Talk:Jamie H. Cowan

No self-ref

I just reread Tardis:Valid sources and it seems that the section T:NO SELF REF is relevant here. "Tennant's tweet of his age or hometown or other biographical information absolutely cannot be used at the page David Tennant." and "we do not accept the statements of individuals about themselves as valid sources for the page about them." For this reason it seems that everything in the parentheses of the first paragraph of this page should be removed. WarDocFan12 ☎ 15:12, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Maybe the bit about his birthplace, but, as for his names, I think removing that is an overreach of what the policy was intended for. That being to disallow quotes from people that may contain deliberate misinformation to deceive viewers and/or employers. Someone listing their pseudonyms doesn't go against that, much in the same way we openly and rightfully cite people when they state their pronouns and such.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

16:18, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Indeed — self-identification, by definition, is the only correct standard for what names we should use for someone, ergo the people themselves are the best source we can use for names and aliases. Birth dates are indeed another matter. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 16:20, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Not "maybe" but obviously the policy applies to the parenthetical that he was "born in Druimblaire, Scotland in a far-off year or 1764". Come on. I see that the same piece has been removed from the page by another user who is not participating in this discussion.

There are two possibilities here. Either the multiple credits represent a genuine change in his name. In which case the deadnaming policy applies. As far as I can tell it is explicitly against policy for us to "out" the whole history of his name changes if his name was once one thing but now is another. The second possibility is that he is joking and the wiki is just taking it too seriously. This is what "a far-off year of 1764" would suggest. See also below.

In any case there is an issue of citation. Two of the three names are cited to Amazon pages that do not contain them anywhere. Instead the Amazon pages say in his author bio "Don't ask what the H. stands for." As a wiki we should take that advice. WarDocFan12 ☎ 13:52, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

I do want to clarify that the scope of self-identification policies is not limited to "deadnames" in the narrow sense — we're not interested in what somebody's legal name is, but 1) what they're credited as and 2) what they go by. Both in terms of accepting any "My name is…" at face value, for any reasons, and even in terms of hiding out-of-date credits as redirects if the person has not only added another nom de plum to their roster making a genuine effort to bury the older name, even if it's not for gender reasons.

As regards the "H.", his latest release, {{esquivalience}}, gives it as "Hunter"; I think the "don't ask" is not intended to represent actual secrecy but rather a kind of ongoing private joke that he gives a different name for the H. to abridge every time he makes a statement on the matter.

But yes, as I said, the facetious self-reported birth dates and such are clearly within the scope of "no self-ref" and should be removed. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 16:30, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

"a kind of ongoing private joke that he gives a different name for the H. to abridge every time he makes a statement on the matter." - what word to give this other than facetious? Its exactly in line with the kind of self marketing that T:NO SELF REF is meant to help the wiki escape being complicit in. Maybe the various H names can be listed later on the page but they do not belong in an opening parenthetical which will only expand maybe infinitely. WarDocFan12 ☎ 17:32, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely. I didn't mean to be arguing against you in any holistic way — just working through the various points of this peculiar case. When I say we should accept self-citations for aliases, I was thinking more of the source for him going by simply "Jamie Hartley", for example. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 17:44, 12 April 2024 (UTC)