That article sucks royally. More eyes, please. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_McMahan
The major problem is that the "controversy" (which I have largely removed now) is reported only in one local tabloid, with a single reprint cited. It does indeed look as if we are being used to promote a vendetta.
I have asked on Talk for reliable secondary sources for the significance of the allegations. A Wall Street Journal profile would be nice...
My Factiva subscription gives precisely zero hits on McMahan outside of the campaign by the Broward New Times. Not one.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net writes:
That article sucks royally. More eyes, please. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_McMahan
The major problem is that the "controversy" (which I have
largely
removed now) is reported only in one local tabloid, with a
single
reprint cited. It does indeed look as if we are being used to
promote
a vendetta.
I have asked on Talk for reliable secondary sources for the significance of the allegations. A Wall Street Journal profile
would
be nice...
My Factiva subscription gives precisely zero hits on McMahan
outside
of the campaign by the Broward New Times. Not one.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.ukhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
Amusingly, there's already an article about Wikipedia's coverage of that article:, which I found along with a a bunch of aother articles in LexisNexis Academic. From, yes, the New Times Broward-Palm Beach, February 22, 2007 Thursday:
"Daddy's Little Obfuscator; The McMahan clan tries a new way to attack our "Daddy's Girl" bombshell -- by dive-bombing Wikipedia"
Choice quotes:
"As of this writing however (it changes by the hour), Wikipedia's entry is a pathetic thing, opening with three paragraphs of pure pap. (McMahan is chief executive officer of blah blah blah, he founded the financial firm so-and-such, his charities include whatzitmatter... as if anyone were looking up McMahan for that drivel.) Finally, it gets to the point, watered down by so much editing and reediting that it reads like an afterthought:
"Linda Schutt his biological daughter, who was raised by adoptive parents through adulthood, has claimed in a lawsuit that she had a sexual relationship with him as an adult. Documents from this suit became the source of information for a series of articles in the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, with further coverage in other tabloid journals."
Ouch. The "tabloid" touch hurts so much."
Of course, the article's quote in investigating sockpuppetry is also choice:
,---- | Behind every Wikipedia entry meanwhile, there's a discussion page, which is where the war of words over McMahan's entry has really been taking place. This includes a several-thousand-words-long screed trashing Cramer and her story by "CabbageFairy," who claims to be something of a journalism expert. CabbageFairy accused New Times of the basest unethical practices in the McMahan story. | | Something about CabbageFairy's profile at the site however, made Tailpipe suspicious. Could the mysterious "researcher" be, gulp, none other than Bruce McMahan's eldest daughter, Alison? Tailpipe looked into it further and discovered that, yes, Alison McMahan is a film historian who has written a book about early film pioneer Alice Guy Blaché whose first feature film, in 1897 bore a French title that translates to - you guessed it - "The Cabbage Fairy." `----
On Mar 28, 2007, at 7:04 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
That article sucks royally. More eyes, please. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_McMahan
The major problem is that the "controversy" (which I have largely removed now) is reported only in one local tabloid, with a single reprint cited. It does indeed look as if we are being used to promote a vendetta.
Erm... Alternative Press != tabloid. They don't = Washington Post either, but they're not completely dismissable. Broward Palm Beach News has video, for God's sake - this isn't the Enquirer.
-Phil
On 3/29/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Mar 28, 2007, at 7:04 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
That article sucks royally. More eyes, please. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_McMahan
The major problem is that the "controversy" (which I have largely removed now) is reported only in one local tabloid, with a single reprint cited. It does indeed look as if we are being used to promote a vendetta.
Erm... Alternative Press != tabloid. They don't = Washington Post either, but they're not completely dismissable. Broward Palm Beach News has video, for God's sake - this isn't the Enquirer.
-Phil
True, but those quotes look anything but neutral. Are they really that reliable. It looks like they have an agenda.]
Mgm
On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 21:27:43 -0400, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Erm... Alternative Press != tabloid. They don't = Washington Post either, but they're not completely dismissable. Broward Palm Beach News has video, for God's sake - this isn't the Enquirer.
Fine, but it's still a primary source, and I have not yet found any secondary sources which have picked this up as significant. Like Zeleny's allegations over Min Zhu, really.
Guy (JzG)
On Mar 29, 2007, at 4:23 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Fine, but it's still a primary source, and I have not yet found any secondary sources which have picked this up as significant. Like Zeleny's allegations over Min Zhu, really.
A primary source would be the court documents or the video. A news story about it is a secondary source. Not that the primary/secondary distinction seems to be useful for most of our purposes, since A) it's misused about half the time it comes up, and B) it has very little to do with reliability.
-Phil
On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:39:38 -0400, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Fine, but it's still a primary source, and I have not yet found any secondary sources which have picked this up as significant. Like Zeleny's allegations over Min Zhu, really.
A primary source would be the court documents or the video. A news story about it is a secondary source. Not that the primary/secondary distinction seems to be useful for most of our purposes, since A) it's misused about half the time it comes up, and B) it has very little to do with reliability.
In this case I would say the newspaper is the primary source of the story. It draws on other primary sources for parts of it, but the story is clearly based on novel synthesis by the paper; investigative journalism is not a secondary source according to my understanding.
Guy (JzG)
On 29/03/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
In this case I would say the newspaper is the primary source of the story. It draws on other primary sources for parts of it, but the story is clearly based on novel synthesis by the paper; investigative journalism is not a secondary source according to my understanding.
This is verging on "editorial decisions are original research."
- d.
On 3/29/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
In this case I would say the newspaper is the primary source of the story. It draws on other primary sources for parts of it, but the story is clearly based on novel synthesis by the paper; investigative journalism is not a secondary source according to my understanding.
Guy (JzG)
Either way it just isn't notable. Google newing McMahan, his name in quotes + daughter, +marriage, or +married only pulls up that one Florida source. Unless the media picks it up and verifies it/corroborates it, seems like a dead issue to be Rv'd out for blp.
On Mar 29, 2007, at 1:07 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
In this case I would say the newspaper is the primary source of the story. It draws on other primary sources for parts of it, but the story is clearly based on novel synthesis by the paper; investigative journalism is not a secondary source according to my understanding.
Original research by a reputable and significant source (i.e. this paper) is reportable.
-Phil
On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:43:42 -0400, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
In this case I would say the newspaper is the primary source of the story. It draws on other primary sources for parts of it, but the story is clearly based on novel synthesis by the paper; investigative journalism is not a secondary source according to my understanding.
Original research by a reputable and significant source (i.e. this paper) is reportable.
Maybe. If it's judged significant. Which, in this case, it clearly is not, since nobody else seems to be running with it. Have you read their follow-up stories? It looks *awfully* like a vendetta.
Guy (JzG)
On Mar 29, 2007, at 2:10 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Maybe. If it's judged significant. Which, in this case, it clearly is not, since nobody else seems to be running with it. Have you read their follow-up stories? It looks *awfully* like a vendetta.
Nah. It looks like alternative press follow-ups. They tend to run hard with their exclusives.
Put another way - if he's significant enough to have an article then the alternative press article that comes up as the first Google hit on him is significant enough to mention.
Anyway - this got reprint in the Village Voice - quite a major paper.
I'm troubled here by the shifting argument. First it's from a tabloid. Except it's not from a tabloid - it's from a reputable paper that did original research. But then when it's pointed out that NOR isn't relevant to this either it becomes insignificant.
Still not the case - if we're having an article on the guy, this is a sensible thing to put in it.
-Phil
On 3/29/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I'm troubled here by the shifting argument. First it's from a tabloid. Except it's not from a tabloid - it's from a reputable paper that did original research. But then when it's pointed out that NOR isn't relevant to this either it becomes insignificant.
Still not the case - if we're having an article on the guy, this is a sensible thing to put in it.
I wholly agree. We don't have a policy of avoiding scandalous or unfavorable information about living persons - we have a policy about being strict about our sourcing.
This story was published by a paper that yes, is alternative and local - but not a tabloid by any means - and was republished by other alternative-press papers including the Village Voice. These are sources that exercise editorial judgment and fact-checking, and they are big enough to be vulnerable to lawsuits if they publish libellous untruths, just like the major press.
Stories like this rarely make the major press simply because they are not the kind of stories they're interested in. In my experience, personal scandal like this is generally not reported in the local mainstream press unless real-world consequences occur - criminal prosecutions or dismissals, for instance - and even more rarely in the national or financial press unless the individual is of national significance and the scandal has grown to have substantial real-world consequence. The tabloid and celebrity press is generally not interested in businessmen unless they're stupendously rich or a media whore a la Donald Trump.
IMO, this is using BLP as a hammer to beat scandal and negative stories out of Wikipedia, even a well-sourced one, and I suspect that it is done out of a belief that Wikipedia should not be reporting on such - that it is 'unencyclopedic'. I don't think that point of view has strong consensus.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 3/29/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I'm troubled here by the shifting argument. First it's from a tabloid. Except it's not from a tabloid - it's from a reputable paper that did original research. But then when it's pointed out that NOR isn't relevant to this either it becomes insignificant.
Still not the case - if we're having an article on the guy, this is a sensible thing to put in it.
I wholly agree. We don't have a policy of avoiding scandalous or unfavorable information about living persons - we have a policy about being strict about our sourcing.
I have no problem with including scandalous information as long as it's verifiable, and, because of the potential for repercussions doubly verified rather than merely verifiable. It is inevitable that those who spesak for us in the media will be blinsided by questions about these articles, but with 1.7 million articles there is no way that such a person can be familiar with every possible problem. When a problem is raised one can only promise to have people familiar with the subject look into it to ensure that the information it contains is accurate. We should not be promising political correctness.
This story was published by a paper that yes, is alternative and local
- but not a tabloid by any means - and was republished by other
alternative-press papers including the Village Voice. These are sources that exercise editorial judgment and fact-checking, and they are big enough to be vulnerable to lawsuits if they publish libellous untruths, just like the major press.
Absolutely. The paper press is paper. Even if the New York Times supports the motto, "All the news that's fit to print," it is still constrained by the realities of the paper medium. It follows from that that certain issues will be covered by publications with a more local distribution. A topic that is local in its notability is still notable to the locals. Most would not be publicized far and wide, though local newspaper do get mailed to a town's former residents who have moved away. Most of us are completely uninterested in local scandals in somebody else's community, but some people are.
Stories like this rarely make the major press simply because they are not the kind of stories they're interested in. In my experience, personal scandal like this is generally not reported in the local mainstream press unless real-world consequences occur - criminal prosecutions or dismissals, for instance - and even more rarely in the national or financial press unless the individual is of national significance and the scandal has grown to have substantial real-world consequence. The tabloid and celebrity press is generally not interested in businessmen unless they're stupendously rich or a media whore a la Donald Trump.
It's also not unusual for the mainstream press to have a big front page article when the subject is spectacularly arrested. But it's damned boring for them to sit through a trial that finds someone innocent.
IMO, this is using BLP as a hammer to beat scandal and negative stories out of Wikipedia, even a well-sourced one, and I suspect that it is done out of a belief that Wikipedia should not be reporting on such - that it is 'unencyclopedic'.
I do have a book titled "Encyclopedia of Serial Killers." There is some interest in this kind of thing! Enough to make it encyclopedic. While I don't think there is much honour in extensive reporting on this kind of thing I think we do just as much if not more harm bringing it to people's attention by arguing over it. By all means remove the information immediately when it cannot be substantiated. If the argument is only over its importance to the subject, we do much better waiting a couple of months before removing it quietly.
I don't think that point of view has strong consensus.
The point may not have strong consensus, but that's no deterrent to the supporters from pushing that point of view.
Ec
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:36:10 -0700, "Matthew Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote:
IMO, this is using BLP as a hammer to beat scandal and negative stories out of Wikipedia, even a well-sourced one, and I suspect that it is done out of a belief that Wikipedia should not be reporting on such - that it is 'unencyclopedic'. I don't think that point of view has strong consensus.
That's not how I see it. I see it as preventing Wikipedia from being used as the primary vehicle for publicising barely-known negative material about barely-known living individuals.
Guy (JzG)
On 4/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
That's not how I see it. I see it as preventing Wikipedia from being used as the primary vehicle for publicising barely-known negative material about barely-known living individuals.
I'd say that if anyone knows about Bruce McMahan, it's because of this issue. The top six Google results for his name are about this scandal. I feel that having an article about someone and ignoring the most publicized thing about their life is rather too whitewashing for my preferences, especially when there are newspaper sources to cite.
On the other hand, it could be argued if the best known thing about the guy is this, and it's not THAT well known, then he's a nobody who doesn't need an article at all.
-Matt
On Wed, 4 Apr 2007 16:54:13 -0700, "Matthew Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote:
I'd say that if anyone knows about Bruce McMahan, it's because of this issue. The top six Google results for his name are about this scandal.
Quite possibly. And the truth is,virtually nobody knows about him.
Would you like to handle the OTRS ticket?
Guy (JzG)
On 4/5/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 4 Apr 2007 16:54:13 -0700, "Matthew Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote:
I'd say that if anyone knows about Bruce McMahan, it's because of this issue. The top six Google results for his name are about this scandal.
Quite possibly. And the truth is,virtually nobody knows about him.
I'd heard about the scandal before - the details were colorful enough to get wide if shallow mention in the blog world, I think, and that's probably where I heard it. I didn't remember his name, however, but then I have little memory for names in general.
Would you like to handle the OTRS ticket?
Since all mention of the scandal is gone from the article, I would have thought it was dealt with to the subject's satisfaction in any case.
I'd also say that if he wishes to erase this scandal, he should pursue it with the local paper that printed the story, and such papers as the Village Voice that reprinted it. We are not the ones converting a rumor to permanent record here.
-Matt
On 05/04/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
I'd also say that if he wishes to erase this scandal, he should pursue it with the local paper that printed the story, and such papers as the Village Voice that reprinted it. We are not the ones converting a rumor to permanent record here.
I don't see any conceptual difference between us picking it up from a paper and republishing it, to the Village Voice picking it up from a paper and republishing it... does it somehow become more legitimate three or four transactions down the chain?
On 4/5/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see any conceptual difference between us picking it up from a paper and republishing it, to the Village Voice picking it up from a paper and republishing it... does it somehow become more legitimate three or four transactions down the chain?
I'm curious about this too for future reference. Whats a good typical benchmark for when the absurd or salacious does in fact become notable for inclusion? A good rule of thumb, lets say.
For what its worth, also the Village Voice is a good resource. They're cited in quite a few articles...
On 4/5/07, Denny Colt wikidenny@gmail.com wrote:
I'm curious about this too for future reference. Whats a good typical benchmark for when the absurd or salacious does in fact become notable for inclusion? A good rule of thumb, lets say.
For what its worth, also the Village Voice is a good resource. They're cited in quite a few articles...
Personally, that's my question as well. BLP started off as 'we should be strict about having good sources for negative stuff'. But that doesn't get rid of all negative stuff, as is the case here. We have a rather negative and salacious story that comes from a legitimate print newspaper source.
The argument then turns to NPOV and its 'undue weight' proscriptions. I argue that that one doesn't work when the negative story is in fact the best known thing about the person! When a quick Google for the person's name gives the negative story as the first six results I have my doubts that 'undue weight' applies.
The person in question here is extremely wealthy, which definitely means that they have the means to pursue those who've printed these stories if they are libellous. They have not, it seems.
I have no issue with the BLP effort where it says, "We will take especial care that Wikipedia's policies are followed scrupulously for articles on living persons". I start to have issues with it where it is being pushed beyond Wikipedia's existing policies to remove content that is sourced well and where the negative information in question already is widespread and well-published.
-Matt
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 12:00:56 -0700, "Matthew Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote:
Personally, that's my question as well. BLP started off as 'we should be strict about having good sources for negative stuff'. But that doesn't get rid of all negative stuff, as is the case here. We have a rather negative and salacious story that comes from a legitimate print newspaper source.
It all tracks back to a single paper, which very clearly has it in for the subject. If other papers had *independently* come to the same conclusion, then I would have simply ignored it (after checking that the cites were good, of course). This could be the work of one journalist, or one editor with a grudge. Or it could be genuinely significant, but he is such a minor figure that nobody else cared. My big problem is, though, that it all originates from that one local paper, the tone of whose coverage is very much that of a witch-hunt.
Guy (JzG)
On 4/5/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see any conceptual difference between us picking it up from a paper and republishing it, to the Village Voice picking it up from a paper and republishing it... does it somehow become more legitimate three or four transactions down the chain?
My point simply being that the story is already out there from fairly credible printed sources, including one at least (the Village Voice) that's fairly well-known and well-read.
It's different when we're the first publisher of any note, but in this case, we aren't.
-Matt
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Matthew Brown wrote:
I'd also say that if he wishes to erase this scandal, he should pursue it with the local paper that printed the story, and such papers as the Village Voice that reprinted it. We are not the ones converting a rumor to permanent record here.
"Permanent record" is a relative term. The newspaper will exist permanently, but it won't be *prominent* permanently. It will eventually become something obscure that nobody cares about.
Unless of course we make the incident the permanent #1 hit on Google for their name.
On 4/5/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
"Permanent record" is a relative term. The newspaper will exist permanently, but it won't be *prominent* permanently. It will eventually become something obscure that nobody cares about.
Unless of course we make the incident the permanent #1 hit on Google for their name.
In the present time, I'm not so sure we can say that other sources will become hard to find - since they may be archived online practically forever. We're certainly not making the incident #1 on Google for the forseeable future, since it's already there.
-Matt
On 29/03/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Maybe. If it's judged significant. Which, in this case, it clearly is not, since nobody else seems to be running with it. Have you read their follow-up stories? It looks *awfully* like a vendetta.
This argument is not valid. Significance of a particular item of information cannot be judged based upon the number of papers which run with the story. There are many factors which influence whether a newspaper reports an item of information, regardless of its factual accuracy and significance. Perhaps the most important of these factors is that almost all newspapers have a political point of view which influences the perceived significance of some information.
On 29/03/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/03/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Maybe. If it's judged significant. Which, in this case, it clearly is not, since nobody else seems to be running with it. Have you read their follow-up stories? It looks *awfully* like a vendetta.
This argument is not valid. Significance of a particular item of information cannot be judged based upon the number of papers which run with the story.
Indeed. Anyone with any experience of the media echo chamber would find this argument ludicrous. The papers reprint and expand each others' errors *all the time*.
- d.