Talk:Harvey Milk/Archive 13

Harvey Milk's support of Jim Jones
Didn't he write a letter to the president exposing the qualities of Jim Jones and discouraging an investigation? Shouldn't that be in here somewhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.165.48.146 (talk • contribs)
 * Trying to intertwine Milk with Jones' suicide cult has been discussed endlessly and resolved with undue but relevant content added as a footnote. If you wish to read more on this there are a few conspiracy theorists who have compiled an extensive collection of tangently related bits but this is, an encyclopedia. -- Banj e  b oi   03:39, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There's nothing conspiratorial about it. It happened--Milk, among others, espoused great public support for Jones.  That doesn't mean he was complicit in Jonestown, obviously, but it's worth noting somewhere in the midst of this hagiography.  For crying out loud, Milk's entry is longer than Barack Obama's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.48.213.122 (talk • contribs)
 * There's already half a paragraph about Jim Jones, plus a footnote - far more than enough. It is only tangentially related to Milk's career, and the information is far better centralized in one or more articles about Jim Jones, not adding material to the biography of each of his supporters.  The problems with the article tone and length are there, but unrelated to the question of how much weight to give various events. Wikidemon (talk) 05:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Hagiography, indeed. Barack Obama has his own template with 34 articles related to him, his family, his books, his political career, and his presidency. Can we not communicate in hyperbole? These overblown statements prompt me to ignore these comments because they don't come from people who make sense. Fool that I am, I'm going to respond to the issue of Jim Jones yet again:
 * This is Harvey Milk's article. Everything that happened of significance to Milk is represented. I wrote this article, deciding what to include, by reading all the information I could find on Milk and giving it the weight reliable sources gave. Jim Jones had less emphasis in Milk's life than what is in this article. If you don't believe me, start at the top of the citations section and read everything presented there. My patience and willing to compromise is wearing thin with folks who come to this talk page and leave poorly written and unverifiable comments about the article's content when they clearly have not read even the most core biography of Milk's life. --Moni3 (talk) 13:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Time to adopt summary style
The recent attempt to refactor this article by creating a child Legacy of Harvey Milk seems like a very good idea. In its existing form, the article violates, or at least closely skirts, WP:SIZE. Specifically, as of a moment ago, its "readable prose size" was: 58 kB (9847 words). That's really too much to be helpful to readers.

While other approaches might be possible, pulling off the "Legacy" to a child article seems like a very good approach. Obviously, the recent edit that did that was too extreme in leaving nothing but the link in the main article. But we could move forward from that by adding a few paragraphs of summary to the section, but placing the majority of that content in the child. Some form of refactoring seems very important to maintain and improve the quality of this article. LotLE × talk 20:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Scratchpad: /Legacy summary
 * Overall, I agree. Many readers would be far better served by having an article of more manageable size to get in summary form a balanced view of the life, times, and legacy of Milk.  Milk is a figure larger than a single article can hold - organizationally it would be best to spread the material across three or four at least.  On the other hand this is a very good article - even among featured articles it is especially well done.  I would hate to lose that. At a minimum we should come up with a summary paragraph to accompany any child link before moving the material.  Also, you have to be careful when splitting articles to avoid broken reference links, missing wikilinks, etc.  Wikidemon (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I have cleaned the references in the proposed child. I am working on compacting the Legacy section in the above linked "scratchpad" area.  If you wouldn't mind, give me a few more minutes to create a pass at a proposed summary there.  LotLE × talk  21:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious about where the notion that this article skirts WP:SIZE originates. FAs routinely run up to 10,000 words readable prose, and quite often run over. See User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics. This article passed FAC and main page day with no complaints about size; why the push to gut the article? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 21:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The length of this article is very close to making that top-10 (though probably a lot are roughly tied for "almost obese". Moreover, this article has grown quite a lot since its FA status.  We're currently just barely under 10k words, but 10k is absolutely too much... perhaps most importantly, no one is talking about "gutting" this article.  Our concern is about good and readable organization, with all relevant material still retained on Wikipedia (just not necessarily under this exact title).  LotLE × talk  21:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Not so AFAIK; look at word size. That list is old, and this article is not even close to being a long FA (I'd love to see this energy devoted to shortening the Dynasty articles at the top of the list-- which are all over 13,000 words, are too long, and did not pass FAC at anything near that size, growing by one-third after FAC). This article is not too long, it is within WP:SIZE, it need not be trimmed.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:30, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This article was 59kb when it passed FA, and is now 58kb. How do you get "has grown quite a lot since its FA status"? Maralia (talk) 21:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking it over briefly, I'm not seeing any need to cut it down; doesn't seem to be that long. Skinny87 (talk) 21:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

RfC: Use of summary style
This article currently nears or exceeds WP:SIZE limits. A suggestion is being discussed to refactor portions into one or more child articles.

I have presented what I believe is desirable refactoring above. Specifically, I believe that something close to the content in /Legacy summary should be used as a few summary paragraphs for the "Legacy" section of the article, with the child Legacy of Harvey Milk containing longer descriptions of the general points outlined in summary. However, User:SandyGeorgia reverted my refactoring change as soon as it was made.

Some unnecessary friction was created, I believe, by a sloppy initial version of refactoring by another editor. This was compounded by what I believe is somewhat too much of an WP:OWNership attitude by another valuable editor here who instantly nominated the child on AfD.

To my mind, this article is in obvious and fairly urgent need of refactoring to conform with WP:LENGTH. The division into a "Legacy" child article seems like a straightforward and sensible approach that would retain all content and simultaneously meet the expectations of readers. I think it's just a little bit of a humb to get over around ownership by excellent, but invested, editors. LotLE × talk 21:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Size is marked as a guideline for a reason. We should obviously try to make daughter articles where they are appropriate, but we don't need to disrupt a FA needlessly to meet SIZE. Protonk (talk) 21:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The 'unneccessary friction' could perhaps be attributed to the fact that this is the second RFC you have initiated on the article in as many months. For what possible reason would this article be "in obvious and fairly urgent need of refactoring to conform with WP:LENGTH"? At 58kb, it is shorter than at least 40 other FAs, significantly shorter than even the 1,000th-longest article on Wikipedia, and...within the parameters described at WP:SIZE. What is the 'need' here? Maralia (talk) 22:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The rollback of the refactoring occurred before I noticed any change, and was done be a different editor. It was therefore also before I noted this new Request for Comments.  That said, as I state above, the first refactoring was done sloppily, even if it did have the right idea.  FWIW, I found that the earlier RfC I put about the lead was very productive, and led to a wonderful improvement in the quality of this article.  Involvement of outside editors is very often a positive and useful thing, and RfC seems like a pretty good mechanism to solicit that (though why the hell the robot doesn't include this one baffles me... it also didn't for the prior one on this article, but seems to work on other articles where I've place the template!).  LotLE × talk  22:24, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the article is too long to be of optimal use to the typical reader. Other long articles neatly divide into sections with headings that clearly differentiate one aspect or subject matter from another, and one get a good encyclopedic understanding of as much of the subject as one wants.  That does not seem to work with this article, perhaps because of the chronological organization, sectioning and headings, or maybe just the facts of milk's life.  Headers like "changing politics" or "serious candidates" don't help the reader decide whether to skip a section or read it more in depth.  You have to read it from start to finish, and I doubt most readers have that luxury.Wikidemon (talk) 22:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what the lede is for. It's a good precis for readers who don't want to dig in to the whole.  As for the section names, if the alternative is the bog standard "early life" "legacy" "middle life" crap that plagues most of our biographies, no thanks. Protonk (talk) 22:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, no. I'm saying that the article is too long to be of optimal use to most readers, given its organization.  10,000 words is a 20-minute read for a fast reader.  Other long articles do not necessarily have the problem because they are more readily skimmable.Wikidemon (talk) 22:49, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This article already conforms with the WP:LENGTH guideline (which is only a guideline). This article does not, as stated exceed WP:SIZE limits; at 9,800 words, it is within the guideline of 10,000 words, at the same size that passed WP:FAC and appeared on the main page, and not among the largest FAs, that routinely pass FAC (see User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics ... such concern should be extended to the 13,000-word articles at the top of the list, as they did not pass FAC at that size). One editor undertook trimming of the article although there is no consensus that trimming is needed, either on this talk page or at Articles for deletion/Legacy of Harvey Milk; hence, I reverted. This sort of gutting of a featured article is likely to be discouraging to future FA writers; I hope trimming efforts will focus instead on those featured articles which grew by one-third after passing FAC, such as the longer ones at User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics. Achieving consensus before chopping up a featured article would be a better approach.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:28, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree that there are other articles that need refactoring even more than this one does. I confess that, like most Wikipedia editors, my concern is motivated partially by the topics that are of personal interest to me for reasons outside of Wikipedia guidelines alone.  That said, if this article were an FA when that link you show was generated, it would be around #35 in length.  Indeed not the longest, but still definitely longer than the overwhelming majority of FAs.  Most importantly, I simply believe strongly that the article would be more readable and more useful to readers if it were refactored a bit.
 * To be very specific here, if the "Legacy" section read something close to what is now in the scratch area /Legacy summary, I think far more readers would read the moderate length text than now read the much longer section. Those who wanted even more detail than those 4-5 paragraphs could easily follow the link to the child, and the article would present a much more cohesive and readable whole.  LotLE × talk  00:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I do not believe this article is too long nor do I believe it should be split up. As Sandy says, we have a bunch longer, often excellent ones.  And one thing people should realize is that no one is forced to read every word of this article.  There's a very good two-level table of contents that allows readers to focus on the areas they are most interested in and skim or skip other parts.  Another thing people should realize is that WP:Summary style does not work well for BLPs, in that readership of the subarticles is very, very low.  Here's just one example for this month so far, using the page views stats from http://stats.grok.se/en/:
 * Sarah Palin 116,750
 * Early political career of Sarah Palin 274
 * Governorship of Sarah Palin  518
 * Public image and reception of Sarah Palin 2,565
 * This kind of 100:1 ratio or worse is common across all BLP subarticles, from Bush to Hillary to McCain and so on. Believe me, I've checked a bunch of them.  And it's not that I haven't taken summary style seriously: when the McCain subarticles were created, I subsequently got one of them to FA and two others to GA, something I don't think anyone else has done.  But the readership hasn't really rewarded the effort.  One major problem is that Google ranks BLP subarticles very low in most cases, and points everyone to the main.  Summary style works much better for other kinds of subjects, such as D-Day or Super Bowl XLIII, where Google does find them.  So to tell BLP writers that they have to move out parts of their article to where 99% of the readers will never see them is, as Sandy says, very discouraging.  I think summary style should only be used as a measure of last resort for BLPs, and the Harvey Milk article is not there.  Wasted Time R (talk) 23:53, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a very convincing argument. I wonder about child articles that relate to background material.  For what it's worth Harvey Milk had 419,000 viewers in January, The Castro had 22,000, and Castro Camera had 3,100. - Wikidemon (talk) 00:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I wonder if it's obvious that I think it's a very poor idea to cut this article apart due to prose size. If there is a record, let me state it here: it is a very poor idea. I did not appreciate the RfC that came before this one, and I consider it unnecessarily heavy-handed and unwise. These RfCs do not depend on the weight of sources, nor ask the opinions of people who know about the subject. Instead, they direct attention from editors uninvolved with the topic. This is where the complaint arises regarding dependence on consensus over good judgment and familiarity with the subject on Wikipedia. I'm starting to notice a trend that, for some reason, editors do not wish to have these details in well-written articles. Trivia and short sections are much easier and entertaining, and with all this solid sourcing, how can you engage in pointless and endless arguments about original research and undue weight? Where's the fun in that? --Moni3 (talk) 00:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I am certainly not suggesting that any of the excellent material in the article (which was largely written by you, Moni3) be deleted. Overall, I think the topic broadly merits at least as many words as we have now.  The point is about organization.  Following WP:SUMMARY simply makes material more accessible to readers.  Wasted Time R's readership statistics are interesting, I admit.  I certainly don't want to "bury" the Legacy material by putting it in a child article.  However, as I indicate above, I believe that this minor reorganization would result in more people actually reading the topic.  Something a bit shorter, like I propose in /Legacy summary would not seem so daunting to readers as to make them just gloss over the section.  Indeed, many readers might only read the shorter summary, but the longer details would remain easily available for readers interested in reading further.
 * What absolutely certainly happens in the case of a very long article like this one is that general, non-scholarly readers come along, they read the lead, then they notice the overall length and either depart the page because it's just too much to process, or at most they randomly flit their eyes over a sentence here and there that catches their attention. What almost never happens is that someone turns to the article, and laboriously reads start-to-finish all 10k words Moni3 (and other fine editors) have written.  Most certainly, that fine level of detail should be available for the rare reader who might actually go through it, but that's exactly what child articles and WP:SUMMARY style are good at enabling.  Wikipedia really isn't paper, and the habits we might have for book-length scholarly treatises in the paper world shouldn't carry over here in unexamined form.  LotLE × talk  00:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * What evidence do you have for your "absolutely certainly happens" or "almost never happens" descriptions? I could just as well surmise that they read the lead, click on the table of contents entry that most interests them, read that section fully, then jump around to other sections and read as much as their interest dictates.  In contrast, I do have evidence that BLP subarticles are very rarely looked at.  Wasted Time R (talk) 00:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * How can you possibly know what readers do when they get to a page? What is this hesitance to require readers to step up and expect well-sourced, comprehensive, well-written articles? What is this fear that readers will turn away because they are too dim to slog their way through all these words? I, for one, am tired of living in the Information SuperGhetto, here on the wrong side of the tracks of academia where limits prescribe what people are capable of. Maybe people are not only well able to read an article of this size, but enjoy reading it. The entire point of this site is for individuals to take information into their own hands. Give people some credit. --Moni3 (talk) 00:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, any complaint about the article WRT to SIZE that isn't about ensuring this page's ability to be a reference for those on mobile devices or dialup should be ignored. This is a featured article, and a pretty good one to boot. I could care less whether or not someone thinks that it might be too long for the "average" reader to get through. Protonk (talk) 01:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The somewhat testy defense of this article in its current state is confusing. Wikipedia exists for the benefit of readers, not as a trove of gems to admire.  Articles that are especially long have less readership.  That much is obvious.  It does not insult anyone's intelligence to observe that users of reference sources are looking for crisp, to-the-point summaries of a subject rather than detailed treatments, and online readers prefer hyperlinked content.  That's a premise here.  A commercial site would have a keen idea how much time people spend on any page.  Has anyone attempted to measure this for Wikipedia articles of different lengths? Wikidemon (talk) 01:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm testy because I feel that SIZE is a well founded guideline. We should be careful to avoid ballooning articles which would stop many people from reading them.  However, that doesn't mean that the non-technical implications (word choice, section styling, etc.) are to be given any force whatsoever.  I treat your opinion of the article's length just as I do anyone else's.  I also note that the reviewers at FAC chose to pass this article in basically its current form.  If you want to measure the page hits vs. article size relationship, please do so.  But before that is done and you have some good data regarding the relationship, your assertion that "Articles that are especially long have less readership.  That much is obvious." is missing a citation.  Should I respond by saying "Articles that are especially short have less readership.  That much is obvious. "? Protonk (talk) 01:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It would be best not to deny the obvious. Long articles are less likely to be read all the way through, and articles without clearly differentiated sections are less likely to be skimmed or read piecewise.  If there is no study on the subject we simply do not know the magnitude of the effect.  But maybe there is a study, that's why I asked.  Here is a claim that the average Wikipedia session is ten minutes.  Per Words per minute the average American adult reads 250-300 words per minute, so with a simplifying assumption that the person is reading a single article full-time during the session that means 2,500 to 3,000 words.  It seems quite unlikely that more than a small minority of editors would read more than a fraction of a 10,000 word article. Wikidemon (talk) 01:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It would be best if you give some substantiation rather than just telling me what is and isn't obvious. The "average wikipedia session" is a start.  But I'll repeat, the lede exists for people interested in skimming, as do the sections w/ hatnoted main articles.  The whole of the article shouldn't be written like a Politico article. Protonk (talk) 01:43, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think Wikidemon or Lulu have made a valid point about how many readers come to the article based on size. I transferred the rewritten article in October 2008, and readership went up by a lot. Quite simply, that's because the film came out. Page hits will go up again closer to Oscar night, and then gradually dissipate until Milk is out of the news. There does not appear to be any evidence that readers are frustrated or unwilling to read long articles. In fact, I just completely overhauled Lesbian, and it is a monstrosity compared to this one—if detail and comprehensiveness are not what you're looking for. Page hits have not been affected at all.
 * The bottom line is that this article has cohesiveness and detail; it addresses the main points of Milk's life as represented by reliable sources, but here is this RfC brought by people who have not read these sources, and place more priority on what they assume an average reader can handle. Why? I don't understand why this article and I don't understand why this isn't taking place at WP:SIZE, WP:FAC, or some venue where the guidelines and policy are addressed. Why not suggest making a limit on all articles, forcing them to be within constraints? Bring that to the entire community, and tell them you don't think people can or should read all this information. It's too much for their feeble minds. Help them by cleansing the tablet. --Moni3 (talk) 01:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't have any opinion about how the length of this main article will affect the number of readers who arrive here at all. I think Moni3 is probably entirely correct about the general pattern of readership following the release of the film, and will probably follow the Oscar ceremony (I suppose it depends on who gets awards too).  My only concern is with readability of the article.  That is, I am concerned with readers rather than with editors (or scholars), as much as I praise and admire the hard work of editors.  Our goal should be to make this as good an article as possible for its actual readership, not, e.g., "as good as possible for an academic historian of American gay politics."  As I suspect Moni3 has, I have also written highly technical academic work; however, I also know that this is a different readership than that.
 * There seems to be something disingenuous, even a violation of WP:AGF perhaps, in the question "why this article?" Discussion at WP:LENGTH or wherever is hardly relevant, since the guideline already strongly recommends dividing articles of this length. In actual fact, I have been involved in successfully refactoring maybe a dozen large articles, all of which got better for the effort.  And, yes, there are most certainly hundreds or thousands of articles that I have never read or worked on that could also use refactoring.  A few of those I'll probably work on at some point in the future, but the vast majority I'll never even read.  This topic happens to be one I'm interested in, and editing happens on particular articles, not generically on "some other article".  LotLE × talk  02:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks to me like the unwarranted hostility stems from a case of WP:OWN here. I'm too busy to argue the obvious or find citations for common sense.  I've overhauled and reduced the length of featured articles as well - the one that comes to mind is Barack Obama.  Readability goes up.  I'm not convinced either way that this article should or should not be trimmed, or sections budded off to child articles.  But to even discuss the matter we have to acknowledge a few basic things about the nature of Wikipedia articles and editing process - we try for compact articles, split multiple subjects across multiple articles, allow anyone to edit, work by consensus, don't keep fiefdoms, etc.  I don't think article quality is a valid argument against proper organization, whatever that organization may be.  At bottom, everything comes down to what best serves the reader.  The goal above all else is to give the interested lay reader of reasonable intelligence and diligence a neutral, usable, encyclopedic presentation of the subject matter.  Or whatever version of the mission statement you care to use.Wikidemon (talk) 02:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec)LotLE, you were involved in refactoring the Obama article, right? So far this month, Barack Obama has 1,177,389 views. Early life and career of Barack Obama, which deals with all sorts of interesting and perpetually controversial stuff, has only 17,267 views. That's another 100:1 ratio. That means that any material that's exclusive to that subarticle, only 1% of readers can possibly see. Is there nothing in it more valuable than that? Now with Obama, there's no choice but to break it up, because most of the article is eventually going to be about his national years and his presidency. But with Milk, we do have a choice, and I think readers are better served by leaving the article intact. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:26, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I vote against breaking this article up. Scartol  •  Tok  03:21, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I was asked to come over and chip in too. LotLE, I think your instinct to improve readability is sound, and I don't have a strong opinion either way about the optimal length of this article. So to decide whether the article needs splitting I've got two guides to refer to: WP:LENGTH and WP:SIZE, which both seem to suggest that this article's still just all right lengthwise without the cut; and the opinion of the other editors here, who mostly agree that this article doesn't need cutting. So I'd say, leave it. LotLE's idea's not a fundamentally bad one, it's just that in this case the change doesn't seem desired.
 * One other thought: the "Legacy" might be a bad choice of section to split out. In a biography, "legacy" is relevant to a reader only insofar as they understand a little of who the person was in life. A freestanding "legacy" article struggles to create that sense. Not knowing the article that well I'm not sure if another section might be a better candidate for a split, but I suspect you'll always get opposition to the idea of a biography stripped of discussion of that person's wider impact. Gonzonoir (talk) 09:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

No consensus for refactoring
I am a little disappointed, since it seems so obvious to me that the article would be more useful to readers if refactored into WP:SUMMARY style. However, clearly consensus is not going to reach my perspective: a majority of editors weighing in want to keep the current length and degree of detail. Moreover, I hardly think it is a bad article as-is; it is an excellent article that is just not quite as good as it might be.

I do think there is an unfortunate tendency of Wikipedia editor to think that the moral worth of an article topic is measured by the length of the (primary) article about it. I have encountered that in regard to many topics, generally from people who write about a topic out of their enthusiasm for its subject matter. So, for example, here there seems to be an undercurrent of sentiment that dividing the article into child articles would implicitly claim that Harvey Milk himself was less influential, less worthwhile, or whatever, than the editors (who have worked hard and well on the content) believe him to be. Oh well, so be it... consensus rules. LotLE × talk 19:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe his article is long because he had an interesting life? There's a lot to talk about.  Anyway, under the circumstances would everyone think it's best to collapse or archive this discussion section and the one above it?  They're long and may be distracting.Wikidemon (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Miller quote
Very trivial point: could someone who has the Miller look up the attributed quote "No contemporary American gay leader has yet to achieve in life the stature Milk found in death" (ref 127, on page 408 according to the article)? Because "yet to achieve" means "has not yet achieved", this sentence is technically a double negative: "No leader has not yet achieved", or "All leaders have already achieved." That can't be the author's intention. A correct sentence would be either "No leader has yet achieved" or "Contemporary leaders have yet to achieve". Is this an error in the original book, or in its transcription into the article? Gonzonoir (talk) 12:46, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a library book. I'll see if I can peek in it today to verify the quote. --Moni3 (talk) 13:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Cheers Moni3.
 * Sorry to return to this a few days late. The quote is accurate. I think Miller intended it conversationally, and I understand your grammatical protest, but I think a [sic] would be distracting. Suggestions? --Moni3 (talk) 17:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Gonzonoir, great eye! Pesky historians and their tenuous grasp of the English language, eh?  I've been pondering this a bit and, much as it irks me, leaving the quote as is irks me less than any alternative.  Yes, Moni3, I agree that the [sic] is a bit distracting.  We could go the way of "correcting" the quote: "No contemporary American gay leader has [achieved] in life the stature Milk found in death," but that seems a tad patronising ("poor sap can't form a sentence, Wikipedia to the rescue").  I buy the claim that he meant the phrase conversationally, and while it doesn't make sense under scrutiny it is clear what he's implying.  I'd put this in the same category as the phrase "I could care less about trout," which should really be "I couldn't care less about trout."  So I'm leaning leave it.  How do others feel?   Flying  Toaster  17:49, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

From the OMFG! Statistics Department
OMFG! Oscar night! WTF! --Moni3 (talk) 15:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * That's why we put up with all this. There are book authors on the best-seller lists who never get 176,000 people to read their words.  Wasted Time R (talk) 16:16, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * On one plane, I know that, but on another, that freaks me out. --Moni3 (talk) 16:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've never chosen articles to work on based on raw readership, but there is something cool about having your words read by so many people. I'm sure that no article that was primarily my work got hundreds of thousands of hits in one day, but I found it amazing a few months ago to see how well read my non-negligible number words in the Barack Obama article were (2.3m a certain day in November :-)).  You deserve a certain thrill for this, Moni3, you've done great work on this article.  LotLE × talk  19:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * When I started rewriting this article, it had 1,000 readers a day. I checked it at the time just out of curiosity. That's about as many people read Everglades, another one of mine, but which clearly has not jumped dramatically as Milk's readership has. I'm not sure why Milk (film) got 90,000 hits and this one got so many more. These idiosyncrasies are interesting. I wrote to Danny Nicoletta to make sure he knew. Nicoletta responds, in part: "this is fascinating, the numbers mind boggling... Thank you for bothering to enlighten me... It explains why they are all finding me through that Uncle Donald site and wanting to send love and thank ME? for making the world a better place etc..." I'm very much a nobody; that I see evidence the things I do impact other people is overwhelming. --Moni3 (talk) 19:47, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm actually mildly surprised that the movie got as many hits in comparison with the main bio as you mention. It seems like the obvious thing for someone who had just seen the movie, or who was thinking of seeing it, to use the the Wikipedia article to judge the veracity of the film, or to explore more details of events only briefly addressed in the film.  The main bio would be the logical place for a reader to come.  LotLE × talk  22:05, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

A Streetcar named Milk
Probably too trivial for the main article, but regarding Milk's legacy it is interesting how he is becoming a cultural icon, initially in San Francisco and now perhaps worldwide. There are busts of Milk, plaques, a plaza (mentioned in a photo caption), lots of events, tributes... and a city streetcar. Not sure where I'm going with this... - Wikidemon (talk) 00:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I saw that when it happened. The list of things named for milk is indeed long. --Moni3 (talk) 15:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll again nugde that a spin-off tributes to and legacies of might be nice ... -- Banj e  b oi   22:16, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Thinker jones' edits
I would like to respond to each of Thinker jones' edits, but I have to state that I had surgery a couple days ago, and I am on very strong pain meds. They keep me from being able to concentrate for long periods, so this convo may have to take place over some time.


 * Stringent is how the New York Times called the gay rights ordinance, which appears in the article. As such, I disagree that it is not a neutral term. The gay rights ordinance in SF gave authorities the ability to fine or arrest people who broke it. It was stringent.
 * No more clarification on Jim Jones or the People's Temple is necessary. The notion of a political connection was perplexing, since the leader of the Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, was a powerful political player who had helped Milk, Moscone, Feinstein, and others win various elections. In response to the news from Guyana, is a statement that appears to include unsourced information. Who is perplexed? And it does not appear to add anything to the paragraph.
 * The article is a featured article and has gone through a rigorous peer review process prior to its designation as an FA, as well as much scrutiny about its size and other content afterwards. A major component to a featured article is a professional level of writing. Thinker jones adjusted some of the beginnings of paragraphs. I don't see the changes as necessary, and in fact were reverted with the more problematic issues of unsourced information.
 * Regarding the change of wording about the Twinkie defense, "some say", "others claimed", and "better remembered" are too vague for FAs. As noted above, the size of this article has been made an issue for various reasons. Wording before Thinker jones' edits was simple and to the point, reflecting information in sources.

As requested, these are being discussed one by one, though I note Thinker jones did not start the thread. Please don't revert it back. You are skirting close to WP:3RR, which means you may be blocked. --Moni3 (talk) 23:22, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I am inclined to agree with you about the edits in question. Once an article has received status as a Featured Article, further changes should be discussed. The edits made by Thinker jones do not add anything of quality, are uncited and make a lot of uncessary alterations. TechBear (talk) 23:47, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for addressing my suggestions with more granularity. I really hope you recover quickly. I just had surgery myself ten days ago and am still recovering, and I'll have to see how long my energy holds out. It was sinus surgery, and I'm still suffering these strange intense headaches. Perhaps this discussion will help us both.


 * First of all I respect and honor all the work you've put into this page. It's great and contains a tremendous amount of information, and you richly deserve applause for all of your efforts.


 * I don't find 'stringent' to be neutral, since, if you think about it, the law appears stringent only from the point of view of those who would want to discriminate, not from the point of view of those suffering without rights. Perhaps the NY Times had that point of view, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a point of view. I think 'progressive' is a more neutral word -- one that simply comments on the relative political content of a law with respect to human rights. Still, this isn't as important as the other items and I'll let it go.


 * The Jim Jones reference in the assassination section is critical, I think. It's basic historic record. People wondered if there was a connection. Moscone and Milk shared a connection with Jim Jones, who had died in a huge, distant national catastrophe. These are richly documented facts, and it's important to mention it here to tell history accurately. That some people quickly discounted any connection, also true, is mentioned elsewhere in this article. I believe the Jim Jones connection to Moscone and Milk (but not Feinstein) is sufficiently documented in note4. I can find additional sources if that is the issue. I was looking for documentation on Feinstein when I noticed you had reverted my changes and started this discussion.


 * This has been an FA, and deservedly so. Nothing on wikipedia is ever finished, however, and that is its beauty. Every article can always be improved in its accuracy and readability. That's what I've tried to do in the very few places I've made changes.


 * The twinkie defense bit is one of the few sentences in the entire piece that is poorly written. I think we can agree on that. The "Twinkie defense" has entered American mythology, popularly described as a case where a murderer escapes justice because he binged on junk food, simplifying White's lack of political savvy, his relationships with George Moscone and Harvey Milk, and what San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen described as pandemic police "dislike of homosexuals". First of all, simply going to Twinkie Defense, you see that it isn't specifically about binging on junk food, but has gained greater parlance as a defense based on a particularly strange or improbable defense. This is remarkable and deserves its own sentence. Second, the word simplifying cannot connect these two thoughts, they're too distant from each other. The twinkie defense didn't simplify those elements of the assassination, rather it has nearly replaced them in popular memory. Right? I think this one is pretty straightforward.


 * Earlier in that paragraph is the discussion of District Elections. My changes clarify what I think is one of your concerns -- unattributed sources. To say that all of the city of San Francisco was fearing that a Board of Supervisors so divisive would be harmful to the city, and that they [District Elections] had been a factor in the assassinations, is not accurate. It's more narrowly accurate to say that those in a position of power believed this, and repealed District Elections. Citizens who supported the political trends actually largely continued to support District Elections. My revision was to clarify this. And to connect it to the next thought -- that eventually political efforts returned District Elections to the city.

Personally, living in San Francisco, I know that many of us recall these events very vividly. This page is excellently written and very well balanced, with the exception of just the few places I've touched. I haven't reverted, and await your response. I hope we can find common ground. Thinker jones (talk) 00:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Lucid response I'm capable of giving at the moment:


 * This article went to mediation (link at the top of this page) on the amount of information in it regarding Milk's relationship to Jim Jones. A scan through the archives will bring this issue up over and over again. No other material is necessary depending on the weight of the most reliable sources. Information about Jones was included in the section dealing with Milk and Moscone's assassinations only to illustrate the devastation the city experienced with so many tragedies back to back, not to reiterate Milk's connection to Jones. I am emphatic on this issue, and approach it this way after reading the material cited.


 * I again disagree on the POV nature of "stringent". A source used it, it's quoted in the article, and it's accurate. To remove it in one place without removing the quote for being POV would be to counter the source – The New York Times – and that is original research.


 * I disagree that the Twinkie defense bit – or any other sentence or section – is poorly written, and why I would accede that point is perplexing. If you're going to pick apart the accuracy of the sentence in question, it would be accurate to state the City of San Francisco thought neighborhood elections were divisive. Add "City of" if you think the world will end, and leave it at that.


 * I am not responsible for material in the article for Twinkie defense. I don't think I've ever edited it. In what little material there is on the Twinkie defense in this article, I was careful to include that White's depression was already present during the binge in question, which was noted by his defense attorney. Carol Pogash's article in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999 discusses the mythology of the Twinkie defense. It's much easier (and funnier), according to Pogash, to believe that a jury let off a murderer for eating sugar than believe it was done because the cops hated Milk and Moscone, and the criminal justice system completely failed. Again, what is in the article is cited to reliable sources. If you're suggesting a change to information on the Twinkie defense, then you should provide a source to back up what point you're trying to make. --Moni3 (talk) 11:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Small point about "City of" San Francisco: that would be incorrect. The city and county governments have been consolidated into a single government since 1856, according to the article on the Government of San Francisco. The correct name would be "The City and County of". And Thinker jones, you might find it useful to read a bit about Wikipedia's policies so you can understand what Moni3 and I are talking about when we write of original research and proper citation. My user page has a list of some of the more important ones. TechBear (talk) 13:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm disappointed to see how you resolve contributions to this page. Peremptory reversions, immediate threats to block users, and unwillingness to consider the ideas of others without sarcasm or defensiveness demonstrate laziness or a closed mind. I'm a writer who rarely speaks up without knowing (if I do say so myself) at least a little bit about what I'm talking about; my suggestions weren't flippant. I have read (and re-read) the guidelines on Reliable Sources and including All Significant Views. In return, I humbly suggest you revisit Page Ownership and think about it for a minute. As that page suggests, I took a week off, and I realize now these changes aren't that important. The article would be better with them, and I believe the transmission of knowledge in a way that is evolving, accurate, and a collaborative effort by all -- notions that may seem quaint to you but are in fact at the heart of the mission of this website -- would be well served as well. But my edits aren't important enough to fight over. My only desire is that this encyclopedia be the most useful and accurate it can be. It may be inevitable that "power corrupts," but here I hope that won't generally be the case. Thinker jones (talk) 05:54, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your reminders on ownership. Did you happen to check out the mediation link at the top of the page? How about the numerous archives for this article? You are not the first to suggest changes for the article. Last month someone felt they should just remove the Legacy section altogether, just because they felt the article is too long. A few days before that, someone else removed an entire section because they didn't feel it was relevant, then copied information from the Dan White article and inserted it into this one, not even having read the sources. Two RfCs have been opened unnecessarily. An editor was blocked for edit warring over the name of a subheading. This article has, quite truthfully, been a royal pain in the ass (just like Harvey). Your suggestions introduce weasel words, and reiterate a point that does not need to be reiterated. I have no difficulty discussing issues in the article with editors who are interested in the best quality sources. The problem is that the majority of suggestions and changes are from editors who simply have not read the sources and either do not understand what weight means, or rely on their own experiences of what they remember San Francisco to be like at the time, which is, of course, original research. There is no power play here. The sources are available down to the page number for you or anyone else to read where the information in this article came from. There is a very high set of criteria for what a Featured Article is. This is what the article looked like the day before I posted the rewrite. Often it seems to me that many editors wish content to remain like this because it's much easier to argue about issues than do the work to read sources. --Moni3 (talk) 12:27, 16 April 2009 (UTC)