Talk:Robert Earl Jones

Latest comment: 11 years ago by Osiris in topic Year of birth

Year of birth change

Now im pretty sure alot of editors on this pgae have heard about the edit war. The cause for the edit war is the year of birth. His year of birth is reported any year between 1900 and 1911. The social securtiy says 1910 but other sources say this man was born in 1911 and others 1904 which one is the right one. Now if any user is willing to help me and other fellow users out it would be good. No one has said anything yet.

Hi there. The first point of business would be to find some sources showing his birth year or age at various points in history. The only year sourced in the article at the moment is 1910. So the questions we normally ask in these kinds of situations:
  1. Which sources report his birth as being 1911 or another year different to 1910?
  2. How reliable are those sources? What are the most authoritative sources?
  3. Is there a date that is reported by a distinct majority of reliable sources?
If the discrepancy between sources is large enough, a note (such as the one I added previously) should be added explaining the situation. If one age/year is preferred by a majority of authoritative and reliable sources, then it is safe to also use that date here – in addition to the note.
His age at death is reported as 96 in the vast majority of obits I've seen (Boston Globe, Guardian, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, MSNBC). I've not seen anything reporting another age. Media reports can often all come from the same source (Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Associated Press, etc), so this isn't surprising. But the fact that public records have his birth year as 1910 is pretty convincing, and is the most authoritative source I can find. Until we can find an equally authoritative array of sources for the other years, I would recommend that we report the year as 1910. Osiris (talk) 05:37, 9 November 2012 (UTC)Reply
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