Talk:Virginia Citizens Defense League

Article Bias
User S4k removed the link to the Cocco article I added on April 20. I have not reverted the changes, or re-added the article reference or link, because it might be argued that doing so would have shown bias against the VCDL, and two wrongs don't make a right. However, the recent additions are clearly strongly baised in favor of VCDL, and go beyond the scope of the article as well. I have therefore nominated this article for a neutrality check. Rblaster 23:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Article Bias (continued)
Hope I use this Talk page right, since I'm new to Wikipedia.

There have been many newspaper articles on VCDL and the Bloomberg gun drawing. Of all the articles, only the Cocco article contained a factual error stating that the drawing would be held at the home of a victim of the Virginia Tech murderer. It's important that references are accurate and don't repeat or perpetuate errors.

The "Philosophy" section I added was copied from the VCDL membership brochure. There are several different approaches that organizations use to advance their agenda. This just explains the VCDL approach in their own words.

S4k 04:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC)S4k

Factual Error
Hi S4k, it looks like you used the page just fine, right down to signing your comment.

I am curious how you determined that the Cocco article contained a factual error. Is there some source you have found to back that up, and can you provide a link? Thanks. Rblaster 02:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Factual Error
The article that was removed does contain a factual error. It states that the drawing is going to occur at the home of a victim of the VT shooting near the bottom. It was never planned to be held there. It was originally planned for a regular VCDL meeting, which is held in a meeting room of the George Mason District government building in Fairfax County. That is where the drawing did occur on May 17th 2007.

W palmer 13:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)w_palmer

Re: Cocco Article
I still would like to know why someone can't provide something...anything...that refutes the content of the article besides just saying it's wrong. If it was factually incorrect, where did she get her information from, and why weren't any of the papers that printed it forced to issue a retraction? Is there even a letter to the editor from any of the papers that published the article which alleged it was incorrect? I have no doubt that the drawing was originally to be held at a regular meeting of the VCDL, since it was scheduled before the shootings. But once the shootings occurred, the location might very well have been changed, possibly to make some sort of point. Who knows? Even a Google search doesn't seem to turn up anything suggesting it's a lie or factual error. Why? Rblaster 02:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: Factual Error
Ever since VCDL announced the drawing back in mid January, they always said it'd be held at their regularly scheduled meeting. When it was postponed on April 18, they said the drawing would be held at their "next regular membership meeting on May 17th." See: http://www2.vcdl.org/cgi-bin/wspd_cgi.sh/vcdl/vadetail.html?RECID=1705153&FILTER= for the postponement announcement and http://www.vcdl.org/static/meetings.html for a list of meeting dates and locations. Subsequent VCDL announcements also stated the drawing would be held at their regular meeting at the government center.

I've never seen anything put out by VCDL to indicate that the drawing would be held at any place other than the government center, let alone at an individual's home.

I have no idea where the reporter got the information that the drawing would be held at the home of one of the VT victims. It was the only article I saw that said the drawing would be held in someone's home. Maybe you should ask her where she got her info.

S4k 05:47, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting idea, Rblaster. How about you go out and prove a negative. That's what you're asking everyone else here to do. Have you considered that possibility that there is no Google result showing that the meeting was changed to anywhere other than a regular VCDL meeting at the George Mason District building becuase it wasn't?

70.179.98.222 19:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC) w_palmer

Here's a better idea - letting sleeping dogs lie. I haven't added to this since May 22. S4k responded and I let it go. But carry on if you feel it's necessary.

Rblaster 03:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Cocco article is wrong
Although the Cocco article link seems to be gone, based on the above comments on the article, I can say that the article is erroneous.

I am the President of VCDL and I speak with 100% authority when I say that the drawing was to be held at the Mason Government Center from the very beginning and that did not change.

The drawing was conceptualized in December, 2006 and started on January 15th, 2007 - long before the Virginia Tech incident. The rules of the drawing have always stated that it would be held at the Mason Government Center at our April meeting.

The April meeting was only days after the Virginia Tech tragedy, so we moved the event out to our next meeting in May to give everyone a chance to heal.

If there is any question of my identity, you can reach me at president@vcdl.org or at the phone number listed on the VCDL web page.

PVanCleave (talk) 06:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Text is verbatim from VCDL Membership Application
The entirety of the text of the philosophy section is from the VCDL membership brochure (Word doc). This text is by no means neutral and at least this section (if not the entire page) needs to be rewritten to conform to Wikipedia's guidelines.

Andrew (talk) 06:26, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the article clearly violates Wikipedia's guidelines, so I have changed the tag to reflect a definite POV dispute. Ravens freak0624 (talk) 22:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If there is already a good number of editors and users acknowledging the unfair use of wikipedia to advance this organization's ideals, it is time to either engage in a meaningful discussion about this, or simply re-edit the article to start on its bare minimum and allow for a new and more wikified article to emerge. If you have an interest on this issue, please, respond here. comment added by Dennishidalgo (talk •contribs) Historian 01:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Question
Dear Readers, My name is David Keeter, and I was a member of the VCDL. In fact, I was more than a member, I hosted fund raisers, recruited members, spoke at their meetings and even allowed Mr. Van Cleef and associates to shoot on my range for free even though they never even offered to buy so much as a single box of ammunition from me in my gun shop. That was okay, I thought, at the time, seeing that I thought it was a good cause, but I was so wrong! In February of 2007, I was subjected to an ATF sting operation not too different to that of "Fast and Furious". Once arrested I immediately called upon "my friends" at the VCDL for some assistance, (not monetary, but of help with legal representation of Attorneys who knew gun laws), not only did they not respond, but they held fundraisers for other gun shops State Wide to help them in State matters, (Not Federal), and never once mentioned me. Without proper assistance from any Attorney, I was forced into taking a plea, and received 57 months in Federal prison. My crime? Selling a gun to a person who gave it to a convicted felon. Now this is the really funny part...how did I know that? Besides the fact that all the "actors" in this sting were paid informants, (C.I.s) who can lie legally in Federal Court without so much as a wink from the Judge, (in this case the "Honorable Henry Hudson) the only reason that I could have known that the "convicted felon" was a convicted felon was because that the Virginia State Firearms Transaction Center (VASFTC) told me she was.   Question 1:  How did they know?    Question 2:  At what point was the VASFTC involved? No mention of the "Straw purchaser" was ever mentioned.  The sale went through legally, because the buyer never said that they were buying for someone else.  But more importantly, check the guidelines for the VASFTC.  The VASFTC by law, cannot give out criminal history backgrounds to gun dealers.  They either "approve, or not approve" the sale.  Therefore, there was no way that I could have known anything about a felon's history, even if they tried to purchase the firearm, which they did not! So in respect to our "friends" at VCDl, before you invest your money and trust in them, just know that they will take credit where credit isn't due, take your dues and pocket them, and when you need their help...well...just reread this response. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1003:B123:6EFC:89B7:AB36:362E:1A1 (talk) 07:47, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality dispute tag removal
The tag is being removed because discussion of dispute has been  dormant  for a year and therefore meets the following requirement for removal. Please note the words "when any one of the following is true" at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POV

This (neutrality dispute) template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true:


 * 1) There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved.
 * 2) It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given.
 * 3) In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant 74.96.242.195 (talk) 14:41, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * (talk) Thanks for taking special interest on this article, but I am not of the opinion that discussion has ended nor is dormant. Timing in WP is quite relative. My intervention on this matter, this very response, just shows the conversation is still alive. The way I see it, this article is closer to propaganda than to a neutral presentation of this organization. For the reasons that have been presented in this TP and is also embedded in the changes and summary commentaries, I believe it is a blatant violation of WP's Npov principles. If you believe differently, let's open another tab here and revive the discussion. Based on my own intervention, which gives evidence to the continued existence of the discussion, I bring back the Npov tag. Historiador (talk) 16:12, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking a special and sudden interest in this article yourself. I see you have made no contributions to the article before or contributed to any discussion, nor has anyone else participated in discussion of the NPOV tag in a year, yet when the tag was correctly removed due to dormancy, you put it back and justified your action with the novel assertion that your reaction to the tag removal represents continued discussion. What you have done is not new discussion, it is the equivalent of 'bumping' an old dormant thread on a message board to make it appear current. You don't seem to have any interest in the article other than maintaining a NPOV tag on it. If your actions here are legitimate, any NPOV tag can be kept on any article indefinitely, against the explicit directive that the template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article.  74.96.242.195 (talk) 19:09, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * (talk) For about two years have I waited for answers to the concerns I placed on this same Talk Page. Please, look again under the subheading: "Text is verbatim from VCDL Membership Application." I was only the last one to support the need for change in that subsection. So, no. Reinstituting the tag is not bumping, but reasserting the need to address these concerns. It can go on indefinitely only if the editors interested in maintaining the article do not address the issues being raised by others. Stalling change by ignoring pleas for improvement is not an excuse to keep this article in this way indefinitely. Historiador (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Npov
In conformity with previous assertions, I open this section to deal specifically with the issue of lack of neutrality. My intention at this moment is only to present the key argument and allow others to add and refute. In other words, this is not the complete position against the way this article is written. It is just the beginning. Simply put, this article reads as a propaganda and not as a neutral encyclopedia entry. This organization has been at the center of a highly controversial subject. Thus, anyone, even those linked to the organization, interested in making it fairer, should have little trouble in finding information other than adulatory to include in the article. As long as this entry reads the way it does right now, it belongs among those eligible for speedy deletion. Historiador (talk) 16:26, 5 December 2015 (UTC) (minor prose edits) Historiador (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Copyvio Detector: According to this tool, the article is %65 from the organisation's website. All WP should be written from a perspective other than those linked to the organization. So, it also meets the requirements for COI and Copyvio tags. Historiador (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

The entire Philosophy section is still taken directly from its website. I rewrote some of the "Efforts" section to make it a little better, but the POV is still far from neutral. the Philosophy section needs to be rewritten or deleted. Plandu (talk) 05:41, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it needs to be rewritten entirely.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 19:14, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

New source
Mother Jones has just published a long piece on the org, if anyone's interested in adding to the article. Schazjmd  (talk)  00:07, 3 December 2020 (UTC)