User talk:Fairness Doctrine

February 2009
Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not add promotional material to articles or other Wikipedia pages. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" is strongly discouraged. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. --Dynaflow  babble  00:33, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The Maureen O'Connell article
Hi. I apologize for any harshness you may have detected from the template message I left you earlier. However, the point still stands that this is an encyclopedia, not a webhost for curricula vitae. The tone and structure of the text you were using to replace the article was far out of line with Wikipedia's manual of style, and much more in tune with a campaign bio or CV. When experienced Wikipedia editors and readers see something like that, there is a tendency for them to immediately assume astroturfing, and they are often proved right at Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest Noticeboard, through discussions within the various wikiprojects or on one of the many specialized noticeboards, etc. Regardless of intentions and particular circumstances, that kind of controversy is exactly the kind of thing that one would want to keep away from a sensitive political bio page.

In truth, It looks much better for this Maureen O'Connell person to have a "normal" Wikipedia article about her than it does to have people warring to keep the article in a version that looks more like an outside, professionally-written capsule PR bio than the encyclopedia article most readers would expect to see.

I have rewritten the previous incarnation of the article a bit to take out a large chunk 2007 campaign verbiage (you were correct to point out that it was given undue weight) and incorporated a few of the more important points from your version. That should give us a good starting point from which to later expand article in an acceptably encyclopedic style.

If you would like to look at some examples of what a decently-structured article for a politician would look like, I'd recommend taking a look at the articles on two of my former Congressmen, Fred Upton and George Miller (California). Upton's article is fairly terse and mainly biographical, while Miller's is broken down into sections on the various issues he's attached himself to over the years. Either style is fine, as long as the article can pass the Neutral point of view policy and jibe with the manual of style. If you are interested in learning more about Wikipedia's policies on biographies of living persons, please see WP:BLP. Leave a message on my Talk page (click "babble" in my signature) if you have any other Wikipedia-related questions. Thanks. --Dynaflow  babble  02:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Would you really redact any mention of your subject's (as yet) political high water mark? It seems analogous, on a smaller scale, to denying Henry Clay a mention of his presidential runs in his article.  In any case, the State Senate run would have seen a peaking of O'Connell's notability that would justify at least the truncated, one-paragraph treatment of that race without letting it accumulate undue weight.   --Dynaflow   babble  04:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)