Talk:Stephen Lash

removed "opening paragraph needs to be rewritten" note from dec 2024

I can see how the last sentence ("he has been involved in virtually every historical auction since 1977 etc") can be construed as hyperbolic or one-liner-y, so deleted it entirely. what remains is sufficient in summarizing his notability, and the rest of the article sufficiently furthers that as well Greg (talk) (contribs) 19:40, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Removed "promotion content" tag from May 2025

Cleaned up some language that could be perceived as promotional. the issue is, a lot of the sales of paintings Lash commandeered are by nature fantastical-sounding, as if out of a movie, but things he actually helped sell. Anyway, should be ok now Greg (talk) (contribs) 01:22, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

COI tag (June 2025)

Many of the claims were not backed up by the sources. It appears that this is either original research, or puffery, or written by someone close to the person or who works/ed at Christie's or another connected source. It may have been created for undisclosed payment. Netherzone (talk) 05:04, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I guess I disagree. Many of the articles are paywall New York Times pieces that collectively support everything and that he was instrumental in founding Christie's North America and was involved in everything the piece claims. I do notice a "dead link" that goes to something unrelated, but that tends to happen over time. As the chairman emeritus of the biggest auction house in the world, he's certainly worthy of an article without all these tags. On top of that it's a low-importance article. but hey, i have no dog in this fight and i've said my piece Greg (talk) (contribs) 12:01, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi Greg, thank you for responding in a timely manner. The NYT paywall is not the issue, I have a subscription and access to many other newspapers. The issue is that the article was not appropriately nor accurately sourced. In other words, statements were being made about Lash that were not backed up by the associated inline reference. WP is an encyclopedia, not a blog, so everything must be reliably and verifiably sourced to published high-quality sources. Editors can't just say things about people - especially in a biography of living people - without it being in the sources, even if you "know" those things are "true" or they are things the person told you in a private conversation. If that were permitted, anyone could say anything about themselves or others, and the quality and the integrity of the encyclopedia would be compromised.

Here are the claims in the article that were not backed up by the associated sources: . Where did those claims/facts come from?

For example, *How do you know that his parents were "art aficionados" or that he grew up in Brookline, and where he got his degrees? The only thing about him in the associated source, "Featured Alumnus" is a photo caption.

There were many other examples of claims that did not correlate to what the sources actually said consequently they were removed. Netherzone (talk) 15:16, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I understand. He's an alma mater of institutions that interviewed him about his parents, for example, but when I can get to it I will fix those sources and then assess if it's worth even removing the tag. I've created a lot of articles on wiki that i would never have put up and would never have gone un-flagged if i were solely intent on blogging or puffing - but i see now how inprecise my work was on this. Will circle back at some point - thx! Greg (talk) (contribs) 16:00, 18 June 2025 (UTC)