Talk:Stephen Murphy III

Bot-created subpage
A temporary subpage at User:Polbot/fjc/Stephen Joseph Murphy III was automatically created by a perl script, based on this article at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges. The subpage should either be merged into this article, or moved and disambiguated. Polbot (talk) 16:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced/possible conflict of interest paragraphs
I've added a citation-needed tag to several paragraphs with no supporting citations.

Reviewing the page edit history, I see that the paragraphs in question - and a substantial amount of other material in this article - were added as part of a series of extensive edits on July 19-20, 2017. The first in these edits were logged by an IP address associated with a Dearborn, MI office of the Administrative Office of United States Courts, which is the administrative branch of the federal court system based in the district where the subject of this article works. Later edits in the same short time period were completed by a newly created user whose only edits have been to this article.

Because these unsourced facts appear to resolve to a location where the subject works, I am concerned about WP:COI issues. But since I doubt they can be confirmed, it may be enough to note that the facts are unsourced. 108.172.42.107 (talk) 15:20, 4 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I'd advise continued vigilance as to WP:COI issues, as the article appears to have been the target of edits by at least four "different" users who appear to mostly if not exclusively make Wikipedia edits (sometimes substantial ones) concerning the subject:
 * User:63.241.40.125 - See above - this is the IP resolving to the US Courts' AO office located where the subject works. There are multiple edits adding information to this page and adding mention of the subject to "notable people" categories on other pages. (This is likely a shared IP address at the courthouse, as it is also associated with other unrelated edits.)
 * User:English_hinton - Started editing immediately after the edits from the above IP address, and has only edited this page.
 * User:Sjmurphy81 - In addition to the username hint, this account has only made edits concerning this subject, either to adjust this page or to add mention of the subject to other pages.
 * User:JudicialEditor - Has only made edits to this page.
 * (I guess technically there's also me, but I'm just someone who read about the subject on my day off, got bored, and tried to improve this article.) 108.172.42.107 (talk) 19:50, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I put in some effort to find reliable sources for the subject's board and committee affiliations, and could find none. I have removed mention of those affiliations, while also adding and sourcing an affiliation with the Federalist Society, which was more reliably established. 108.172.42.107 (talk) 21:22, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Sjmurphy81 deleted the Federalist Society appearances; they've been restored. I think it's time to take this to Conflict of interest/Noticeboard -- Pemilligan (talk) 13:37, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Notable Rulings
The Notable rulings section, which appears to have been mostly authored by someone working at the same location as the subject (see above WP:COI concerns), was a formatting mess. I have attempted to standardize the formatting consistent with Template:Cite court and standard US case citation formatting, with minimal substantive changes. Previously, almost all of the links for each decision went directly to the judge's own official bio page, which itself has links to each decision; I substituted this for the direct links to each decision provided on that page. I do have significant doubts as to whether all of these cases are truly notable, but I leave that for others to address. 108.172.42.107 (talk) 16:42, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

On further reflection and review of Wikipedia's notability guidelines, I am removing the vast majority of decisions previously listed. The three decisions remaining either have outside media coverage (Liggons) or focus on someone who already has an existing Wikipedia page (Hammond and Acts 17 Apologetics). If editors disagree with this decision and decide to revert, I would request reversion to my most recent previous edit, which preserves the discussion of all previously-listed decisions but is formatted properly as discussed above. 108.172.42.107 (talk) 16:55, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Photo FFD
A photo on this article is credited in the caption to a Detroit News reporter, but the file itself is uploaded as "Own work" by the same user that triggered my WP:COI concerns (see above). It does not seem that this user is the photographer listed in the caption for the photo on this article. I've added the file to the Wikimedia Files for Discussion page at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Judge_at_Tigers_Game.jpg 108.172.42.107 (talk) 18:14, 4 August 2023 (UTC)