The blogs are not reputable sources in most instances and ought not be there. Fred On Oct 17, 2005, at 8:15 PM, Snowspinner wrote:

Exactly, but are we all going to be bullied by POV warriors? Fred On Oct 17, 2005, at 7:56 PM, Carbonite wrote:

Exactly, excellent parallel; although, this POV bunch is a bit bigger and better organized. And intimidating. Fred On Oct 17, 2005, at 11:16 PM, Snowspinner wrote:

Actually I stopped by the talk page of that article this morning, and Snowspinner has done a very good job of listing and critiquing every one of nearly 70 references, most of which seem to have been blogs, agitprop websites, and Michael Moore.

On 10/18/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: Is is just me, or does it seem needlessly inflammatory to compare solid editors - admins, no less - to the LaRouchies? Ian

I see. So saying "obviously you support election fraud" would be appropriate too, and not "needlessly" inflammatory? Interesting. Ian

On 10/18/05, Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com> wrote: Actually election fraud is an old and established element of American elections. Whether it changed the outcome of the 2004 Presidential Elections is another matter. Given the attention it received, it definitely deserves an article. Everything else is a formatting question. Ian

On 10/18/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: What does that have to do with your decision to insult your fellow editors? I would fail students for submitting half of the articles in Wikipedia - but I would not tell them that they were bad people for submitting poorly sourced material. In fact, I'd be thrilled to have someone show some evidence that they were thinking, and not just repeating back to me what I told them. More to the point though, since you brought up your experience teaching comp, wouldn't you fail a student for submitting an entirely off-topic answer to your question? Ian

On 10/18/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: Go back and read the intructions at the top of the question paper.

On 10/18/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: So you are saying that, as a person running for the ArbComm, you are unwilling to say 1. What you think about personal attacks here on the listserv? After all, you have compared established editors (admins among them) to notorious POV pushers. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but inasmuch as you have chosen to run for the ArbComm, it makes sense that you should clarify your positions, not further cloud the matter with unrelated material 2. You have drawn allusions to the LaRouche case, one of the most famous ArbComm cases. Does this mean that you believe that the people involved in this matter should be treated in a manner similar with Herschel...? 3. You have stated "I just have a lot of trouble with the idea that a large-scale national issue like this - an allegedly stolen election - didn't get national coverage. If there is something worth covering *in an encyclopedia* in this, there is a mainstream, verifiable source for it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2004_U.S._presidential_election_controver… As an ArbComm candidate, do you really think that anything that doesn't make it to the NYTimes should not be in Wikipedia? Should you, as an ArbComm candidate, expect to be able to just brush these things off by with references to Godwin's law? Ian

On 10/18/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: I was not playing cheap rhetorical games. My first question was rhetorical - "is that really needed" - ie, isn't that a little over the top. The correct answer to that question is, "no,it was over the top". Someone with the character and judgement to serve in the ArbComm would recognise that when they overreach and someone calls them on it, they would admit their error. But no, you choose to say "I am never wrong". So I gave you a second chance to redeem yourself - you could make it clear that, no, you do not really think it ok to insult your fellow editors. In other words, it's a chance to take responsibility for your actions. Had you done that, you'd probably have gotten my vote for the ArbComm, because it takes some character. Instead you attack me for calling you on your misdeeds. Very noble, great job. You have made it very clear that you are not suited for a position of authority like the ArbComm. Thanks for the clarification. Ian

On 10/18/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: I didn't know you well enough to have a decision before today. I knew you by name, knew you as an established user, and assumed the best. I really didn't have a specific opinion about you. And I didn't think anything much about your posting this morning - I was curious, but mostly took what you said at face value - until I looked at the articles. Once I realised who the editors were - good solid contributors, at least one admin - it struck me that comparing them to LaRouchies was a totally unwarranted accusation. So I asked "was that really necessary"? Up to that point, I still didn't see this as anything major, but your facetious dismissal of a valid concern was enlightening. How I am building a straw man of you, I don't know. I realise that this is not the whole picture of who you are, but it's a good picture of how you react when challenged. And, it would appear, that your reaction to being challenged is to try to redirect. You made attacks on other editors. You unjustifiably tarred them - people who I have interacted with, and people whose decisions as editors and admins I know and respect. The right thing to do is to call a person on an insult like that. And the normal thing to do would have been to say "yeah, ok, I exaggerated". That's the answer I expected. That's what a normal person would have done. But you didn't. You could have said nothing. That wouldn't have put you back at the "don't know but broadly positive" opinion I started out with, but it I probably wouldn't have thought any the worse of you. But you chose to answer my question/comment with tangents about teaching comp. What the point of that was, God alone knows. I never challenged you on the issue that the articles were long and poorly sourced. And then you went for "Yes, I have stopped beating my wife", which appears to be your favourite line (since you have already used it in your ArbComm Q&A page). I'm not an English major, I may lack your rhetorical skills...all I can make of that is the fact that you somehow see my question about insults to fellow editors as a "have you stopped beating your wife" question. I find that baffling. I didn't set out to trick you. You can either say "sorry, I overstated things" or "yes, I think that Ryan and Kizzle and Kevin Baas are POV-pushers on the level of the LaRouchies" or you could say "NPA does not apply to the mailing list". You chose to run for the ArbComm - your opinion on Wikipedia policy are very germane. But you chose to duck the question. So I made the questions explicit. I really do think that we NEED to know what you think about these things. I don't know you that well, I assumed that you abided by the norms of the community. How is asking these questions a strawman attack? I had no opinion about you. Sure, I held you to a higher standard than I would a person who was not an admin, and I held you to a higher standard because you are running for the ArbComm. I think I asked fair questions, I think your refusal to answer them is telling. Is it unfair to judge your personality and your character from one episode? Maybe. Obviously there is more to you than this one aspect. But it say a lot... Ian

The key issue here is not the topic at hand but whether or not it is verifiable. The main question here seems to be, "Do blogs count as sources?" In certain rare cases they ought to be, but in general they are no better than citing user pages on Wikipedia. If a blog can cite a source, then we can find that source and cite it ourselves, I assume. If you remove everything from the article that is cited with a blog, and everything which is not cited but should be, what do you have? Perhaps it would be a useful rhetorical technique to try on one of them, whether it gets reverted or not. Of course, all of the above rests on the conclusion that blogs don't count as sources in and of themselves for articles of this sort. The people who wrote the articles are obviously going to disagree on this, hence the entire root of this dispute. I think it'd be nice to have some sort of "ruling on high" every once in awhile about what counts as evidence and what doesn't (what Foucault would call defining our "regimes of truth") but I'm not sure there's any way to do it systematically or rigorously. But perhaps that isn't needed -- perhaps a one-time, "this doesn't work in this situation" wouldn't be so bad (seems to have worked out with the LaRouchies). Again, this doesn't have to have to do anything with politics if it is honestly just a source issue. If "real" sources on these topics come out later, the articles can be rewritten, simple as that. FF On 10/18/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Phil Boswell wrote: What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that they witnessed or attended? (Yes, I know we're talking about political opinions and such, but I hope you won't throw the baby out with the bathwater...) - -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Delirium wrote: What's the difference between a blog and any other page on the internet? - -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 JAY JG wrote: You still haven't answered my question: what's the difference between a blog and ANY OTHER WEBSITE? - -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \

Blogs have editorial standards depending on the expertise and capacity of the blogger. In this example, Michael Barone, the editor of the Almanac of American Politics for 30 years has a blog [ http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/home.htm]. Editors should be careful in using blogs as in any source as to reliability of the blogger and to make sure we are quoting both sides of the story. In this case, having blogs as one of our sole sources is a mistake especially when there is a clear partisan bias to the blogs selected. The same can be said about the "mainstream media". The New York Times has gotten things wrong such as Jayson Blair. So does the BBC - its coverage of the Iraq War was appalling and it was the worst offender in highly exaggerated coverage of Hurricane Katrina. In short, we should be careful in our use of sources in whatever form they take. The problem with these articles in my view is that they are not NPOV and that they do not use the most reliable sources available. Regards Keith Keith User:Capitalistroadster On 10/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote:

On 10/21/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: If that was the case most science corospondants would have been sacked long ago. -- geni

The world is changing. Blogs are becoming more widely read while the mainstream media is losing its audience although obviously it is still more popular and will remain so. My point remains. There are some credible bloggers and not so credible bloggers. We should be careful in the credibility and reliability of all the sources and be aware of ensuring that our references are reliable and provide a balanced view of the topic. We owe that to our readers. Regards Keith On 10/22/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:

No, instead we need to cite only credible sources, a category into which blogs almost never fall. Jay.

This is true, but even blogs need to keep up their standards or things can fall apart and people go elsewhere. It helps to have accountability in the sense of having someone actually "in charge" -- this kind of comes in lieu of a more institutional "reputation" of a newsgathering organization. Even the latter rests on some institutional assumptions, and recent cases (Judy Miller) might make current newsorgs appear rather Herstian (Yellow journalism) and therefore something to avoid like the flux. Wikipedia, being neither a newsorg (under reputation), or a blog (editorial paper under personal account) isnt likely to benefit from any static "policy." It may benefit from an editorial board, however, who contribute to a 'policy body' (like a case record for Arbcom). Dont even ask me about wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Purpose SV --- charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

As an update on this, at the moment the dispute tags remain in place, but I'm being reverted on removing a claim by the founder of Ben and Jerry's on the election (Grounds for removal being that the founder of Ben and Jerry's is not an expert on elections), and a paragraph in the midst of a bunch of stuff about voter suppression in Ohio that tries to present a state senator in Detroit making a comment about voter suppression as evidence of an organized pattern of it - which would be fine if the section were at all about Detroit and Michigan, but as I said, it's about Ohio, so the Detroit quote is just misdirection and poisoning the well. Several people - notably Delerium, Rhobite, and Voice of All - have come by the page to voice support for the removal. Gue

And if the "guy on the internet" is notable enough to warrant citation as an interesting/informed opinion, then that's great. (i.e. the Howard Dean example) But if one is assigning a POV to a non-notable figure, then that's not a good use of blogs as a source. If Jimbo wrote something on his user page about Wikipedia, we could cite it in the article on Wikipedia. If I wrote something on my user page about Wikipedia, it doesn't belong in any article. Why? Because, in regards to this topic, I'm not at all notable. (Something which implies nothing negative, in my opinion) Allowing excessively non-notable opinions into articles goes down an unpleasant slippery slope: why require citation at all? "[[User:Fastfission]], of Wikipedia, thinks that Einstein was totally wrong in his math, though no physicists share that opinion." Instead of NPOV, you end up with Particularist POV -- a thousand POVs, none of which are notable. Which isn't the goal of NPOV, I'm fairly sure. FF On 10/19/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:

Folks, There are probably reliable reports that we can use: (1) reports by state and local election authorities on the elections in their states or districts; (2) the debate on January 6 over certifying the vote in Ohio; (3) essays in political science journals; (4) books such as the Almanac of American Politics 2006 by Michael Barone will have articles on the outcomes; (5) reports on the court challenge. While blogs can be useful, a lot depends on the credibility of the blogger - Michael Barone. Like in all articles, we should aim for a neutral point of view. For example, in the number of articles on voter fraud, there is precious little on Wisconsin (won narrowly by John Kerry) where an inquiry found clear evidence of fraud see [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may05/324933.asp]. Kerry's margin in Wisconsin was much less than Bush's in either Florida or Ohio by the way. We are now in a situation when reliable sources are available and more will become progressively available. We should clean up these articles for NPOV, make sure we use reliable sources in a balanced way and get rid of the claims in the articles that just don't stack up. Regards Keith Old Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster On 10/19/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I can't say I care that much. US politics is surely too much covered on WP (but not in terms of its importance); i.e. turgidity rules. Yes, there should be more on Kant. Let's have it, please. (I can claim to have started the [[neo-kantianism]] article, not that I have the slightest expertise). The only real way to deal with the phenomenon of 'bloat', I think, is not to change any basic rules - that ought to be resisted, policy should not be driven by the hard cases. Tough edit followed by 'respite' protection of a month, I'd support. Charles