Talk:San Francisco tech bus protests

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Needs work
This article needs a lot of work and rewrite. Especially the last paragraph of the controversy section .Specifically some of the phrases such as, "In 2013, Google had $14.9 billion in revenues and they can certainly afford to pay more to use their buses in SF and Oakland." Sockistan (talk) 17:01, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed. To pick a single example: The article puts "unfair" (modifying evictions) in Wikipedia's voice, we're not here to decide what is and isn't "fair".  --j⚛e deckertalk 04:22, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I've left a note at WP:NPOVN. I don't have time to sort this, I'm afraid. --j⚛e deckertalk 04:37, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved to Google bus protests. Xoloz (talk) 01:53, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Google Bus → Google bus protests – The primary topic of the material in the article is not the buses, it is the organized opposition to them. Very little is said about the busses themselves. I would be quite open to other ideas for the article title, but I think the title needs to reflect that the primary topic here is the protests, not the buses. Note that we have four sources, all of which are about the protests and the aftereffects of those protests (the $1 fee), for example. j⚛e deckertalk 17:32, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. I'd prefer Google Bus protests since including the year in the title seems unnecessary. GabrielF (talk) 02:33, 13 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Support just plain Google Bus protests, at least in principle. I nominated this article for deletion, but in case it is kept, the article title ought to reflect the real scope of the article, which is not the day-to-day operation of the bus service, Miscellaneous user (talk) 03:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose – More correct styling (case and punctuation and number format) would be 2013–14 Google bus protests per MOS:CAPS, MOS:DASH, WP:DATERANGE. No need to capitalize bus or other generic terms.  I'd support Google bus protests.  Dicklyon (talk) 17:02, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * As nominator, I have absolutely no opposition to modifying my own to be MOS-compliant as you suggest. Do you think we should also avoid the years?  It would seem so.  I don't really care on the date either way, my primary concern is fixing the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC issue.  So Google bus protests would leave me happy. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:05, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, I can support now. Dicklyon (talk) 22:13, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the corrections! --j⚛e deckertalk 22:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Note since everyone here appears to prefer Google bus protests, I've modified the proposal. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:10, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Anthony Levandowski incident
User:Joe Decker removed a couple of sentences about a protest at the home of a Google engineer. Both the protestors themselves and the media link this to the Google bus protests. The protest group wrote: "After previous actions against the Google buses, many critics insisted that the individual Google employees are not to blame. Taking this deeply to heart, we chose to block Anthony Levandowski’s personal commute.". According to Ars Technica: "After protesting at his home for 45 minutes, the group marched to a Google bus pickup in South Berkeley and blocked it for about 30 minutes."

Other sources have also seen this incident as part of the larger protest. The LA Times wrote an article about the protest of Levandowski's house titled "'Google Bus' protests escalate as activists target employee's home".GabrielF (talk) 02:48, 13 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree that seems connected by that source. Thanks!   I'd only add that I think a little thought is warranted about any possible inclusion of Levandowski's name, if he is an otherwise unnotable engineer. I'm not saying don't do it, but if he's being (say) made a specific target of what is alleged to be a set of anti-gentrification/shuttle protests aimed at a technology company, I retain some concern that we might be paritipating in a lynch mob not being particularly concerned about who they target.  Perhaps I simply haven't read enough about the subject, but a lot of the connections between the elements here seem pretty hard to make sense of.  Never mind the question of whether I agree with them, was Levandowski targeted in anti-gentrification/shuttle protests for any other reason than his employer?  The sources above seem to suggest not. --j⚛e deckertalk 04:57, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

NPOV changes to article
This article seems to have many POV issues, such as: "provide free public transit for low-income children in San Francisco for only two years" and "waive the few fines they've received" (emphasis mine). These sections are clearly biased and should be rewritten to be NPOV. —Mark Bao (talk) 16:25, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. I've restored an older version of that paragraph.GabrielF (talk) 17:58, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I think the article is now sufficiently NPOV so I've removed the notice that I previously added. —Mark Bao (talk) 03:41, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Al-Jazeera citation
I made a small edit to the content drawing upon the Al-Jazeera article, which itself cites A. Goldman's research. The 20% figure is misleading, and should be correctly cited as "up to" 20% (I changed this). I also included the mean change, which more accurately reflects the findings. The raw data taken directly from Goldman's manuscript are copied here for the sake of transparency. All data are exactly as they were presented in the manuscript, but I have added the "Diff" column along with the sum and mean differences. I think that the 20% figure should be removed in lieu of more relevant summary statistic (range or mean), but would like to allow some time for discussion/debate about this. Moreover, the analysis in Goldman's manuscript is very crude -- no inferential statistics were used, and no attempt to place the results in perspective using the overall mean and variance of housing prices in the city as a whole.

Stop Name |#BR  |walkable|outside|Difference

Lombard	1	30	17	13

Lombard	2	11	25	-14

Geary	1	10	22	-12

Geary	2	23	12	11

Haight	1	28	23	5

Haight	2	37	27	10

Valenci	1	23	23	0

Valenci	2	27	20	7

Dolores	1	43	23	20

Dolores	2	28	23	5

SUM DIFF	45

MEAN DIFF	4.5

Afossbio (talk) 21:16, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Suggested rename of article to "Tech bus protests (San Francisco)" or "Tech worker bus protests (Bay Area)" or ...?
@ @ @anyone else interested:

Firstly, I haven't followed this subject much or read all the references...BUT, it seems to me that these protests (as the lead explains) are against buses from many tech companies, not just Google.

Was the phrase "Google buses" the normal phasing used in the press? Is it the most commonly used? I think Wikipedia should use the most commonly used terms for these events. (I created two redirects to this page, Tech worker bus protests and Tech bus protests.

Does the current name give UNDUE press/weighting to Google, when others: Facebook, Apple, etc. should also be talked about similarly?

I'm putting this out there for others who are more familiar with the press coverage that these events received to offer their views here.

Thanks!! Avatar317 (talk) 01:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)Avatar317


 * If this article were to be renamed, I would suggest not using parentheses in the title, because of WP:NATURALDAB (no other articles with the exact title "Tech bus protests"). How about "San Francisco tech bus protests", "Bay Area tech bus protests", etc.? epicgenius (talk) 01:37, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
 * While in the beginning it seemed that the majority of sources referred to it by its pars pro toto, media-given name of Google bus, as the reporting on it has bloomed and the distance from the present to when the protests occurred has grown, more and more sources have been comfortable referring to them as "tech buses". So I think it may be time to revist the question. I like Epic's name suggestion, however the protests occurred across the bay in Oakland as well, so just saying San Francisco might be limiting. San Francisco Bay Area tech bus protests could work, but there were protests which occurred in Seattle, although the article only mentions those in passing. Tech bus protests puts it succinctly, but a lot of the protest anger came as the result of issues particular to the bay area, so that might be too generalized. The 1960s Berkeley protests is one example where a movement which originated in one area (Berkeley) moved to others (the wider bay area) but who's label remains fixed on the sentinel event location, so perhaps just San Francisco would work.  spintendo   03:10, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Since the three of us are all agreed that the name may need a change, I'm going to go ahead and begin the requested move process. Since as nominator I will not be allowed to contribute to the discussion beyond the nomination statement, I urge you both to contribute your views already expressed here to that move discussion, which will display below. Thank you!  spintendo   19:43, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 10 June 2018

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved as requested per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 22:33, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Google bus protests → San Francisco tech bus protests – A perusal of the sources on this has media referrals to the event cleanly split 50/50 between the terms "Google bus" (which was how they were first referred to) and "tech bus" (which quickly became a just-as-common term used). WP:COMMONTERM states: "When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others." The problems as mentioned in that guidance here are that the use of the term "Google bus" is pars pro toto — it only describes a segment of the actual buses involved in the protests. Changing the name would correct this problem. 13-JUN-2018: Note to closer—If after 7 days no additional !votes have been posted beyond the one already given, please feel free at your discretion to close this request as not moved, rather than re-list it. Thank you.  spintendo   02:17, 14 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Support - From what news articles I saw on this subject, it seems that the greatest number of protests (and the start of these types of protests) occurred in San Francisco, and it was a result of the fact that many new tech workers who work in Silicon Valley CHOOSE to live in San Francisco. Since the public transportation from S.F. down the peninsula is poor, and the roads are overburdened with traffic, the tech companies started offering these shuttle services for their employees to be able to work while commuting. The combination of new residents to S.F. with high incomes, and the lack of sufficient new housing, has caused rents and home prices in S.F. to become THE highest in the nation.  (S.F. is kind of the "poster-child" for the housing shortage that is happening in many rapidly growing metros in the U.S.)  Protestors then view these busses as symbols of change in "their" city that they don't like.  The same housing situation is occurring in Seattle with Amazon and Microsoft's high paid workers, but Seattle has been building faster than S.F. recently, though I have read of a few similar protests in Seattle.  I therefore agree with Spintendo's comments (above the requested move) about a movement which started in one area and spread to other areas with similar issues/circumstances.  Avatar317 (talk) 21:53, 11 June 2018 (UTC)Avatar317
 * Support: "Google bus" is no longer accurate, even if still fairly common. Google was just the first company providing the buses.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:03, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Dicklyon (talk) 03:47, 16 June 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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