Talk:Gordon H. Smith

Disambiguation (#2)
I'm not sure that this page should go directly to this politician. Two of the Scottish footballer Gordon Smiths are very well known in Scotland, and the rest of Britain to a lesser extent. Gordon Smith (footballer born 1924) was a Scotland international, and a highly successful player in Hibs' best team. He won league championships with three different clubs (none of the them the dominant Old Firm clubs), a unique distinction in Scottish football.

Gordon Smith (footballer born September 1954) is also an interesting figure. He played at a resonably high level (although not an international), winning trophies with Rangers and missing a notorious chance for Brighton in an FA Cup Final (and Smith must score is a widely known phrase in the UK). Since retiring he has been a football agent and media pundit. He has since become a somewhat controversial figure as SFA chief executive, which is one of the highest profile positions in Scottish football.

By way of comparison, Gordon Smith senator has 149,000 results, while Gordon Smith hibs has 9,050 results (somewhat understandable given that his career ended in the early 1960s). There are a few plausible search terms for the SFA chief executive - Gordon Smith sfa has 35,500 results, Gordon Smith rangers has 31,900 results and Gordon Smith brighton has 10,900 results. I accept that there will be overlap between these last three results.

I'm not requesting a move yet because I'm unsure of the American politician's notability, which I would like others to state. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 20:56, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * FYI, "Gordon Smith" + Senate gets 251,000.

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was Page moved. Please help fix the inbound links! -Pete (talk) 18:29, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Gordon Smith → Gordon Smith (politician) — Per my statement above, I believe that this page is ambiguous, particularly with the two well known Scottish footballers. Anyone presently looking for either of them has to go through two pages to find the person they are looking for. I invited comments two weeks ago for justification of why the page should not be moved but none have been made. -- Jmorrison230582 (talk) 07:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Looking at Gordon Smith (disambiguation) I do not believe there is a primary topic for Gordon Smith. This should be moved to Gordon Smith (politician) and Gordon Smith (disambiguation) should be moved here.   GB fan  talk 13:29, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Support I am living in UK and have never heard of any of these people. No primary topic = DAB page and DABed name. Jubilee♫ clipman  16:12, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment There are also Gordon Smith (American football), Gordon Smith (ice hockey), and others on the Gordon Smith (disambiguation) page that could be equally well known in their fields as the Former US Senator is in Oregon. Jubilee♫ clipman  16:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Further comment: It would be easier to redirect Gordon Smith to Gordon Smith (disambiguation) than rename that DAB page. This will have to be one of the cleanup tasks.  If people want this page to be the DAB they might need to get an admin.  Jubilee♫ clipman  16:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Support As one of the main contributors to this article, I have no objection -- in fact, this seems like a totally uncontroversial thing, and as far a I'm concerned the changes should be made without further delay. (Also, I'm an administrator, and would be happy to move the DAB page here once this page is renamed.) -Pete (talk) 18:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Support in part/Oppose in part This article should be moved to Gordon H. Smith, not (politician). -Rrius (talk) 19:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Curious why you would name it this way. He is not commonly known as Gordon H. Smith. If your concern is about other politicians, we could name it Gordon Smith (Oregon politician), which would be consistent with how we've dealt with this sort of DAB issue for most Oregon politicians with common names. (e.g., Sam Adams (Oregon politician), David Hill (Oregon politician), Dave Hunt (Oregon politician)) We could certainly make a redirect from Gordon H. Smith, if you think it likely that somebody might search for him that way. -Pete (talk) 21:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Support move to Gordon Smith (politician). If anything the Scottish footballer (the one now CEO of Scottish football) is probably the primary topic (just, over the 1924-born player), but by such a slim margin that using Gordon Smith as the dab page makes perfect sense. Grutness...wha?  05:07, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose move, until someone uses objective criteria such as the examples cited in Disambiguation to establish a need for change. That section suggests using any or all of the following:
 * Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere
 * Wikipedia article traffic statistics
 * Google web, news, scholar, or book searches
 * (Traffic stats are probably not useful in this case since when a primary topic already exists, the statistics could be distorted.)


 * If wikipedia had separate uk.en.wikipedia.org and us.en.wikipedia.org then it would be self-evident how each of them would resolve this. But it doesn't, so web searches are the objective way to clarify this.  For example, searching from google.com places the politician at top; searching from google.co.uk puts Gordon-Smith Guitars and Gordon Smith (psychic barber) at the top.  No footballers to be found that way.  It's starting to look like Jmorrison230582's proposal is more motivated by that editor's self-identity (,,  are the top three user templates for Jmorrison230582) than by anything objective.


 * Don't get me wrong...for all I know the objective data would point the to reasonableness of the proposal, but the discussion so far fails to supply any statistics in support of the move. Thanks. 68.165.77.98 (talk) 19:29, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S. Gordon Smith (Oregon politician) and Gordon H. Smith are definitely less preferable to  Gordon Smith (politician), since in the former case U.S. senators are national politicians, not state politicians, and in the latter case, there's no objective evidence that Senator Smith was ever know by his middle initial.
 * Comment. What are you wittering on about? I posted google stats in my comments above - there are more results for the politician, but hardly overwhelming considering the amount of trivial mentions (eg senate votes) that he would receive. The guitar and barber links will appear at the top because they will have paid Google to be there. Gordon Smith (politician) has more incoming links, but that appears to be purely because he is on several templates. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 05:55, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Page views: "Gordon Smith" 3609 in August 2009; Gordon Smith (1924 footballer) 487 in August 2009; Gordon Smith (Sep. 1954 footballer) 969 in August 2009. Again a lead, but hardly overwhelming, particularly considering that anyone who types in Gordon Smith looking for someone else will have to land on the politician's page. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 06:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Support. Collectively all the Gordon Smiths are more important than one US politician. By the principle of least surprise this page should be the primary dab page. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Please note: There are lots of links to be fixed that point at Gordon Smith, but should point at this article instead. Your help would be greatly appreciated! -Pete (talk) 18:29, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Gordon H. Smith
I suggested prior to the move that the page should be at Gordon H. Smith instead of Gordon Smith (politician). Unfortunately, I lost track of was AFK for the rest of the discussion, and didn't respond to the baseless objections to Gordon H. Smith. The two objections basically amount to, "there is no evidence he was known by that name. A simple search for "Gordon H. Smith" disproves that. Of the first page, all but one of the hits are about the Senator. More to the point, the New York Times's page about him is called "Gordon H. Smith". In addition, the last time Smith was elected to the Senate, his credentials were in the name "Gordon H. Smith". Smith's election page on facebook was in the name "Gordon H. Smith". Smith put out a statement while on the Aging Committee using the name "Gordon H. Smith". Smith's letters reveal that his Senate letterhead, printed closing, and signature use the "H" (the first two being "Gordon H. Smith" and the signature being either the same or "G H Smith". So not only is "Gordon H. Smith" a common way of referring to Jeff Merkely's predecessor, but it seems to be the way he refers to himself. Since a non-parenthetical disambiguator is available, it should be used. It is therefore my intention to move the page there. Discussion? -Rrius (talk) 18:51, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not a big fan of parenthetical disambiguation either, but in this case, I can't remember a single reference to him as "Gordon H. Smith" in the media. Clearly that's his name and he uses it in official situations, but he campaigned as "Gordon Smith" and most people would find him as Gordon Smith and go from the disambiguation page. A redirect to the parenthetical disambiguation device seems most appropriate to me in this instance since someone who only typed "Gordon Smith" would learn immediately of his profession and have more confidence they had the right page than if they saw the middle initial and had to read further to determine if it was the right person. So I'd say leave it as is. --Esprqii (talk) 23:28, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't really care much one way or the other. Rrius, if you are really convinced that's the better way to go, and if you need administrator buttons to accomplish it, please feel free to let me know, an (as long as there isn't strong opposition to the change) I'll do it for you. -Pete (talk) 00:04, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, he did use "Gordon H. Smith" for his facebook page, which seems to have solely been used for campaigning, and he is referred to by the "H" in several media reports. And while he is probably more often referred to as "Gordon Smith" than as "Gordon H. Smith", that isn't the question. The question is whether a parenthetical or an initial is preferable for disambiguation. Even the section on parenthetical disambiguation says middle initials and qualifiers such as "Jr.", "II", and the like are better than parenthetical descriptors. -Rrius (talk) 00:25, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Also Rrius, thanks very much for all your AWB dab work. I just logged in to take a crack at that, but I'm not so good with automated tools…so I was very pleased to see that the bulk of it has been taken care of! -Pete (talk) 00:17, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. I'm starting to get the hang of AWB, but I am not terribly good yet, either. -Rrius (talk) 00:25, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * My only point was what would be make the page more usable for the reader: his profession (presumably why they have heard of him) or his middle initial. I think the first rule of disambiguation is picking the most common name he is known by. His Facebook page and a smattering of news articles seem less convincing than just using the parenthetical disambiguator in this case (which I just love typing, by the way). It's not as pretty but it seems more functional. Just my two cents. --Esprqii (talk) 01:40, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess I just disagree. Someone searching for the senator is going to type "Gordon Smith", "Gordon H. Smith", or "Gordon Harold Smith", not "Gordon Smith (politician)". Thus, in terms of searching, "Gordon H. Smith" is more functional than "Gordon Smith (politician)". Also, having done the disambiguation work, there are many articles that use "Gordon H. Smith" as the display text. As such, those articles would be able to link directly to this article without a piped link. By contrast, the only pages in the article namespace likely to display "Gordon Smith (politician)" are "Gordon Smith" (the disambiguation article) and perhaps other Gordon Smith articles, where editors think this Gordon Smith is worthy of a hatnote. And, yes, it is I really enjoy "parenthetical disambiguator" (and "non-parenthetical disambiguator") too.-Rrius (talk) 01:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, no one is going to arrive at the article any way but through a link on another article, a search, or the dab page, so it really doesn't matter what we make the actual article. If we don't get another opinion, I'm fine with whatever you think is best. --Esprqii (talk) 04:02, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Should lead paragraph describe current occupation and role?
Gordon Smith has now been the head of the National Assocation of Broadcasters (NAB) for almost a year, and today is a very important day in his new job - he has summoned the heads of all the radio owners in the United States to discuss negotation of the so-called "Peformance Tax". This has the potential to break him into a visible figure on the news over this issue.

Would it be appropriate now to rewrite the lead to say "Gordon H Smith is the President of the National Association of Broadcasters, [blah blah].[paragraph].  Previously, he had served as a U.S. Senator from Oregon [blah] [blah].?69.37.68.72 (talk) 11:15, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Looking for someone to nominate this article for GA status
Does anyone else think this article is up to GA status?--Bigpoliticsfan (talk) 00:41, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

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Youtube "Leaks"
Youtube is a self-publishing mechanism, so any videos from there are self published sources. The news article says nothing about Gordon Smith, so it's addition is OR. As such the whole "leaks" information is one big BLP violation. --Kyohyi (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

There are news articles that discuss Gordon Smith in the leaks and the reaction that it has had. Here is one http://www.sltrib.com/home/4428075-155/mormon-politicians-defend-gordon-smith-after?fullpage=1 174.68.86.212 (talk) 17:46, 5 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Then we should document what the news articles say and add them to the article. My edits, and comment here were only about the paragraph that was not properly sourced for a BLP.  --Kyohyi (talk) 18:14, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Lots of back-and-forth editing later, is everybody happy with the end product? (I am.) Tripleahg (talk) 05:46, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Never mind, the NYT is now covering this and I'm adding that information to the article. Definitely chime in if there are better ways to word it, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tripleahg (talk • contribs) 05:16, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The sources are conflicted on this. Given that the quote from the leaked video does not support conflating the two claims, and given that only some sources conflate them in the interests of BLP we need to keep the two separate. - Bilby (talk) 05:41, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. In your similar comment on your wall, you included "the quote from the leaked video" as follows:
 * "I know and have been a critic of the Iraq war, but I also admit to you that I voted for it because I felt the Lord’s hand in it. I hope it works out, but I can promise you this: You’ll never send missionaries to the Arab street until the rule of law exists in Arabia, and it has taken root in Iraq. And ultimately, if that succeeds, there will be an opportunity to begin building the church in the Middle East, which is a deeply troubled place."
 * Two points. First, I sat down to listen to the video and I disagree that's where the relevant quote starts. At around 11:30, he says he will discuss the three things that God cares about in politics: 1) free exercise of conscience, 2) right and control of property, and 3) protection of life. He begins to talk about point 1, explaining this refers to the right of the church to have practicing and proselytizing members in a country. After a bit of discussion on this point, including the phrase "rule of law" to describe a government providing this right to the people, is the above quote you included above. Directly after the quote he gives a long anecdote to illustrate this first point. The anecdote is explicitly about Iraqis being baptized into the LDS faith. Around 16:20 as the anecdote is concluding he repeats the phrase "the Lord's hand," saying he saw it in the events of the above anecdote. He then says he shared the anecdote with the previous (now deceased) president of the LDS faith, Gordon Hinckley, "and he said, 'Senator, our missionaries always follow in the footsteps of american soldiers.' The Lord governs in the affairs of nations even if the nations don't know it. So wars and rumors of wars there will be, but the Lord is in charge, just as he is in Iraq on a macro basis." He then moves to a discussion of point 2 (property rights) at about minute 17.
 * Second, NYT is the most prestigious source reporting on this topic. Even if you disagree with my above point that the longer quote clearly supports the idea that these are not two separate thoughts from the Senator but rather a single subpoint about his vote in the context of his main point about the free exercise of conscience, I don't think we need to be more conservative than the most prestigious source simply because some less prestigious papers have been more conservative. Tripleahg (talk) 06:45, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I guess under this circumstances you would rather hold the discussion here? If so, I'll respond here.
 * To say that a senator would vote to take the US to war in order to ease the spread of the Mormon church is a very serious claim. If there is a valid possibility that this claim is being misrepresented, then the best bet is to be overly cautious. We have almost no sources on this - there has been relatively little coverage of the video, and while I would generally agree with you about the NYT, the NYT isn't necessarily right in all things. I'l listen to the video again and see if there is a clear, unambiguous connection between the two claims - his support for the Iraq war and the furthering of the Mormon church. If there is, I'm happy to see the connection made here. But if the sources remain conflicted, and if the connection remains ambiguous, then it seems much safer to keep the two claims separate. - Bilby (talk) 07:01, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I finally had another chance to listen to the recording, and no, I can;t really find the unambiguous connection between his reason for supporting the war in Iraq and hid belief that the introduction of the rule of law would imp[rove the situation for Mormon missionaries. I don't doubt that he believes that the Iraq war will help with the spread of Mormonism in that part of the world, but it seems viable for him to be describing a benefit to the Mormon church without also having used that as a factor in his decision to support the war. - Bilby (talk) 03:27, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, we disagree on this, which is okay. My basic opinion about sources is: the only source reporting on whether or not it was a factor in his decision is the NYT which reported it was a factor. The other sources don't say "separately, he stated X, but he did not state that this was a factor in his decision." Instead, they simply report both facts without reporting whether or not one is related to the other. So I do not view the sources as conflicting. I'd like the NYT statement that it was a factor to be included in this page. Since we disagree, what do we do next? Is there some sort of arbiter we can take it to? Tripleahg (talk) 23:30, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

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