Talk:David Gerard (author)

Personal life
Obviously David Gerard is hated by the online sites that promote crypto (e.g. here), and some seem to use aspects of David's personal life to disparage him (and thus his views). Are there any good RS on David's personal orientations to clarify things, or is this best left off this BLP? Aszx5000 (talk) 14:42, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Source
I (martin walker)wrote the article for London School of Economics Business Review. Helena is the editor. Scroll down to bottom of article and your see I was the author Martincwwalker (talk) 23:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * . Sorry for the inconvenience. --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 23:30, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

"Personal life" content
Hi If you can come up with a solution that avoids a dedicated section heading, that's fine. But the content has no place in the MOS:LEDE. Kind regards, Robby.is.on (talk) 17:24, 27 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi, I hear very much what you're saying, but consider the following: There is no section in the body about personal life, basically about Gerard's family, because a literal ten words do not make a section. It's just not a section of an article. It's formatted as a section, using technical means, but functionally it it's not that. When we take ten words and give them a heading we just visually highlight those ten words, but do not really subdivide the article in any meaningful way. Highlighting short sentences with comparatively gigantic letters and a horizontal line is not what sectioning is for. Per MOS:BODY, Very short sections and subsections clutter an article with headings and inhibit the flow of the prose. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheadings. There is not enough content in this article in general for it to be conventionally sectioned. The content about Gerard's personal life is unlikely to expand in the foreseeable future. This is true for all the other aspects of his life and work, except for his crypto criticism. That is the only element that is expansive enough to warrant coverage both in the lead and in a dedicated section. The only element that can actually be summarized. With this in mind, WP:PYRAMID applies. This is basically a stub with a single outlying aspect which we can zoom in. This article can not be conventionally sectioned in its entirety. It can only be partially sectioned. Sincerely —Alalch E. 18:06, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the detailed explanation. It's unfortunate. Robby.is.on (talk) 19:51, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia editing section
My edit at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Gerard_(author)&oldid=1233960177 to add this information:

"Gerard was the first editor on the site able to see IP addresses of other editors ("checkuser"). Following a feud with an Australian political blogger, he abused this power to post the blogger's personal information in a blog post,[35] leading the Wikipedia arbitration committee to strip him of the checkuser privilege.[36][37]"

was removed.

This information is true and highly relevant to the article. The fact that Gerard was the first editor on the site to have a certain power, and then had it stripped for misusing it, is clearly relevant to a section called "Wikipedia editing".

The edit was removed by one of Gerard's friends because the sources were "a blog, a forum, and a biased source?".

I'm not a veteran editor like Gerard. I understand that blog posts are not considered reliable for articles about living subjects, but in this case the post is not a source of the information in the edit, it is simply the post he made that got him in trouble.

Even if the blog source is not acceptable, the source cited as [36] should be according to Wikipedia policies. It is this Register article: https://www.theregister.com/2009/12/02/the_end_of_the_wikipedia_good_old_boys_club/

As far as I can tell, there is no consensus that The Register is unreliable based on past discussions such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_79#The_Register_article_on_physicist%27s_resignation_from_the_American_Physical_Society and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_102#The_Register_at_Santorum_(neologism)

I suggest the paragraph should be restored using The Register article as the source. I am not a power user of Wikipedia like David and his friends, but I believe that there is no Wikipedia policy against citing a news article by a respected journalist in this article.

MedianJoe (talk) 05:17, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Among other problems, this fails verification. You say in wikivoice that Gerard misused CheckUser tools, whereas the source you are using attributes that claim to the Arbitration Committee. At the very least, you should too, and then it would paint a misleading picture not to include the later rebuttal of ArbCom's claim that that very source cites. * Pppery * it has begun... 05:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

—


 * Ok so how about :


 * "Gerard was one of the few editors on the site who had the administrator privilege to see IP addresses of users ("checkuser"). According to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (ArbCom), he publicly disseminated what appeared to be private data gained via his checkuser privileges in a post about an Australian blogger he disagreed with, as well as "repeatedly failing to maintain proper decorum in public fora." This lead the Wikipedia arbitration committee to strip him of his admin privileges.


 * "Wikimedia Foundation general counsel Mike Godwin intervened, citing concerns of a possible defamation suit by Gerard. As a result, ArbCom agreed to delete its decision against Gerard from Wikipedia, and Gerard agreed to give up his admin privileges. "


 * This is fully supported by the source and, I'm sure you would agree, is highly relevant to a section on Wikipedia editing!

MedianJoe (talk) 07:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Our bar for inclusion of this sort of material about living people is high, and it seems like the Register is maybe the only halfway decent source available? If so, I oppose inclusion. The article does not have the trappings of a reliable source, and the publication does not appear to distinctively mark a difference between news and opinion. From the title to the conclusion, the article makes it clear that it's an opinion piece. Our RSP listing notes that many consider the source to biased particularly when it comes to Wikipedia topics. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:19, 12 July 2024 (UTC)