Talk:Brad Lander

Untitled
Keep - Mr. Lander seems to have notable, significant, sustained, and verifiable coverage to qualify under wikipedia's terms. He also has won several awards throughout his career by credible institutions, outside of his candidacy for office.

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NPOV
Jesse - you can't lett subjective POV you have lead you to delete RS-supported information. And you know better than to assert NPOV for the reason - the reflection of RS supported information is not pov editing. Deletion is. You know better. --2603:7000:2143:8500:3048:E4EF:82C2:5FAB (talk) 09:43, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Bullshit. The original post was a hitpiece and non-NPOV, but you'll note the reason I gave for removing it was WP:NOTNEWS, it's trivial reporting and not even really "reporting". It may be of note to you since you like to claim "you should know better" to others and what is and isn't an RS, please see: WP:NYPOST. It was picked up by Patch (not RS) and the Daily News, but referring to the Post's publication. JesseRafe (talk) 13:24, 13 May 2021 (UTC)


 * WP:NOTNEWS is irrelevant here. The policy says news reports can be cited. A particular news source might not be considered reliable but plenty of other newspapers or other news media are perfectly reliable. You do need to cite very high quality sources for anything, particularly anything controversial, about a living person, per WP:BLP, and that probably rules out tabloid newspapers. WP:UNDUE is relevant as well: if these facts are relevant, we should be able to find them in multiple diverse sources, and not have to settle for one or two sketchy ones.But WP:NOTNEWS does not say "don't cite newspapers" and it doesn't say "you can't mention current events". It's a lot more subtle than that, and mostly is about tone and emphasis, not sources. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:15, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * When did I say anything of that sort? I said "not news" because Wikipedia is not for ordinary nothings that occur daily, which, by necessity, populate a newspaper's content, but not an encyclopedia's. On top of which, this was not neutral but "gotcha journalism" from a non-RS, all of which were reasons it was removed. You've created a strawman. Absurd, and in fact, a breach of good faith, to imply I am arguing that WP does not cite newspapers. JesseRafe (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * You mean where it says "routine news reporting of announcements, sports, or celebrities" isn't sufficient basis for inclusion? Which news outlets routinely list all the traffic violations of elected officials? These things are not routinely reported. And the number of parking and moving violations in this case seems to be quite a bit more than whatever might be normal or routine.Weather reports are routine, the daily ups and downs of the stock market, various entertainment events happening around town; the fact that they do appear in a newspaper that meets WP:RS does not mean they belong in an encyclopedia. This story is nothing like that. The story is that a politician looks hypocritical. What we lack is high-quality, independent sources that tell us that this is significant. NOTNEWS doesn't address those questions; that's where WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:BLP enter into it.Now, don't stuff beans up your nose, but if someone said, "yes these tabloid papers are weak sources, but the election is soon and if we wait for more respected sources to pick up this story it will be too late. Wikipedia has to get this information to the public now!" If someone said that, which they didn't, then, at long last, we'd have a sighting of the elusive unicorn in the flesh: a legitimate case of WP:NOTNEWS being relevant. Because then we could say if timely reporting to the public is the only justification, it would violate this policy.What's odd to me is that in this particular case, the WP:BLP policy hits this one out of the park. Cite BLP. Case closed. NOTNEWS only invites endless debate. Just reading WP:NOTNEWS is painful, making us all realize we'll never get those minutes back. It's confusing, unhelpful, and the parts of it that make much sense are redundant statements of other, more robust, policies. Especially when you're addressing an IP editor who probably doesn't understand subtle Wikipedia policies. Why ask them to understand the crap at WP:NOTNEWS when the answer is so succinctly spelled out at BLP, and at WP:WEIGHT if that's not enough, and at WP:RS. So many good options before you got to scrape the bottom of the barrel. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:56, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Jesse deletion in lede
Jesse - please provide support for your assertions for this deletion. I cannot find support for it, and think it is heavy handed and smacks of personal view rather than wp view. wp:lede, on the other hand, supports this in the lede, as the lede is meant to summarize the more important parts of the text below, and this qualifies as important because it is what the candidate keeps on talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brad_Lander&diff=1029031129&oldid=1028966510 --2603:7000:2143:8500:CD7:B390:5FA4:87BE (talk) 04:11, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:52, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Lander NYC.jpg

Lander is a member of DSA
Taking it to the talk per edit 1092965947 (an aside, the onus for doing so should be on you JesseRafe given your two quick reversions here). I have not seen this mentioned before in the talk section and there's no apparent archive for this page so I would appreciate a link to where the debate and consensus occurred where it was decided that Lander, despite his own public statement that he is a DSA member, is not in fact a DSA member.

I will be citing both precedence on Wikipedia with other DSA members, as well as other first and third party sources again citing that Lander is a DSA member.

For Lander:
 * "While studying at the University of Chicago, he attended meetings of the Democratic Socialists of America and painted public housing units on Chicago’s South Side." from: An Unassuming Liberal Makes a Rapid Ascent to Power Broker, January 2014
 * "As I mentioned tonight, I joined DSA as a freshman at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1987." - Lander on Twitter, August 2019
 * "I joined DSA as a freshman at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1987 ... I've considered myself a member ever since. Can't say I've paid my dues every single year, but Democratic Left has always found its way to my door." - Lander on Twitter, July 2020 (also citing the above NYTimes article)
 * "Lander, now 52, ... and joined the Democratic Socialists of America in 1987 while an undergraduate at the University of Chicago (he doesn’t attend meetings and hasn’t been endorsed by NYC-DSA – but he still pays his dues)." from: Eric Adams might need someone to serve as a check. Is that Brad Lander?, March 2022

Lander firsthand states he's a member, has publicly stated as such, and recently as of a local publication in 2022 has been cited as a dues paying member. The precedence here for other DSA members on Wikipedia, both elected politicians and notable people, is to cite this similar to how I did, namely either a firsthand account (such as in the case of Tim Heidecker publicly stating he is a member) or third party sources such as Sean Doolittle, let alone the countless politicians such as Ron Dellums to John Conyers all the way to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and local ones to New York like Alexa Avilés where they've all been cited as DSA members over the years. Him stating he "[c]an't say [he's] paid [his] dues every single year" in July 2020 should be interpreted not just at face value but with the context he stated it in: he hasn't paid dues every single year up until that point, but is currently a dues paying member. I think it's splitting hairs to call this otherwise when it's coming from the now-Comptroller's own mouth. Cmahns (talk) 19:35, 13 June 2022 (UTC)


 * You're reading too much into these comments and thus doing synthesis. Where does Jeff Coltin say he pays dues? That was an off the cuff remark, and I think based on the same twitter thread. Alexa Aviles is a rank and file member who attends meetings, her membership is not in dispute. AOC did too and is involved in chapter working groups. We don't have a good single source for his current membership, posting all these links is not making your case because this is actually OR and Synth. We don't use a preponderance of evidence, but clear direct reliable sourcing. He's positively declared he is a former member and currently is often sympathetic to the politics but not clear he is a current member. Your direct quote is still cheeky and vague "I don't pay every year" does not imply he is currently paying. It simply doesn't. We can't make such a conclusion in Wikipedia's voice, though you may infer that interpretation as an individual, but there's still a plausible reading he paid in 1987 and 1993 and 2016 and no other years. We can use the NYT to say he was a member in college, but that's all that can be definitively said. And my mistake, previous conversation about the same topic occurred at List of Democratic Socialists of America members who have held office in the United States, not here. JesseRafe (talk) 13:41, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clearing up which talk page this occurred in, I disagree that this counts as discussion and consensus given the only comment on that page with respect to Lander is from yourself talking about reverting similar edits to that page. I'm not going to dwell on this though, discussion is occurring here which is what matters.
 * The Jeff Coltin article in City & State is an interview piece with Lander. It was apparently brought up in the interview that Lander is back to paying dues, otherwise it wouldn't have been included in the article. I fail to see how this is synthesis and original research when the text is right there in the article, directly from the politician's own mouth. Membership in the organization isn't dictated by one's activity in the organization, as in your examples with Avilés and Ocasio-Cortez' cases, but if a member pays dues. Citing activity in the organization and if one attends meetings or works in working groups is moving the goal posts here on whether or not Lander is a member.
 * As you have some familiarity with DSA, I'm sure you are familiar with the term "paper member" and "activated member", both are still counted to the membership rolls of the organization. Lander wouldn't be receiving copies of the Democratic Left in the mail otherwise if he ever left the organization's rolls. Cmahns (talk) 16:30, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Adding talkref to your first comment to keep them in situ. Read the Coltin piece again. The dues paying is not part of the interview, just something Coltin says in the write up, which I called an off-the-cuff remark and you yourself can only surmise "apparently" was brought up. Again, you are reading into it a preponderance instead of a clear assertion. He does not say when or how regularly Democratic Left shows up in his mailbox, it could time-to-time, it could be a memory from years prior, what's the standard you're imagining here? There's numerous plausible ways one could still get an issue without being up-to-date on dues. We cannot make inferences on BLP articles like "otherwise it wouldn't have been included in the article" (also, I wouldn't categorize that piece as an "article", it's part of C&S's personality series, which also includes their opinion pieces and online polls and popularity contests). This isn't a game of "let's try to find as many possible mentions and form a nexus to connect the dots", but unallowable synthesis. Full stop. Also, you brought up Aviles and Ocasio-Cortez, politicians to whom DSA membership is a core part of their political base and identity, not me, so accusing me of goalpost-moving when rebutting your own arguments is clear bad faith, and further arguments in that line will not be responded to. JesseRafe (talk) 17:34, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I am not surmising anything with that article, and instead am merely working on the evidence in front of us on the table, in the citations I provided above. Honest question, is this not also you surmising, when you said of that part of the article "and I think based on the same twitter thread"? What is your basis for this?
 * "Apparently" was not a judgement of me "reading into" it as you put it, more that it was apparent enough in the interview to be brought up by the author. Maybe the better word here, to describe the content of that article is "literally" as in "it was literally brought up in the article", but I didn't describe it this way, because that's not how I talk or write. Apologies for not using more precise language, if that is what caused the issue here.
 * I cited the mentions of membership on Avilés and Ocasio-Cortez' pages as precedence for contemporary DSA elected politicians, alongside of older DSA electeds such as Dellums (former vice-chair of DSA, more in parallel with these two members in terms of activity) and Conyers (more in parallel with Lander here), for how these mentions are handled on other pages today on Wikipedia. In addition to this, the mentions of Heidecker and Doolittle, former case a cited first hand tweet from a verified account (like Lander) and latter, an "off-the-cuff remark" in a profile of him, are exactly the two items I raised in this original edit, so I've given a higher standard for citations here than other notable DSA members have received. The goalpost moving comment was from you taking my mentions of Avilés and Ocasio-Cortez to expand that they're more active in the organization, going so far as to call the two of them rank and file members, which is true! But it's not relevant to whether or not Lander is or is not a current member, nor other fellow members in the organization who have Wikipedia articles.
 * To be blunt with you JesseRafe, with how this discussion is and has been going, at this point I'm not clear what will resolve this issue with you outside of Lander either posting his most recent dues-receipt or DSA publishing their membership rolls. Is this what's needed to clear this up? Will this be the standard raised for other DSA members who are more notable than Lander?
 * One last thing: I'm not clear where the escalation from your end with accusing me of arguing in bad faith is coming from, because I can safely say I've only been reading and responding to your arguments in good faith. Taking a step back, I can only guess that in my opinion based on the interactions here on this Talk page, in the edit descriptions you left in this article, the sole comment from yourself that I linked above where you claimed this discussion where this had been decided occurred, and with your recent edit in 1093089524 restoring most of what I wrote but only in a way that was "technically correct" as you put it, that this is from being overly protective of the content on this page which I, in this case I am actually surmising so hold me to it, is from your edit history and investment in the growth of this page. If this is wrong, please let me know as I'm trying like you, to make sure Wikipedia is inclusive of the world's knowledge and is growing, especially by casual editors like myself. Cmahns (talk) 04:20, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I only skimmed this, but you are not arguing in good faith and in fact dipping your toes into personal attacks. You are the one with the agenda on this page, and it is bad faith to accuse me of agenda as I have pointed again and again to RS, Synth, and BLP policies. I'm not even going to read your paragraph about Aviles and Dellums because their pages are irrelevant as I said at the outset their membership is not in dispute! It's uncontentious. If one disputed an element of a BLP, then a higher standard of sourcing is required. That's happening here and now. Your proposed solution coming from Lander himself shows you don't understand the purpose of Wikipedia and its talk pages: we don't mouthpiece the subjects but build consensus from reliable sources. You could have taken this time to build consensus, instead you are composing impenetrable walls of texts and doubling down on your accusations of me and insisting you were right -- that in my experience makes it harder for other editors to later come round to the discussion, even if they would be inclined to take your side. Without consensus to make your change, the article stays as is, your role is not to "convince" me of anything, just to present your position. I understand yours, you don't understand the rebuttal. JesseRafe (talk) 12:52, 15 June 2022 (UTC)