Talk:Jan Wong controversy

NPOV dispute
This entry, in its current form, seems almost entirely concerned with painting with Mrs. Wong's article in the worst possible light. I don't have an opinion on Mrs. Wong's article itself (in fact, I haven't read it and didn't even know about the controversy until reading about it here on Wikipedia), but this entry is definitely not neutral in tone and needs to be fixed. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 15:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree, this article is just a long list of "OMG, then Billy said he didn't like it. OMG, then Jane said it made her mad. Then..."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 14:40, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

This piece is shockingly biased and should be corrected or deleted. There is a valid discussion to be had around the Jan Wong column and the political reaction to it, but this entry constitutes character assassination masquerading as discussion. For the record, I have been the subject of Jan Wong's reporting, and I found her work to be of a consistently high standard. Sure, she is provocative. Good for her. It would appear that with this column, she touched a raw nerve indeed. We used to say, "If the shoe fits, wear it." Apparently that rule has changed to, "If the shoe fits, beat up on the cobbler." Serial Comma 15:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. I don't have an opinion on Wong's opinion piece - I haven't read it - but she is a totally legit journalist. No one seems to be concerned with the absolute chutzpah of Parliament calling on a journalist to waive her free speech. Accordingly, I'm tagging the article. Carolynparrishfan 01:33, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, there's the tag! Duh! Carolynparrishfan 01:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

pure laine isn't that antiquated - I recall it being used pretty frequently — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.180.199.227 (talk) 16:14, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Deprecated
Er, who exactly decided "pure laine" was "deprecated"? It may be deeply politically incorrect to use nowadays, rather like the terms "Negro" or "Jewess" in English, but "deprecated" suggests it has been excised from the somehow language, which is obviously false.

We should be able to say Jan Wong used the term without some mealymouthed qualifier explaining modern Quebecers don't use the term much now. Come to think of it, if it's really that important to mention, then pure laine deserves an article of its own. --Saforrest 21:17, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I recall "pure laine" being used all the time in Quebec. That's not good enough for wikipedia of course. It comes up more often when the sovereignty movement is strong. Reference google ngrams: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pure+laine&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=7&smoothing=3 (french) and http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pure+laine&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 (english). It would appear that use is falling off but it's certainly not deprecated. I expect that if a new referendum comes up it will return. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 14:56, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Linguistic discrimination
The subject of Jan Wong's article is a very relevant issue.

If one is to interview those individuals who are not French bilingual, there would be ample evidence that Jan Wong's observations are highly perceptive.

It is interesting to note that those who reacted so negatively to her article are successful bilingual individuals who would not have had experienced the bias the article speaks of.

The lack of reaction from the rest of Canada should indicate that this entry lacks objectivity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.188.116.133 (talk) 5 November 2006

Does anyone speak french here ?
Jan Wong lived in Quebec for years and never bothered to learn the language. No wonder she feels discriminated against. If I lived in Toronto for years and didn't bother to learn english I would feel discirminated against too. But then again, maybe i could learn ? She knows nothing about Quebec because she never made the effort to understand anything. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.204.116.31 (talk) 20 April 2007

Actually, Wong was born and raised in the west end of Montreal during the 1950s and 60s. It was an entirely English-speaking part of town. There was no practical need for anglophones to speak French at the time. I think Wong's analysis was bullshit, but I don't think you can fault her personally for not speaking French, especially considering the last time she lived in the city was in the early 1970s. Montreal was very different then. --Kilgore MTL 09:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Copy editing
I tried to simply copy edit this article, but never got past the “article” section. The problem for me was that many of the sentences read as critiques of Wong’s Globe & Mail piece, as written by the Wikipedia author, rather than the Wikipedia author presenting aspects of critiques of Wong's essay from (mass) publications. Therefore, I am uncertain how to edit the copy so that it more neutrally presents Wong's arguments and the published critiques of them, since I often times cannot distinguish between those critiques that were published after Wong's article and those criticisms that are actually the product of the Wikipedia author.

My understanding of the role of Wikipedia as it would relate to the so-called “Jan Wong Controversy” is that the author of an article relating to the matter is supposed to fairly present the two sides of the debate. He is not to use the creation of the Wikipedia article for the purposes of producing a (self-)published essay in which he also takes Ms. Wong to task.

I think that before anyone can copy edit this article, the origiator of it needs to return to the article and distinguish his critiques from those that can be sourced to publications.

Any suggestions? Comments?

SpikeToronto (talk) 11:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I had the same experience reading the article, and the skill with which "those critiques that were published after Wong's article and those criticisms that are actually the product of the Wikipedia author" are confounded in the article leads me to suspect the a professional writer worked very hard to make the article uneditable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.246.170.13 (talk) 07:35, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Montréal’s Crime Rate
The text in the ARTICLE section had a statement to the effect that Montreal has one of the lowest crime rates in North America. The phrase, “in North America,” is misleading since it is a truism that every Canadian metropolitan area has a lower, per capita crime rate than comparable American metropolitan areas. Total bans on handguns will tend to reduce overall crime rates in any country.

However, in Canada itself, Montreal has the fourth highest crime rate, while Canada's largest city, Toronto, bottoms out the list of cities having populations of 500,000 or more. (See: Sauvé, Julie. “Crime Statistics in Canada, 2004.” Juristat Volume 25, number 5. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. Statistics Canada. 2005. )

SpikeToronto (talk) 06:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Mark for Deletion?
The idea behind this wikiarticle is a good one. The Jan Wong essay published on the front page of the Globe & Mail did give rise to controversy in Canada, particularly in the province of Québec where it was especially relevant. However, it is difficult when reading this wikiarticle to discern which of the criticisms and viewpoints in opposition to Ms. Wong are from articles published by other commentators and which are the critical viewpoints of the wikiauthor.

Those that are the critical viewpoint of the wikiauthor violate Wikipedia policy and need to be excised from the text. Ultimately, only the wikiauthor knows which of the critical viewpoints are his/hers and which are those of independent authors and are merely being reported herein. If the wikiauthor cannot be pursuaded to return to the wikiarticle and remove those cricial comments which cannot be substantiated by citation to independent writers, then perhaps the article should simply be deleted. This would be unfortunate as the entire Wong incident proved very insightful vis-à-vis the relationship of Québec to its immigrant populations and the place of Québec in the Canadian confederation.

My next question is, should I go ahead and place the appropriate tag for proposed deletion at the top of the page and await discussion, or should we have discussion first? As a wikinewbie I feel insufficiently experienced to make the call. SpikeToronto (talk) 06:24, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Disappearance of the Article
I don’t know if anyone will ever notice, but the Jan Wong article has completely disappeared and insteads redirects to a small section of the Anti-Quebec sentiment article. Is this allowed at Wikipedia? To just up and delete an entire article without any discussion? Also, the small section of the article of which the Jan Wong Controversy is now a part reads more like an op/ed piece and less like an encyclopedia article than did the larger Jan Wong article it purports to replace!

… I just don’t get it …

SpikeToronto (talk) 23:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This article had been redirected to Anti-Quebec sentiment which contains much less detail on this spat. I think this is sufficiently notable for its own article, especially since it's specifically linked from the FA-level article École_Polytechnique_massacre. Articles like this are usually controversial, but they should still exist. Compare with Water fluoridation, which has a sub-article Opposition to water fluoridation&mdash; the latter has some issues, but it provides a level of detail that would seriously detract from reading the main article. However, that's not a carte blanche for steamrolling over WP:NPOV. Now that some time has elapsed since the spat discussed in this article was hot off the press, the potential for a NPOV article has increased methinks. Xasodfuih (talk) 19:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Npovified, desynthesized
I've removed the following statements: I don't think the removal of these two statements affects the POV of the article in any significant way given that many other sources condemned Wong's article. Xasodfuih (talk) 20:50, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * "However, five Canadian shootings out of eight have actually occurred outside Quebec, according to Bryan's own newspaper." (cites "Quand les fusibles sautent à Toronto" by the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society, CNW Telbec, September 18, 2006.) marked
 * You need a source that specifically points out this error in Wong's article. Otherwise it's WP:OR/WP:SYNT, especially since the cited article precedes Wong's.
 * However, it is actually composed of over 400,000 individuals, controlling five CEGEPs, two universities, and a vast number of health, media, and various other organizations.
 * The same observation applies.

Article gives undue weight
This article is basically a "Let's dump as much trash on top of this woman" kind of article. It is a very sexist and racist article that gives a lot of undue weight to all these different statements condemning her. It should be trimmed, and there should be enough counter viewpoints in favour of her added, and yes they are absolutely out there. This has to be one of the most racist and sexist articles I have ever come across. It is very slanderous. Laval (talk) 01:58, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you cite WP:RS "in favour of her" that are missing? If not, I'm going to suggest we remove your neutrality tag. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's so easy to find anything in print that supports her. As one article put it from Edmonton (critical of her), she broke a Canadian Taboo. People either pile on in this situation or, seeing the dogpile, slowly step back. That said I would speculate that any support for her is small in comparison to the criticism. Googling "Jan Wong was right" gives 8 hits, within which are mostly blogger comments which are not useful for citations. So her point seems to be unilaterally condemned in the media and it's I think legitimate then to portray it here as such unless someone can find some support (I couldn't). My own complaint with this article is that there is detail, comprehensive, and then over the top in terms of listing the criticisms. Should every notable Canadian that spoke on this issue be listed within the article? Where is enough enough and where does it begin detracting from the content of the article and begin instead to be simply burying the journalist? How much is enough to make the point here? We can take any jerk in history and insert a long list of people's comments condemning them and it does not make a wikipedia article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 15:11, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:35, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120220125124/http://www.davidhayes.ca/wong.htm to http://www.davidhayes.ca/wong.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121023005926/http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=7558331f-14b9-4b1a-bfc1-e5a68dbe3999&k=47772 to http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=7558331f-14b9-4b1a-bfc1-e5a68dbe3999&k=47772
 * Added tag to http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/MediaNews/2006/09/21/1872721-cp.html
 * Added tag to http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Wong%2Bblues/6566814/story.html
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121025040555/http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=68973176-3342-4164-b62c-ed7eb0beaace to http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=68973176-3342-4164-b62c-ed7eb0beaace

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Edit Request: Bolding Topic in Introduction Paragraph
Hi all, I'm not too familiar with this topic, so I wanted to pose an edit request for someone who knows the topic better than myself. Shouldn't the title of the article (Jan Wong controversy) be bolded in the first sentence of the introduction? Right now, the introduction doesn't use that phrase verbatim. If no one takes care of this, I'll do my best to give it a stab in the next few days. Thanks. Thefjordhusky201 (talk) 17:33, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://archive.is/20120716040357/http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/20/jan-wong-why-i-was-hated-in-quebec-and-abandoned-in-toronto/ to http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/20/jan-wong-why-i-was-hated-in-quebec-and-abandoned-in-toronto/

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