User talk:LouPuls

Proper Sourcing
Please properly source all additions you make to articles, especially controversial ones like you did to the Massachusetts special election. Internet forums are not proper sources. Please source a verifyable and RELIABLE source not peoples opinions or speculations. A reliable source would be for instance, say the associated press, reuters, fox, cnn and so on. Do not source interent forums or special interest groups. thank you -Tracer9999 (talk) 04:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Re: "Analysis" section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_special_election_in_Massachusetts,_2010
Hmm ... "senior Brown adviser" Fehrnstrom is allowed to speculate on what was THE "turning point"? TV/radio/billboard ads are indeed extremely important -- especially when one party has lots of money to saturate the limited airspace. Is the moneyed-winner being enabled to speculate on writing the history here? (A reasonable question, not an explicit opinion, not a speculation).

Hmm ... the Brown "debate performance" is speculated to be a "critical event" in Brown's "late surge" -- again it's the agency of media ads (money, eyeball access) that made "the people's seat" an issue and a "rallying cry." Whether it was a "critical event" compared to other issues can be argued by reasonable people, as can the existence of the "late surge" itself.

Hmm ... the speculation that the "late surge was made possible by support by conservative bloggers" and that "the Brown campaign succeeded through its moneybomb in raising millions of dollars" (again dependent on heavily-funded ads) can only recall the past controversies that much fund-raising is NOT what it is allowed to appear to be, and whether such money comes from bloggers and moneybombs that are rather far more AstroTurf than verifiably grassroots.

Although these speculations are presumably originally sourced to "reliable" major media "of record", rather than online-only blogs or forums, they are speculations nonetheless. To me, the relevance of a particular speculation should be based on full disclosure of vested sources (which paper endorsed which side, which blog is really funded by which fronting foundation, etc.) and the reputation of the source for objectivity, veracity, and documentation of facts and positions.

Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting has far more nationwide credibility among informed expertise promoting the wider use of verifiable balloting than that of all the promoters combined of voting based on unverifiable and non-transparent recording, undisclosable and closed proprietary software, and easily-hacked data storage and transmission. Over many years, her organizing and reporting of testing and exposure by objective and non-vested professional and academic expertise has REPEATEDLY driven the commercial vendors of questionable voting hardware and software into embarrassing and indefensible positions.

Further, her relentless and fact-driven efforts have been largely responsible for driving these commercial vendors into a major readjustment of their economic success, market share, ownership, and, FINALLY, ongoing antitrust examination and intervention. This readjustment has (much too slowly) occurred in spite of the vital and relevant issues and questions being largely IGNORED by the major national media.

Harris has tended to initially disclose her analyses in the topical forums of the BlackBoxVoting website, always trying to limit her speculation, implied or explicit, and rather posing issues and questions which should be made more transparent in order to enable the elimination of ANY doubts of verifiability.

While such forums are timely and highly expedient for the rapid and effective dissemination of information and activation of corrective pressure and measures, I agree that it can appear less traditionally credible when the immediate primary sources are not from known local or national media of record. If she had more of the resources that the corporate, ad-driven (including political ads, impugning "reliability") major media have, it would be possible for her to present her analyses in a more traditional format.

I appreciate your concern and agree that speculation should yield preference to verifiable primary sources, but issues and questions presented by credible if limited and non-conventional sources should also be aired, given an atmosphere of ongoing and equitable discussion. The verifiability of electronic voting machines is far from attaining the status of a settled and unquestioned issue, especially as long as the ownership, control, and management of the facilities are under proprietary, not public, trusteeship. Respectfully, -LouPuls (talk) --MonkeeRench 06:44, 10 July 2010 (UTC)