Talk:Matthew Shirk

BLP concerns
This article is a BLP mess. As it currently stands it pieces together a variety of articles in order to make the subject come off in the worst possible light. The opinions of newspaper columnists and worse, bloggers, are presented as if they were facts. I do not have time to fix this now, but it needs to be taken care of immediately.--Cúchullain t/ c 19:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The primary contributor to the article seems to have overlooked this, and has attempted to re-instate material sourced only to an opinion column. I have removed it again, along with several sections of what could probably be termed attack material, which gave a vast amount of undue weight to certain sources. As said above, these sources include opinion columnists and blogs. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia article, not a collation of negative opinions of the subject circulated in op-ed columns, blogs, and the local alt weekly.--Cúchullain t/ c 14:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The critic of this article seems to be intent on removing any negative or unflattering statements concerning the article's subject. My understanding was that Wikipedia does not try to sanitize an article by removing unpleasant information as long as it is accurate and comes from reliable sources.Mgreason (talk) 14:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You are quite correct that I'm intent on removing any negative statements concerning the subject, when they are poorly sourced and not neutrally-worded in a biography of a living person. You really need to read up on that policy. As it says, "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." Material sourced only to bloggers and opinion columnists is not acceptable, nor is piling on negative assessments from legal blogs and Folio Weekly without any regard for proper weight. This has been a problem for you at multiple articles.--Cúchullain t/ c 15:11, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Third opinion

 * Looking at the page history, I am assuming that the statements in question are primarily these, and I shall limit my review to that material unless advised otherwise.—Ash (talk) 17:28, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You are correct. I also previously removed some material here, with the same intention and justification.--Cúchullain t/ c 17:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you Ash. I think that goes a long way to resolving the issues. --Cúchullain t/ c 17:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

New material
This edit added a large amount of poorly sourced, fawning material to the article. One of the sources is an op-ed piece; another is a newspaper just reprinting an email in which the subject talks about himself. As it is poorly sourced and not neutral it needs to be removed per the biographies of living persons policy. The editor who added the material has been warned about this and invited to discuss the material here on the talk page.--Cúchullain t/ c 15:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've reworded the text attributed to editorials. Editorials can be used so long as they meet the relevant policies (eg the Criticism and praise section of the BLP policy page.) The Florida Times-Union is obviously a reliable source, so we can quote its editorials, so long as we attribute them as such, keep the text neutral, and be careful of the weight we're giving them. Including one or two sentences saying, in a dispassionate fashion, that they approve or disapprove of what the subject is doing is okay. More than that is not.--Cúchullain t/ c 19:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

After several months I went ahead and trimmed the article. There was far too much space devoted to the campaign versus what he's actually done as Public Defender, and we were using far too many words to say simple things. The article was longer than that of several governors of Florida I think.Cúchullain t/ c 19:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

scandals
A simple google search of Matthew Shirk reveals that much has occurred that has not been addressed in this article. I will try to address in time. --JumpLike23 (talk) 04:37, 20 October 2015 (UTC)