Talk:Rebecca Bradley

College papers
She publicly apologized, and that apology has been sourced. inclusion is merited by news coverage in 2 major daily publications in Wisconsin. cecilgol (talk) 17:57, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. However, I deleted a comment that was added today, supposedly based on these student writings, that said: "Lastly, she threw support behind the idea that women ought to be held partially responsible for date rape."  I read the original writings (available at http://media.jrn.com/documents/supreme_bradleywritings.pdf), and the only thing I see is her support for "Just say no."  There is no discussion of date rape -- or of anything connected to date rape -- that I could find.  If anyone believes I've overlooked something, please post it here. - AyaK (talk) 05:20, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Found a better source with a direct quote (from a different column) and included the claim. -AyaK (talk) 21:57, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Heads Up
It is quite likely User:Rlgbjd is Rebecca Bradley herself. https://twitter.com/arizonasunblock/status/1687615861840855040?s=20 GhostofDebs (talk) 00:50, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * It's all over the news, User:Rlgbjd is Rebecca Bradley herself and editing her own article. Rules for thee, none for me. We're going to need an admin on this ASAP.Wzrd1 (talk) 17:58, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't believe it. No one dumb enough to do that could possibly be a state supreme court justice. Undoubtedly this is someone trying to embarrass the subject. EEng 18:50, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * EEng, I admire your optimism. 2600:4040:79C6:EB00:0:0:0:100B (talk) 18:52, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I see you haven't been introduced to the GOP. 208.87.236.201 (talk) 19:26, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * She's admitted to doing it. Source: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/daniel-bice/2023/08/14/justice-rebecca-bradley-edits-out-criticism-on-wikipedia-page/70576397007/ 2600:6C44:1A7F:C13C:2C5B:FE78:DE6:57D0 (talk) 21:02, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Um, did you read the attached article about her? This is completely consistent with her character. 2600:8802:5913:1700:3DF6:C3F2:128B:A82C (talk) 19:30, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The tweet states the count is currently edit warring, but the account hasn't edited since May. And the only things that identifies the account with the subject is that tweet, this looks like a BLP issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:49, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * She has admitted it was her. Source: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/daniel-bice/2023/08/14/justice-rebecca-bradley-edits-out-criticism-on-wikipedia-page/70576397007/ 2600:6C44:1A7F:C13C:2C5B:FE78:DE6:57D0 (talk) 21:02, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You're quite right, I have struck my comment. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:52, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Pinging . That'll teach you for being optimistic!  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 17:15, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I still can't believe a state supreme court justice can be that dumb. So if it's really her it must be part of some 3D-chess strategy she's formulated that we little people are unable to grasp. EEng 22:59, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
 * No, it's just the sort of person she is. 2600:8802:5913:1700:3DF6:C3F2:128B:A82C (talk) 19:32, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to restore Judge Bradley's COI deletions
Among Judge Bradley's edits are two paragraphs that appear to have been well sourced and have not yet been restored. Propose reinstating them. The deleted text is copied below for discussion. They both appear to satisfy WP:RS although their length might deserve scrutiny per WP:UNDUE.

Please note, Judge Bradley's changes are complex edits that also rewrote and changed the focus of other parts of her bio. The text copied below doesn't reflect the full scope of either diff. These are extracted for brevity. Her other changes deserve review and possible reversion or rewriting too.

According to the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal, Judge Bradley's changes did include one genuine factual correction. Quoting their report, "In addition to substantive issues, Bradley also updated her photo and corrected one clear error. Her Wikipedia page said she had participated in the Thomas More Society, a right-wing, nonprofit law firm. Instead, she was a member of the St. Thomas More Lawyers Society, a group of Catholic lawyers and judges."

Other than that, her changes introduced serious WP:COI and WP:NPOV problems.

The full news report may be useful in reviewing & revising this bio. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/daniel-bice/2023/08/14/justice-rebecca-bradley-edits-out-criticism-on-wikipedia-page/70576397007/

Her full edit history is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Rlgbjd

Yet since the most straightforward content to reconsider are here deletions, here's the text she removed:

From the diff https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rebecca_Bradley_(justice)&diff=prev&oldid=1147282994


 * Bradley's homophobic writings that she wrote in the Marquette University student newspaper in 1992 while an undergraduate stirred controversy during the race. She had written letters to the editor and a column for the Marquette Tribune, in which she stated she held no sympathy for AIDS patients because they were "degenerates" who had effectively chosen to kill themselves. She also referred to gays as "queers". She called the plurality of Americans who voted for Clinton "either totally stupid or entirely evil". She blasted supporters of abortion as murderers, and compared abortion to the Holocaust and slavery. She attacked feminists as "angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family" and defended Camille Paglia, who had written in a 1991 column that "women who get drunk at frat parties are 'fools' and women who go upstairs with frat brothers are 'idiots'." Bradley wrote that Paglia had "legitimately suggested that women play a role in date rape." Bradley apologized for her student writings in 2016, shortly after they had stirred controversy.

Then from the diff https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rebecca_Bradley_(justice)&diff=prev&oldid=1147283603


 * In 2016, she apologized for columns she wrote for the Marquette Tribune under a former name, Rebecca Grassl. Quotes from her 1992 columns include, "one will be better off contracting AIDS than developing cancer, because those afflicted with the politically correct disease will get all the funding," and "how sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent lives of more prevalent ailments." She also wrote, "but the homosexuals and drug addicts who do essentially kill themselves and others through their own behavior deservedly receive none of my sympathy."

Submitting for community consideration. A. Nonna Moose (talk) 22:27, 14 August 2023 (UTC)


 * @A. Nonna Moose I came to the talk after correcting some very awkward grammar throughout this article, and have just read your post above. I'm very confused about what you're proposing: to remove the text she deleted again? That's the only text you provide in full, whereas the intro to your post suggested she had added productive text which should be reinstated.
 * For the record I'm against removing text which she might be unhappy about the presence of, because it's perfectly well cited and that's not how encyclopedias work. The correction of the legal society name, on the other hand, makes sense if it hasn't been fixed already.
 * May I ask how your interest in this article arose? From what I can see, this proposal is your only edit to en.wiki under this account. Thanks in advance for clarifying! Chiselinccc (talk) 20:08, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 15 August 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved to Rebecca Bradley. (closed by non-admin page mover) — DaxServer (t · m · e · c) 05:15, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Rebecca Bradley (justice) → Rebecca Bradley (judge) – A few months ago, this was moved in good faith but without discussion by User:Someone who's wrong on the internet from Rebecca Bradley (judge) to Rebecca Bradley (justice). While this move was surely in good faith, it goes against a longstanding practice of using "judge" as a disambiguator for someone who is any level of judge (including a justice) in the same way that we use "politician" as a disambiguator for a senator unless there is another politician with the same name such that disambiguation can best be accomplished using "senator" as a disambiguator. The vast majority of ambiguously named justices in Wikipedia use "judge" as their disambiguator, and I see no case for an exception here, particularly considering that there is only one other person with this name, and that person is not any kind of judge. I would also consider it acceptable to deem the judge the primary topic of the name, and do away with a disambiguator altogether. BD2412 T 03:20, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: |Rebecca_Bradley_(judge)|Rebecca_Bradley_(Wisconsin_Judge)|Rebecca_Bradley_(novelist) pageviews for "Rebecca Bradley (justice)"; "Rebecca Bradley (judge)"; "Rebecca Bradley (Wisconsin judge)"; and "Rebecca Bradley (novelist)". BD2412  T 03:32, 15 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Move to Rebecca Bradley as the primary topic over Rebecca Bradley (novelist), based on the page views, as well as what the difference in article content and sourcing suggests about the relative significance of the two topics. Otherwise, I agree with the argument above in favor of "(judge)" over "(justice)". Adumbrativus (talk) 04:56, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Move to Rebecca Bradley. Very clear WP:primary topic in a WP:ONEOTHER situation. Add a hatnote pointing to the novelist and delete the dab page. Station1 (talk) 05:20, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Move to Rebecca Bradley. But if she wasn't the primary topic I would have agreed with moving back to Rebecca Bradley (judge). All justices are judges and that's the standard disambiguator. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Move to Rebecca Bradley as primary topic, but also agree that 'judge' should be the default disambiguator. Star Garnet (talk) 15:53, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Move to Rebecca Bradley (judge) as proposed.  Arguments for making this the primary topic are reasonable, but pageviews for this RB are spiked, presumably by current attention from press stories on her editing her own Wikipedia page--which is the reason I am on the page--and they look more similar to views of the other RP in days where they don't spike, which may be more normal.  Sullidav (talk) 11:02, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 * If we look at an older period when the judge is not spiking (|Rebecca_Bradley_(judge)|Rebecca_Bradley_(Wisconsin_Judge)|Rebecca_Bradley_(novelist) here from mid-2016 to mid-2017), the judge still averages about five times as many hits per day. BD2412  T 13:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks BD2412. And that chart also suggests that a certain amount of spiky-ness in the judge's pageviews is an ongoing thing as she regularly does newsworthy stuff, not just a one-time thing for the editing-her-Wikipedia-page story.  An argument for the nearly unanimous "primary topic" conclusion.  Sullidav (talk) 22:40, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Self Editing Section
Not sure why we need to discuss adding the section of her already proven allegations of her scrubbing her page of criticism. ExactingScrutiny (talk) 15:03, 20 August 2023 (UTC)


 * — ExactingScrutiny (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. BD2412  T 00:48, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You may have overlooked the edit summary on this edit that removed the section, which answers your question: "challenging this on WP:BLP grounds: WP:UNDUE weight to a single, minor controversy. see similar cases, regarding undue weight to Wikipedia editing, at Emily St. John Mandel and Mike Lawler." The later edit summary "WP:BLPRESTORE: please discuss on talk before re-adding" by the same user referred to that challenge. According to the cited policy, you need to achieve consensus first before restoring the material. That involves at a minimum responding to the challenge with reference to WP:BLP and WP:UNDUE. Accordingly, I've reverted your edit, since you identically restored the removed content without addressing those points. Joriki (talk) 03:18, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * In my view, the examples cited in the challenge differ from this case in relevant respects. In neither case was there an allegation of removing criticism. In the case of Emily St. John Mandel, she had gotten divorced and wanted the article to correctly reflect that development. The problem was exclusively with Wikipedia policies (there weren't any secondary sources about the divorce yet), not with the content. In the case of Mike Lawler, he added his election results, his campaign website and some information about which committees he served on and which firm he was a partner at, and he removed some citation needed templates on his personal information. Here, too, there were some problems with Wikipedia policies (the election results were originally unsourced, and he had a conflict of interest and didn't disclose it), but there was never any controversy about the content of his changes.
 * Thus, in those cases, the story was merely about someone violating Wikipedia policies, not about someone skewing public information about them. Accordingly, the charge of WP:NAVELGAZING featured heavily in the discussions that led to the decisions not to include the incidents in the articles. So I believe this case requires its own assessment of whether the fact that in this case the subject of the article, a high-ranking judge, significantly changed the article's content to make it reflect more positively on her, which is of broader political interest than a violation of Wikipedia policies, would be given undue weight by its inclusion in the article. Joriki (talk) 04:09, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Redundancy -- college writings
Editing on this point has been controversial so I am cautious to change anything, but here's a Wikipedia style point.

The details of her college writing don't need to be repeated (with some differences, eg, columns, or letters and columns?, different quotations pulled out) in both the "early life" and "2016 election" sections. I suggest moving all details about what she wrote in college from the 2016 section into the section on the time she wrote them, the "early life" section, and then replacing that paragraph in the 2016 section with a short description of what happened in 2016, eg, "During the campaign [XYZ] criticized her, asserting that she demonstrated racism and homophobia in her college writings described above. On [date], 2016, she issued an apology for those writings." Including quotes from both sides if possible.

Reactions welcome. Sullidav (talk) 11:16, 21 August 2023 (UTC)


 * @Sullidav Hey there, just seeing your comment here while checking back through- I did a copyedit a few days before you stated this, and had discovered the same thing. Unlike you, however, I didn't think of a good solution (I'm still getting the hang of Wiki norms for article structure etc, so I wasn't sure where it would be most appropriate to "corral" this duplicated content).
 * I want to fully cosign your point here and I encourage you to move ahead with the change if you're willing to. I'd do so but I'm still working up my bravery to move from mobile app edits to a real computer, and I think it would be messy to try such a change on mobile! Chiselinccc (talk) 07:58, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Chiselinccc. For now I don't have the time or knowledge to make these edits - the topic is new to me and I'd need to read through all the sources and figure out which parts of the article are right and wrong, and make the right ones into an accurate & consistent story, and I don't have the time for that, so for now I am leaving this glitch for others to fix, if they want to.  Sullidav (talk) 03:54, 5 September 2023 (UTC)