Talk:David Sirota

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Untitled[edit]

Edit war aside, I logged onto wikipedia today to find something on David Sirota. There should be no question as to whenter this article should exist, but we really do need to have a realistic biography presented in an objective and neutral fashion.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by A.backman (talk • contribs) 18:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Anon edit War[edit]

It appears that we have an edit war between two anons. Anon 68.175.95.30 and Anon 69.144.65.132. The former is either a good friend of Sirota (or Sirota himself), while the latter is a Sirota critic. Please use this talk page to discuss your concerns. --Asbl 04:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From the City Paper article that Sirota or his surrogate keeps removing:
"A bogus John White Jr. Web site was floating around in cyberspace, which, for the most part, contained glowing articles about White, but also played up racial remarks the candidate made to the Spanish-language newspaper Al Dia.
Sirota, it was discovered, was friends with the site's creator.
Evans reacted quickly, firing deputy campaign manager Sirota and accepting the resignation of longtime friend and campaign manager Jack Fugett. The whole flap spoke volumes about Evans as a leader."
3 points:
  1. Sirota did not go to college with the webmaster. he was friends with him
  2. Sirota did not "fall on his sword", he was fired.
  3. According to the local Philadelphia newspaper, the scandal played at least some role in Evans losing the race.
Sirota's efforts to whitewash the record should be unacceptable for wikipedia. At the very least, the Citypaper article should be linked to so that readers can draw their own conclusion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.84.161.108 (talk • contribs)
Note: the user Heartland22 is doing a lot of pro-Sirota edits, and has not edited any other page. Brianski 10:06, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Warning: Whitewashing[edit]

The following paragraph has been stripped at least twice from this article. It does show some POV, and could be cleaned up, but it happened and cannot be striken from the record. Please check that the current revision includes some information on this subject.

Sirota was also involved in a major scandal in 1999 when he worked for mayoral candidate Dwight Evans in Philadelphia. He was caught employing dirty tricks, specifically a misleading website, and was fired by Evans. Evans ended up losing the race because of Sirota's ethical lapse. Some argue that his criticism of conservatives for ethical violations is thus hypocritical.

Brianski

Update: here's the link (added in the paragraph as well): [1]

I am not the guy stripping the paragraph out, but I don't think that paragraph really belongs in the article (especially not how it is written). My reasons are as follows:
  • "He was caught" is clearly POV
  • "Employing dirty tricks" is not accurate. The article does not say he was using dirty tricks. That is a phrase created by the wiki editor. Again, clearly POV.
  • The article quoted says Sirota's friend set up a bogus website for Evan's opponent. The article does not say Sirota was responsible for this.
  • The wiki article refers to this as a major scandal; whereas, the article quoted says "In early March, a minor scandal knocked the wind out of his campaign." major vs minor. This source is being used to back up something that it doesn't.
  • The source itself. If this was such a big deal, why is it only in a publication that claims to cover alternative news? Philadelphia City Paper is not a mainstream publication.
  • "Some argue..." is clearly Weasel Words.
  • Since the "Some aruge..." sentence is not quoted in the article, and aside from being weasel words, it is Original Research.
  • "Evans ended up losing the race because of Sirota's ethical lapse" is not stated in the source. In fact, the article implies the opposite with this quote "Evans was already lagging behind in the polls and in fundraising," so if he was already losing, how can you blame the loss on Sirota?
I would be fine with allowing the paragraph to be changed to "In 1999 Sirota worked for Dwight Evans Philadelphia mayoral campaign; however he was removed from the campaign when it became known that a friend of Sirota's created a false website about his opponent." IF there is a better source for this (and the source says that the website was false). It is also important to note that we have free-speech in the United States, and anyone can make a website about anyone else, highlighting true statements they have made, even somewhat misleading. Normal laws of libel do apply, but was anyone charged for this with respect to the website? It could be that Sirota removed for a strictly PR reason. In the mean time, I am going to remove this entire paragraph because it is not NPOV, the source may not qualify as a Reliable Source, the paragraph states things that are not in the source, it uses Weasel Words, etc, etc. This paragraph is honestly beyond repair. If this paragraph continues to be added to the article, I will put out a Request for Comment to resolve this issue, which I'm almost certain will result in the paragraph being removed from the article. Bbrown8370 17:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whoops, this is already removed, so I don't have to remove it (this time). Instead, I am adding the link to his syndicator's website thing... which is what I originally came here to do anyway... Bbrown8370 17:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article[edit]

I'd like to contribute on this article; I think it's fairly good as it is. Is there an edit war going on? I'm NPOV but getting involved in edit warring is no fun.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:19, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll revamp this article and try to keep what's in (but it may get moved around). I strive hard for NPOV.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Article upgraded. Basically, I didn't change much. Almost all of the article I found was correct; good job everybody who worked on it before -- nothing was made up, and I found what you were saying. So mostly I added references. In a few instances, I added a section about the Newsweek profile, or critics reviews of books; I included both positive and negative. I took out the section headings "Praise" and "Criticism" but kept the content in, with references. I'm striving for WP:NPOV. In a couple of places, I had to remove comments in blogs (WP doesn't like blogs as you know as sources), like the part about DS talking about himself after the Lamont business. But generally I kept everything in. Since the article has plenty of references now, I removed the tags about "advertising" and "neutrality" and "citations needed" and stuff. I'm still not sure whether DS lives in Montana now or Denver. I'm kind of wondering whether the LEDE has too many references in it? What do others think -- it's somewhat hard to read, but at the same time, since DS is such a controversial figure, maybe they should be left in? I'm wondering about this. Generally I think DS is a smart, very interesting guy, and I can't decide how far he is in terms of leaning towards the non-partisan equation (I'm non-partisan, but I leaned from the right, although I was left-leaning after college). My sense is DS is still highly partisan but is thinking about becoming more non-partisan? But that's my POV; doesn't belong in the article.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:26, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I learned a great reference clumping tool and will try to get the LEDE paragraph less overdone with reference.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:13, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Check out the reference clumping tool. Very cool. Dcmacnut = user who figured this stuff out. Great job.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:12, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality tags[edit]

Would the person who put the neutrality tags on please explain their problem with the article; in which ways is the article not neutral. Wondering.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know who added the neutrality tags, but I agree with them: this wikipedia entry has often been a poorly-disguised copy of Sirota's own website, filled with seeming self-puffery. Also, it seems someone tries to remove or blunt the criticisms of Sirota added in the article. 71.192.47.236 (talk) 00:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When I reworked this article a while back here I checked all the references, made sure to include both sides (pro & con Sirota) and watched it for a bit. The article was fairly fair then. I'm non-partisan; there are aspects to DS which are non-partisan but definitely aspects to him which are partisan to the Democratic party. I haven't been watching it in about a year so I have not taken the time to analyze the changes since then. If people want to restore it to the older version, I think we'll have something fairer.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:29, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It appears someone has gone through and removed all criticism of Sirota. 107.3.53.238 (talk) 17:39, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Could you be more specific? Please consider that the article is highly-referenced and does include some criticism of Sirota. Please make a case explaining specifically why you feel the article is not neutral and why you feel there's a conflict-of-interest situation.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:09, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There were a number of criticisms of his work and writing (three come to mind - a book review, one from Nate Silver, and one from Al Giordano) that have been removed over the past year. Unfortunately, I don't know when those were removed.107.3.53.238 (talk) 22:51, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. The lack-of-neutrality tag should remain until these issues are addressed.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:41, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blogs[edit]

Per WP:SPS and WP:BLP, we may not use self-published sources such as blogs as references for biographies of living people unless they are written by the subjects. I've deleted material sourced solely to two blogs.[2][3][4]   Will Beback  talk  12:41, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Substack[edit]

Should it be mentioned in this article that he publishes on the Substack platform? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 18:23, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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