User talk:JocularJellyfish/Archives/2018/February

''This is an archive of User talk:JocularJellyfish. Please do not change it in any way. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 01:18, 8 March 2018 (UTC)''

See: Stras, David, Appointed January 31, 2018.
http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/active-and-senior-judges — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.241.40.127 (talk) 20:33, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * His FJC bio does not state that he has been commissioned yet. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 21:53, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Okay... and why is that more reliable than the 8th Circuit's own website...? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.241.40.127 (talk) 14:36, 2 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Because that is the biographical directory of all federal judges which lists important information such as confirmation and the commission date. Every other federal judge has their commission date recorded based off of their FJC bio, and while the 8th circuit site says Stras was appointed that day, he may have just been confirmed by the Senate and has not received his commission yet. Until the FJC bio is updated or another valid source is provided (meaning a news article), we don't know when Stras was commissioned. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 14:58, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Let's just look at the last two judges confirmed before Stras. Ralph Erickson's confirmation vote happened on September 28, but he did not receive his commission until October 12. The 8th Circuit website says he was appointed the next day, October 13. L. Steven Grasz was confirmed by the Senate on December 12 but he also did not immediately receive his commission, instead receiving it January 3. The Eighth Circuit website says he was appointed the next day, January 4. Sensing a trend? The Eighth Circuit website does not list a judge as a current member of the court until he or she has received their commission. The FJC is a resource, it is not an official record. Nonetheless, this page also lists Judge Stras as a member of the court: https://www.fjc.gov/history/courts/u.s.-court-appeals-eighth-circuit-judges. If you want to wait until you are satisfied to update his page, go right ahead. I'll just wait around for you to do so. 63.241.40.127 (talk) 16:00, 2 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I understand your logic but with the differing dates between the 8th circuit website and the FJC bio, I'm just going to wait until the FJC bio is updated but if you prefer you can make the change. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 18:05, 2 February 2018 (UTC)


 * What do you all think about this? Please note that the IP editor seems to have an address registered to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts; could that be a possible COI? – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 18:06, 2 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I have no problem going with the Eighth Circuit website. But since there does seem to be a date discrepancy on a couple of the judges, it might warrant an investigation as to why. For example, one source might be going with the date on the commission while the other might be going by the day he actually received the commission. Somebody can make an FOIA request for a copy of the commission and solve the discrepancy. It is also possible the Eighth Circuit might be going by oath date. I would say, for the moment, go with the Eighth Circuit information, but keep an eye on FJC Bio and see what they eventually put. Safiel (talk) 18:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I see an issue with doing that. Consistency isn't guaranteed by that. There are ~100 Article III courts with that many websites. I'm sure some district court sites don't list start dates at all for judges and other courts, like the 8th circuit, list their start dates. That means there are ~100 different court staffs putting information on their websites with different standards. This also brings up the question of when a judge actually takes office. I know WP:USCJ currently uses commission date, but as you said, there is also the date the judge received the commission (as opposed to when the President signed it) or the date they took the oath of office. I think the project needs to emphasize consistency and a RFC may be in order. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 18:31, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we can deal with that by agreeing, if a discrepancy occurs, to go with FJC Bio. Safiel (talk) 18:41, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It's been my rule of thumb to go by the FJC, even if it's listed on the court website. I haven't done an extensive search, and by practice, it doesn't look like the 8th Circuit documents when a judge is commissioned and/or sworn in but I haven't come across anything yet stating otherwise. A judge could be commissioned the same day or it could be months from now, like Valerie E. Caproni, she was confirmed September 9th and received her commission nearly 3 months later. Obviously, he'll be commissioned sometime this year (hopefully) but I think we can hold off on updating his page until there's more concrete sources regarding his commission date and eventual swearing in. As of February 2, 2018 he was still listed on the Minnesota Supreme Court website so it wouldn't make sense, to me, to end his term for state judicial service over federal judicial service when there's conflicting sources. Snickers2686 (talk) 01:44, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Andrei Iancu
As I type this, I am listening to the live roll call vote on Iancu's confirmation (https://floor.senate.gov/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=20). he is not yet confirmed, and has not yet been sworn as director. Once both of those things happen, go ahead and make the edits, if you like, but please hold off until they are accurate. There's no need to scoop the news here. TJRC (talk) 23:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * as of now the C-SPAN roll call has 93 votes in favor. He's de facto confirmed. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 23:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * If you have to qualify it, he's not yet confirmed! In any event, he's not sworn, so does not yet have the position. My guess is he'll probably be sworn today, but it's already early evening in DC, so maybe not; and in any event, if I recall correctly, Lee held off to be publicly sworn at SXSW a day or two later; I think Kappos was sworn the following morning, too. TJRC (talk) 23:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to change the the status quo of the pages (meaning the versions you have edited), but I will note that for the political appointments by Donald Trump the Obama administration predecessors usually have their successors added immediately upon confirmation. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 23:24, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think either Lee or Kappos was. As of a few seconds ago, he's confirmed, but let's let him take office before saying he has the office. Regardless of what's been done on other articles, that's really the only thing that makes sense. TJRC (talk) 23:33, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll leave those changes to you. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 23:38, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

USPTO news reports he was sworn in yesterday, Feb 8. Would you like to do the honors? TJRC (talk) 22:45, 9 February 2018 (UTC)


 * My pleasure. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 23:28, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Thomas S. Kleeh
Hello, JocularJellyfish. I wanted to let you know that I’m proposing an article that you started, Thomas S. Kleeh, for deletion because I don't think it meets our criteria for inclusion. If you don't want the article deleted:


 * 1) [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&action=edit edit the page]
 * 2) remove the text that looks like this:
 * 3) save the page

Also, be sure to explain why you think the article should be kept in your edit summary or on the article's talk page. If you don't do so, it may be deleted later anyway.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions.

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:17, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Template:Neilgorsuchopinions


Hello, JocularJellyfish. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Template:Neilgorsuchopinions".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the, , or  code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Legacypac (talk) 16:58, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Political affiliation of nominees
Hey! Just a quick question. I've noticed you've been adding political affiliations to infoboxes for judicial nominees like Susan Paradise Baxter (Democrat) or Karen Gren Scholer (Republican). I can't find any mention of their affiliation in said articles or a citation. Is it possible you could add those so it isn't challenged down the road? Thanks! Snickers2686 (talk) 00:23, 20 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I'll do that in the future. I've been going off of Judiciary Committee questionnaires for someone like Scholer. For fear of the links going dead with the end of the 115th Congress on the Committee site, I didn't source them yet. Is there a way we could put the questionnaires on some external site? – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 00:27, 20 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Being as it's "technically" a government document, I'm not sure if they do that or if it's allowed to be copied and posted somewhere else. I suppose you could do a screenshot and try it? I don't know. I haven't been able to find that specific information anywhere else other than the Judiciary Committee website itself. You might be able to find past transcripts on congress.gov but that could be like searching for a needle in a haystack, depending on how much time you want to invest. Snickers2686 (talk) 00:52, 20 February 2018 (UTC)


 * In that case I'll just use those questionnaires as references directly from the Senate site. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 01:50, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Change to Federal Judges Page
That page is under administrative restrictions, including one which states in big bold letters at the top of the editing window: "You must not reinstate any challenged (via reversion) edits without obtaining consensus on the talk page of this article." You have just done exactly this, reinstating a challenged (via reversion by me) edit without obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article. Before you plead that the actual facts are on your side, let me remind you that there is no exception here for being "actually right". You may be right that another judge has announced his retirement, but our page explicitly takes its data on vacancies from the Federal Judicial Center and so until such time as the FJC notices the vacancy and publicizes it, we should not try to take it into account. Under these circumstances, I would immediately revert your edit except for the fact that part of the administrative restrictions placed on the page also include "You must not make more than one revert per 24 hours to this article". But I have already reverted your action on this question once today, and there is no exception for reverting the edits of users who are violating the administrative restrictions. You seem to have a persistent problem with wanting to update the page prematurely. Please calm down and slow down. In the mean time, please self-revert your own edit, which is the only solution to the current problem for which there actually is an applicable exemption to the administrative restrictions. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 20:28, 21 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I've reverted my edit to avoid another pointless argument about the page. But it might by prudent for you to note, however, that I did add a citation with my first revert showing the new vacancy. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 20:53, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply and for pointing out that you had added the citation, a fact which I had (as you suspected) missed. I appreciate your responsiveness. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 22:28, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * My pleasure. At the end of the day I think we're both here to contribute to the encyclopedia, so the less that we disagree about, the better. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 22:45, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

David Dodson
Dear "JJ." I noticed that Sen. Barrasso had a challenger and curious, I looked to see who he was. I found the article and your AfD notes. I'm guessing that Dodson did pay someone to author the page in concert with his announcement, and that he also paid PRWeb to cover it. That's a paid "news" site distributing press releases that appear to be actual edited, earned copy, if I recall. I'm also guessing that he hired a publicist to distribute press releases, arrange interviews, etc. (I may be confusing it in part or all with PRWire.) However, the content looked to me to be factual. It was written by a Wikipedia editor who's been around for a while. He doesn't do a lot of editing, but added to the Michael Wolff article 18 months or so ago, long before I ever heard of Wolff. Dodson is certainly notable. His and his ex-wife's charity has had a page for three or four years, I think, that's not self-promotional. I'm guessing they met at Stanford. I didn't look at their 990s, but their organization seems pretty legit and useful. I did numerous searches after I found his article and didn't get a heck of a lot more info than what you'd seen already. I added much of what I found to it, that didn't duplicate anything already in it. I actually found one source at Stanford that I used, then found whoever authored the article had used it too, I think. I didn't find anything inaccurate in the article that you saw, as written. I've noticed your edits for a year or two, perhaps because I have some avocational interest in federal judgeships, history of the courts, cases, etc. You edit a lot more frequently than I do, though I've been editing here much longer. So I'm thinking the article is okay and should be retained. Take a look if you have the time. What do you think? Activist (talk) 16:27, 23 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I've taken a look at the page again and I still don't think that the subject is notable enough (after your contributions were added). In addition to that, if the user who created the page was paid to make it, then they should have disclosed it (see WP:PAID). Otherwise, that's an issue. If you disagree, please comment on the AFD post and we'll see how the discussion is closed. It's nice that you've been noticing my edits since it has only been 10 months since I joined en.wiki. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 18:32, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not disagreeing. I think that any editor who is being paid to create, monitor, etc., articles, should disclose. However, I see some corporate spokespersons working for troubled corporations still seem to be editing fairly, which should be an element of appraisal. Activist (talk) 01:31, 24 February 2018 (UTC)