Talk:Barack Obama/weight

This talk page is intended for evidence and discussion of WP:WEIGHT concerns relating to including various subjects and people in the Barack Obama article.

Wikipedia article
(as of 7/21/08)

Total length: about 6,100 words, 300 sentences.

by subject

 * Personal life
 * African-American 12.5 (and other race issues)
 * Religion and church - 6
 * Basketball – 1
 * Left-handed – 1
 * Quit smoking - 2
 * Childhood 3.25
 * In NYC 0.5
 * In Chicago 0.5
 * Trips abroad 1.25
 * Trinity Church – 4
 * Wealth and home - 3
 * School
 * High school 0.5
 * Columbia 1.75
 * Harvard 4.25
 * Occidental college 0.5
 * Career outside politics
 * Taught law at Chicago 2 (12 years)
 * Attorney
 * General 0.25
 * Sidney & Austin 0.75(summer associate)
 * Hopkins & Sutter 0.25 (summer associates)
 * Davis, Miner 1 (12 yeasr)
 * Community organizer
 * General 0.25
 * Developing Communities Project 1.5 (3 years)
 * Gmaliel Foundation – 1
 * Project Vote – 1 (1/2 year)
 * Public Allies
 * Nonprofits
 * Woods Fund of Chicago – ½ (9 years)
 * Joyce Foundation – ½ (8 years)
 * Chicago Annenberg Challenge 1 (7 years)
 * Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights 0.25
 * Center for Neighborhood Technology 0.25
 * Lugenia Burns Hope Center 0.25
 * Writer
 * Dreams from my father 4.5
 * Audacity of Hope - 8
 * Political career
 * Illinois senate
 * General 1.75
 * Legislation 2.5
 * Committee work - 1
 * House campaign 1.5
 * Senate campaign
 * General - 12
 * DNC keynote 0.5
 * Senate career
 * General - 6
 * Legislation sponsored – 21
 * Voting record – 5
 * Positions, speeches - 10
 * Committees – 4.5
 * Trips – 7.5
 * Presidential campaign
 * General - 8
 * Campaign positions - 15
 * Announcements and statements - 4
 * Fundraising – 4
 * Polls – 2
 * Primary results and delegate counts - 7

People

 * family
 * Mother 4.75
 * Michelle Obama - 4
 * Extended family, generally – 3.5
 * Father 3.25
 * Grandparents 2
 * Sister 1.5
 * Daughters - 1
 * Stepfather 0.5

Associates, friends, etc.

 * Jeremiah Wright – 3.5
 * David Axelrod – 1.5
 * Michael Pfleger - 1
 * Tony Rezko - 1
 * Samantha Power – 0.5
 * Pete Rouse – 0.5
 * Anthony Lake – 0.5
 * Karen Kornbluth – 0.25
 * Robert Rubin – 0.25
 * Susan Rice – 0.25
 * Kay Warren – 0.25
 * Rick Warren – 0.75

Fellow politicians

 * Hillary Clinton - 3
 * George W. Bush – 2
 * Alan Keyes – 2
 * Jack Ryan – 2
 * Chuck Hagel - 1
 * Bobby Rush – 1
 * Alice Palmer – 0.5
 * Sam Brownback – 0.5
 * Tom Coburn – 0.5
 * Carol Moseley Braun – 0.5
 * Peter Fitzgerald – 0.5
 * John McCain – 0.5
 * Russ Feingold – 0.5
 * Richard Lugar – 0.5
 * Harold Washington – 0.25
 * Paul Simon (Senator) – 0.25
 * Tom Daschle – 0.25

Critical

 * Debra Dickerson – 1
 * David Ehrenstein - 1
 * Michael Tomasky - 1

Sympathetic or neutral

 * Gary Hart - 1
 * Ryan Lizza - 1
 * Peggy Noonan - 1

New Yorker article
Count of sentences devoted to various individuals (from )

Total length is about 14,700 words, 800 sentences. Note that this article is narrower in scope than the Obama article in that it is specifically about Obama's rise beginning around or after law school to announcing his presidential candidacy, as it relates to Chicago politics. It does not significantly cover his legislative work, private life, accomplishments outside of politics, or national politics. Though apparently neutral it nevertheless is in essay form, with more detailed (and opinionated) background descriptions than would be allowed on Wikipedia.


 * 1) Toni Preckwinkle – 33.75
 * 2) Will Burns 27.75
 * 3) Emil Jones 27.5
 * 4) Alice Palmer (Illinois politician) – 18.5
 * 5) Bobby Rush 16.5
 * 6) David Axelrod (political consultant) 14.75
 * 7) Abner Mikva 14.25
 * 8) Tony Rezko 11.5
 * 9) Ricky Hendon 11
 * 10) Bettylu Saltzman 10
 * 11) Bill Clinton 10
 * 12) Richard M. Daley 9.5
 * 13) John Corrigan 9
 * 14) Rod Blagojevich 8.5
 * 15) Marty Nesbitt 7.75
 * 16) Judson Miner 7.25
 * 17) Harold Washington 6.75
 * 18) Al Kindle 5.75
 * 19) Christie Hefner 5.5
 * 20) Don Rose 5
 * 21) Penny Prtitzger 5
 * 22) Ivory Mitchell 4.75
 * 23) Jane Byrne 4.75
 * 24) Marilyn Katz 4.5
 * 25) Lois Friedberg-Dobry 4.25
 * 26) Michelle Robinson 3.75
 * 27) Jeremiah Wright 3.5
 * 28) Alan Dobry 3.5
 * 29) Richard J. Daley 3.5
 * 30) E.J. Dionne, Jr. 3
 * 31) Obama grandparents 3
 * 32) Courtney Nottage 2.75
 * 33) Carol Anne Harwell 2.5
 * 34) Anita Ackerman 2.5
 * 35) Carol Moseley Braun 2
 * 36) Bill Ayers 2.0
 * 37) Dan Shomon 2
 * 38) Alvin Love 2
 * 39) Rohm Emanuel 1.75
 * 40) Craig Robinson 1.75
 * 41) Adlai Stevenson 1.75
 * 42) Bob Dole 1.5
 * 43) Buzz Palmer 1.5
 * 44) Michael Bilandic 1.5
 * 45) Robert Starks 1.5
 * 46) Jesse Jackson 1.5
 * 47) Sam Ackerman 1.5
 * 48) Valerie Jarrett 1.25
 * 49) Paul Simon (senator) 1.25
 * 50) Hillary Clinton 1.25
 * 51) Saul Bellow 1
 * 52) Saul Alinsky 1
 * 53) David Wilhelm 1
 * 54) John McCain 1
 * 55) George W. Bush 1
 * 56) David Mendell 1
 * 57) William Daley 1
 * 58) John Mearsheimer 1
 * 59) Mel Reynolds – 1
 * 60) Obama parents]] 1
 * 61) Martin Luther King 1
 * 62) Bernadette Dohrn 1
 * 63) Jim Edgar 1
 * 64) Peter Fitzgerald 1
 * 65) James Andrews 0.75
 * 66) Philip M. Klutznick 0.75
 * 67) Tiger Woods 0.5
 * 68) Paul Douglas 0.5
 * 69) Huey Rich 0.5
 * 70) Obama daughters 0.5
 * 71) Norman Lear 0.5
 * 72) Dan Hynes 0.5
 * 73) Santita Jackson 0.25
 * 74) Lyndon Johnson 0.25
 * 75) Trent Lott 0.25
 * 76) Michael Madigan 0.25
 * 77) Mark Penn 0.25
 * 78) Dick Morris 0.25
 * 79) Daniel Patrick Moynihan 0.25
 * 80) Anita Blanchard 0.25
 * 81) Jesse Helms 0.25

Ayers issue is a non-starter

 * Copied from main talk page

On the substance there doesn't seem to be any relevance or importance to Bill Ayers via-v-vis Barack Obama. It did not figure significantly in his life, and it did not affect either in any real way. As the New Yorker piece describes, Obama was associated with dozens if not hundreds of politicians, fundraisers, businesspeople, and other and prominent community members in his rise to power. We cover only a few of the most important - Ayers was nowhere near being important, a footnote if even that in Chicago politics.

On the sources establishing weight / importance, Obama/Ayers gets 450 news hits, as compared to 175,000 for Obama overall  Only 1 in 400 news pieces about Obama even mentions Ayers, and most of those are either not the focus of the article, or in blogs and editorials, or both. Nobody else seems to think it's important either.
 * Update as of 8/25/08 - the ratio is now 1,240 to 282,000. There are a number of news pieces now that cover the issue as being a Republican-promoted campaign tactic.  None of this changes the analysis.Wikidemo (talk) 21:00, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

On the weight issue I've I've looked at the weight we give various people and issues. See my new subpage, Talk:Barack Obama/weight. Of the 45 people we mention 10 are family members and 6 are people who simply commented about him. Of the 29 others, 17 are fellow politicians he ran against or sponsored legislation with (of all persuasions), and only 12 can be said to be friends, associates, or colleagues - of which 8 are his campaign or senate staffers. That leaves only four people we mention as being informal associates - the two pastors Pfleger and Wright, his close strategist Axelrod, and Rezko as a scandal / controversy and mid-level campaign supporter. I just don't see the room in there to start adding people he had a casual relationship with and who happen to be former terrorists - it's not balanced. The New Yorker piece, which is twice as long yet only covers about 1/4 of the territory as this article, devotes 2 sentences to Ayers (dividing up sentences that discuss multiple people). It covers 81 people in total, 34 to a greater degree than Ayers, 43 less than Ayers, and 3 get the same 2 sentences. Just by math that would suggest Ayers deserves 1/4 sentence here (i.e. zip)... but before even thinking about that we should consider some of the 34 more important people. Of them many of the ones most important to Obama's Chicago power base are simply not covered here: Toni Preckwinkle - 33.75 sentences there, not covered here; Will Burns - 27.75 sentences there, none here; Emil Jones - 27.5 sentences there, none here; Alice Palmer - 18.5 sentences there, 1/2 here; Bobby Rush - 16.5 sentences there, 1 here; and so on. In fact, of the 34 people who figure more prominently into the New Yorker article than Ayers, only 8 are mentioned at all in our article. And the New Yorker piece is on the very subject for which Ayers is supposedly notable, how Obama chose his friends and associates in his early political rise in Chicago.

Thus, Ayers doesn't pass the test for weight or relevance, either logically, by looking at reliable sources, or by a detailed analysis of how much space we and others give to various events. It's a no brainer. I think it's very unlikely at this point that Ayers can be included here, or that there are sources out there at this point that can make a case that he should. Wikidemo (talk) 00:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)