Talk:Jackie Summers

how old is this rooster?
Would be good to have some more detail on biographical basics, such as his age/birthdate.

black vs Black
I made a conscious decision to use Black in this article. This is a decision that can be made by an article creator, most recent sources were using Black. —valereee (talk) 18:18, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Lol what? Please show me where it says that the article creator gets to just decide what kind of capitalization to use and their word is the rule. Black is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized. Natureium (talk) 18:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I would gather that Valereee is referencing WP:STYLEVAR, with codifies an ARBCOM ruling that where MoS allows for multiple approaches or is silent on a style issue, the status quo approach should prevail. The style guidance actually used to literally say that the preferred version of the earliest major contributor to the article who is still active in its maintenance should be adopted as the default, barring an overwhelming local consensus against this approach for whatever reason--I'm not sure when that changed, but the overall practical effect is pretty much the same even under the current wording: the earlier variation should be maintained.  Like LANGVAR, this time- and disruption-saving approach: as these issues are considered to have too minor an impact upon the overall reading of an article to justify extensive bickering, when style pages and guidelines have laid out no community consensus on some minor grammatical or typographical distinction, so this rule cuts off arguments that would be outsized relative to their benefit to the article.


 * I've just taken a look at MOS:CAPS, and sure enough, there is no rule at present regarding this issue (though I believe I've seen it raised in other articles before): probably the issue has been just too controversial to reach any previous consensus. Certainly it his highly variable in sources, in general style guides, and in the in-house style sheets for major publications--the approaches seem to be roughly split down the middle, in my impressionistic experience. Anyway, I think Valereee probably has the right end of the stick here: this seems to be a classic STYLEVAR case and that being so, if they are in fact the author of the article, their earlier approach to the issue should be maintained unless someone gains a consensus that there is a substantially important reason for the change.  And if many years of building MoS has not resulted in a uniform approach here, you're unlikely to get a consensus through an RfC.  In any event, the change would not be worth the effort if you ask me. And, on a side note, though this not super germane to the policy/style determination here, but as someone with a background in linguistics, I can tell you that 'Black' is interpreted to function as a proper noun in many contexts, and is used as such in this article. A google search on the matter will turn up plenty of sources to confirm and explain this interpretation, from major style guides, to op-eds, to actual semantic/syntactic analyses by linguists. Snow let's rap 19:24, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but what about 'whites' vs. 'Blacks'. It looks very silly here. And how about people like me, are we now 'Brown'? If the word is a proper noun it should be capitalised, and in this article it's not a problem. But to be consistent, in the article I linked to 'white' is also a proper noun and should be capitalised. Leo Breman (talk) 12:27, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There's been a recent discussion on this, I believe...trying to remember where. There was a question of whether WP should go to using Black as default, because many RS had moved to that. I don't believe there was consensus to do so, or at least last time I looked at the discussion, there wasn't. I suspect as more and more RS go to that usage, WP eventually will end up doing so also. —valereee (talk) 12:28, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * But if that means white people would be referred to as 'whites' and black people as 'Blacks', that would be inconsistent and orthographically unsound. It would make more sense to just use English grammar and capitalise proper nouns when they need to be capitalised. Leo Breman (talk) 12:45, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Some RS are considering using White, also. No idea about brown/Brown. We are quite likely to end up doing what RS do. If all of our most-reliable sources start using Black, we eventually will, too. —valereee (talk) 13:00, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Consistency is most important for me I guess, I'll do either, as long as it's consistent. Leo Breman (talk) 13:07, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't have policy on it yet. The discussion is at WT:MOSCAPS. I doubt it's going to reach consensus either way. I'd rather have policy, too, but until we do, I'm using Black because that's what I'm seeing most often in RS. —valereee (talk) 13:11, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * As per Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 32 the consensus is currently against changing MOSCAPS to capitalize "Black" when used as a racial or ethnic descriptor, however the discussion continues. As it stands I believe we are not capitalizing black.  Grey joy talk 10:26, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The MOS is against changing black to Black. It isn't against leaving Black as is. —valereee (talk) 18:55, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

sorrel
sorrel Leo Breman (talk) 12:18, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm not following. What does that have to do with the stuff you're removing? —valereee (talk) 12:23, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Valeree. The stuff I removed is confusing the name of an alcoholic drink with a common product which can be bought anywhere. It says sorrel can only be bought from this one guy in the USA. That isn't true. Search 'buy sorrel'! Leo Breman (talk) 12:29, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I see teas...this is a liqueur. —valereee (talk) 12:51, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Wait, are you saying you're removing something that simply needs to be corrected? Good grief. I'll go correct it, shall I? —valereee (talk) 12:53, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Edit conflict' Text I removed: "it was the only brand of sorrel being marketed in the US". This is not true. Sorrel is the name for the plant or the tea. It is not the name of this new liqueur product/innovation. The product is made from sorrel and marketed as 'Sorel'. Say you took a common American thing (I assume you're American) like 'doughnut', moved to Mexico, and made a liquor and called it Doughnut. That would not mean it was the only doughnut one could buy in Mexico.
 * In reply: Look, I'm from the Caribbean, I drink this stuff and I know my plants. I see a mistake, I correct it. If you want to rewrite it to try to correct it, go ahead! Leo Breman (talk) 13:03, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You didn't correct it, you removed the entire thing altogether. I've restored, adding the single word 'liqueur', which fixes the problem.
 * "it was the only brand of sorrel liqueur being marketed in the US"
 * I don't understand why you'd want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. —valereee (talk) 13:16, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, I see your correction and snide edit comment (hehe). I can live with this text, but the question is now if it is sourced... source says: "only product of its kind currently marketed in the States"; mwah, not exactly corroborates your statement. I'd just delete it, it's topical, hard to verify and untrustworthy, but as long as the plant is not confused with the liquor, I'm good here.
 * Ah, with correction I mean the article as a whole. This little statement/baby was incorrect and didn't seem important to me, and hard to justify considering the mwa sourcing. Hence abortion! Cheers, Leo Breman (talk) 13:25, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What's mwa sourcing? —valereee (talk) 17:15, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, the journalist at the Village Voice likely wrote this in a day or two, and is likely basing most of his article on the marketing materials of the product, so it's not exactly an industry report. The statement "only product of its kind currently marketed in the States" (which you've rewritten as "only brand of sorrel liqueur being marketed in the US") might be true, but its not likely the journalist at the Village Voice knows for sure. That's just my take on the source, Valereee, note how often I used "likely". I mean, this is quite an easy product to make -I could make some right now if I had some alcohol. Seems odd no one thought of chucking some sorrel/roselle in spiced rum or something before. But yeah, good ideas/food/drink do not have to be complicated. An aside: the most salient part of this article is that this dude is the first black man to hold a liquor license in the USA. That's pretty crazy... Leo Breman (talk) 11:12, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The Village Voice has editorial oversight and has won Pulitzers. It's probably not reliable for opinion on US politics, but unless you have evidence of generally shoddy reporting or that in this case it's wrong, it's fine for statements of fact on noncontentious subjects. There's discussion at RSN —valereee (talk) 14:15, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, the journalist at the Village Voice likely wrote this in a day or two, and is likely basing most of his article on the marketing materials of the product, so it's not exactly an industry report. The statement "only product of its kind currently marketed in the States" (which you've rewritten as "only brand of sorrel liqueur being marketed in the US") might be true, but its not likely the journalist at the Village Voice knows for sure. That's just my take on the source, Valereee, note how often I used "likely". I mean, this is quite an easy product to make -I could make some right now if I had some alcohol. Seems odd no one thought of chucking some sorrel/roselle in spiced rum or something before. But yeah, good ideas/food/drink do not have to be complicated. An aside: the most salient part of this article is that this dude is the first black man to hold a liquor license in the USA. That's pretty crazy... Leo Breman (talk) 11:12, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The Village Voice has editorial oversight and has won Pulitzers. It's probably not reliable for opinion on US politics, but unless you have evidence of generally shoddy reporting or that in this case it's wrong, it's fine for statements of fact on noncontentious subjects. There's discussion at RSN —valereee (talk) 14:15, 19 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm late to the party here and not looking to shift the consensus, let alone the stable version of the article, but I do want to comment that even if we assume that The Village Voice is a generally acceptable RS on such a topic--in fact, even if we assume every source discussed here or utilized in the article is--Leo has a point that there seems to be more than a little question here as to the extent of scrutiny these sources have put into some of the claims made by the public relations efforts of the subject and his company. Another example is in the claim (relayed prominently in the lead, and ultimately utilized in the DYK, if I recall correctly) that Mr. Summers is the first black individual to have a license to make liquor anywhere in the United States, ever.  Now, I'm by no means saying that is impossible, but that strikes me as an extraordinary claim that could stand some substantial scrutiny and verification.  But if you look at the four sources we utilize, it becomes pretty clear that the claim is coming directly from Mr. Summers in his interviews and is being taken at face value by these publications.  What's more, there seems to be some disagreement as to the exact nature of the claim: two sources (including Mr. Summers in his own words in the Esquire piece) seem to suggest that he was not in fact the very first such licensee, as the wording of our own prose suggests, but merely the only one at the time he acquired his license: a different but still exceptional claim, and Summers does not explain how he came to know of this fact, or from what degree of research his certainty arises.


 * Personally, as an editorial matter, I'd be more comfortable if our own coverage reflected these facts by somehow making the ultimate source of these claims a little more transparent, but it's just not a change I am comfortable implementing without a clear consensus: afterall, at the end of the day, it's still four sources reporting this claim, in one form or another, and if there's to be a more nuanced approach to how we present that claim, there should be near-universal agreement among active editors here as to the particulars, as in cases where we have to deal with citogenesis, and for similar reasons. But at a minimum we should acknowledge the self-interested provenance of some of our information here: I have no desire to erase a component of the man's genuine experience, but I am also wary of any situation where we might become an unquestioning vehicle for self-promotion. I can't speak for anyone else, but my more general propensity for giving benefit of the doubt in a situation like this is a little at war with my more particular on-wiki priorities and skepticism when it comes to somewhat exceptional claims that originate with the subject.  Then again, sometimes on this project we have to set aside doubts about the rigor of our sources in cases where the only alternative would be reaching too far towards  WP:original research.  In any event, this is all intended as food for thought going forward, not a call for any particular change at the present time. Sno<b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 08:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)