Talk:Sticks & Stones (2019 film)

FT as RS for RT score
This edit should be reverted, as its sole justification is that this FT article cannot be used, yet I'd argue that even though it is an opinion piece, the cited figure of RT audience score of 99% can be used as a statement of fact. Now I could be wrong, so I have asked other editors at WP:RSN. — Srid 🍁 17:16, 14 November 2019 (UTC)


 * - Here's another source, I quote: "viewers gave it a 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. ". This is not an opinion piece. - — Srid 🍁 17:50, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Article title
Hi. I noticed that some comedy specials tend to have "Comedian Name:" in front of the title, while this is being used by Netflix and databases such as imdb.com or rottentomatoes.com to identify the comedian's name in the title for all comedy specials categorically. Other sources however, use the title without the comedians' name attached in front of it.


 * https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/59ngpb/you-can-definitely-skip-dave-chappelles-new-netflix-special-sticks-and-stones
 * Quote: "Dave Chappelle made a return to Netflix Monday with a new stand-up special, Sticks & Stones."


 * https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/dave-chappelle-doubles-down-sticks-and-stones/596947/
 * Quote: "Early into Sticks and Stones, Dave Chappelle’s newest Netflix stand-up special,..."


 * https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/chart-beat/8531968/dave-chappelle-first-billboard-chart-appearance-sticks-and-stones
 * "The soundtrack recording of his Netflix stand-up special Sticks & Stones debuts at No. 4..."

I believe there is no rationale for Wikipedia to follow this article title convention since it is not used by the majority of sources.--Concus Cretus (talk) 00:54, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
 * So what is the official name of this? Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones or just Sticks & Stones? CaffeinAddict (talk) 03:53, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The official website (a Netflix page not a website but anyway...) does seem to suggest the full official title is "Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones". This encyclopedia might chose to also use that long title for consistency or other reasons but it does not have to. It is clear from the above points that the WP:COMMONNAME is Sticks & Stones and no one really writes out the full name if they can avoid it. I checked to see if there was a redirect from Dave Chapelle: Sticks & Stones but at the time of writing there is no page. I'd leave the article title as it is. -- 109.79.170.230 (talk) 17:36, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There does seem to be a redirect already at Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones and it seems I need to remember that it is Chappelle with double pp and double ll. -- 109.77.198.222 (talk) 17:00, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Audience response
We cannot cite Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB user scores directly; they're WP:USERGENERATED and subject to manipulation. And the secondary cites in the proposed section on them are all unusable - Newsweek, today, isn't an WP:RS due to its extensive decline. The other sources in that paragraph are all non-WP:RS, opinion pieces, or both. (Except Vox, which doesn't mention this film and is being used for WP:SYNTHESIS.) --Aquillion (talk) 23:58, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Since someone has objected, I'll go into more detail. Note that these were only added last September (with no discussion or consensus), so per WP:ONUS consensus has to be reached to keep it.  Here's the problems:
 * First, we absolutely cannot cite Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB user scores directly, per the above; they're WP:USERGENERATED. Rotten Tomatoes user scores are actually mentioned as being forbidden in the policy by name.  They're easily-manipulated and mean nothing.
 * Mitchell Blue is cited via Medium, which is a self-published source. That cannot be used.
 * The other sources include The American Spectator, Blaze Media, Louder with Crowder, The Daily Wire (cited for an extensive block of text), Twitter (unusuable as a WP:SPS), RedState, the Media Research Center, and Twitchy. All of these are being cited for WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims about professional reviewers, based on essentially nonexistent evidence.  These sources all share common features - they're not WP:RSes, they're WP:BIASed, and they're all biased in the same direction, in a way that gives them a political affiliation with Chappelle.  None of this bias is disclosed when citing them.
 * There are one or two sources in there that are usable. But they're not enough to support a massive section like this, and we are, in fact, already covering positive receptions to him from higher-profile professional critics further up.  What we can't do is string together a bunch of opinions from non-WP:RS WP:BIASED sources without disclosing their bias and then use that to WP:SYNTH up an implication that there's some big gap between critical and fan reception. If you want to cite the fact that some American conservatives supported Chappelle, it would be best to find a secondary source, but we could perhaps support a few sentences saying so specifically.  The collective story of these sources, though, is "some American conservatives rallied to Chappelle", not "Rotten Tomato scores revealed a sinister conspiracy among reviewers." --Aquillion (talk) 19:39, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Everything mentioned above dismissing various user reviews could be applied to critical reviews as well, other than their axiomatic prohibition on Wikipedia, which is actually a great argument in favor of removing their prohibition. Also, Google Reviews lists a user rating of 4.7/5.0 stars (247 user account ratings) with 96% of Google users "liking" Sticks and Stones, Netflix themselves listed the special as the "most popular" standup special on its site for 2019, and Amazon lists the audio CD at 4.4/5.0 stars (18 user reviews). There 100% is a consensus among the common user (if not outright universal, uniform agreement) [sources available upon request]; the user reviews have 100% reached a nearly-perfectly-uniform consensus by every review source the world over. To not even mention this fact in an article over-flowing with critical review which is both mirror opposite and perfectly contradictory to popular opinion is doing a tremendous disservice to the common reader of the article, who would thus certainly be totally mis-informed about the contemporaneous, consensus, popular opinion. I'm loath to think what a future visitor to the page 50 years from now who wants to get an idea of Dave's popularity might think if they read this article, only to find it contained absolutely nothing about the universally polar opposite critical and user reviews, especially now that the difference has become a bit of meme unto itself; a topic unto itself for critical review. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Msennello (talk • contribs) 13:18, 26 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I can understand mentioning positive audience scores if they have been noted by multiple, independent reliable sources, but as Aquillion stated, audience scores are easily subject to manipulation. To reiterate: unless a positive audience score has been noted by multiple, independent reliable sources, it shouldn't be mentioned on the article. That goes for Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Google Reviews, Amazon, or any other aggregator of audience reviews. WP:USERGENERATED makes it pretty clear that audience scores on their own aren't considered acceptable. — Matthew  - (talk) 21:48, 27 March 2020 (UTC)


 * User voted web polls are junk and I generally object to them being included, and if this was a film I'd point to CinemaScore PostTrak and even RelishMix, and if it was a regular tv show I'd say look at the ratings, but unfortunately we dont seem to have Netflix or Neilsen ratings for this comedy special. In this specific case I thought there would be adequate third party reporting to briefly mention the divergence between critics and audiences, and make it one of the rare exceptions. Specifically the early very low Rotten Tomatoes critic scores were met with very high rotten tomatoes audience scores. It isn't about mentioning the audience scores, it is about mentioning combination of an initially very low Rotten Tomatoes score and the reaction that. I'd trim back heavily and include less than half of what was there but I do think the bones of it could be salvaged, and the divergence between audience and critic scores acknowledged.
 * Newsweek establishes that the Rotten Tomatoes (early) score was zero, but that IMDB scores were high (and I'm not saying IMDB is okay, I'm saying it okay that we repeat what Newsweek reported). Washington Standard said "a wide ratings gap on Rotten Tomatoes between the critics, mostly negative, and the audience, mostly positive", and maybe the Washington Standard isn't a great source but using it only to indicate that the divergence did get coverage seems okay. (Vox reference is irrelevant, WP:COATRACK.) The thepostmillennial.com reference seems adequate but only as another example that the divergence was covered by multiple sources. Same goes for Spectator.org but I'm not suggesting we use these sources for anything other than confirmation that there was coverage.
 * Maybe you could change somewhere else in the article to mention that Rotten Tomatoes initially gave it 0% and there was a reaction, but restoring a very short Audience response section seems easiest. So I give Weak Support to including a very small amount of what was removed, and restoring only a very limited amount of Audience response.. I do think the people who have added all this in WP:GOODFAITH need help cleaning it up and bringing it to a higher standard, but there are rare exceptions that allow the Audiences scores to be mentioned, and I think this might be one of them. -- 109.76.217.83 (talk) 04:38, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I would nearly say that the Newsweek article and CNBC article previously mentioned at the top of this page (but not used on the main article) are two reliable sources and enough on their own. But again only to acknowledge that there was a divergence, and that various third parties commented on that divergence. -- 109.76.217.83 (talk) 04:45, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

WP:BRD I've made a bold attempt to show what I mean by salvaging a small fraction of what was included before and used most of the sources only to indicate that this got lots of coverage, and then used the best sources to specifically mention the IMDB user score and the 99% Rotten Tomatoes score. I believe the version I have added is within the acceptable limits of what is allowed by Wikipedia rules. The scores themselves are not the focus, but the fact that various third parties were discussing the differences and contrasting the scores. I also accept that if there is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS against including any Audience Scores at all, then it might get deleted again, but I think that with discussion we should be able to include a some small compromise version of Audience scores, since this really did get a lot of coverage. -- 109.76.200.196 (talk) 16:20, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: remember to be wary of Newsweek's reliability. In this instance, it seems fine. — Matthew  - (talk) 16:21, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'd been looking for that list too WP:RSPSOURCES but wasn't able to find it again, in my brief search. -- 109.76.200.196 (talk) 19:36, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Anyone? I thought maybe I needed to give it some time and there would be some disagreement and at least some suggestions to copyedit, but I'm surprised there haven't been any complaints so far. Are people really satisfied that the version I added was adequate and that it follows the rules enough to keep it more or less as it is? I guess it must not be entirely terrible or someone would have reverted it already. Suggestions and improvements would be welcome. -- 109.76.137.4 (talk) 22:25, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * An editor deleted one of the lower quality sources due to WP:OVERCITE which is fair I suppose, it was included to make it clear this was widely reported and there are still plenty of sources to show that. I could have hidden the citations using WP:CITEBUNDLE like some other editors do, but I prefer to avoid that because I don't think it is a good policy.
 * I'm so used to aggressive reverts and speedy deletes it seems strange to not be get more feedback/pushback on this, so I guess it must be okay. -- 109.79.176.231 (talk) 14:48, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure merging the Audience response section back into the Critical response section was an improvement. -- 109.79.81.95 (talk) 03:26, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Unintelligible language
I haven't read the entire text of the article too closely, so there could be additional instances, but I came across this astonishingly awkward sentence in the "Analysis" subsection:

"Family therapy Fran Walfish felt an improbability in Chappelle betting into trouble after the controversy,[104] while placing significance on the majority of the American population, in with whom she felt were vastly uneducated about the LGBTQ and trans community..."

If anyone knows what it actually means (the link is dead and doesn't show up in a brief search), please edit for clarity. WhampoaSamovar (talk) 16:56, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Apparently Dr. Fran Walfish has a show on We TV. It was very poorly written. Someone went ahead and removed it. -- 109.79.167.172 (talk) 14:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Plot chunk removal
A significant point of this article is the reaction to LGBTQ jokes in the show. It is wholly inappropriate to remove the part of the plot section that mentions this. If editors have some issue with reviews from a particular source that should be discussed but without removing any of the Plot section. -- 109.79.175.124 (talk) 15:08, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Again if an editor has some objection to a particular reviewer, then it is not so much to ask them to explain themselves and for them to remove only that reviewer without also removing part of the plot section (and other minor changes).
 * Reviews are by definition opinions, and the guidelines (see Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources) do say "it may be usable for attributed opinions." Maybe there is a good reason to exclude this review but there is no good reason to remove a chunk of the plot section along with it. -- 109.78.204.166 (talk) 01:58, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Editor refuses to discuss and continues to vandalize the plot section. WP:NOTLISTENING. -- 109.78.204.106 (talk) 15:32, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * it also appears that he has been warned for not taking enough care when removing references to The Federalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:David_Gerard#Federalist_removals and I while I also question the removal of the review there is no justification for the repeated removal of a chunk of the plot section. -- 109.78.204.106 (talk) 15:52, 23 September 2022 (UTC)


 * WP:GUNREL sites are presumed not to meet WP:DUE, it's pretty straightforward and was explained the first time. If it's such an important aspect of the plot, you can find a Reliable Source that says it is. IP-hopping to repeatedly reinsert a GU site into Wikipedia is disruptive behaviour and got you a block. Please don't persist - David Gerard (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Repeatedly deleting sources without discussion is disruptive, deleting plot for no reason is more disruptive. The WP:SIMPLE rules about explaining in your edit summary or WP:DISCUSSing are pretty clear, I didn't think anyone was exempt. User:David Gerard sems to have blocked a dynamic IP address I was randomly assigned the other day rather than discussing or explaining his edits, despite my edit summaries and effort to start a discussion here. Wholesale reverting multiple edits because of object to one publication shows a lack of WP:GOODFAITH. "Presumed"? I was reasonably restoring a review/opinion based on what the guidelines at WP:RSPS actually say about The_Federalist ("it may be usable for attributed opinions."), not what someone is belatedly explaining is "presumed" rather than clearly stated in actual documentation. User:David Gerard speaks of rules that are "presumed" and expects others to somehow know what those rules without him ever explaining or pointing to them directly, but doesn't seem to be following all the rules himself. As this show falls under the film category and the WP:FILMPLOT guidelines would seem to apply, and they do not require sources for plot as the show/film itself is the source of the plot. It would show some good faith if User:David Gerard was actually wiling to delete the review he was objecting to without also deleting the relevant plot chunk. (The plot section already includes many links, including a link to a full transcript but I simply don't understand why anyone taking due care and paying attention would think it was appropriate to delete a chunk of the plot section in the first place.)
 * I do understand that many editors do not like or want to allow anonymous editing but I follow the rules as far as I am aware of them, and I am allowed to edit without logging in and as far as I know I am not breaking any rules by doing so, but if I've missed something I'm open to discussion. I'm happy to stay on the outside when people on the inside refuse to properly explain what they're doing and go around deleting sources for unclear reasons and deleting chunks of plot for no good reason at all.
 * you discussed deletes of this source/review before, perhaps you can clarify and maybe explain if you think this case is reasonable? -- 109.78.204.93 (talk) 02:35, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Removing GUNREL sources and claims sourced only to those is something every Wikipedian should be doing. Wikipedia sourcing is meant to be to reliable sources, not unreliable ones. This is a pretty simple point, and you're trying extremely hard not to hear it.
 * I urge you to review your understanding of Wikipedia sourcing - if you see a conspiracy theory site that's been found by editorial consensus to be generally unreliable and not to be trustworthy for factual claims, and your first thought is "great source!" for a factual claim, then you're doing this wrong.
 * If this is such an important point element, you should have no trouble finding an RS for it - that would solve the problem neatly - David Gerard (talk) 13:06, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Overzealously removing reviews and opinions is one thing, but it is another thing to overzealously remove chunks of plot section because other editors overzealously included references in the Plot section that were never strictly necessary in the first place. User:David Gerard refuses to acknowledge that his removal of a chunk of the plot section was inappropriate or that it was shows a lack of good faith to wholesale revert multiple edits instead of removing just the review that he objected to.
 * If this is such an important point element an editor should not have arbitrarily removed a chunk of plot without knowing if it was important or not. you should have no trouble finding an RS for it please stop claiming the plot section needs references in the first place, see WP:FILMPLOT. Again the chunk of plot should not have been removed in the first place and User:David Gerard should not be carelessly creating problems (easy to solve or not) expecting other people to solve them. -- 109.77.198.234 (talk) 20:47, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

I have restored the deleted plot section yet again. This time I did not restore the review from the Federalist that was disputed and hopefully this will be enough to end the repeated vandalism plot section. While I do not agree with the removal of this review from this article and believe it is a deliberate misunderstanding of WP:RSOPINION, I am far more concerned that an editor would continue to claim the removal of a chunk of the plot section was ever appropriate to begin with and the hypocrisy of calling another editor disruptive while doing so is incredible. -- 109.77.198.234 (talk) 21:17, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

DavidGerard returned to delete more clearly attributed opinions (WP:RSOPINION), carelessly taking a proverbial hatchet to the Analysis section.(diff) Was it really necessary to delete a reference to NPR? Whatever efforts had been made to write a balanced analysis section have been entirely destroyed. -- 109.77.200.184 (talk) 02:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)