Talk:Gary Weiss/Archive 1

Journalist?
(comment from banned user WordBomb deleted)

He used to be a journalist and an investigative reporter (maybe, but that information is uncited in the text, so we don't know for sure). If it turns out to be true, then shouldn't the article still be included in those categories, since he used to do that kind of work? Cla68 23:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I know it's silly to argue with "two editors" (quote unquote) who are so aggressively pushing an agenda, but the article itself indicates that Weiss is a founding member of the Project Klebnikov consortium of investigative reporters. My responding, incidentally, should be construed solely as an expression of amazement, and not conceding any good faith to the attacking and nonsensical comments being made on this talk page this AM.--Mantanmoreland 12:12, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, I was defending your side of the issue under discussion in this particular section. Cla68 13:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * No, you were inaccurately characterizing Weiss as a "former journalist," as is stated in the attack site upon which you are basing your edits and hostile remarks. Actually, a casual reading of the article itself - which points out that he is a member of Project Klebnikov investigative reporting project - indicates that he is a current journalist and investigative reporter. Stop the POV pushing.--Mantanmoreland 09:40, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Bad faith removal of cited, referenced text from article
Mantanmoreland, you deleted the following text from the article:

Libel suit
In 1996, Gary Weiss and Business Week magazine were named as co-defendents in a libel suit brought by Julian Robertson, founder of Tiger Management Corporation, over an article written by Weiss in Business Week that Mr. Robertson felt contained erroneous and malicious information about him. The suit was withdrawn by Robertson in January, 1997 after Business Week agreed to retract some of the statements it had made about Robertson in the article.

That passage is cited and referenced. The reference was extremely valid, since it was the very magazine that Mr. Weiss was working for that confirms the facts. Before removing cited text, you're supposed to discuss it here on the discussion page first. I'm going to re-add the text you deleted, and you can discuss it here on the discussion page why you think it shouldn't be included. I'll also add a warning on your user talk page about deleting cited text without discussion. A lot of the rest of the text is uncited, so feel free to delete that text, or else add inline citations. Cla68 23:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * User:Amoruso, please see above. You're not supposed to delete cited, referenced material without discussion first.  You've also been warned on your talk page. Cla68 00:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The section in question was properly removed. In an article of this size, devoting an entire section to a ten-year-old, withdrawn libel suit grossly skews the POV of the article. Your description of the editors' note was incorrect, and the fund manager who brought the suit later went belly up, but that is kind of beside the point given the obvious inappropriateness of its inclusion. --Mantanmoreland 07:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * As the article stands now after clean-up, I believe the libel suit piece would, arguably, fall under the undue-weight policy. Other editors might not agree with me, but for now I'm not going to add it back to the article. Cla68 07:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Article citation problems
About half of this article is uncited. I'm going to give the regular editors of this article (who seem to share close, mutual interests and goals) a week to get the rest cited, then I'm going to start deleting uncited text, which is not only allowable, but encouraged. Cla68 05:15, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I finally gave up with working with this article's editors after they removed all of the tags without doing anything to cite the article.  I just nominated this article for deletion.  I've never seen an article more obviously being used for promotion of the article's subject.  Classic example of the genre. Cla68 08:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * What you "finally" (after 24 hours) did is to lodge a WP:POINT AfD after your POV-pushing was correctly reverted. There are no "regular editors of this article." It has had almost no activity in recent weeks except vandalism by sockpuppets of banned User:WordBomb. That is why this article is semiprotected. Most of the edits on this article and talk page cannot be seen in the history because they were such crude trashings that they were deleted.--Mantanmoreland 09:43, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Comments were deleted permanently from the Discussion page? Without a trace?  I'm at a loss for words on this one. Cla68 12:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I've added a cleanup tag
Because the "Notes" and "Sources and external links" section are not actual tied to any statements in the article. If these are meant to source statements in the article, they need to be tied to the statements they source or removed. Right now, I'd consider this unverified even with the source section because it is not at all clear what is actually sourced and what is not.--Isotope23 18:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Cite tags
I added cite tags to the quotes where we need citations to source them. The way this was done (adding "sources" to the external links section) was incorrect. I would add the sources, but I'm not sure exactly which statements are linked to which sources (it's unclear, that is why this needs to be cleaned up). If you don't know how to add references and ref tags just pop a message on my talk page and I can guide you through the processes (or you can let me know URL's or hardcopy information for each passage and I format the refs.--Isotope23 15:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Article cleanup
Since it appears that this article will probably be a keep from the AfD discussion, I'm going ahead and starting the clean-up to help make it a neutral and accurate entry on the article's subject. First of all, I can't find a source for the information under the "Education and Early Career." I checked Weiss' website (a cached version on Google since it appears to be down at the moment) and Weiss' blog (which I think is ok to use to confirm non-subjective facts such as where he worked, lived, went to school, etc) but couldn't fine any information in either for that section. If anyone knows where I can verify that info, I can add the citation and the info can stay as is in the article, as it is already neutrally presented. Also, what did Weiss get his degrees in and where is a source for that info? Cla68 03:39, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I see that you've again resorted to unecessary "cite" tags and gratuitous cuts that are sheer POV pushing. As I explained previously on your talk page, the source of the "education and early career" section can be found here, and it was also explained to you that personal websites are acceptable sources of such data. The sources of the "magazine articles" section are the articles themselves (, and the Weiss website. The source of the description of Born to Steal is, obviously, the book itself. --Mantanmoreland 04:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you for providing the references. I added them to the text and removed the  tags.  By the way, adding  tags isn't POV-pushing.  Anything on Wikipedia is subject to referenced verification or else deletion.  One of the biggest criticisms of Wikipedia is that too much of the information on it is unverifiable, which is our duty to try and ameliorate.  I still think the article is slightly promotional in nature, but I don't have too much of a problem with it now.  Some might object to the testimonial by Mr. Freeh, but I think he's such a notable person that it's ok to leave his comment in there.  On the other hand, the same might also be said of Mark Cuban's comments about this article's subject.  But, I'll leave that to other editors to decide on whether to put that in the article or not.  I'll go ahead and remove the "clean-up" tag. Cla68 06:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I was mainly referring to the cuts of sourced and relevant material, which I thought were gratuitous at best. However, as you say, I'll leave that to other editors for the time being. --Mantanmoreland 08:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Not a 'Former' Journalist
Just in case this one hadn't been adequately put to rest earlier. http://weblogs.jomc.unc.edu/talkingbiznews/?p=1591 --Christofurio 15:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

AFD
I find it hard to "Please see prior discussion(s)" if the AFD was deleted. Why was it deleted? Jimbo didn't really leave anything... well, helpful in his deletion summary. Voretus 09:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The AfD was commenced in bad faith by a user acting on behalf of banned User:WordBomb, who was subsequently determined to be an employee of a company criticized by Weiss. The AfD was in effect a libelous attack page. That may or may not be the reason it was deleted.--Mantanmoreland 16:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)