ANSWERED: Harry S. Webb

Fred C.,
Who ever wrote it did a great job...especially the sentence about..."Webb moved into production and, like many of Laemmle's relatively few unrelated employees, left for what he felt were greener pastures."

A sentence with "like many of Laemmle's relatively few unrelated employees" in it, while true but an observation-type sidebar not seen in most bios should be remembered by you, if you wrote it. I don't know whether you did or not but if I had to place a bet (my dog dies if I'm wrong)...I'd hedge toward you.

But, since mini-bios can be, unprotected just like plot summaries, edited, altered, one word spelled incorrectly, and outright stolen, the site does have a way of detecting if any "changes/edits" were made after the bio first appeared.

And what they were and who made them. If Jack Backstreet was the author, no changes would be found.

A while back (that could mean within the last five years or less)a long-tenured Top Contributor e-mailed something along the lines of him having some doubts about Bios written by Jack Backstreet and would I have the site check on those. It didn't involve me in any way---I hadn't written any of them---and told the contributor he could do it himself. For reasons unknown to me that contributor quit posting on this board for some personal reason...he wasn't banned nor publicly corrected..he just decided to avoid this board.

So his concerns went unreported as I had no horse in that race.

Anyway, your inquiry was what made me remember the Jack Backstreet name.

And, I hedge my bet on you. You may be the original author and Backsteet staked your claim...and you may not and Backstreet is the only name on Webb's bio.

And if it is entirely an original work by Backstreet, I don't won't my dog to die.

Les

Les,


And, I hedge my bet on you. You may be the original author and Backsteet staked your claim...and you may not and Backstreet is the only name on Webb's bio.

And if it is entirely an original work by Backstreet, I don't won't my dog to die.

If it was mine and he added some info, or deleted some info, or corrected some info, etc., then all he had to was add something like "corrected/modified [whatever] by Jack Backstreet" to my signature and I wouldn't have minded. But to replace my name outright is, at the very least, unethical. The same thing happened a while back when somebody took my name of a bio I wrote of Pancho Villa and replaced it with his name. The site was eventually able to determine it was originally mine and not his and fixed it. Hopefully they can do that in this instance.

Unfortunately, as I said, I'm not "absolutely" certain I originally wrote it--I'm pretty sure, but since it was quite a few years ago and I've written a number of bios before it and after I may be "misremembering" it--so I might not bet my dog's life on it either.

I would, however, bet my ex-wife's divorce lawyer's life on it. But that's another story . . .

However, Mr. Backstreet has hijacked my bios before, so I feel safe in assuming that he's done it again. I don't know how the staff puts up with such unethical behavior, but maybe they're simply not aware or not able to be aware. On the other hand...

If there is any way you can tell who originally wrote the bio and credit it to the correct writer (if me, fine; if not, fine), I'd appreciate it if you would do that. The staff should be able to determine this.

Hi fredcdobbs5,

It looks like this mini bio has been live since 2007, submitted by this individual and it is difficult for us to trace it back in our records. Without knowing how much of it is your original work it is hard for me to comment as this user may have written it himself or added significant detail therefore deserves to be credited.

Regards,
Will

OK, thanks.