Talk:J. Bradford DeLong

Biographies of living persons
Before adding any contentious material to this article, please read the policy on biographies of living persons carefully. Any controversial material must be attributable to a reliable source.

I have three times removed the same negative comments, which were not directly attributable to a reliable source. Please do not restore this material again unless you can point to a reliable source. (Note that a comment on a blog post is not even a vaguely reliable source.)

Sideshow Bob Roberts 00:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you saying that a person's own blog is not a reliable source for quoting him, or am I missing something? -- intgr 00:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Of course we can quote DeLong's own words from his blog, but we can't refer to “allegations of insensitivity” etc. unless a reliable source has made (or referred to) these allegations.


 * The section I removed, which was headed “Allegations of insensitivity toward Asian Americans”, stated that “DeLong's stance has prompted charges of insensitivity toward Asians and their plight in America” and the reference provided was a link to DeLong's blog which did not support this assertion.


 * The tone of the section suggested that there was some sort of controversy surrounding DeLong's remarks. If this is the case, we should be able to find a reliable source (say, Andrew Sullivan or someone in the mainstream media) who refers to the controversy.  If we can't find a source, it's probably either untrue or non-notable.
 * Sideshow Bob Roberts 13:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The section is back, this time with the heading “Allegations of hostility against Asian Americans”, and now with a new reference linking to a blog post by Andrew Sullivan which makes no mention whatsoever of hostility towards Asian Americans. (Sullivan does accuse DeLong of “nativist hostility”: this clearly refers to DeLong's comment that “Andrew Sullivan is simply and totally clueless about what America is”. Please read your sources more carefully before adding contentious material.)

I may be wrong, but as far as I can tell nobody has ever accused DeLong of “hostility against Asian Americans”. For us to do so is a blatant violation of WP:BLP.

Also, as I said earlier, people who post comments on a blog are not reliable sources, and their negative opinions cannot be quoted in a biography of a living person.

To avoid an edit war, please don't add any more contentious material without discussing it here first. Anything that's not directly attributable to a reliable source will be removed.

Sideshow Bob Roberts 03:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Bob Roberts, as I noted in my edits, several websites have been created just to document DeLong's censorship. However, you didn't delete the references to where he lives and his academic background. And yet no references are provided. I don't doubt the information is correct. However, if your policy is to delete unsubstantiated material, it has to go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.133.192 (talk) 02:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Our policy is to delete "unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons". If you believe the references to where he lives and his academic background are contentious, please delete them.


 * If a controversy is notable, it will almost certainly have been discussed by a reliable, published source. If you can find a reliable, published source that discusses the controversy, feel free to add it back to the article.  If you can't, it has no business in the article — no matter how many angry people have posted blog comments or "created websites to document it".  Sideshow Bob Roberts 02:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Bob Roberts, much of the rest of the material you deleted was valuable as well... And it wasn't controversial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.133.192 (talk) 02:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Such as? Sideshow Bob Roberts 02:30, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Deletions of Blog Posts
It seems that many people have had constructive comments deleted on Delong's blog. Searching Google for "delong delete comment" turns up 47,200 pages as of 11:30 March 16 2009. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.167.191.35 (talk) 06:32, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Bbartlog (talk)Yes; I added a comment concerning Delong's reputation for deleting comments, but it has for the moment been reverted. Various posts do not rise to the level of a 'reliable source' per wikipedia policy, but I will see if I can find a reference that qualifies. —Preceding undated comment added 16:21, 17 March 2009 (UTC).


 * So what? This is utterly non-notable. "Man erases comment from his notebook." Chill out. It's his blog.--CSTAR (talk) 17:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

64.190.41.186 (talk)Well, you may be right. But if we're going to have a paragraph on his blogging activities (which is more detailed and longer than just about anything else in the article), then I don't think the note would be out of place. I have never personally commented there (I have no axe to grind), but I've run across somewhere between six and ten posters who complained about his aggressive deletion policy. I'd argue that *if* it were verifiable it would be worth mentioning. But I doubt something like this would crop up in a verifiable source and I'm not going to spend any more time on it. —Preceding undated comment added 17:34, 17 March 2009 (UTC).

The problem isn't only that he deletes comments. As CSTAR says, it is the right of any blogger to delete comments on his blog. The problem here is that DeLong is known for not only deleting comments that disagree with him and ESPECIALLY the ones presenting arguments against him, AND that he frequently EDITS comments so that the meaning changes (from negative to positive). I added a sentence on this along with SEVERAL REFERENCES (professors in academia discussing the fact), but it was still deleted. I suspect the user deleting this sentence was a fan of DeLong's, rather than a serious editor, which is why I undid this change. --Bylund (talk) 08:15, 16 February 2010 (CDT)

I was rather surprised to see the first line of the paragraph about DeLong's blog discussing his "infamous" comment editing. I'm not certain whether this is remarkable by Wikipedia standards to merit its inclusion in any part of the profile (are we going to start including everything that's been said on a blog on Wikipedia now?), but I chose to leave it on the page. The wording has been changed as it was not written in a NPOV. It's also certainly not remarkable enough to merit inclusion the first line of that paragraph. Why on Earth would we detail a criticism of his blog before we even remark on what his blog actually is? - SH —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.144.149 (talk) 19:17, 15 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with "SH" that it is not necessary to include comments on Brad DeLong's infamous blogging as the beginning of the paragraph. What disturbs me is that there seem to be a lot of Delong's fans on this site that frequently delete anything negative about DeLong. After all, it is a well-known fact (and documented all over the blogosphere) that people not agreeing with DeLong's views get their comments on his blog either (1) deleted or (2) edited beyond recognition. There are many, many of these cases and literally hundreds of testimonies about this--even from college professors who try to debate DeLong!! Yet all such comments are deleted by his fans. I would urge the fans to stop this type of editing and instead help us provide an accurate image of DeLong. --Bylund (talk) 13:35, 18 March 2010 (CDT)


 * I removed the contentious sentence claiming censorship by DeLong. The sources for the allegation clearly do not meet the requirements for WP:BLP. Specifically, one of the sources is a a self published blog (see WP:BLPSPS), another is merely a comment left on a blog (obviously inappropriate), and the third doesn't appear to have any relevance to this issue at all.--Mooksas (talk) 01:55, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

John Yoo comments are not from a NPOV
"torture memos" could be considered "anti-torture memos" (as argued by Arthur Herman in the June 2009 issue of Commentary Magazine). The use of "infamous" and "dictates" are needlessly loaded, "torture" is partial and should be changed and linked to "interrogation". Scow Captain (talk) 02:01, 23 May 2009 (UTC).

Delong douchification
Anyone noticed that Delong has become more of a douche lately? What prompted this transformation? perhaps a discussion of his general lack of civility towards conservative writers (e.g., Mankiw, Economists from the U of C, writers for the Washington Post, etc.) would be nice. Heavyset (talk) 11:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I understand this is due to his frustration with how his peers have reacted to the GFC and the stimulus bill. You know, the way they say things that are clearly false when they really should know better. I can understand how it would wind a guy up when a significant portion of his profession stops being professional during such an important crisis. Anyway, it's clearly not worth putting in the article. JohnyGoodman (talk) 16:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

He's always been a douchebag. He's a lier. To him a free market is the exact opposite of what Adam Smith and other classical economist defined. A free market is a market free from rentier charges and a free lunch. Today a free market means a market free for a "free lunch". 24.36.78.185 (talk) 05:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps due to his blog, Wikipedia seems to cover more of his spats with the right, than his also-frequent spats with the left; for example, he's a harsh critic of Eric Hobsbawm and a good deal of other leftist academics. --Delirium (talk) 10:00, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Main article needs a section on DeLong's economics research achievements
While DeLong is notable as a blogger and political commentator, he is also notable as an economist and it would be great if someone more knowledgeable than me on the topic could write a section summarizing his main research contributios. The publication list is nice but is not a substitute for such a section. MorphismOfDoom (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

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Selfpublished material
Tagging due to excess use of self-published material. Will look around for non-self-published text on the same subjects, but I think the frequent quotes to the subject's blog needs to go. In addition to the self-published text is an excess of trivial detail. Coretheapple (talk) 15:52, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

I've remedied this by merging a lengthy "political views" section, consisting largely of self-published material, and creating a "career" section per WP:MOS. Article still contains an excess of self-published material. Coretheapple (talk) 16:08, 21 March 2021 (UTC)