Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hey

I'm writing about this quote:
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/...

“Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.”
― Stephen King

This is not a Stephen King quote. Since a lot of people like it, it can only be edited by super librarians. The quote is originally from the tublr of a girl named Robin Browne, was made popular by a guy named Andrew Futral, and then somehow someone started attributing King as origins of the quote.

The idea that King said this comes from images like this one that are popular on pages like tublr, reddit, 9gag and other image sharing pages:
http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llh...

Andrew Futral claims that the quote is originally from him in a comment to the picture here (search his name on the page):
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comment...

Futrals original post with the quote, and his credit to his friend Robin Browne who originally said it (I cannot find her post though) is here
http://andrewfutral.tumblr.com/post/1...
and here
http://andrewfutral.tumblr.com/post/1...

Is it possible to edit the quote, or maybe even delete it, since it is not originally from a published author?

I have moved it from "Stephen King" horror writer.

My instinct is to delete it but I would like rivka's take on it before I do.

While Robin M. Browne seems to be slightly Internet famous she doesn't seem to be genuinely notable. I've never heard of her before now but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

On the other hand nearly a thousand people thought the quote worth adding...

Certainly sounds like something King would say. I found it funny.

Paula wrote: "My instinct is to delete it but I would like rivka's take on it before I do."

Rivka agrees. Rivka also thinks we have deleted this quote before and probably will again.

And it's gone!

THere are tons and tons of quotes by obscure people that are often attributed to famous people. As someone osbcure said, "Famous words need famous mouths."

Deleting these only means deleting them again later.

When I am cleaning quotes, I generally try to move them to the correct author, if possible, and add a tag like "misattributed to Stephen King". If there is no viable true author, I just tag it "misattributed" if it is known that someone else said it, or "attributed" if there's just no proof that the linked author said it.

It may be better still if there were librarian-only fields for this kind of stuff, like maybe a "source verified" field to indicate authenticity, or an "attributed to" field to link it to the author(s) people usuallyu think said it.

Eleanor Rooseveldt in particular didn't say a lot of what she is said to have said.

Keith wrote: "When I am cleaning quotes, I generally try to move them to the correct author, if possible"

I have done this when possible, too. But sometimes there is no known/correct source.

rivka wrote: "I have done this when possible, too. But sometimes there is no known/correct source."

Yep, that's when I just use "attributed."

BTW, for TPTB, my suggestion of adding librarian-only fields for quotes, like someone else's suggestion in another thread of allowing voting on tags (like Amazon does), is something I recognize to be WAY low priority, especially this week, and I just mention for the "would be nice if" project file.

It's baaaaaaack: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/...

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/...

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/...

and their gone !