• Autobiography is highly frowned upon and sets a poor example to other editors
• Since Everson himself states he is one of the numerous co-authors of the Unicode standard, maybe he should be merged with a small portion of a larger page listing all of the Unicode authors.
• The links at the bottom of the page to evertype.com are a commercial site where he is advertising products, so by definition, him writing his own article about himself and his products on Wikipedia is nothing more than thinly veiled spam
• This article is a fine example of what user pages are for, and all of its content should be on User:Evertype instead of here.
• This article does not cite any sources that are not primary. He has a source cited of his own personal website and two links to interviews with himself.
• While this article has been vandalized numerous times by trolls, it is also important to note that reverting vandalization is not justification of content and we can't turn a blind eye to the fact that Evertype has made a mockery of Wikipedia not only in his original violation by writing the article himself but through continued reversion to this vanity page to this very day. He is not remorseful in action despite numerous "apologies".

- 69.76.168.158 aka --SayWhatYouMeanAndMeanWhatYouSay 15:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

One more thing, since Everson would always rather waste time addressing the author than the issue, I would like to state ahead of time that I'm not a sockpuppet and that I nearly never contribute anything to Wikipedia whatsoever, which doesn't make any of the above points less valid. Thank you. - 69.76.168.158 aka --SayWhatYouMeanAndMeanWhatYouSay 15:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)