Talk:Larry Ryckman

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Larry Ryckman (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)[edit]

Untitled[edit]

unprotection This page is a resume first and foremost. It does not meet any wiki guidelines especially NPOV and notability. Attempts to bring this page into compliance should be allowed. Draft to follow. Richmanwalking (talk) 22:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I have to agree with MW's

K-TOWN —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.198.151.56 (talk) 16:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV and other issues[edit]

I believe this article has severe POV issues, and rather than get sucked into an edit war with an IP editor I was hoping for fresh eyes to take a look at this article. It reads like a resume, contains numerous unsourced 'awards' and 'acknowledgements', is largely self-referential (larryryckman.com, mystudio.net, etc.) and I believe it does not give the proper weight to the reason Larry Ryckman is (arguably) notable in the first place: his ownership of the Calgary Stampeders football club, admitted securities fraud unrelated to the club (leading to its divestiture to another owner), and the subsequent fines and trading bans that were imposed upon him. Can someone else please take a look at this article? Frankly I'm not sure it's even notable but if it is it is obvious to me that it cannot remain as-is. 93JC (talk) 23:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is written by someone with an axe to grind and is also willing to publish untrue, libelous statements such as Rckman "admitted securities fraud". Ryckman never admitted to securities fraud or was ever convicted of securities fraud. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.77.192 (talk) 01:44, April 13, 2011 (UTC)
Ryckman plead guilty at an Alberta Securities Commission hearing in March 2006 for the improprieties surrounding Aabbax International Financial Corporation, in which 600,000 shares were issued by him to two employees without having paid the $790,000 price. He agreed to pay a fine of about $75,000. Was he convicted in criminal court? No, but he admitted he did it and he settled with the ASC before it got to that point. This was in addition to $492,640.14 in assessed investigative costs he was ordered to pay by the Court of Queen's Bench (Alberta) for his involvement in stock manipulation. See http://www.uniset.ca/other/cs2/30P3d121.html and https://secure.globeadvisor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/gam/20060310/RTICKER10-10. It's all there, black and white, plain as day. The fact that this article glosses over this and presents its view of Ryckman is disturbing.
I also find it disturbing that the article's view on QSound is wholeheartedly positive. QSound was characterized, in the words of this thesis (http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/4955/1/MM10865.pdf), "... controversial and dubious with regards to both technical performance and management objectives. To summarize quite briefly, attempts by the original inventors to get financial backing for their project resulted in what many consider to be stock market scam. Larry Ryckman, an entrepreneur who agreed to finance the project, bought a "shell" company on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, Archer Communications, and sold shares to various members of the entertainment industry, the financial community, and the general public. Management objectives were initially geared towards creating hype to attract investors and consequently, or perhaps intentionally, QSound Labs (still operating under the name of Archer) effectively functioned more as a PR engine for its stock than a company focused on developing a viable technology."
Given the sycophantic tone of writing I believe that the anonymous editors have a conflict of interest and may very well work for Larry Ryckman himself. Note that Ryckman's personal website, larryryckman.com, links to this Wikipedia article. 93JC (talk) 21:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The comments by Contributor 93JC (listed as no longer active) contain severe POV issues, inaccuracies and libelous content. Given the sycophantic tone of his comments, I believe that he has a conflict of interest as a Contributor to this Wikipedia article. The corrections are as follows:
1. Ryckman has never "admitted to securities fraud", he has never been convicted of securities fraud and he does not have a criminal record.
2. Ryckman's National Vanier Award for outstanding young Canadian's and The Hollywood Music and Media, Technical Achievement Award related to Ryckman are "sourced" on the External Links.
3. Larryryckman.com and mystudio.net are no longer included in the Wikipedia article, nor is the article linked on larryryckman.com.
4. Questioning whether Ryckman is even notable for Wikipedia is a clear indication of 93JC's motivations, POV and bias. Ryckman purchased a professional sports franchise, the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL) at age 30. The Stampeders won the CFL championship game, the Grey Cup, under Ryckman's ownership after a 21 year drought. Technologies developed by Ryckman and his companies have received multiple patents and have been licensed by some of the worlds largest technology/entertainment companies and used by some of the worlds top recording artists. Ryckman's most recent accomplishments with MyStudio are highly notable as is demonstrated by recent national media coverage.
5. The underlying events relating to the regulatory issues that 93JC attempts to define Ryckman with, took place in 1995, over 15 years ago. The Alberta Securities Commission matter was not a civil or criminal court matter. The Provincial Corporations Act matter was settled with an admission to a non-criminal, minor infraction (less than a misdemeanor).
6. The information in the Wikipedia article relating to QSound is a listing of facts unlike the "thesis" cited by 93JC, which is a critical opinion that includes an assertion that QSound's technologies are dubious. Ryckman co-founded QSound and it has continued to operate for over 25 years. It has developed patented technologies licensed by numerous multi-national companies including Intel, Sony, Microsoft, AMD, Panasonic and Vodafone (which uses QSound in their cellphones). QSound technologies have also been utilized by many top recording artists on Grammy Award winning, multi-platinum albums and by leading motion picture producers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.167.202.160 (talk) 01:24, April 18, 2011 (UTC)
I will answer your points one-by-one:
1. I never said Ryckman was convicted in a criminal court and that he had a criminal record, however there is no denying the Alberta Securities Commission has levied fines and imposed sanctions upon him due to improprieties surrounding Westgroup and Aabbax at the very least. That is certainly notable and for the sake of presenting a neutral point of view should not be removed or sequestered in one little paragraph which states "Ryckman denied the allegations and asked that the hearing be heard in a civil court, which was denied. Ryckman also asked to call evidence in his defense at the hearing but was denied. The legal challenges that Ryckman faced at that time followed a public battle between the Premier of the Province of Alberta and Ryckman over the Government cutting lottery funding for his Calgary Stampeders Football team." As it stands the way this is written suggests the Government of Alberta and the Premier himself conspired to deny Ryckman his rights to justice but this viewpoint has, as far as I know, only ever been espoused by Ryckman himself in interviews with the media. ASC and Government of Alberta sources have dismissed Ryckman conspiracy theory as complete bunk.
2. Be that as it may Wikipedia is not a means of self-promotion and is not a repository of trivia.
3. www.larryryckman.com linked to this website yesterday. It doesn't today, but google still has a cache of it from a week ago. I have also saved an image of it, to preserve it in future. When I made the comment larryryckman.com did, in fact, link to this article.
4. The article is about Ryckman, not explicitly about MyStudio, QSound or anything else he has ever done. I don't care if Madonna or Sting or whoever else ever used QSound technology to do anything: the article is about a man named Larry Ryckman. It's this style of résumé-like writing with numerous "name-drops" that has brought this article to my attention in the first place. Unless it gets an extensive clean-up I believe this article should be a candidate for deletion.
5. Just because this happened 15 years ago does not make it any less notable. By that line of thinking I could argue the list of awards and achievements should be deleted because most of those were from the late 1980s and early 1990s. It's not for me to judge whether it was "a minor infraction (less than a misdemeanor)" or not, nor is it for you to judge. The facts are he is still banned from trading securities in several Canadian provinces and still owes the Alberta Securities Commission hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Whether you think the fines were major or minor, fair or unfair, is not a consideration for their inclusion in the article.
6. Is the L.A. Times good enough for you? http://articles.latimes.com/1989-09-11/business/fi-1519_1_sound-technology Some interesting quotes:
The high-flying stock has also attracted the scrutiny of Canadian and U.S. regulators. At its current price, Archer is one of the most highly capitalized firms on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, which is known for "chicanery," as Forbes magazine recently observed. A number of traders have taken "short" positions, betting that the price of the stock will tumble.
The premise has been received cautiously in some scientific circles, because no independent evaluation has been allowed. Eyebrows shot up when Archer sought introductions through a Hollywood talent agency instead of the scientific community.
Meanwhile, some scientists continue to say they're perplexed by descriptions of QSound. "I don't know how this can be done, from what we everyday scientists know about how people hear and how sound propagates in a room," said Floyd E. Toole, senior research officer of the division of physics at Canada's National Research Council.
Ryckman says he invested $350,000 (Canadian) in QSound and set about helping the inventors incorporate QSound Ltd. as a California firm in September, 1986. But the three men were soon frustrated by the hurdles that they faced in taking the company public in the United States, so they turned to the Vancouver Stock Exchange for a "shell" company that could acquire QSound in a so-called reverse merger.
Vancouver exchange officials issued a most uncharacteristic warning about the highly speculative nature of the stock, and the Securities and Exchange Commission sent questionnaires to some shareholders asking how they had heard of Archer. 93JC (talk) 17:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a very good article, but Ryckman is probably notable both as the owner of a football club (along with any related controversies), and for his role in developing audio mastering technologies. The problem is the sycophantic tone of the writing, and the article is nowhere near NPOV. Deserves to be flagged for tone at least. The structure is also a bit weak, in my opinion.Spoonriver (talk) 03:37, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
it has since been cleaned up.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.77.192 (talk) 01:44, April 13, 2011 (UTC)

I agree, the article reads more like a resume than a biography. Nothing about birthdate, spouse, children, etc. It says Canadian born, but isn't clear as to nationality. The copious references to "Larry" make it look as if it were written by a friend. In my opinion it should be flagged or even removed until it gets extensive cleanup. Alexgriz (talk) 02:54, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changes were made accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.77.192 (talk) 01:44, April 13, 2011 (UTC)

Ongoing NPOV issues[edit]

Drive-By tagging by CplDHicks. No actionable issues within wikipedia content policies were documented. Page was previously revised to address bias issues. Drive-by tagging is discouraged by wikipedia. The editor who adds the tag should address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Wikipedia: Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.110.76.177 (talk) 07:47, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The issues identified in the tag were identified in the discussion above almost three years ago. They're all the same issues, they were never satisfactorily resolved. The article is still broadly the same as it was. I suspect it is an autobiography: the article is a verbatim copy of the profile on www.larryryckman.com. I have requested comment from other editors and have posted a notice at Wikipedia:POVN. CplDHicks (talk) 23:41, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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