Talk:United Press International/Archive 1

Helen Thomas
It's not surprising that Helen Thomas resigned from UPI after its acquisition by the Washington Times. It saved her from being fired.

Listen to the way she badgered the White House press secretary -- worming in patently false statements under the guise of a question:


 * Q I pick up on that -- what you said. Does it bother the President that most of the world is against this war, and half of America? And I have a follow-up.


 * MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, this is an issue where you and I will never agree when you state your premise about what the people think.


 * Q This isn't you and I. This is a very legitimate question.


 * Q There's a new poll showing --


 * MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think there's a lot of public polling that you can see out there. The recent poll from your neighbor to the right, ABC News showed that 79 percent of the American people think that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States. I've heard you say on many occasions most Americans don't think he's a threat to the United States.


 * Q I didn't say -- is said the war.


 * MR. FLEISCHER: So I understand your strong opinions clearly. I'm not sure the American people agree with you.


 * Q That's a very personal attack. I said the war. Are they in favor of --


 * MR. FLEISCHER: I thought it was an accurate observation.


 * Q Are you saying 79 percent of the American people are for this war?


 * MR. FLEISCHER: What I just said to you is that according to that ABC poll, 79 percent of the American people think that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States.


 * Q That wasn't what I asked you.


 * MR. FLEISCHER: In terms of support for a war, again, talking about the public polls, I saw one this morning in USA Today that put that figure at 66 percent, if I recall.


 * Source:

--Uncle Ed 19:07 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)


 * Old topic, but I feel compelled to comment. Fleischer was clearly attempting to skirt the issue and, like most of the Bush administration, did not answer the question that was asked.  Helen did not "badger" him. Nelson Ricardo 02:44, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * Your answer is a year old, and just as incorrect now as it was then. Thomas was asserting that "half of America" was against the war, and Fleisher rebutted that assertion by citing a USA Today poll putting American support for the war at 66 percent. Since 66 + 50 > 100, eithor Thomas or Fleisher was mistaken. If Fleisher was correctly citing the USA poll, then Thomas was turning 33% into "most", which is dishonest. Uncle Ed 21:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Tired topic and for accuracy sake Helen was not going to be fired. stevensweet

Moonie Ownership of UPI
I believe it is imperative to prominently explain that a religious cult owns UPI these days. The head of that cult claims to be the Messiah. He may well be for all I know, and I make no judgments but it needs to be stated.

There is genuine confusion about this with the less-informed and the article can play a small part in remedying that. Libertas


 * Thanks for adding this, it's important. I have tightened and wikified the language. Readers interested in the details of Rev. Moon's claims about himself can consult his article. More fact-checking is needed on the Washington Times issue. RadicalSubversiv E 00:34, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, which one the ownership or the publication of UPI yarns. Happy to do either.Libertas

I agree that the reference to Moon's ownership needs to be in the first paragraph! Especially since I didn't see the ownership listed in Moon's own wiki article. 202.82.171.186 07:41, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

It's owned by news world int'l: I am adding to article, can someone who is better at markup link the source?202.82.171.186 02:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Added reference from Columbia Journalism Review, sayting it's owned by News World Comms, the media arm of the Universalist Church. CJR is a fine source, let's hope that line stays in teh article.202.82.171.186 02:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Looks like it was removed by a UC member - restoring WNDL42 (talk) 22:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

UPI Ownership and Helen Thomas
There are some who have an axe to grind about the Unification Church and it shows in the editing.

I am more interested in a factual representation and history of UPI to honor its journalists who stay true to its editorial mission of independent and unbiased reporting.

Grinding the ownership axe, chronically mentioning speculation about why Helen Thomas resigned, etc., is less about UPI and more about some issue with the ownership.

As any journalist at UPI will tell you, judge UPI on its content and not the ownership.

stevensweet


 * Information about UPI's ownership is encyclopedic. Deciding how to "judge" UPI is up to readers. Also, please refrain from marking non-trivial edits such as this as "minor" -- it's deceptive. RadicalSubversiv E 23:59, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Deciding how to "judge" UPI is up to the readers. These are minor changes as this entry is about UPI not the ownership or Helen Thomas. Content and an "axe-to-grind" author bias is the deceptive issue.

stevensweet

I agree no axegrinding but the information about ownerhsip needs to be there becuase it's not on the Sun Myung Moon entry.202.82.171.186 02:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

External linked article about upcoming event
I removed that link, an article about a current event, because wikipedia isn't/can't be a breaking-news depository. The article will be out of date in a couple of weeks. If there is there material from the meeting that could be incorporated into the article, fine, but there are new articles every day affecting, oh, about 250,000 of wikipedia's articles. - DavidWBrooks 16:05, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Hardly. The link is revealing about the organisations, and isn't primarily about "the event". (Try reading it properly.) In any case it is currently relevant and will be for some time and can be removed when it isn't any more. Rd232 22:05, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It's obviously inappropriate for an encyclopedia article, as compared to Usenet for a pro/con Web site (wait'll some Moonie posts a link to a pro-Moon article, and then somebody posts another anti, etc. etc.) but it's not worth an edit war. - DavidWBrooks 23:00, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
 * There are a few articles which have 'pro' and 'con' sections in the links (usually with neutral ones at the top). I don't have a problem with that, although in some cases the links do multiply rather. I see the External Links as supplementary to the article, and as long they're ordered and useful (i.e. of interest to readers), there's no need to be overly cautious in restricting them. Rd232 10:50, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Modifying the edit war and recognising that for some the history is second to the owner I made it a stand-alone section as the link is not a history link but a story link. stevensweet
 * Realising the edit war goes on I quote the anonymous Rd232 "Wikipedia convention is to use subsections (===) or no divisions for External links section)" and have moved this tiresome story link to a subsection of External links.

Ownership
This is a little embarassing. I ought to know this, after 28 years membership in the Unification Church. But does the church itself own UPI, Washington Times, or News World?

Or are these companies owned by individual members of the church? Uncle Ed 20:54, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm fairly sure the church as a corporation does not own these companies. However the church as a body of believers does, in a sense.  I considered changing this article but it seemed a little nit-picky.Steve Dufour 06:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That seems odd: an ever-changing "body of believers" would have difficulty, say, paying taxes or submitting paperwork to show it doesn't need to pay taxes. Churches frequently own buildings/businesses, in the sense that the ruling body of the church - synod, board of directors, whatever - rather than the people who gather in the pews each week, is the legally responsible entity. So we need to be sure before making such a change. - DavidWBrooks 11:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * My understanding, I've been a UC member since 1974 but am not an accountant or a lawyer and live 3000 miles from DC, is that the Times is a corporation owned by some church members. It was Rev. Moon's idea so we often say he inspired it.  I think most church members in the USA feel a sense of ownership towards the Times even if we or the church are not the legal owners.Steve Dufour 16:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Both Yahoo Finance and Hoover.com say in their capsule summaries of News World Communications that it "is a media company owned by the Unification Church, which is controlled by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon." I'm not sure exactly what "owned by the Unification Church" means, however. - DavidWBrooks 17:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not either. I don't think the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity HSA-UWC (the official name of the UC) owns News World Corp; however it is owned by the Unification Church movement or community.  I'm in favor of leaving the statement as it stands.  It is true, in one sense, and it is simple and clear.Steve Dufour 05:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)  p.s. The issue of ownership would seem more important if News World was making a profit.  :-)


 * I work for a financial news service. 'Owns' means the entity actually holds at least 51% of the equity.202.82.171.186 01:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The article now says that UPI's owner, News World, is an "arm of the church." I guess that is fair enough. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It says only that it is described that way by the CJR, which seems slightly weasel-ish, but not weird enough to be rewritten unless we get a better citation. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Expaining it precisely would probably be too complex for most people to follow and wouldn't give much more info than the way it is now. Steve Dufour (talk) 04:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

External links - News/comment - Broken-dead-links 404
This message is to advise of broken links, if there is somewhere more appropiate to post this please advise.

The New York Times, Feb. 21, 1988 "NYT Story on FNN's Purchase of UPI in 1988" http://www.auburn.edu/~lowrygr/nytfnn.html gets the following result: 404 Not Found

George Garneau, Editor & Publisher, Oct. 21, 1989 "Infotech Now Owns UPI" http://www.auburn.edu/~lowrygr/e&p35.html 404 Not Found

Associated Press Story, June 28, 1992 "Middle East TV Network Purchases UPI" http://www.auburn.edu/~lowrygr/pat5.html 404 Not Found

Allan Wolper, Editor & Publisher, May 22, 2000 "UPI WILL STILL FLY UNDER OWN FLAG" http://www.auburn.edu/~lowrygr/moonie1.html 404 Not Found

Eve Gerber, Brills Content, April, 2001 "Looking for a Miracle" http://www.auburn.edu/~lowrygr/brill.html 404 Not Found

Please note all of the above pages can be viewed using The Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/web/web.php just paste the URL you want to locate into the search form and click on one of the archived page links

Servant of the Cat 04:17, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Reputable News Organization?
I was pretty shocked to see how far down UPI has come and I'd guess part of that is the Unification Church ownership. But actually I was most shocked when I learned about UPI employing Steve Sailer as a commentator. He seems to be a neo-eugenicist, i.e. racist, and a "paleoconservative," though I haven't seen anything quite that bad in his commentary at UPI. Is this a one-time fluke or is the whole organization morally bankrupt?
 * WP talk pages are not soapboxes or discussion forums, or places to review the subjects of its articles. Please read about what wikipedia is not, and keep talk page discussion directly relevant to the editing of the article at hand. Dsol 16:30, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the talk pages are actually discussion forums - look at the top tab.
 * Discussion relevant to editing only. Read the policy page I linked to if you didn't know this already.  Please sign your posts. Dsol 17:49, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Ownership history in error?
The article currently contains a statement "It went through seven owners between 1992 and 2000, ..." which I think is incorrect. The UPI website lists an ownership change in 1991 ("purchased out of its second bankruptcy by a group of Saudi investors") and in 2000 ("News World Communications, a media group founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon that includes The Washington Times newspaper, purchases UPI.") That site indicates that there have been 5 owners after the Scripps family sold UPI in 1982. Anybody got any other references to support/refute the text? I'm certainly not a UPI historian, I only know what I've found in 5 minutes of Googling... Studerby 01:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe the article should be written in past tense if UPI's notable days are behind it. Redddogg (talk) 07:22, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

UPI in 1946?
The article says, "Arnaud de Borchgrave ... began his journalistic career at UPI in 1946." UPI didn't exist until 1958. Presumably he worked for UP or INS in 1946; I don't know which one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pha telegrapher (talk • contribs) 02:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The number of UPI's current 'offices'
To better reflect reality and not mislead readers, I've changed the two sentence that listed the locations of UPI's current 'offices'. These sentences had read: UPI is headquartered in Washington D.C. with other offices in Beirut, Hong Kong, London, Santiago, Seoul and Tokyo, which secures UPI's global presence. Beyond those offices, correspondents in all major capitals cover and report about events on-site. That first sentence misleads readers to believe that UPI has physical offices in Beirut, Hong Kong, London, Santiago, Seoul and Tokyo. At best, the current UPI might be employing freelance journalists who work from their homes in those cities, but their homes are not UPI 'offices' under either the venacular nor formal meanings of the word 'office' (not unless there is a nameplate saying 'United Press International' or 'UPI' on the outside doors and not unless their is a business telephone listing published for those addresses). And the 'which secures UPI's global presences' is certainly an editorialization (besides totally ignoring Africa). That second sentence is also an editorialization. I do not know how many 'correspondents' the tiny news agency currently known as UPI employs, but the number hardly extends to "all major capitals" and is a huge gap from the old UPI's 185 full-time bureaus worldwide and from the number of full-time bureaus or correspondents currently employed by the Associated Press, Thomson Reuters, Deutsche Presse Agentur, Agence France Press, or other news agency that directly competed against the historic UPI. I've changed those sentences to read: UPI is headquartered in Washington D.C. During the mid-1980s, at the height of UPI's expansion, it operated more than 180 news bureaus around the world and employed nearly 2,000 salaried journalists. Today, except for its Washington office, UPI neither owns nor leases any news bureaus, although it does employ freelance journalists in several of the world's major cities. Vcrosbie (talk) 17:52, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

UPI did, at least as of mid-2007, have actual offices in London, Santiago and Beirut. As far as Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo, I am not 100% sure whether those were offices, or simply employees (as opposed to stringers), but they most certainly had offices in the other three, including satellite and data connections.

'People of UPI' section
This section appears to consist mostly of almost-entirely unsourced, often highly-tangential, trivia, and far too heavy a concentration of redlinks. It needs sourcing & pruning. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

1881?
The article now says that the United Press Association was founded in 1907. Yet, this wired news from 1881 is attributed to "United Press Association". The same text is also used in the New York Times article (without attribution). -- Petri Krohn (talk) 17:51, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

United Press Associations
Newspaper publisher Edward W. Scripps (1854–1926) created the first chain of newspapers in the United States. After the Associated Press refused to sell its services to several of his papers, Scripps together with partner Milton A. McRae combined three regional news services (the Publisher's Press Association, Scripps McRae Press Association, and the Scripps News Association) into the United Press Associations, which began service on June 21, 1907. Scripps founded United Press on the principle that there should be no restrictions on who could buy news from a news service. William Randolph Hearst entered the fray in 1909 when he founded International News Service.

The AP was owned by its newspaper members, who could simply decline to serve the competition. Scripps had refused to become a member of AP, calling it a "monopoly, pure and simple" and declaring it was "impossible for any new paper to be started in any of the cities where there were AP members." (AP appeared in 1848, when six New York City newspapers formed a cooperative to gather and share telegraph news, but the name Associated Press did not come into general use until the 1860s.)

Scripps believed that there should be no restrictions on who could buy news from a news service and he made UP available to anyone, including his competitors. He later said: "I regard my life's greatest service to the people of this country to be the creation of the United Press."

Creating UPI
Frank Bartholomew, UPI's last reporter-president, took over in 1955, obsessed with bringing Hearst's International News Service (INS) into UP. He put the "I" in UPI on May 24, 1958, when UP and INS merged to become United Press International. Hearst, who owned King Features Syndicate, received a small share of the merged company. Lawyers on both sides worried about anti-trust problems if King competitor United Features Syndicate remained a part of the newly merged company, so it was made a separate Scripps company, which deprived UPI of a persuasive sales tool and the money generated by Charles M. Schulz' popular Peanuts and other comic strips.

The new UPI had 6,000 employees and 5,000 subscribers, 1,000 of them newspapers.

[End of unsourced material removed from article. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC) ]

Missing history section
"Undo" is looking like a crude tool. I understand WP:BURDEN, but the difference from my previous restoration is that two further sources were made visible to the reader: (1) the Time article quoted at International_News_Service (seealso often means that fuller citation can be found elsewhere in Wikipedia), (2) the external link. It is not my normal practice to introduce this half-assed level of citation, but I think I can defend it here as first aid to a woefully deficient article (missing even the basic parameters of UP's foundation and 1958 merger to form UPI, which are grounded in a WP:RS at International News Service) that no one (myself included) seems to have the interest & energy to fix.

This is better than nothing, and WP:BURDEN does not require, for its satisfaction, that citations be expertly formatted and ideally presented. Once the two sources given above are in the article, it would seem appropriate that anything they support be retained. Anything else should be challenged specifically with cn so that editors have an opportunity within a reasonable time to support it. (I don't care if things like the quote templated in 2007 are deleted: that makes sense.)

In sum, the two citations my edit provides support much of the section, and the fact that they should be made better with neat inline refs is true, but an improvement project that does not justify blanking the section. The article in its present state is disfigured in a way that no strict Wikipedia policy requires: I regret editing to make it a mediocrely and partially cited section; again, that's not my usual practice, but it's better than nothing (and nothing is what the reader now learns about the most basic common-knowledge facts of UPI's history). Wareh (talk) 20:10, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * P.S. Note that in the removed section, above, the three longest and most substantive paragraph have no  tags.  I believe the time to add them (and wait some months for response) is now, retaining at least those paragraphs.  Wareh (talk) 20:22, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * YES THEY DID, at the time they were first deleted (last month), before YOU restored this material without the tags. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

As to the rest: HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Whilst a seealso may (or then again may not) be adequate to prevent (or at least delay) deletion of unsourced material, it is not an adequate basis for its reinclusion.
 * 2) The webarchived page is WP:SPS, and therefore not an appropriate source for use about a third party (even if you had provided appropriate citations indicating what material it was purported to verify).
 * 3) This is not attributing "to a reliable, published source in the form of an inline citation, and that the source directly support the material in question", so fails WP:V, and thus is as close to "nothing" as makes no difference.


 * Ok, the version I found to restore lacked cn tags on the substantial paragraphs (I certainly did not edit them out), but I gather from your protest that they were subsequently introduced at some point in the history after the point at which I accessed that version.  I regret the oversight.  I think your dismissal of the seealso's support for many of the essential points is cavalier; as I said before, such "further details" pointers often point our readers to more fully cited discussions, and I can't discover any basis in policy for saying such a form of reference fails to suffice here.  But I don't want to waste time arguing.  If I have time, I'll put the Time article in the references here and adapt the material at the INS article to the topic of UPI.  If you have time, I hope you will.


 * WP:SPS "may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications"; I'm no expert in media history, but the author is pictured here producing copy for reliable third-party publications in the business about which he later compiled those facts. So this is not a flagrant fail.


 * In general, my shyness to remove so quickly may not be defensible by the letter of policy. I understand it's not a valid argument against you that this approach would destroy a lot of content I consider worthwhile for future editors and current readers.  But I do think the seealso and the WP:SPS deserve better than abrupt dismissal. Wareh (talk) 14:24, 9 December 2010 (UTC)


 * (i) The first tag on the material I removed, and you added, was placed in cn was added in February 2007. Back then it did not even contain some of the material you restored. I am therefore at a loss to work out how you managed to find a version with all the restored material, without any tags. (ii) As to the see-also'd section -- it turned out to be a WP:COPYVIO. (iii) What evidence do you have that Lowry is an "established expert on the topic of the article"? HrafnTalkStalk(P) 15:11, 9 December 2010 (UTC)


 * (i) All I can say is that I cut-and-pasted from a version somewhere in the history (I had to page through it at large intervals to find any treatment at all).


 * (ii) How can a 278-word quotation from a press account, when the quoted words are indicated as such and reference is given, be a WP:COPYVIO? This is fair use as practiced routinely in Wikipedia, blogs, newspaper websites themselves, etc.  Is there a part of WP:COPYVIO I'm missing, which lays down something specific about extensive quotation, for example, the percentage of an article that crosses the line from appropriate citation to copyright infringement?  Wareh (talk) 15:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)


 * How? Very easily when it's a 425 word article -- that's 65% of the article that has been copied verbatim. See WP:NFC : "Extensive quotation of copyrighted text is prohibited." HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not disputing that it was an extensive quote, and perhaps inappropriately so (certainly it was not digested the way it should have been for other reasons), but the fact remains that it would be useful to have some rough guidelines about what the "prohibited" degree of extensive quotation really is. These guidelines, by the way, should not be crude percentages; of course a 75-word "article" could be quoted 100% without any real risk of copyvio, while 0.1% of a 10,000-page work would be dubious. Our article fair use and published treatments of the question provide some illumination (under 300 words of Time would probably be ok, I believe), while acknowledging how blurry the lines really are.  Wareh (talk) 18:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * (i) Extensive quoting is not merely 'inappropriate', but prohibited. (ii) Read Fair use -- which does in fact talk percentages, not word count. This is the legal framework that Wikipedia is attempting to stay well away from the borders of. (iii) This would appear to be a completely unambiguous case of violation of WP:COPYVIO/WP:NFC. If you want to discuss hypothetical details further, then take it to somewhere like WT:COPYVIO. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:55, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

It should be possible to write a good article on the UPI. There must be sources around. Borock (talk) 16:49, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Archiving
Archiving posts older than 180 days. After reviewing this page it seems like the correct amount of time. -KeptSouth (talk) 20:51, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. Now 180 days (6 months) is set. --Kslotte (talk) 10:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * 100 days was already set. No need to keep old dead threads around. If the page is inactive, the bot won't archive. Jayjg (talk) 02:46, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * "100 days was already set" BY YOU (not too long ago). Why the WP:LAME edit-war to enforce an archive duration on a talkpage you aren't involved in? To settle this, I'm adding a strong support for 180 days -- because this idiocy is pissing me off! HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Archiving reredux
Jayjg...

Archiving rereredux
...why...

Archiving rerereredux
...create....

Archiving rererereredux
...redundant...

Archiving rerererereredux
...section...

Archiving rererererereredux
...titles? HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:46, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Archiving rerererererereredux
And why edit-war to change the archiving duration of a talkpage that you have no other involvement in? It is ludicrously WP:LAME. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:46, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I didn't "modify" your comment, other than to remove the redundent section title -- I merely archived it as ludicrously irrelevant WP:WIKIDRAMA. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Archiving redux
I restored the archiving time to 100 days after it was changed to 180 days, but Hrafn has reverted me, with the edit summary Rvt: no consensus for this (and editor seems to have no other involvement in this article. Now, oddly enough, he wasn't concerned that the "editor seems to have no other involvement in this article" when User:Kslotte lengthened the archiving time a few days before. In any event, I've manually archived a couple of long-dead threads (including one that the bot would never archive because of its formatting), and opened this thread to discuss archiving timing, which normally doesn't require this much discussion. Can Hrafn explain why he wants archiving to happen only after a thread has been completely dead for six months? Can he explain what advantage there is to having dead threads stick around on an article Talk: page, encouraging editors to waste their time responding to discussions that are long over, and whose participants have moved on (and often even left Wikipedia)? Jayjg (talk) 17:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry Hrafn, I don't see any rationale for leaving dead thread around. Discussion are discussions, not votes. And please don't modify my comments again. Thanks! Jayjg (talk) 00:51, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Removing a section title I've created and collapsing my comment so that it's invisible is modifying my comment. So far there's only one argument (mine) on the Talk: page regarding archiving times; votes, non-responsive comments, and disruptive comments (like yours below) don't really have any value in a discussion. You can fool around all you like, but that means that there's only one actual relevant view on the archiving timing. Jayjg (talk) 12:24, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Removing a REDUNDANT section title you POINTLESSLY created, and archiving (NOT "MODIFYING") your WP:DEADHORSE comment is perfectly reasonable. If you want an explicit reason leaving it at 6-months (a point there is already a WP:CONSENSUS on), here's one: this talkpage has low traffic and frequently experiences lulls of the order of 3-6 months, so there's little point in setting an archive duration shorter than this. Oh, and you still haven't answered my question: Why edit-war to change the archiving duration of a talkpage that you have no other involvement in?' HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:32, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It wasn't a redundant section because the previous discussion was old, and the original participants had left. This was a new discussion on the topic, with editors who were currently active on it. See, that's what happens on Wikipedia; discussions die, editors move on, etc. That's why one doesn't want to set the "age" parameter to more than 4 months. As to why I restored the 100 day archiving time? I was wiki-gnoming, the 100 day limit was no problem for at least a couple of months, and no actual rationale was presented for reverting that change. The real question is why would you edit war over it? Where's the evidence of discussions here experiencing "lulls" of 4-6 months? Keeping in mind that the 100 day limit set would easily deal with "lulls" of over 3 months. And finally, please stop including your disruptive sections below in this section, which is for actual, serious discussion. If I were you I'd simply delete the section you created below as utterly inappropriate (and, frankly, casting a very poor light on your actions here), but that's up to you. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 12:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
 * (i) WP:Complete bollocks! The last comment on the previous discussion was less than a week old when you started the new thread, the oldest only a couple of months old. (ii) It is unreasonable to expect a de novo reappraisal every couple of months. (iii) That "discussions die, editors move on, etc" is no good reason to be too quick about hiding the results of past consensuses. Talkpages are a balance between documenting past discussions/consensuses and having too much for new editors to wade through --where there isn't too much volume there's little point in pushing the balance too far towards brevity. (iv) Given your "disruptive" insistence on having this in a REDUNDANT new thread, your demand is ludicrously WP:POT. So no, I will not agree to their removal (nor their being moved to a new top-level thread) until you agree to the removal of the ludicrous title that they were a response to. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:33, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You haven't actually addressed the issue of threads dying though, which they do all the time. If someone responds to a dead thread, then their time is wasted, regardless of how short the Talk: page is. And don't change the level of this section I've created again. Thanks! Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 02:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Already covered in (newly bolded) passage above. And where a new thread is clearly a subtopic of an immediately=preceding one, darn straight I'll nest it within that topic. Your pathetic demand that I should refrain from such perfectly unexceptionable house-keeping is rendered all the more ludicrously WP:POT by your insistence on creating an utterly-redundant and "disruptive" 'Hrafn's Comment' heading for my poking fun at your Redundant 'Reduxing'. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:32, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure which "newly bolded" passage you mean, but if you mess around with the levels of the sections I create again, I'll simply revert your activity as an obviously disruptive violation of WP:TALK - as is, indeed, the rest of your activity here so far. You can put whatever title you like on your absurdly disruptive section, with its six subsections, but don't go sticking it in sections for serious discussion that I've created, and don't go messing with the headings I've created either. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 04:10, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Unipressers?
This article uses the slang/jargon term "Unipressers" (e.g. "Former Unipressers such as ..."). Is this appropriate for an encyclopedia article? Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 12:27, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It's simply a contraction of "UNIted PRESS" + "ers"=members-of/belonging-to. In fact it has official usage: http://100years.upi.com/unipressers.html so is hardly inappropriate. Surely you can find something more substantive to raise as an issue on talk? <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:41, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm sure that's what it is, but should the article be using this jargon? I don't think the WP:JARGON supports it. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 02:58, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Jayjg: a simple and obvious contraction IS NOT "technical language", so WP:MOS does not really apply. If you really think that this might be confusing, you could simply WP:Explain jargon and have the article inform the reader the blindingly obvious point that "UNIted PRESS staff membERS" are often referred to as "unipressers", when the contraction is first used. For myself, I think this is a ludicrous storm-in-a-tea-cup. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:38, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You seriously think that "Unipressers" is a "simple contraction", not jargon? I think that's a highly unlikely claim. In any event, contractions are unencyclopedic writing, and should be avoided. As for a "ludicrous storm-in-a-tea-cup", the only think ludicrous is your over-the-top hostility towards me, because I set the archiving time on this talk page to a more reasonable value, and protested your subsequent disruptive closing of threads, adding 7 levels of sub-threads, changing the heading levels of threads I create, etc. Now, behave appropriately, or move on to a different article. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 04:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)