Talk:Sean O'Neal

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The A.V. Club's Sean O'Neal is not this Sean O'Neal

I posted this which lasted all of 11 minutes:

"Not to be confused with A.V. Club contributor Sean O'Neal."

using this reference:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-boy-from-small-wonder-is-broke-and-homeless-be,76636/#comment-543987912

which was deleted, the reason stated was that it was a blog post and not being a reliable secondary source.

The post in question is:

"Another true story: After about 20 years of getting emails and Myspace/Facebook/Twitter messages meant for him, seeing my photos posted on "Where Are They Now?" pages and the like, I finally tracked down the guy from Clarissa Explains It All on Facebook, then wrote him a message letting him know what he's put me through pretty much since the advent of the Internet. He thought it was all pretty funny, and we've become cordial, friendly acquaintances since— even though I still kind of hate him, just for existing. But at least now I can forward people to his actual page: "

This was written by the the A.V. Club's Sean O'Neal and his post has a "Staff" tag not available to us regular posters (as seen at the link).

I thought the information might be of interest to some people reading this entry and useful too, given the content and cases of mistaken identity that have already happened. As Sean O'Neal from the A.V. Club also has a public profile, it's possible people might look him up here just for starters.

I'm not sure how else we could definitively prove these are two different people at this time. Though I guess most of us at the A.V. Club would find it quite funny that Sean O'Neal is not considered a reliable source about himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shan246 (talk • contribs) 09:46, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The other Sean O'Neal is not notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, so we don't really need to explain that this is not the same Sean O'Neal. By the same token, if a Sean O'Neal lived in Austin, Texas and owned a restaurant, we wouldn't have to disclaim him either. If another Sean O'Neal does become notable, we can disambiguate them in the usual way. Elizium23 (talk) 18:14, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just purely writing some observations here, this isn't a call to make any changes. I was never suggesting the Sean O'Neal of the A.V. Club should be getting his own Wikipedia article now, that hadn't even occurred to me at the time I added that information and whether or not Sean O'Neal of the A.V. Club is notable enough for his own article is not something I think I could offer an opinion on at this time. However, unlike Sean O'Neal the restaurateur, this particular Sean O'Neal does work in a related field (covering entertainment) to this Sean O'Neal. Also, going by his statement, people looking on the net for the Sean O'Neal who is the subject of this article have encountered the other Sean O'Neal's internet presence and mixed these two up by mistake, as opposed to other Sean O'Neals. It's not inconceivable that some people encountering Sean O'Neal at the A.V.Club (which is a well known website for its subject matter, which includes fields of popular culture that overlaps with this subject's areas of interest) might draw the reasonable (though erroneous) conclusion that this is Sean O'Neal the actor. Therefore, it could be argued that this information might be of interest for people reading this article as there could be some potential overlap between those interested in the subject of this article and also use a website that covers things that include his line of work and happen to have someone working there who co-incidentally has the same name, in order to be more accurately informed. Thoughts?

Shan246 (talk) 14:44, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It would be original research to conclude that these people are mistaken for each other, without documentation in reliable secondary sources. The source you provided is a self-published primary source and cannot be used to support that conclusion. We're looking for something like a book or a news article that explains the common confusion. Elizium23 (talk) 20:13, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]