Talk:Small Dead Animals

McMillan's importance
Ms. McMillan's Artwork of "The Libranos" has been flashed in the Canadian House of Commons by members of Parliament. Her blog is easily the most prominent and popular blog in right wing Canadian political blogging circles. She recieves about 3000+ hits a day.

She has also been referenced recently by luminaries in Canadian conservative political commentary circles as Ezra Levant, former communications manager for former Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day and also by Mark Steyn.

Granted, her only professional writing has been on the subject of dog breeding, for the "Vogue" of dogbreeders, but in this day of citizen journalism, her blog does have some prominence in Canadian popular culture.

She is also the paid administrator of the Western Standard's very popular Shotgun blog.


 * The Western Standard article disputes this. It claims Kevin Steel administers the blog. --Cyberboomer 00:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I can't vouch for the POV, but McMillan is notable, as per Wikipedia criteria. She is on the radio alot (more than Mike Brock, another Canadian blogger who went through VfD and remained).  She also seems to be quoted in the newspaper alot as a "blogging authority."  Editors should also keep in mind the  Systemic Bias that has been identified in Wikipedia against entries that are non-American.  Bloggers generally are more notable and have a greater cultural role in Canada than elsewhere.  For more info see Canadian blogosphere.--Simon.Pole 10:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm adding this link about the Wikipedia Deletion debate, which was originally placed on the original wiki entry for KM, as it seems a more suitable place for it.


 * Controversy over Wikipedia entry

Note for the record that No Treason, the website in question linked to has made several blog posts complaining that Wiki is a useless tool simply because they are unfamiliar with, or unwilling to work within the paramateters of the Wiki community to contribute to the content of Wiki. In addition At least one of the contributors from No Treason has engaged in Wiki-Vandalism of the Somena page, because they did not like how the vote went on the discussion about whether or not this particular wiki entry should be deleted. MW, May 29th, 2006

After reviewing the article and the above discussion, I took the liberty of removing the "importance" tag from the article. The article appears to cite a number of instances where the article's subject has been discussed in a legislative body, and also contains numerous links to high-hit sites involving the subject. The criteria for importance specifies that if an article can demonstrate a "reasonable number of people" are concurrently interested in the subject, it should be deemed to meet the suggested importance standard.

Therefore it appears that the importance criteria has been met, and the tag was probably outdated. Of course, it's possible I'm misreading the situation, so if there is sufficient disagreement then feel free to re-insert the tag. Dugwiki 19:24, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Kate McMillan editing her own page
Kate McMillan has come to her the Wiki Entry about her, and has added some information which is best dealt with in the *discussion* section, instead of on the entry.

As such, I have removed the comments and invite her to bring those comments here to the *discussion* area.

Note, that Ms.McMillan has not disputed any of the comments attributed to her, nor has she offerd a reason as to why such commentary as hers about Angolans, Aboriginals or "Jap Bastards" should not be discussed. She has merely piled on a great deal of ad-hominem, instead of addressing the substance of the entry.

I would encourage Ms.McMillan to add to the Wiki Entry about herself, or edit it, if she feels that it is innacurate... and not just fill up a page of information about Wikipedians who dare to make a Wiki Entry about her political blogging.

The entry about Kate McMillan merely reports the facts. If Kate McMillan disputes the facts, then she should edit the Wiki entry to reflect that.

--

Post AfD, I have, as promised, fixed up the article. I believe what we have now is NPOV and maintains the proper balance. I have left out the stuff about "locking up" activists, which was clearly meant rhetorically, but kept the Angola remark because over the controversy it generated. I strongly suggest that people who have a personal connection to this subject please not edit the article. The article is not the place to catalogue every single thing McMillan says, outrageous or not. I will place it on my watchlist. Sdedeo 21:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Re: Most Recent Edit by Samaritan
Samaritan wrote in editing the McMillan's entry "i'll call residential schools "widely decried"; "controversial" understates, and suggests some visible base of *support* for the system still exists. better-reflects uniqueness of McMillan's position."

Now that's interesting. I had tried very hard to write an NPOV post on this issue, and what's really odd... and perhaps may seem hard to believe is that McMillan is *not* actually really UNIQUE in her take on this.

In fact... there are some Blogging Tories who have openly defended the remarks. I suppose this is based on appalling levels of ignorance about the Residential Schools system within Canada and the impact that they had, and continue to have to this day.

In fact... when McMillan first made her remarks about all this, I was astounded that not one single person in the right-wing blog world objected. Aside from Norm Spector, and Dazzlin Dean, not one of the 150+ Blogging Tories seems to find anything objectionable about these remarks at all.

Bizarre isn't it?

When she was questioned on this point, by Peter Warren of CKNW Radio last week, because Mike Park of The Wingnutterer had written to Mr.Warren to ask him about this very Wikipedia entry, Mc.Millan actually started to cackle hysterically.

Strange but true. User:68.84.255.199 12:45, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the correct way to do this, but there is a correction that needs to be made. I am Zorpheous, the owner and operator of the Wingnuterer Blog. Mike Park does not write for Wingnuterer, nor has he ever written for Wingnuterer in the past. I don't even know who Mike Park is, or if he even owns a blog. So to who ever made this entry, please find the correct link to use, although I don't mind the traffic that I get from Wiki entry.

Hey Zorph, Sorry - it was Mike from Rational Reasons that wrote the letter to Warren. Not Wingnutterer. My mistake. 68.84.255.199 08:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Residential Schools
KM has not appeared to support residential schools in any serious way, and it is certaintly misleading to claim that she supports residential schools as they existed in the past. This article is not the place for listing all the things you disagree with about McMillan. Please do that somewhere else. If some important person (a major journalist, a major politician) has publically accused KM of supporting residential schools, then fine, we can include it, otherwise, no.

Sdedeo 07:00, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

She was on the Peter Warren Show, CKNW a couple of weeks ago, where Warren read a letter from Mike Park of Rational Reasons, asking her about this position. Somena 08:53, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

McMillan's complaint about Wikipedia and my recent edits
Kate posted in her blog this angry reaction to a recent argument with a WP editor. Since, she added to the SDA blog this permanent comment : ''Vandalize My Wiki Page. Write any old crap you want about me. Just click the edit tab. The worse, the better! ''

I was disturbed by this because I am both a fan of the SDA blog and of Wikipedia. I therefore edited he article to introduce a semblance of NPOV. It remains incomplete and leaning heavily towards the negative.

If Wikipedia turns off brilliant minds like McMillan (who refuses to edit even her own page), then Wikipedia is going in the wrong direction. Emmanuelm (talk) 02:33, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I completely and whole-heartedly agree with Ms. McMillan's right to not have libelous information posted on Wikipedia. However, it seems as though she has refused to cooperate, resorting instead to apparently vandalizing Wikipedia pages, making personalized legal threats, and otherwise rousing rabbles.  These aren't actions which are productive to anyone, particularly if you are trying to get your way.  It's also somewhat contradictory to say that Wikipedia is meaningless yet make such a big deal about it, am I wrong?  Ms. McMillan seems like a sharp person, so I can't see why she doesn't understand why her actions aren't helping.  I will still continue to monitor the page for vandalism and libel.         bsmithme    03:41, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I will watch too. Thanks. Emmanuelm (talk) 12:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Changes needed
Those of us who read Small Dead Animals and poke around relevant pages at Wikipedia will be aware the Kate McMillan would really, really like this article to be deleted. That is not going to happen: Small Dead Animals has won lots of awards, so our rules say we should have an article about it.

See what I just did? I said Wikipedia should have an article about the blog. That doesn't mean we should have one about the blogger. I think we should refocus the article. After all, SDA now has multiple bloggers, with KM just the most prominent. In fact, the thinking behind WP:BLP1E basically requires us to do this.

Here's something else our rules say: we should get rid of a lot of crap from the article, especially the all-too-frequent ransom-note attacks on KM and SDA. We are also required to protect people's privacy — see WP:BLP. So I've just deleted quite a lot of the article. I'll add stuff in forthcoming edits.

Remember: the reason we have this article is to provide reliable, unbiased information to our readers about an award-winning blog. No more, no less.

(Full disclosure: I'm the Chris Chittleborough who commented on the angry SDA post mentioned above.)

Cheers, CWC 07:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Chris, I just looked it up: Little Green Footballs and Charles Foster Johnson have a wikipedia page, same for Instapundit and Glenn Reynolds, Daily Kos and Markos Moulitsas, etc.
 * I agree that SDA deserves a page of its own, but I think Kate also does. If no one else does it, I'll split this article next week. Emmanuelm (talk) 18:34, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Reynolds holds a named chair at a top-20 law school, and Johnson was a respected guitar player before he started blogging. I'm not aware that Kate McMillan's life outside SDA rises to WikiNotability. I am aware that she hates having a Wikipedia article about her (for good reason — see below). Other problems: respecting her privacy, finding enough adequately sourced information to write a biographical article that is more than a stub.
 * We also need to keep in mind that people have been using this article to attack KM for many years. I just started researching the "Saskatoon controversy" stuff in order to rewrite it. I quickly discovered that the section of our article about that event is malicious and malignant, so I deleted the whole section, as required by the BLP policy. I haven't finished my research yet; when I do I'll put a rewritten coverage in the article for other editors to improve. (It may take me a few days.) BTW, I'm (slowly!) drafting an article about SDA in my Sandbox page.
 * Cheers, CWC 23:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Chris, by your own standards, you should delete the Markos Moulitsas page because this guy is nothing outside of his blog. Kate, on the other hand, is an artist. I think she and SDA deserve their page (and so does Markos, I was being the devil's advocate). About the Saskatoon controversy, nothing wrong with being slow, but leave the current version until you replace it with yours. Emmanuelm (talk) 00:57, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

CBC blogging during 2005 election
I've just restored the "Coverage in media" section, per discussion on my talk page, with some changes.

One of those changes was to cite one of KM's blog posts for the CBC during the 2005 election. The whole set of those posts can be found via this search. Cheers, CWC 12:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed move
As I indicated above, I think that Wikipedia should not have an article about Kate McMillan, but should have one about Small Dead Animals. I therefore propose to move this article to the latter name in a few days, unless someone convinces me not to. (That will replace this article with a redirect to the new Small Dead Animals article.)

Why we should not have an article about Kate McMillan:
 * Not enough material from reliable sources to write a BLP
 * Only WikiNotable for SDA
 * Kate McMillan wants this article deleted

Comments? Objections? CWC 12:57, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I support this move for the same reasons. I'd like to address something above raised in objection to it. The comparison to Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog, misunderstands notability. Notability is measured by significant coverage in independent reliable sources. In this case, there are no reliable sources with anything but the most basic information about McMillan. Moulitsas, on the other hand, has gotten major press coverage, like this Newsweek profile and this article about his high school days. McMillan has not gotten as much coverage. Whatever doubt anyone has about moving this article should be allayed by the fact that McMillan wants this article deleted. Under current WP:BLP policy, we take the subject's wishes into account when the subject is of marginal notability.--chaser (talk) 18:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * First, there is enough independent coverage to warrant notability, that discussion has already been had. Second, a person's wishes more affects their interaction with the Foundation, not day-to-day volunteer editors facing a choice of censorship of an article. Ms. McMillan has been informed multiple times on how to correct misinformation by contacting the Foundation through the correct procedure regarding biographical articles (a very simple one, at that). Instead she displays what appears to be a willful disregard of Wikipedia guidelines and instead attacks disaffected editors who simply got caught in the crossfire, and threaten them with legal action, even though she would have no standing in any legal venue.  While I defend her right whole-heartedly to protect herself from libel, she has clearly chosen a sensationalist, unproductive approach rather than to end the charade in the very beginning with one simple email to the Foundation.  As for moving to the blog, that is a distinction without a difference.  SDA already redirects to KM so there is absolutely no point in reversing that.        bsmithme    23:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That discussion ended without consensus, in a different era for our BLP policy. In any case, the reliable sources on her are mostly syndication of her blog CBC BBC. This is the only reliable source I could find actually discussing her or her blog in any depth. These two are both minor coverage, and I'm not sure the first is a reliable source. Hardly anyone contacts the foundation to report biography errors. Requests here actually go straight to OTRS (of which I'm a respondent) and anyway are not a necessary precondition for the subject of a biography of marginal notability to request deletion or other remedial measures. Sending an email might be useful to make a request that requires confidentiality, but it is not necessary. Finally, her poor methods of interacting with us have nothing to do with whether we consider her wishes regarding her article. If they did, we would still have an article for Daniel Brandt, who created a website dedicated to outing prominent Wikipedians. Changing this into an article about her blog is likely to reduce the article's prominence on google. Unless you have some better reasons, I will move this article as suggested above.--chaser (talk) 17:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That isn't exactly my point; we've already had several impostors try to impersonate her, the easiest way to get a clear idea of what her wishes would be through direct communication with the foundation, even if through OTRS, rather than random rants from IP addresses claiming to be her. As far as her posts on her blog, correct me if I'm wrong, but the most she has done is increased her own prominence by railing against Wikipedia and encouraging vandalism, rather than taking appropriate and productive action to get the article corrected.  Subjects of articles cannot and should not ever have the authority to have articles blanketly deleted, ever, because while they have a right to not be libeled, they do not own the article or its destiny (within reason; you know what I mean).  This type of action should be made with a full airing and community consensus, not a tacit agreement between a few editors.        bsmithme    22:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

(Outdenting to reply to the preceding three comments) Cheers, CWC 11:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That canada.com is by far the best Reliably Sourced news article I've seen about Kate M, but even it is mostly about the blog and the blogger, not about Kate M the person.
 * I don't regard that Life Site News article as a RS. See "About LSN".
 * To have a biographical article about Kate M, we would have to rely largely on her own statements, or on people who relied on her own statements. To do that in a BLP about a controversial blogger is bound to cause problems (see bsmithme's point about impostors). Note the requirement in WP:SELFPUB that "the article is not based primarily on such sources".
 * IMO, how positive or negative Wikipedia articles are about living people should not depend in any way on how nice or nasty those people are to Wikipedia editors. In particular, I say that failure of an article subject to follow Wikipedia's not-always-obvious procedures should not influence decisions about deleting or moving articles.
 * I have to admit that we Wikipedia editors, as a whole, have treated Kate M very poorly. Example: she has been telling us for years that we needed to stop user:Somena from inserting malicious, deceptive negative material into this article, but we left one of Somena's cleverer attacks in the article until a few months ago. Her impatience with us, regrettable as it may be, is not without justification.
 * I started this discussion precisely to seek a community consensus. I'm happy to wait a week (that would be 24 Nov) to see what others have to say. At present, I still believe that Wikipedia's rules and goals mandate this move.
 * Please don't misunderstand me, I am not proposing that the article be kept exactly as is or in any particular state, either friendly or unfriendly towards her; I am only asserting that she herself has the complete ability to maintain the article and remove un-sourced information, etc. etc. etc. She has clearly chosen NOT to do that, and simply wanting the article deleted. She does not have the right to dictate whether the article exists or not. I simply want an accurate article that describes Kate McMillan to exist that is informative and helpful to readers of Wikipedia.      bsmithme    19:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

For the record, I support the redirect of Kate McMillan to Small dead animals. As for the survival of the Kate McMillan page after the redirect, I agree that it is hard to defend based on WP:notability criteria. On the other hand, both Markos Moulitsas and Charles Johnson (blogger) have their page, yet do not seem to have a public life outside of their blogs. Knowing how she feels about Wikipedia, I say we leave it empty (redirect only) for now. Emmanuelm (talk) 15:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

December 2009
Having moved the article (thanks, Chaser!), we can now start improving it. I've just made a bunch of smallish changes. Please check my work.

Other things to do: What do other contributors think? Cheers, CWC 12:55, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Mention the other contributors. List them all? List the frequent contributors?
 * Maybe note the mention of SDA in this Toronto Sun column by Lorrie Goldstein
 * Add more "memorable phrases", tying them to SDA's viewpoints. Eg., "Not waiting for the Asteroid" → the MSM are dinosaur-like and doomed

Non-notable and totally lacking in RS
This is one of the worst article I have ever seen on Wikipedia. It borders on shameless self-promotion. There are quite literaly ZERO reliable sources for the listed material. Is there any real reason why this article should not be deleted? Poyani (talk) 20:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

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