Talk:Valerie Davidson

Untitled
Reverting the change to WP:ALASKA importance by Juneau Mike. My experience with this user is that he is someone with a fondness for fueling conflict, but I really don't have the time at this stage of my life to go there. Instead, I'll explain. There was a discussion over at the WP Alaska talk page about seven years ago, in which I attempted to establish a basis in the project for article assessments, something which had fallen by the wayside for roughly two or three years at that point. One of the points made was that certain current officeholders should have their articles' importance assessed a certain way while in office, which can be adjusted appropriately once they leave office. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mike was on Wikipedia and active with Alaska-related content in 2011, so he should have at least been aware of that discussion. If not, there's not exactly anything going on over there, so there's plenty of opportunity to have this discussion again and not have it be buried by other things.

As Alaska has very few statewide elected officials in comparison to many other states, holding a statewide elected office can be construed as being of high importance to the state, even if by its very nature the lieutenant governor doesn't exactly do much of anything important and Davidson wasn't elected to the office. The main consideration would be this: technically, is Davidson really the acting lieutenant governor? Sounds like the media has been too busy fawning all over her to bother to address that point with its audiences.

On a slightly related note, Mike's rationale is that Davidson is of "equal importance" to her predecessor Byron Mallott (ignoring that Mallott's article has been assessed as high importance for the project for nearly the past four years and was dropped down to mid importance now that he is no longer in office, something done in conjunction with assessing this article). This sentiment appears to echo an edit made to the article that I reverted as puffery, which also echoes scattered mentions made in the media, including social media, that Davidson and Mallott are the highest-achieving Alaska Natives in the history of Alaskan politics. I call bollocks. Simply put, certainly Davidson's and arguably even Mallott's achievements can hardly hold a candle to that of Frank Peratrovich. Feel free to admit that we're really a news site that's here to push whatever the media's pushing today, because that's the only basis I can see for disagreeing with that point. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 04:38, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Putting her importance back to high is fine with me. You don't have to write a book about it. Thanks for your efforts. Juneau Mike (talk) 13:04, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

More sources
Link to Google search for pre-2017 pieces on Davidson for reference. cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 17:34, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Image
The image of Davidson absolutely fails any reasonable interpretation of the relevant policies regarding fair use. The rationale states in part "Could not locate a free image of Davidson". This is what happens when you try and build content strictly by scavenging off of the web instead of going out in the real world and making things happen. The Alaska Federation of Natives convention, which is one of the largest if not the largest public gathering in Alaska every year, concluded just days before. She was all over the place at that event. Far as I'm aware, we still have active Wiki(m/p)edians living in Anchorage; I don't know what the hell they're doing that we can't get any coverage of this sort. Regardless, if she's "a significant political figure in the United States" as the rationale states, then common sense would dictate that "significant" opportunities exist to obtain a free-content photo. Has it occurred to anyone that there exists a pattern on the encyclopedia of taking the stance that perceptions of someone's office or title or other position should drive whether an subject lacking any free-content images has a fair-use image in the corresponding article, and that such a stance could very well be POV? There's a slight chance that I will be in Anchorage on November 6 and I'm seeing advertising for an Election Central get-together, more than likely at the Dena'ina Center. At the last one I attended, for the 2012 primary, Mead Treadwell was there in his role as lieutenant governor. As that position is responsible for overseeing the Division of Elections, I can't see why Davidson wouldn't be there. I'll try to keep checking in here. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 23:34, 24 October 2018 (UTC) Since it's likely to be deleted, I'll copy the comments I made at the file talk page here:"I left comments at Talk:Valerie Davidson#Image. To specifically address your points here, the metadata credits the photo to Michael Dinneen Photography and not to any state agency. Comparing the way she looks in this photo to recent media photos taken at the AFN convention, this photo could very well have been taken before she entered state service. Even if it were a work of the state government, there would be still be a dispute as to its usability.  Alaska state law favors the view that works of the state government aren't copyrighted except in limited circumstances.  Because there hasn't been an explicit legal opinion issued to that effect that I'm aware of, one would have to default to the view taken on the federal level (where the body of copyright law resides) that works of state governments are copyrighted. I've been trying to discuss that very issue on the state level for roughly the past seven or eight years and have gotten nowhere. Because we live in a day and age and place where everything is aggressively monetized, if someone has the opportunity to claim copyright to something which really isn't copyrighted so that they can sell rights to it, they will, trust me." RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 00:30, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Requesting career update
Information to be added to Career section: "On April 25, 2020, Davidson became the 12th president of Alaska Pacific University, a liberal arts college and Alaska Native-serving institution in Anchorage. She is the first woman to lead the university.

Explanation of issue: Her career section hasn't been updated

References supporting change: I work for Alaska Pacific University. The information on her role as president is available here: https://www.alaskapacific.edu/valerie-nurraraaluk-davidson-named-alaska-pacific-university-president/.

If you choose to use the above text, you can link "Alaska Native-serving institution" to the Wikipedia page for Minority-serving institution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority-serving_institution

209.112.147.214 (talk) 18:52, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Altamel (talk) 04:26, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Comment on the current state of the article
Fast forward several years and this article is yet another example of an encyclopedia entry stuck in "curious snapshot in time" mode. Contemporary sources refer to her as the girls state cross-country skiing champion while attending Ben Eielson High School. That's just as relevant to the biography of a person as a laundry list of job titles. Let me know if any of you have the stomach to do anything besides dumping whatever Google spoon-feeds you today into the encyclopedia. I'll see if I can help you locate those sources. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 04:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)