Talk: The Labsmith Controversy
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Labsmith Controversy article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the topic. New comments should be added at the bottom of relevant sections. Please sign and date your posts using four tildes (~~~~). Unsourced claims may be removed.
The Fentriss letter - does anyone else think this is strange?
Local historians read local history. That's not unusual. ShedWatcher99 11:52, 14 August 2020 (AEST)
For a pamphlet published by an organisation that apparently didn't exist? The Bankstown Historical Society (informal) has no records anywhere. No other publications. No membership list. No address. It's one pamphlet and then silence. What local historian is tracking that? DGraham_doof 12:30, 14 August 2020 (AEST)
Maybe someone sent it to her. Maybe she was already working in local archives and it crossed her desk. There are innocent explanations. ShedWatcher99 13:15, 14 August 2020 (AEST)
There are. I'm not ruling them out. I'm saying the article should note the question. DGraham_doof 14:00, 14 August 2020 (AEST)
Agreed. Flag it as a question, don't assert motive. ShedWatcher99 14:22, 14 August 2020 (AEST)
Re: Fentriss - I found something
Please just tell us what you found. ShedWatcher99 09:45, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
The photograph. It's labelled 1899. I've had someone look at it. The paper stock is wrong. Not wrong by a year or two - wrong by decades. And the handwriting on the programme doesn't match anything else in the Fentriss papers. Nothing. Not one letter. LabrakisWatch 10:02, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
Paper stock analysis by who? What qualifications? Bourouni_H 10:30, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
A community member with relevant experience. I'm not naming them without permission. They've agreed to put their findings in writing for the archive. LabrakisWatch 10:58, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
So what you're saying is: the Fentriss family may have fabricated evidence for a competing claim. And the professional archivist who happens to be a Fentriss descendant wrote a letter in 1989 calling the Labsmith account "evidentially inert." DGraham_doof 11:15, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
I am not saying that. I am saying the documents are inconsistent with their claimed date. I am saying the person who rebutted the Labsmith account is a descendant of the family that benefits from its rejection. I am saying both of these things are facts. What you do with them is up to you. LabrakisWatch 11:40, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
We need to be very careful here. We are one step from accusing a named professional archivist of research fraud. We need a high evidentiary standard for this or we're going to embarrass ourselves and potentially expose the archive to legal action. ShedWatcher99 12:08, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
I agree entirely. We document what we have. We don't assert what we can't prove. But we document it. DGraham_doof 12:30, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
Also - does anyone know what Fentriss's actual job title is? The letter is signed "H. Fentriss, Australian Institute of Classical Music Documentation." I've been trying to find her on the AICMD website. Bourouni_H 13:00, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
Senior Catalogue Manager. She's been there since the late 1980s. Her entire career has been the formal cataloguing of significant Australian classical music heritage. She decides what counts. LabrakisWatch 13:22, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
Of course it has. DGraham_doof 13:30, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
I've now seen her email correspondence with a contributor who contacted her in June 2020. She said, and I'm quoting directly: "I have spent thirty years ensuring that what passes for Australian musical heritage is not contaminated by the documentation of people dancing in sheds. I do not intend to stop now." LabrakisWatch 15:47, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
She said that in an email? Bourouni_H 16:00, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
She did. The contributor has given permission to quote it. I am going to recommend we create a figure page for Dr Fentriss. I am aware this is an unusual thing for an archive to do for an opponent. I think it is necessary. DGraham_doof 16:15, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
Agreed. Document everything. That's what we do. ShedWatcher99 16:30, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
I am not saying Fentriss was covering something up. I am saying the timing is interesting, the motive is obvious, and the documents are wrong. DGraham_doof 16:44, 3 October 2020 (AEST)
The fragment - ντούφ, ドーフ, gezelschap
Just say it. DGraham_doof 09:02, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
The Greek: ντούφ. Nu-tau makes the D sound in Greek phonetics. Omicron-upsilon makes "oo." Phi makes "f." The word is not a Greek word. It is a sound written in Greek letters. The sound is: doof. The Japanese: ドーフ. Katakana. Do-fu. The approximate Japanese phonetic rendering of: doof. The Dutch: gezelschap. A word for gathering, company, assembly. The language of the Dutch East India Company, whose trading post in Nagasaki is where Labsmith is documented in 1814. LabrakisWatch 09:30, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
A man who was Greek, who worked at Dejima, who ended up in Bankstown, wrote gathering notices in three languages and in each of them the word for what happened in the shed was: doof. DGraham_doof 09:45, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
If the fragment is what I believe it is. Yes. LabrakisWatch 09:52, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
Tell me why I should believe the fragment is what you believe it is. The photocopy quality is terrible. Water damage. You could be seeing patterns in noise. ShedWatcher99 10:15, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
I asked a native Greek speaker. I showed her the fragment. She said: "That's ντούφ. Why?" I said: "Is it definitely ντούφ?" She said: "It's a bit smudged but yes, that's ντούφ. Why are you showing me this?" I didn't have a good answer. LabrakisWatch 10:44, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
And the Japanese? Bourouni_H 11:00, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
I showed it to two people. One said it was probably ドーフ. One said the quality was too poor to read. So: one confirmation, one abstention. LabrakisWatch 11:20, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
This is thin. A native Greek speaker confirmed ντούφ. One of two Japanese readers thinks it's ドーフ. And you can read the Dutch yourself because it's a complete word, not fragments. DGraham_doof 11:35, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
That's what I have. LabrakisWatch 11:40, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
If Helga coined the word "doof" in 1992 and there's a document from 1821 - even a disputed one - that contains the same word in three languages written by a man who would have had reason to use all three, then the etymology is wrong. The word is 170 years older than we thought and its author is a Greek man from Kithira, not a German woman from Newtown. Include the fragment. Flag it heavily. Let the reader decide. DGraham_doof 12:00, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
I'll write the full report. Two thousand words minimum. If I'm wrong about what I'm seeing I want there to be a complete record of how wrong I was. LabrakisWatch 12:18, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
The word "doof" is the sound of a kick drum. It has always been the sound of a kick drum. In 1821 in a shed in Bankstown they were making the sound of a kick drum with whatever they had. A tambourine held sideways, probably. Doof. The word was always already there. It just needed someone to write it down. DGraham_doof 12:45, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
The first rave flyer question - does this need its own section?
This is a significant overclaim. You're describing a rumour network passing through a colonial labour community, not a flyer distribution system. A rumour network is not a flyer. A flyer implies a physical document produced for the purpose of distribution. There's no evidence any such document existed. ShedWatcher99 09:42, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
The definition of a rave flyer as used in the archive's own holdings documentation does not specify reproduction at scale or a specific production method. It requires: physical document, advance production, informal distribution, rhythmic music, non-domestic space, outside official sanction. A handwritten note satisfies every one of those criteria if it was produced in advance and distributed informally. You can argue about whether a handwritten note is a "flyer" but you're then arguing about vocabulary, not evidence. LabrakisWatch 10:15, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
I'm arguing about vocabulary AND evidence. There is zero evidence a written notice was produced. The inference chain is: gatherings happened regularly, therefore communication happened in advance, therefore written communication may have happened, therefore a physical notice may have existed. That's three steps of inference before you get to the claim. ShedWatcher99 11:03, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
Everything in the Labsmith account is inference. The whole controversy is inference. That's not a new objection to this specific claim. LabrakisWatch 11:47, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
That's fair. I still think including this in the controversy article elevates speculation to the level of legitimate debate in a way that will embarrass the archive. ShedWatcher99 12:20, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
My view: the argument should be included with appropriate hedging. The key phrase in the Hargreaves letter is "on nights of no particular significance" - he's explicitly saying these were not feast days or market days, the two natural recurring dates in colonial agricultural life. The gatherings had their own schedule. A recurring ad hoc schedule implies communication of some kind. Whether that communication was oral or written we can't say. But the question is worth raising formally. DGraham_doof 14:08, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
This is the strongest version of the argument I've seen. The "nights of no particular significance" phrase is doing a lot of work and I hadn't read it that way. I'm changing my position from "don't include this" to "include it with heavy hedging and full counter-arguments." The Hargreaves reading is genuinely interesting. ShedWatcher99 15:30, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
Also - and I'm flagging this as potentially too much - if it was a written notice, it would have been the first documented example of a communication produced for the specific purpose of announcing an informal rhythmic gathering. In every jurisdiction. The entire history of the rave flyer, which this archive documents as running from 1992 to approximately 1998, would have a precursor in colonial Bankstown that pre-dates the Sydney examples by 170 years. I'm not saying we should lead with that. I'm saying we should note it. LabrakisWatch 16:44, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
If we include this I want a prominent caveat that the archive is not claiming this is established fact. The argument should be presented as a possibility that emerges from the evidence, not as a conclusion. Bourouni_H 17:22, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
Agreed. The section should open with a clear statement that this is the archive's most speculative position and that it publishes it anyway. The archive's credibility doesn't come from avoiding speculative arguments. It comes from being transparent about which arguments are speculative. DGraham_doof 18:01, 2 September 2021 (AEST)
One more thing. If this is the world's first rave flyer - even as a possibility - then the Labsmith Outbuilding is not just the proto-doof founding site. It's also the origin point of the most widely distributed communications format in underground music history. The flyer didn't start in 1992 in Sydney. It started in 1821 in Bankstown. The corrugated iron was already there. The gathering was already there. The flyer was already there. We just don't have it. LabrakisWatch 09:30, 14 September 2021 (AEST)
I want the record to show that I argued against this section. I also want the record to show that I found it compelling. DGraham_doof 22:14, 13 October 2021 (AEST)
Archive 1 (2014–2016) | Archive 2 (2016–2018) | Archive 3 (2018–2021, this page) - 14 threads
Note from archive admin (ArchiveBot, 14 Oct 2021): This talk page has been frozen pending administrative review. No new sections can be added. The dispute banner on the article remains active. The administrator has been notified. No response has been received.
Sourcing issues with the Labsmith account - ongoing §
With respect, ShedWatcher, you've raised this exact point in Archive 1 and Archive 2 and nothing has changed because the absence of a pamphlet from major institutional holdings doesn't prove the pamphlet doesn't exist. Locally printed pamphlets from the 1970s were almost never acquired by the State Library. The Bankstown Valley Historical Society (informal) - the publisher listed - would have printed fifty copies, distributed them locally, and that's it. Expecting it to appear in Trove is like expecting a flyer from a 1994 Newtown doof to appear in the National Library. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. - DGraham_doof 14:07, 18 February 2018 (AEST)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is the intellectual equivalent of "you can't prove it didn't happen." We're an archive. We're supposed to document what can be verified. - ShedWatcher99 14:53, 18 February 2018 (AEST)
This has been disputed since 2014. - Helbeck_A 09:21, 19 February 2018 (AEST)
Helbeck, can you add something substantive? "This has been disputed since 2014" is not an argument, it's a timestamp. - DGraham_doof 10:34, 19 February 2018 (AEST)
That's my point. It's been disputed for four years and nothing has been resolved. That's the argument. - Helbeck_A 11:02, 19 February 2018 (AEST)
I'm going to try contacting some local historical societies in the Bankstown district area directly and see if anyone has a physical copy of the pamphlet or knows who produced it. Will report back. - DGraham_doof 15:20, 22 February 2018 (AEST)
DGraham has been saying this for two years. Ever since he got gout. - ShedWatcher99 15:47, 22 February 2018 (AEST)
Thread continued - 4 additional replies in Archive 2 (2016–2018). This thread remained unresolved at time of archiving.
The Labrakis name - is this worth including? §
I've reverted this. "Labsmith" and "Labrakis" do not share a phonetic root in any way that would suggest colonial transformation. Smith is an occupational suffix of English origin. Labrakis is a Greek toponym or patronym. The similarity is coincidental and noting it in an archive article gives it a credibility it has not earned. - ShedWatcher99 18:11, 12 August 2020 (AEST)
I've restored it with a slight modification - I've changed "suggests a connection" to "has been noted by some researchers." I think the caution is warranted and I've made it clear it's unverified. The archive documents contested claims all the time. - LabrakisWatch 19:02, 12 August 2020 (AEST)
"Some researchers." Which researchers? - ShedWatcher99 19:28, 12 August 2020 (AEST)
Me. I'm a researcher. - LabrakisWatch 19:45, 12 August 2020 (AEST)
That's not how "some researchers" works. - ShedWatcher99 20:03, 12 August 2020 (AEST)
You're also a researcher. And DGraham. That's three. - LabrakisWatch 20:31, 12 August 2020 (AEST)
I do not agree with the claim. I cannot be cited as a researcher who "notes" it. - ShedWatcher99 20:47, 12 August 2020 (AEST)
I think the note belongs in the article but the framing needs work. What if we say "the phonetic coincidence has been observed by community members, though no genealogical evidence has been produced to support a formal connection"? That's accurate, it's cautious, and it doesn't overclaim. The Doof Shed page already links to both Labrakis figures and to the Labsmith entry. It would be strange not to acknowledge the question at all. - DGraham_doof 09:14, 13 August 2020 (AEST)
Fine. But "community members" not "researchers." - ShedWatcher99 09:52, 13 August 2020 (AEST)
Agreed. - DGraham_doof 10:01, 13 August 2020 (AEST)
This has been disputed since 2014. - Helbeck_A 11:39, 13 August 2020 (AEST)
Helbeck. Mate. The name question only came up in 2020. - DGraham_doof 11:52, 13 August 2020 (AEST)
The broader controversy has been disputed since 2014. - Helbeck_A 12:04, 13 August 2020 (AEST)
Notability of Evangelos Labrakis - neutrality concern §
The Doof Shed is the most recent and most documented example of neo-shed revival architecture in the archive. Of course the entry is longer - there's more evidence. The Labsmith entry is three paragraphs and nobody complains it's too long. - DGraham_doof 09:47, 4 March 2021 (AEST)
The Labsmith entry is three paragraphs because there are only three paragraphs' worth of evidence. - ShedWatcher99 10:22, 4 March 2021 (AEST)
Fair point actually. - DGraham_doof 10:41, 4 March 2021 (AEST)
This is a talk page for improving the article, not a forum for conspiracy theories. Please read the talk page guidelines at the top of this page. The co-creators of the Doof Shed are documented in the Guinness World Records application, which required verified identification. The "Harry plays his brother" claim is a meme that originated on a Discord server and has no evidentiary basis. They have been photographed together many times and Harry Nathan Labrakis has a documented public music career entirely separate from the Doof Shed. These are two different people. I would ask you not to raise this again on this page. - DGraham_doof 13:02, 29 September 2021 (AEST)
thats conspiracy crap they have been seen together many times. its real bro. - (unsigned, IP 110.143.xx.xx, 29 September 2021)
...you just repeated what DGraham said but without the evidence. - ShedWatcher99 13:34, 29 September 2021 (AEST)
yeah well its true - (unsigned, IP 110.143.xx.xx, 29 September 2021)
If you can provide a photograph of them together, or a documented event at which both were present simultaneously, that would settle it. Until then this conversation is not productive. - ShedWatcher99 13:51, 29 September 2021 (AEST)
ill find one - (unsigned, IP 110.143.xx.xx, 29 September 2021)
No further response from IP 110.143.xx.xx. Thread open. Last activity: 29 September 2021.
For the record, I've emailed the DoofHistory administrator asking them to consider adding a section to the Boonie Labrakis article addressing this question directly, since it keeps coming up. As of this writing I have not received a reply. - DGraham_doof 09:18, 1 October 2021 (AEST)
The administrator does not respond to enquiries. It says so in the footer. - Helbeck_A 09:44, 1 October 2021 (AEST)
I know. I tried anyway. - DGraham_doof 10:02, 1 October 2021 (AEST)
This has been disputed since 2014. - Helbeck_A 10:19, 1 October 2021 (AEST)
Boonie wasn't even known in 2014. - DGraham_doof 10:27, 1 October 2021 (AEST)
Right. - Helbeck_A 10:31, 1 October 2021 (AEST)
Neutrality flag - September 2019 §
I disagree with your reading of the proportions but I'll accept the tag while we work on it. - DGraham_doof 17:40, 3 September 2019 (AEST)
This has been disputed since 2014. - Helbeck_A 18:02, 3 September 2019 (AEST)
Status: Neutrality flag remains active. The article has been revised three times since September 2019. The flag has not been removed. No consensus on removal has been reached. - ArchiveBot, 14 Oct 2021
One more thing about Fentriss and the 1974 pamphlet
I don't want to be the person who says this but I've been sitting on it for six months and the archive is closing next week so here it is.
Eleni Papadopoulos was a Greek-Australian local historian in Bankstown. She authored the 1974 pamphlet. She claimed to hold the original Labsmith notice. She died in 1998. Her estate was auctioned in 2018 and the documents appear to have vanished.
Helena Fentriss published her rebuttal of the Labsmith account in 1989. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Herbert Fentriss, whose competing claim is directly threatened by the Labsmith account. She has spent her entire career suppressing evidence of informal gathering culture as legitimate heritage. She has written to the State Library asking them to discredit this archive.
Papadopoulos was the only person who knew where the originals were. Now she's dead and the documents are gone.
I'm not saying anything. I'm just putting the timeline in front of you.
- Anon_IP_192.168.x.x 08:14, 8 October 2021 (AEST)
The archive is not going to allow this thread to stand in its current form. You are not "just putting a timeline in front of us." You are implying, without a single piece of evidence, that a named living professional is responsible for the death of another person. That is not what this talk page is for.
However. The archive also notes that it cannot bring itself to remove this thread entirely. The timeline you have described is accurate. The archive does not endorse your interpretation of it. The archive notes its existence. The archive notes its own discomfort in doing so. - Admin 09:47, 8 October 2021 (AEST)
Eleni Papadopoulos died in March 1998. There is a death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald. The archive has located it. The coroner's finding was self-inflicted gunshot wound. There is no basis whatsoever for what this post implies. - ShedWatcher99 10:22, 8 October 2021 (AEST)
I know. That's what it says. - Anon_IP_192.168.x.x 11:03, 8 October 2021 (AEST)
What does that mean? - DGraham_doof 11:18, 8 October 2021 (AEST)
The archive notes that ShedWatcher99 found the death notice before the anonymous user asked the question. The anonymous user's response - "I know. That's what it says." - presupposes knowledge of the death notice's contents prior to ShedWatcher99 producing it. The archive does not know what the anonymous user knew, or how they knew it. The archive considers this the most disquieting sentence in its documentation.
I don't have documentation for this and I'm aware that's a problem on this talk page but I'm going to say it anyway. I grew up in Bankstown. My mother knew Eleni Papadopoulos, not well, but she knew her. She has mentioned once, years ago, that Eleni was frightened of someone in the historical society world. She didn't say who. I only thought of this again after reading the Fentriss section. I'm not saying it's connected. I'm saying I thought of it. - BankstownLocal_74 08:55, 13 October 2021 (AEST)
Can you ask your mother? - LabrakisWatch 09:14, 13 October 2021 (AEST)
She passed in 2019. I'm sorry I don't have more. - BankstownLocal_74 09:31, 13 October 2021 (AEST)
This is not verifiable and the archive's usual standards would exclude it. The archive is going to note it anyway. The archive's usual standards have been under some strain this week. - Admin 10:05, 13 October 2021 (AEST)
The anonymous user did not reply to the October 8 thread. This thread was submitted the following day. The archive closed the day after this thread. BankstownLocal_74 has not submitted anything further.
This talk page was frozen on 14 October 2021.
No new threads or replies can be added.
The administrator has been notified of two unresolved disputes.
No response has been received.
I've been going back through the 1989 Fentriss rebuttal and I want to flag something that's been bothering me. A junior archivist writes to a minor regional periodical to rebut a pamphlet with an estimated print run under 100. In 1989. Fifteen years after publication. Why? Who was reading this pamphlet in 1989? How did Fentriss even know about it? DGraham_doof 11:04, 14 August 2020 (AEST)