Talk:Larry Page

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change from:

• Editorially protected.

Change to:

• Editorially unprotected.

Justification: The article is rife with copy edit, source-related, and then very substantive accuracy issues (in part, dependent upon the sourcing issues), as well as other problems small and large, because the usual WP:JUSTFIXIT approach cannot be applied by many that visit the site. As such it is, and will remain, a messy rather than GA piece, until such time it receives the amplified attention that removing editorial restrictions will allow.


Alternatively:

Change from:

• Article with duplicate citations.

Change to:

• Article with no duplicate citations (e.g., citations [21] and [41], [43] and [47], [6] and [144], etc.).

Justification: Prima facie obvious.

Change from:

• Article with Education section, first paragraph, with sentences beginning, "Page attended...", "He attended East...", and "In summer school...".

Change to:

• Article with Education section first paragraph sentences "Page attended...", "He attended East...", and "In summer school...", with each sentence ending with a ^{[citation needed]} tag, until such time that this content is sourced.

Justification: WP:VERIFY.

Change from:

• Article with cited books lacking specified page numbers (e.g., Refs. [44] and [28]).

Change to:

• Article with all cited books having specified page numbers (Refs. [44], [28], etc.), OR sentences citing all such refs. to appear with a ^{[page needed]} tag, until sources can be reviewed for that missing field.

Justification: See WP:VERIFY and WP:MOS.

Change from:

• Article with lead, as it is currently presented, with novel content not found in the main body (e.g., search "centibillionaire", "US$269", "December 4, 2019", "namesake"), and with its otherwise failing to summarise all important aspects of the article (together, violations of WP:LEAD).

Change to:

• Article with lead lacking any content not found in the main body, and lead summarising all important aspects of the article (i.e., a WP:LEAD-compliant text), OR article to appear with a {{lead rewrite}} tag.

Justification: Basic expectation that articles move toward complying with WP policies and guidelines, and that they warn readers and alert editors when they do not.

Change from:

• Article with Google section, 2013–2015 subsection, long quote-containing sentence beginning, "On August 10, 2015, Page announced..." (citing Ref. [83] and presenting a blockquote) and the further long quote-containing sentence beginning, "As well as explaining the origin of the company's name:" (citing no Ref. but presenting a second blockquote, again with no Ref.).

Change to:

• Article with 2013–2015 subsection and long quote-containing sentences beginning, "On August 10, 2015, Page announced..." and "As well as explaining the origin of the company's name:" (each presenting blockquotes), with each blockquote now ending with citation of Ref. [83].

Justification: Clarity of quote attributions to source—we had to verify that the unsourced second quote indeed came from the only-earlier-appearing inline citation of [83]—but also for sake of consistency of article-section-subsection formats (as rest of foregoing subsection already presents citations at end of each blockquote).

Change from:

• Article with unflagged, subscription-requiring sources.

Change to:

• Article flagging all subscription-requiring sources (e.g., Business Insider (Refs. [11] and [9]), Fortune (Refs. [38], [63], etc.), The WSJ (Refs. [56], [80]), ETC.

Justification: Respect for reader and editor time, otherwise prima facie obvious.

Change from:

• Article with Google section, 2019 subsection, long quote-containing sentence beginning, "Page and... Sergey Brin announced the change in a joint blog post...", from presenting a long, continuous quote, and citing Ref. [87].

Change to:

• To an article accurate to Ref. [87] for that 2019 subsection, with its quote-containing sentence beginning, "Page and... Sergey Brin announced the change in a joint blog post...", in its not conjoining separate quoted elements from Ref. [87] to create a long quote that does not exist in that source, rather to present the separate quotes as they appear in the source.

Justification: See, WP:PLAGIARISM and, e.g., Charles Lipson's "Doing Honest Work in College" (2019), University of Chicago Press [1].

Change from:

• Article with PhD studies and research section, Search engine development subsection, and the quoted lines stating "Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes" and "..." [ellipsis in next text line, following a line break].

Change to:

• Article with PhD studies and research section, Search engine development subsection, but with a single quoted line stating "Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes..." [ellipsis and preceding line conjoined].

Justification: Without violating acceptable editorial practice, removes unnecessary white space with positive visual effect.

Change from:

• In the "Personal life" section, property-related paragraphs beginning with "On February 18, 2005, Page bought..." (paragraph of at least 5 sentence-equivalents, citing—near end of paragraph—Refs. [103], [104], [105], [106], and [107]) and "In 2009, Page began purchasing..." (paragraph of 7 sentences, including one nested quotation, citing—at end of paragraph—Refs. [113], [114], [115], and [116]), and the sentence on philanthropy beginning, "In November 2014, Page's family foundation..." (paragraph of at least 3 sentence-equivalents, including one nested quotation, citing—at end of paragraph—Refs. [121], [122], [123], and [124]).

Change to:

• Verified "Personal life" sentences beginning with "On February 18, 2005, Page bought...", and "In 2009, Page began purchasing...", and "In November 2014, Page's family foundation...", with citations now following the actual sentence elements (phrases or entire sentences) that they were intended to support, to allow others to also readily verify. [If any parts of the text fail verification, then add ^{[citation needed]} and/or ^{[failed verification]} tags following the text elements whose content is not found in any of the listed sources.]

Justification: WP:VERIFY, and common sense; citations should follow the content they purport to support, esp. given ease with which WP markup handles repeat use citations.

Change from:

• Article with widely varying levels of citation completeness, and citation style with regard to format ({{cite... markup vs. manually composed); completeness (incl. all standard elements); style (vis-à-vis presentations of authors, titles, etc.); and presentation of archival links (use of {{cite... markup vs. otherwise), ETC.; see, respectively, most Refs. [well formatted] vs. poorly done Refs. [44], [46], [48], [58], etc.; complete Refs., e.g., [9], [10], etc., vs. incomplete/incorrect Refs. [12], [13], [114], [117], etc.; stylistic incongruencies, e.g., most author presentations vs. Refs. [139], [119], [110], [53], [43], etc., and title presentations in Refs. [22], [40], [84], etc. vs. Refs. [29], [71], [87], etc.; and most well-archived citations, vs. Refs. [46], [48], [58], [98], [99], [131], [135], etc.; ETC.

Change to:

• Article with complete and uniformly formatted citations, all in {{cite... markups (including all standard applicable fields—authors, titles, URLs, access-dates, timestamps for AV media, etc.—and all with the same handling of archived URLs (see issues with citations [12], [13], [29], [43], [44], [46], [48], [53], [58], [71], [87], [98], [99], [119], [131], [135], etc.), OR article to appear with a {{format citations}} tag.

Justification: See WP:VERIFY and WP:RELIABLE, as well as WP:MOS.


Critically, where we should be going,

Change from:

• Article with repeating inaccuracies and inanities.

Change to:

• Article having inaccuracies and inanities corrected—e.g., the current claim based on a source title that Larry Page said something he didn't actually say (see sentence citing Ref. [39], vs. actual content of Ref. [39])), the current expansive, historic, academic claim based on the intellectual unknown "Arielle Kane", writing at "librarystuff.net", that misguides readers, elevating an opinion from an inadequate source (see the long quote citing Ref. [48], then examine Ref. [48] content, and and then examine source and author reliability); ETC.; ETC.; ETC.

Justification: Prima facie obvious.


Overarchingly, in the interim:

Change from:

• Article with no article tag warning readers and editors, but that nevertheless violates WP:LEAD guidance and the WP:VERIFY policy.

Change to:

• Article with the interim combined article tags:

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article's lead section may need to be rewritten. The reason given is: article violates WP:LEAD in presenting novel content not in the main body (see Talk §Allow others...), and in failing to summarise generally important article aspects. Please review the lead guide and help improve the lead of this article if you can. (April 2026) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article contains inline citations that are not properly formatted. Please improve this article by correcting them. (April 2026) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article contains citations that may not verify the text. The reason given is: the need to rigourously verify quotes and correct inaccuracies (see Talk §Allow others... re: citations of Feiner, "The best advice...", "Google the Gutenberg", etc.); to ease verifiability by de-clustering citation arrays at paragraph ends; and to remediate text issues created by use of "librarystuff.net", "maintour.com", "backrub.c63.be", "plus.google.com/+LarryPage", and other dead/poor sources. Please help improve it by checking for citation inaccuracies and resourcing or removing material failing verification. (April 2026) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Justification: See preceding entries.

Signed, a former professor and logged editor of very long standing. ~2026-18674-10

AI generated? Sure has a lot of WP:AITELLS in it. Edit history also. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 23:55, 29 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Given our assessments of LLMs, we are somewhat insulted. First, AGF, and check for the accuracy of the content references and assessments in the posted change request. (As one who studies generally available LL models, I'd say you grossly overestimate their general capabilities.) Signed, as above. ~2026-18674-10 (talk) 00:15, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

That's not explicit denial. I'm well aware of AI's limitations. I'm also aware of automated editing routinely including vastly over-verbose edit summaries, and obsession with minor details conflated into massive issues. If you're a former professor and logged editor of very long standing, then you know as well as anybody that creating account protects your identity/privacy better than a temporary account. The gap is lower now that anonymous editors are no longer identified by IP address. But at minimum, a regular account would free you from the constraints you complain of. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 00:20, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

"First, AGF [...]" That's why I asked, rather than accused. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 00:22, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

I am also retired. Stop leveling the claim that I made an accusation. I asked a question, based on AI tells. which I still consider valid; but I will take your word for it.

At the practical level, expecting a single, massive 'edit request' that will require dozens of edits throughout the article is heaping a massive load of effort onto other volunteers here. That can be mitigated by opening an account so that you can do it yourself. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 00:30, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Alright, I, a former professor and logged editor of very long standing, explicitly deny your accusation. And again, AGF (which, both veiled insults offered as to content and style, and otherwise being "quick to speak"—speaking before evaluating posted content accuracy, i.e., lack of inference, lack of hallucination—does not).

In our experience, even the best non-proprietary release of a readily available LLM would have taken 7 prompt iterations and a couple minutes of processor/GPU time to generate something like the above, and its presentation would have been structured far differently, and would have had a very different "accent". (I took several hours, on and off.) I therefore challenge you to take those same minutes (not my hours) to check something before again replying.

Finally, our reason for not logging is our own, and we will not quote Jimbo Wales with regard to how out of line one is, in disrespecting non-logged editors. Cheers, last from us, as we are supposed to be retired here. ~2026-18674-10 (talk) 00:25, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Postscript. Retired here, not generally. ~2026-18674-10 (talk) 00:46, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

"[...]we will not quote Jimbo Wales with regard to how out of line one is, in disrespecting non-logged editors." More leveling of charges. I suggested a remedy for your inability to edit mainspace directly.You're welcome to quote specifically where I "disrespected" "non-logged editors"; if I have, I'll be delighted to retract and apologize for said disrespect.

Also, the refactoring after replies have already been tendered is not appreciated. My replies are now out of order with what they were replying to, leaving the discussion fragmented. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 01:54, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

 Not done. Slop is as slop does. No one's going to wade through this incomprehensible mess. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:24, 30 April 2026 (UTC)Reply