Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive309

Brendan Eich
It seems Brendan Eich invented 'opposition to same-sex marriage'. Apparently, opposition to same-sex marriage that existed before Brendon Eich was born, was created anticipating his birth. How astoundingly prophetic. Never knew that.

Sarcasm apart, Eich did not invent 'opposition to same-sex marriage' (quite obvious I believe) so it is illogical, petty, vindictive & bullying behaviour to mention the same in the infobox, whether there are citations are not. It is perfectly fine to do so in the article itself, with its own section.

An editor's views of this on the talk page (a response to some older comment) are "it really does appear to be the thing Eich is actually famous for in the wider world" and "it's not at all clear that Brave is something that Eich is famous for; if anything, it's the other way around: Brave's press coverage is mostly from it being Eich's next project" and "The claim is multiply cited to such sources, and the controversy appears to be that someone doesn't like this".

By that logic, one may as well remove javascript from 'known for', for i doubt any layman 'in the wider world' would know he was the prime designer of javascript.

As a matter of fact, one might as well apply the same logic to any low-key personality who has made significant but unknown contributions to tech/science/others and instead associate them with some inflammatory statement just because one disagrees with their views.

That makes no sense. Such comments may freely appear under personal life or controversies or have its own section - but appear in the infobox?

I am not denying Eich's stance here or asking for a 'benefit of doubt' or some other sappy thing. It is a well-cited controversy and absolutely deserves to be present. I would have added it otherwise. It is absolutely relevant enough to have its own section in the article. But is it relevant enough to be stated in an infobox?

Let us take this objectively. Unless it is a person who created an organisation that actively supported/opposed same-sex marriage, or actively campaigned in favour of/or against same-sex marriage, it is not logical or relevant to mention their 'social opinions' in the infobox. There are thousands of celebs who either openly advocate same-sex marriage or are against it or stay silent over the topic. Every famous person out there is known for some controversy or the other. It is as logical as mentioning 'known for smoking weed' or 'known for supporting same-sex marriage' or 'known for being straight' or 'known for being an atheist' in the info box of all celebs out there.

Carrying forward the logic of the editor i.e., one might as well add 'known for adopting orphans' in Angelina Jolie's infobox or 'known for being gay' in Sir Ian McKellen's & Stephen Fry's infobox or 'known for supporting eugenics' in Nikola Tesla's infobox or 'known for opposing the gold standard' in Thomas Alva Edison's infobox. The editor stated in one of his comments that there are enough citations for his action, but there are more than enough citations for my examples too! Why aren't those mentioned, then? Simple. It is not because those points are not of note, but because it too shallow to mention those points, and not at all relevant for an infobox.

On the other hand, Angelina Jolie's close association with UNHC is of note (which is mentioned in the infobox) and McKellen's contributions towards LGBT rights including his founding of lobby groups is also of note (but not mentioned in the infobox). Had Jolie or McKellen only contributed to charity once or twice, it would be pertinent enough to be mentioned in the article, but not enough to be mentioned in the infobox.

But as opposed to Jolie's or McKellen's repeated participation in those activities, Eich's action, though widely recorded, did not involve repeated actions i.e. repeated donations and active participation in movements against same-sex marriages, as far as I have read. He resigned from Mozilla, allegedly due to the furore caused by his personal action, which again appears to have been done only once, from what I have noted. Also, the term 'allegedly', since the article itself mentions both sides of the coin instead of blindly attributing his 2014 resignation only due to his action from 2008.

This makes his opposition or support for same-sex marriages irrelevant. It is as relevant as someone contributing once to a LGBT lobby group (for public brownie points) and forgetting about it. Nobody would mention that in an infobox, so why would someone mention this?

Would one expect the infobox of a baseball player to contain information about his sexuality/sexual preferences? Or would one expect a rapist/murderer's musical preferences to be mentioned in an infobox? Unless it is pertinent to the person's profession or the reason for which the article is written/focus of the article, I don't think so. So unless the Editors are openly going to state that the article on Brenden Eich was solely written with an objective to target him about his outspoken action, which makes no sense (since it would mean wikipedia was used more as a directory to gauge support/opposition to lgbt rights which is not the point of wikipedia), I believe the comment 'opposition to same-sex marriage' has no place to be in an 'infobox'. The same may be freely mentioned in the article with its own sections as required, but it is neither of note nor is it logical to mention it in the infobox. It only appears to be a vindictive act, which is not the right attitude to have for an Editor.

For the record, I don't care either way about same-sex marriage, as I come from a culture where our 'gods' were 'gay' and are still fervently worshipped to this day, so kindly do not interpret my action as a biased one. I firmly believe I am as neutral as one can get in this regard. It is absolutely unfair to put a personal view in 'known for' and feels like it was done vindictively, with an ulterior motive to create an unnecessarily high negative image of him. Its not as if he invented opposition to same-sex marriage. Had he founded a group that opposed the notion of same-sex marriage, that would be of note. This is more optimally placed in 'personal life' or 'controversies'.

Kindly do the needful and resolve. 115.97.89.52 (talk) 07:10, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure whether that opposition thing should be in the infobox. But can you explain by what token "known for" means someone invented that thing? To give an obvious example, you can fairly say Adolf Hitler is "known for" a lot of things. I don't think anyone would blink an eye if I said Adolf Hitler was known for extreme anti-semitism. Yet he clearly didn't invent extreme anti-semitism. Far from it. It existed millenia before he was born. George W. Bush is known for being president of the United States. He didn't invent the concept of being president, he wasn't the first. There was already a president when he was born. For all the problems with the US nowdays, I'm fairly sure there will be a US president long after George W. Bush has died. But George W. Bush is still known for it. In fact, in that vein, let's use H. D. Deve Gowda. He's known for being prime minister of India. You could add "for less than a year" or "unexpectedly became PM", but it's not necessary, he's known for all of that. There's a fair chance in 300 years, him PM is something that will be barely remembered. Yet for better or worse, it's still likely to be one of the things he is known for. I only skimmed through the rest of your message given how badly it started. Nil Einne (talk) 11:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your feedback on my message, though you did not go through it completely. Considering I scored only a 6 on AWA in GMAT, I suppose it is understandable that my message isn't very understandable. I hope this one will be readable enough and I hope you will go through it completely.
 * I completely agree with your stance that 'known for' does not necessarily mean someone invented something. That is also a point that I have covered in my long and detailed message, i.e. I have argued it from both sides. To quote myself, one would not expect a rapist or murderer's musical preferences to appear in his/her infobox, unless the person were initially a musician who committed the crime. But that is exactly what it is - a crime. Adolf Hilter killing Jews is also a crime. He is a war-monger and a mass murderer. But kindly visit his page and view the infobox. Is that mentioned there?? NO. What is mentioned there? His AWARDS are mentioned there.
 * Let us take that Editor's point of 'known for in the wider world' and ask - is Hitler known for his awards or for his mass-murdering? I didn't even know he had any kind of 'award' till date, frankly, and I can openly bet you $10,000 that I can ask randomly ask 10,000 people on the street and not find a single person who knew about that - unless its a history-phile or a Hitler-crank. So is it fair that Hitler's infobox mentions his awards, while the infobox of a positive CONTRIBUTOR to society mentions his social opinion? No, it is not.
 * It is not fair to mention Eich's personal opinion on the infobox. Mentioning it in the article is totally fine but not the infobox - not unless Eich was known for founding anti-LGBT right groups or ACTIVELY lobbying against LGBT with regular repeated donations to anti-LGBT lobby groups. But that is not the case here. It is not a professionally written infobox. It is biased and the editor's personal opinion is clouding his judgement. I believe the editor must not involve himself with Eich's page again, or at least accept his oversight and correct the infobox himself. 115.97.89.52 (talk) 15:10, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * While this Hitler analogy is humorous and not even entirely unapt, it is essentially an WP:OSE argument. You are free to go to Hitler's article and argue that it needs a "known for" parameter. —DIYeditor (talk) 15:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your amusing but irrelevant insight. I did not cite the Hitler example, your colleague did. Had I not provided the aforementioned valid response, you would imagine the Hitler argument made by your colleague was valid. Since I was able to make a rational response, the example did not work for your personal views, and you are now deflecting from the topic at hand, stating something completely irrelevant, instead of providing a valid counter to my rational and logical argument.
 * My point is, it is not relevant for Brendan Eich's personal opinion to be present in his infobox. The fact that it is present in his article is quite sufficient. As a matter of fact, even Hitler's anti-LGBT views are not mentioned in the infobox. Yet, the article is clearly marked as a 'good article'. Eich's isn't - unless you choose next, to artificially get an award for Eich's article, just to score a brownie point against my valid and logical argument, for which you have not presented any counter. Therefore you may kindly relieve yourself from this topic, if you are guided only by emotion rather than logic. 115.97.89.52 (talk) 15:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You miss my point. Hitler doesn't need a "known for" parameter to his infobox but if he had one it would definitely be "genocide". Nobody knows who Eich is, so he needs one, and a large portion of the WP:RS coverage of him in the mainstream media has been about views on gay marriage. So that's what he's known for. —DIYeditor (talk) 15:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * For clarity, my complaint was not that your message wasn't understandable or readable. So it's nothing to do with your GMAT score. My complaint was that I find your argument that Eich being known for "opposition to same-sex marriage" implies he invented the concept silly enough that once I read it, I couldn't really be bothered reading the rest properly. It may very well be the case that the rest of your commentary is easy to read and makes some very good points. I don't really know because you started off your commentary with a terrible argument. It's like when you encounter someone in the street and they yell at you "CORONAVIRUS IS A PLOT BY BILL GATES TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD", you're not going to pay much attention. Perhaps they actually have some good arguments about the economic cost of lockdowns vs the health benefits. Perhaps they have some good arguments about the risks of relying on philanthropy to do stuff which arguably should be funded mostly by governments. Whatever their good arguments, and however persuasive and smart they are, they mostly destroyed any chance people were going to listen when they started off with nonsense. Nil Einne (talk) 16:24, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * But Nil Einne, they scored a 6 on their AWA in their GMAT! How are you going to argue with brilliance like that? We should put them in charge.--Jorm (talk) 16:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You miss my point. Hitler doesn't need a "known for" parameter to his infobox but if he had one it would definitely be "genocide". Nobody knows who Eich is, so he needs one, and a large portion of the WP:RS coverage of him in the mainstream media has been about views on gay marriage. So that's what he's known for. —DIYeditor (talk) 15:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * For clarity, my complaint was not that your message wasn't understandable or readable. So it's nothing to do with your GMAT score. My complaint was that I find your argument that Eich being known for "opposition to same-sex marriage" implies he invented the concept silly enough that once I read it, I couldn't really be bothered reading the rest properly. It may very well be the case that the rest of your commentary is easy to read and makes some very good points. I don't really know because you started off your commentary with a terrible argument. It's like when you encounter someone in the street and they yell at you "CORONAVIRUS IS A PLOT BY BILL GATES TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD", you're not going to pay much attention. Perhaps they actually have some good arguments about the economic cost of lockdowns vs the health benefits. Perhaps they have some good arguments about the risks of relying on philanthropy to do stuff which arguably should be funded mostly by governments. Whatever their good arguments, and however persuasive and smart they are, they mostly destroyed any chance people were going to listen when they started off with nonsense. Nil Einne (talk) 16:24, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * But Nil Einne, they scored a 6 on their AWA in their GMAT! How are you going to argue with brilliance like that? We should put them in charge.--Jorm (talk) 16:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Protip: Giant blocks of text, no matter how clever and erudite you think they are, don't get read by us simple folk. You would do best to be direct, as we are monumentally stupid. Either way, Eich is known for his opposition to same-sex marriage. It's a thing he is known for. If you want to provide sources that say otherwise (somehow?), you can do so, and then a discussion can be had.--Jorm (talk) 15:52, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * By far the most reasonable person I have met here is @Nil Einne, and I am at least thankful for that. Kindly ignore my earlier sarcasm. I suppose I tend to excessively utilize it when i see deflection, with the mistaken assumption that it keep things light. I request your opinion on what is the way forward. I believe my points have been made clearly and rationally. To put it in a nutshell, 1) Eich is not known for repeatedly campaigning against LGBT 2) Eich has not started an anti-LGBT lobby group nor has he repeatedly contributed funds to an anti-LGBT lobby group 3) There is no evidence that he has discriminated against Mozilla employees who are in favour of same-sex marriage or are homosexual. -- based on these, it appears to me that it is not at all pertinent to have the infobox include 'known for opposition to same-sex marriage', as the same has been included quite elaborately and sufficiently in the article, with its own section - which I believe is the fair way to present it. This is an article about a tech person that details his contributions to tech, as well as other things he had done, good & bad. However, as it is focused on a tech person, the infobox information in such articles has to focus on tech, unless it is of absolute note to state otherwise (i.e. if things were contrary to the three points made above & he was an active campaigner against lgbt rights etc). But even then, though Bill Gates is very well known for his philanthropy, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not mentioned in his 'Known For'. 115.97.89.52 (talk) 17:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * no worries @Jorm, cos I already am in charge here. you are only moving to the flow of my argument and responding only with deflection. i don't imagine you have the inclination read past this line, but if you do, whatever excuses any of you had stated here against my points have cleanly been countered by me, in a reasonably polite manner, all things considered. also, i see only ego's inflated with the artificial pride that you are wiki admins, talking without reading, because never did i once mention that there are "sources that say otherwise". I am quite annoyed & offended you would mention such a thing. In fact, I have repeatedly stated it is very apt to mention this information in his article and that I would have done it myself if it weren't there, but that it is not relevant enough to be included in the infobox. Yet the only points I see in response are "provide sources that say otherwise" and some deflection and some sarcasm - apparently when you are sarcastic it is perfectly acceptable while when I am, it is perceived as arrogance. Interesting. My point is, in case Eich had actively campaigned against LGBT or started some anti-LGBT lobby group, it would certainly be worthy enough to be mentioned in an infobox. However, this is not the case. I welcome you to share any sources that state otherwise. If that really were the case, I am prepared to back off. Assuming you can explain why Bill Gates, another man in tech, is not known for his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And assuming you are prepared to read entire news articles when you aren't able to read a simple, structured, message. Oops, I'm sorry about the sarcasm. If you are capable of a healthy discussion devoid of deflection, I'll cut the sarcasm. Thank you. 115.97.89.52 (talk) 17:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @DIYeditor you are deflecting again. You irrelevantly suggested I go argue about the Hilter article. Now you are justifying your irrational response. Your point that nobody knows who Eich is, is astoundingly arrogant. In fact, you even contradict yourself - if nobody knew who Eich is, how would they know about his opposition to same-sex marriage anyway? how would they know he designed Javascript? Might as well scrap the 'known for' parameter. And the fact that your argument is "Hitler doesn't need a known for parameter" is completely missing the point about notability and is only deflecting away from the question at hand - why must a personal view be present in an infobox? Eich is not known for repeatedly campaigning against LGBT and there is no evidence that he has discriminated against Mozilla employees who are in favour of same-sex marriage. Therefore, it is irrational to mention the same in the infobox and is more akin to 'crying wolf'. However, if you provide evidence that suggests that he is actively campaigning against same-sex marriage or had discriminated against Mozilla employees who were gay/supported same-sex marriage, I would be prepared to back off. Assuming you can explain why Bill Gates, another man in tech, is not known for his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 115.97.89.52 (talk) 17:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Your entire thing comes down to 17,000 unreadable words that say "because I think so." Come back with sources and stop deflecting that there aren't any.--Jorm (talk) 18:04, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It wasn't irrelevant to suggest you take your complaints about Hitler not having a "known for" parameter to that article. You were running with that analogy and it didn't work. Hitler's infobox is correct, it doesn't have a "known for" and if it did obviously it would be "genocide" like I said. It was hyperbole to say nobody knows who Eich is. I meant in comparison to Hitler, whom everyone knows, very few people know who Eich is. So we offer a "known for" parameter. What goes in the parameter is based on how much coverage in reliable sources there has been. It doesn't matter if it's for a personal opinion. It doesn't matter if it was a one time thing. It doesn't matter how much more respect Eich deserves in your or my estimation for things other than gay marriage. If you google Brendan Eich a significant portion of the things that come up are relating to gay marriage. To me, implementing R4000 support in gcc is significant. To a web developer, Javascript is significant. To your average Joe, the only thing that would have made his name known, if anything, is the gay rights issue. I would suggest at this point making specific arguments based on the wording of WP:BLP rather than appealing to your own sense of reason or justice. —DIYeditor (talk) 18:12, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @DIYeditor, no as I stated, I did not choose Hitler and frankly, your comment definitely was kind of irrelevant, but lets forget that. For the sake of the civil discussion you are having here, which I very highly appreciate and thank, I would choose Bill Gates as an analogy. Hitler is not a good analogy as he is not a tech guy & infobox formats can differ. Bill Gates is a tech guy who is very well known for his philanthropy, work to eradicate malaria in parts of Africa, and of course, his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. When you google or bing or whatever for bill gates, you will get information about his philanthropy and his foundation, among the various results from the first page itself. You will also find articles about him being extremely wealthy, with Forbes & Bloomberg coverage etc, right from the first page. By your logic of 'significance is in search results', Bill Gates ought to be known for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which really ought to be mentioned in the infobox btw) and being the richest person in the world for years. However, neither are mentioned in his 'known for'. The same is applicable for Jeff Bezos who is currently the richest person in the world - check out the google & bing results which mention that extensively. Similarly, there is no mention of the various innumerable controversies Elon Musk is known for raking up. In fact, there is no 'known for' for Elon Musk. Isn't he known for anything? Heck, you'd need an entire page to state all the controversies Elon Musk is known for. All these are tech guys. Look at the differential treatment meted to these various articles. I am not using emotion here, nor do I particularly respect Brendan Eich nor am I in favour of how he had acted, however personal a choice that may be. I am using logic and rationality only. I don't understand why editors are looking at the issue as 'gay/non-gay' as that is not the point at all. It is about relevance. If it is not relevant that Bill Gates is known for being rich, despite the various results that extensively detail that, why should Eich's donation to a random lobby (whether it is gay/non-gay) be relevant enough to be placed in an infobox? The amount isn't even particularly big at all. How is that possibly notable? Objectively speaking, would this point have been made had Eich made a contribution towards supporting same-sex marriage? Would there be a comment 'supports same-sex marriage' in an infobox? Would it even be relevant? Are we going to catalogue a same-sex support/opposition parameter in infoboxes in future? Why would that be relevant? It is as relevant as stating political views, 'supports the democrats/republicans/labour', in the infobox. Considering the other tech people articles, I am surprised why such a no-brainer logical format has to be overridden in lieu of a controversy that is not pertinent to what he appears to normally do, i.e. give lectures & take classes, which appear equally frequently in the search results, right from the first page. As I said, things become relevant only when he actively & regularly campaigns against same-sex marriage. It is only a biased situation, otherwise. Kindly introspect for a while and revert at your convenience. 115.97.34.92 (talk) 19:25, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @Jorm, right back at you. You're also essentially only saying 'I think so', and in case you didn't notice, Wikipedia is only about opinions anyway, so telling me to go away because I don't share your opinion is not logical. Why don't you get back with sources that say he is an active champion of anti-same-sex marriage? If the 'known for' field can contain any information whatsoever, take a gander at Bill Gates and kindly explain why he isn't known for the famous Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, or for being literally famously wealthy, when a simple internet search about Gates will give you those results. Again, I am welcome to a civil discussion rather than arrogant deflection. I wonder if that is possible? 115.97.34.92 (talk) 19:25, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

The reason Eich's opposition to same-sex marriage is noted as a thing he is best known for, is fundamentally that it's a thing that he is best known for. The infobox cites Eich's opposition to same-sex marriage being literally headline news in multiple solid highly-regarded mainstream Reliable Sources.

If you want to state I am using logic and rationality only, then the axioms for your logic should probably have WP:RS added to them - David Gerard (talk) 20:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @David Gerard, I note multiple irrational changes to Eich's page by another editor. I've been waiting for you to review the fairness of those changes before I post my response. Since you probably haven't noticed the extent to which the changes were made, I'll give you a few more hours before I post my response, since part of my response refers to these questionable changes. 27.4.114.222 (talk) 13:49, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * to add, other editors are welcome to review these changes too. 27.4.114.222 (talk) 14:19, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * You are being vague, which makes it difficult to pin down what you're specifically concerned with. Parts of the original sourcing were poor. For a BLP, we generally require reliable secondary sources. Sources such as blogs or press releases do not fulfill that requirement. I replaced all primary sources with secondary sources and consolidated the sections "Proposition 8 controversy" and "Mozilla". It's clear that Eich's appointment as Mozilla's CEO triggered the media at large (ABC's "This Week", The Atlantic, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich) to hone in on Eich's political views, and it's very relevant to the "Mozilla" section that he resigned after 11 days. My intention was to improve the quality and flow of that section in a neutral manner.
 * Gerard is getting somewhere. You should read up on WP:BLP, WP:RS, and WP:SYNTH. If you want to make a point, it helps to drill into Wikipedia policies or precedent. I am personally on the fence about whether we should highlight Eich's political views in the infobox. --Elephanthunter (talk) 16:03, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @Elephanthunter I was half considering not responding until the changes were seriously reviewed, but since your tone is civil, it would be rude to ignore your response. I shall consider a benefit of doubt to your actions. My response follows. It will be very long. Brace yourself:
 * "Sources such as blogs or press releases do not fulfill that requirement" - this is not always the case, especially when you go through Andrew Sullivan's page. And honestly, it makes no sense to consider press releases as a reference since it is an official publication by an organisation - but it doesn't matter for this discussion (irrelevant).What I am primarily referring to is related to the link from CNET, a well known tech website, which was originally cited in the Eich wiki page but has since been removed, probably erroneously. Some Mozilla employees on y-combinator also referred to this article as the closest to what had happened at Mozilla. Of course, their comments are not of direct relevance to the Eich page itself, but CNET's article is definitely of note and many pertinent points removed from Eich's page can be cited with the same. The blog post by the Mozilla employee who identified as queer but supported Eich was removed from the wiki, but the same is also mentioned in the CNET article. It is the most rounded article I have seen reg. this issue, though the tone may / may not be agreeable to some. Kindly review the changes you have made, especially with relation to removing entire paragraphs, against the content in the CNET article.Several sources including the CNET source highlight the fact that there were two separate controversies to Eich's appointment as CEO - one is internal politics and the other is external politics (for lack of a better term). Your passage reads 'half of the board stepped down' on Eich's appointment as CEO when in reality, only one person stepped down directly due to the fact and two others were planning to leave already, due to personal reasons/other reasons. This is only gas-lighting and not factual. Citing other publications that did not cover this issue properly, makes no sense and is against the same WP:BLP and WP:RS that everyone confidently cites but never follows. CNET has aggregated the history of his appointment quite well. Your passage needs to be rewritten to accommodate this factual information.I'm also in disagreement with the usage of your phrase "triggered widespread criticism", since the number of Mozilla employees as well as third-party developers known to have protested against Eich's appointment as CEO, combinedly appears to be less than a dozen, and the number of original articles (not copied/reposted content) criticising his appointment as CEO do not exceed two dozen at the very max (i.e. original content), as far as I've read. It is also in line with the link you had kindly shared (which essentially aggregated everything). The rest of the sources are just copy-pasted stuff, or are timed after his resignation, and are mainly written in response to anti-gay lobbyists condemning pro-gay lobbyists for forcing his resignation, or by some pro-gay lobbyists remarking this needn't have happened.Therefore, rather than "triggered widespread criticism", I would ideally use "triggered criticism" since it adequately conveys the fact that criticism did occur. In fact, the citations referred to in the Eich page do not list more than half a dozen Mozilla employees and a few websites and developers to be the ones who objected to his appointment. Additionally, there are no sources that state pro-gay lobbyists / other third-parties criticised Eich's appointment, as far as I recall, which is also stated in the publication you shared. At this juncture, I would like to add:this link from LA Timesthis link from washington post<li>this link from zdnet</li></ol>~ links from 3 reputable & well-established organisations in addition to the CNET link, to support my case that there were only a few employees who objected to his appointment while the majority was in favour, despite his donation.</li><li>As a matter of fact, the CNET article I referred above also states that "Mozilla executives who worked with Eich ... drafted a letter asking for him to be sole CEO". This is prior to his appointment, before the proposition 8 issue was raked up, when the organisation was dealing with internal politics. In short, there were a sizable number of employees who wanted Eich to be CEO as opposed to the few that did not - there's no need to make assumptions here. Its clear as day.</li></ol> The above are a few issues I have with your rewrite. It is not written as neutrally as you would like it to. I believe it needs to be rewritten with the original content as a base, or better still, revert to the original content and make further improvements, as applicable. The contents of the publication you shared are quite good, but the CNET article covers the specific issue in question, a little better, and has to be more actively referred to, along with the 3 other links provided above.</li> <li>My only argument with Gerard is about the infobox, not the rest of the article. WP:BLP, WP:RS, and WP:SYNTH have nothing to do with what should appear in an infobox and relate to the article's content in specific. Citing those is merely a deflection from the point of our discussion. Right from the start, I've been stating that the information already present in the article itself, need not (and must not) be removed, but the arguments put forth by Gerard, reg. the infobox 'known for' parameter, are quite shallow. I had already prepared a response to that, comparing articles by other tech persons who are well known for other things, but having noticed sudden massive changes to the Eich page, felt those changes had to be discussed first. Some of the passages removed & rewordings done changed the overall tone of the article and presented a situation that was factually incorrect. I also felt it would be a good opportunity to make certain observations, before posting my response to Gerard.</li><li>Currently, I am disappointed that Gerard has, as of this writing, not take the trouble to review your changes by comparing the version history, as I had done. For all the talk about WP:BLP and WP:RS here, the rules/suggestions prescribed there have exactly been ignored in the Eich page. The articles cited in the page are repeatedly only one-sided, blatantly duplicated (containing same or similar wordings) and are therefore, a biased selection and not in accordance to WP:RS. I do not know what to call this other than hypocrisy, when I am repeatedly referred to those regulations while the ones who refer me to it are not following it. However, I shall again give the benefit of doubt, assuming everyone including Gerard is busy. I am simply surprised a proper & thorough review was not done by Gerard for the changes you made, even though he clearly checked out the page after you made the changes, as evidenced by his edit history. I used to do these reviews every time a sizable change occurred in a wiki page, and always imagined it was the basic responsibility of an admin in the first place, to review the links so cited. I wonder if that is not the case any more.</li><li>Thank you for sharing the link to that publication. Perhaps I'll read it when I am free.<ul><li>Interestingly, the Eich issue ended up creating an open-minded & liberal pro-gay group (who were against Eich resigning) and a narrow-minded & conservative pro-gay group (who wanted Eich to resign, while imagining themselves to be a progressive group, though in reality ultimately ending up as a pseudo-progressive group). Ironical.</li><li>The key here is that one has to encourage/stimulate others to like them, not force/coerce others to like them, which the narrow-minded group fails to understand even today. It is a hard up-hill rocky road, but nothing too different from wooing another person. One has to show the same enterprise when we love someone and want them to love us back - you never 'force' someone to love you.</li><li>It is nothing but a totalitarian situation if you are hounded for having differing views, and is not too different from the situation the LGBT community once faced. I would say nobody had the right to hound Eich, but had every right to criticise his action and donate against him in favour of same-sex marriage, using their own funds or via a kickstarter/indiegogo/gofundme campaign. The Eich incident is technically not a victory in the long run, and is proven by the fact that many employers chose to let go of same-sex marriage supporting employees well after the Eich issue.</li><li>Had the pro-LGBT community portrayed itself as a truly progressive, liberal and far more tolerant group of people than the anti-LGBT community, things would have been far better today, unlike this forced scenario where people around are forced to pretend, instead of truly live freely. People at two ends of a bridge need to meet in the middle, not drag the others to the other side.</li></ul>However, this is not the topic we are discussing, just my dumb self wishing for a better world, so kindly ignore this. I hope I am not roasted by either side for my lament. 210.18.163.98 (talk) 21:24, 26 May 2020 (UTC)</li></ol>
 * It's fine that you are writing this out. I'm glad that you view my response as civil and you are WP:AGF. Here are my responses to your items of concern:
 * Here you're arguing WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, which is sometimes a valid argument, but doesn't apply when it comes to the rule involving primary sources in BLPs. There is clear policy about the use of primary sources in biographies of living persons which takes precedent.
 * I'm not immediately seeing any problems with using the CNET article by Shankland as a citation. It does appear to be well-written. I removed the paragraph containing that citation because the paragraph mistakenly applied the board's debate before Eich's appointment to the controversy surrounding his resignation. Specifically, and I can say this with certainty, no reliable source questions why Eich resigned. He resigned because of the uproar due to his donation towards Proposition 8. He resigned himself, via the call from Baker. Mozilla did not ask him to resign. They wanted to keep him. From the CNET article, "Baker said she didn't consider Eich's job a lost cause until he called it quits". The paragraph I removed indicated there were other reasons for his resignation, a claim which was not reflected with weight in any sources.
 * It's factually accurate that half of Mozilla's board resigned before Eich's appointment. Most sources outright say that the board members resigned in protest, or question Mozilla's statement that the resignations were unrelated. The CNET article is in a minority here. Still, it's possible I gave one view undue weight.
 * If you want the article to say "triggered criticism" instead of "triggered widespread criticism", I can get on board with that. As for going back to the original content? I'd strongly disagree, as it was full of primary source BLP violations.
 * You should WP:AGF just take my word for it that I was leading you in the correct direction with those policies.
 * I'm assuming Gerard did not revert my changes due to the fact that I was removing primary source BLP violations. All the content I added was well-sourced and well-quoted.
 * Maybe that's something worth mentioning in the article.
 * Hopefully my response is reasonable and we can work together toward a better article. --Elephanthunter (talk) 00:21, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I thought your edits were fine, and frankly were a long-needed cleanup of the article, the need for which had been long-noted on the talk page. But that's an editorial issue. For the sourcing issue on a BLP, your edits are just fine IMO - David Gerard (talk) 09:56, 27 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @Elephanthunter my responses follow:
 * <ol type="1" start=1 style="padding-left:0px; margin-left:1em;list-style-position:outside"><li>The primary sources are only sensational in nature and do not follow the discussion in totality. The content written by them is largely copied across to/from the other editorials with minimal change. This suggests they did not conduct verification on their side and only went with what sounded hot, and did not bother investigating further. There is no evidence of investigative journalism presented, which makes their combined associations invalid - they're just copying from each other. You have 3 pages, from CNET, Washington Post & ZDNet which cover the issue decently, even though it is only after the issue was closed. Even if CNET & ZDNET were not considered reliable sources (which would be surprising considering they are not content from a company created yesterday), Washington Post went on to report what Mozilla had clarified. Further, other Mozilla employees seem to confirm the same things in their personal blogs, which counters the "united, nearly simultaneous message asking Eich to step down" argument that is put forth by what appears to be articles with a strong bias. While the employee blogs & tweets themselves may not be directly cited as sources, they correlate with what CNET, ZDNET, W-Post and Mozilla themselves, had stated. Therefore, as far as anyone is concerned, anything else should only be treated as speculation, which I believe is perfectly in line with WP:RS and corresponds with WP:BLP.</li><li>It is good that you find the CNET article to be fine. The salient point to note is, CNET, ZDNET and Washington Post all reported the 'sensational' news at first, during the peak of the furore, yet did some work of their own later on and posted those updates that I have shared. This essentially makes them more neutral than others, and will contribute to maintaining a neutral tone in the wiki page itself. The same was done by some other websites too, but some websites like arstechnica did not bother doing this. In this scenario, content from websites like ars are biased, and may at the most be used to cite that a few Mozilla employees had indeed protested against Eich's appointment.<ul start=1 style="padding-left:0px; margin-left:1em;list-style-position:outside"><li>I am not arguing about the reason why Eich resigned. I am not sure why there is a confusion regarding this point. I don't understand what statement of mine led you to believe I am questioning that point. The truth is nobody can say for sure why exactly Eich completely quit and anything published by third-parties may only be considered as speculation at this point. My argument is that combining the board of directors' resignations, with the protests by the few Mozilla employees reg. proposition 8 and Eich's ultimate resignation, is incorrect. These are unrelated situations as per Mozilla's own statement, as well as by the articles I had shared earlier. Assuming that these distinct events are related, using only unverified & non-trustworthy citations, is only sensationalism. Case in point, none of the articles currently cited in the Eich page have a direct comment from the Mozilla board or from the directors who resigned, that their resignation was due to Eich's appointment. There is no factual evidence to back the claims of those tabloids - if these were reliable, we would find search results where the two other directors spoke up stating otherwise, but since that is not the case, these tabloids must be considered as mere sensationalism and not as factual evidence. Mozilla themselves directly clarified that there was indeed one director who resigned due to conflict with Eich, while the other two were leaving due to other reasons. There is no evidence that the other two directors have claimed otherwise. Citing these sensationalist-sounding articles (that absolutely ignore Mozilla's official announcement) and combining the sections is an invalid action and is only speculatory in nature. My opinion is in line with WP:RS and WP:BLP.</li><li>In my view, the wording reg. Eich's resignation may sound like "The same week as Brendan Eich's appointment to CEO, Mozilla Board members Gary Kovacs, John Lilly, and Ellen Siminoff resigned. While it was initially speculated that the board members resigned due to Eich's appointment or the Proposition 8 controversy, Mozilla later clarified that Kovacs & Siminoff had already planned to leave due to personal reasons, while Lilly alone had resigned disagreeing with Eich's appointment as he desired for a CEO with experience in the mobile industry." - this is a far more complete phrase in my view.</li><li>As far as Eich's appointment is concerned, this is the end of one controversy and the start of another. The Board resigning controversy is separate from the Proposition 8 controversy. Mozilla's Mitchell Baker openly admitted that they omitted to discuss Eich's history with proposition 8 - therefore, the board members resigning has nothing to do with Eich's stance on the same. You can find the same in the CNET article. While this may or may not have been spoken with the intent to shield the pro-gay community from unnecessary flak, we can only go ahead with what has been stated by Baker and not indulge in idle speculation, like the rest of the article. I believe my view is well in line with BLP. While the article looks artificially cleaner with less sections, the fact that the resignation of the board members section is combined to the donation section now makes readers assume that the two were interrelated. This is only giving into speculation and this can be avoided by creating separate sections for 'Appointment as Mozilla CEO', 'Proposition 8 Donation Controversy' & 'Resignation & Exit from Mozilla'. The appointment section may at a later date be further expanded with how the filtering & choosing process at Mozilla had taken place, which would be of some interest, since Eich was not the natural first choice to the position, due to his less-than-average 'people' skills (refer CNET & the mozilla employee blogs). The donation section may further be expanded to describe the various view points, for & against, by mozilla employees as well as pro-gay/anti-gay groups. The exit section can cover details of his exit, the various mixed reactions from pro-gay & anti-gay groups, and Mozilla's apology & clarification etc.</li></ul></li><li>I am not saying you should revert permanently to the original section and leave it. The format and content of the original can be used as a base for further improvement. As a matter of fact, considering all the speculation that is present in the current content, I'd say the older one violated BLP no more than the current one does. e.g. Eich was CEO for 9 days, not 11 days - his resignation was simply announced two days later in his personal blog. The Mozilla Directors did not resign in response to his appointment. That is only speculation and violates BLP, based on Mozilla official announcement which certain editorials did not cover (either ignored or vested interests).</li><li>Reg. that, I was waiting for David Gerard's review and am disappointed. It appears Gerard has some manner of interest in Eich, but deosn't take enough care to determine whether something is correct or not. It also appears to me that he imagines contributions from persons not logged in are by default incorrect/spam and need to be checked far more than changes by someone who has logged in. That is not in the spirit of an open-to-edit wiki. Either that or there is some manner of conflict of interest (i.e. he doesn't like me), which I hope is not the case.</li><li>Not really, its better off in a blog post. Not that anyone will care. Its an age of self-centredness and impatience. We tap a button to get a taxi, to get food, to watch a movie and to get laid. Similarly, the thought-process has irrationally been changed to something like "things should happen instantly and you should agree with me, else it is intolerance". To be honest, considering we are working with other humans, that very thought itself is what is more intolerant and irrational. Being angry at Eich is one thing and eagerly bashing him as a homophobe & marginalizing him is a completely different thing. Being objective and true to a standard is what should be followed. Notwithstanding his personal opinions, Eich has been a major contributor to how free the internet is today. While he certainly could have apologised & stayed on as CEO, he could have very well stayed on as CEO without apologising too, like many other belligerent people out there. The very law that protects LGBT people from getting fired also gives him a provision & protection to stay on. Yet he removed himself for the sake of Mozilla - which ironically ended up hurting Mozilla more. Of course, this is also only a personal opinion.</li></ol>
 * 115.97.47.153 (talk) 21:06, 27 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @David Gerard, I was hoping you would perform a fair & unbiased review of the article, but it appears to me that you are either disinterested to do so (in which case you should perhaps step back from managing edits on the Eich page) or you are too busy and imagine no mistake occurred. You have made two remarks that I disagree with. One is that the new content has no issues. That is contentious and you can read my detailed response to Elephanthunter above. The other is you claim that 'known for' must contain "fundamentally that thing that he is best known for" and there is nothing wrong in mentioning it, just because there are citations present. Also, you state that if I claim I use logic, it must be supported by WP:RS. My responses follow:
 * <ol type="1" start=1 style="padding-left:0px; margin-left:1em;list-style-position:outside"><li>You felt there was no issue with the changed article. I hope you have referred to the response I gave to Elephanthunter. I observe the current article is less confirming to WP:BLP and WP:RS due to several incorrect facts cited from questionable & sensationally writted articles. Important & pertinent sources were removed, probably erroneously and the entire content diluted to present things distortedly. And apparently, these edits are fine in your opinion. I will assume it is a normal oversight from your side, since you're involving yourself in a ton of other articles, and hope you agree with the corrections I have suggested.</li><li>The Eich page originally stated that his resignation from Mozilla might not necessarily have been due to his action in 2008. There was also a phrase in the Eich page "Others at the Mozilla Corporation spoke out on their blogs in his favor". Both referred to a CNET article, which is far more balanced, has good coverage, and was probably accidentally deleted by Elephanthunter. You must have missed this change. Elephanthunter will be reviewing his changes.</li><li>As a matter of fact, Andrew Sullivan opposed calls to remove Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla and had extensively written on the topic in his various publications as well as his blog. This is accompanied by several citations in his wiki page which you can refer yourself. His blog is also linked there (and I wonder why it is valid to link a blog source there but not here). These comments are not mentioned in Eich's page, despite being related to the issue. They should be included.</li><li>You claim Eich is fundamentally 'known for' his stance against same-sex marriage and provide citations. I am not arguing with the citations, but I am arguing with the fact that you have interpreted 'known for' in your own convenient manner. I disagree with the notion that a tech person's 'known for' must contain 'non-tech' values and will provide supporting examples from wikipedia itself.</li><li>Using your same rationale, Bill Gates is fundamentally known across the world for being famously wealthy, to the point where he was covered extensively in printed newspapers for that sole reason. He is also known for his Foundation, his interest in bio-toilets and eradicating malaria. It is literally again, the headline in multiple solid highly-regarded mainstream Reliable Sources, to quote yourself. These are not mentioned in his infobox. Kindly do not comment I have to go argue about it in Gates' page, as I believe the page is quite fine, since the 'known for' param caters only to tech related contributions. The article is also rated 'good' and is a good standard to follow, unlike the Eich article where a non-tech information is present in a tech person's page.</li><li>Elon Musk is fundamentally known for Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX and his issues with the SEC and the unusual name of his new child - a 'known for' itself is not mentioned here. So does this mean Musk is known for nothing?</li><li>Jeff Bezos is also known for being very wealthy. His surpassing of Gates' wealth (ableit temporarily) was the headline in multiple solid highly-regarded mainstream reliable sources - but it is not mentioned in his 'known for'.There is a very extensive discussion about his wealth in the article, nothing more, nothing less. I'm fine with that too, as this is 'non-tech' information.</li><li>Tim Cook is known for being first (and only) fortune 500 company CEO to come out as gay, which created waves - but I doubt anyone edited his infobox to add 'known for being the first fortune 500 company CEO to come out as gay' or other irrelevant non-tech things. There is no 'known for' in his infobox either, despite the fact that this would be quite salient - but is that a problem? Not really, as it is a non-tech thing.</li><li>These high profile & extremely well-known non-tech facts of tech people are not mentioned in their respective 'known for' params, yet a non-tech item related to Eich is stated here. I believe the examples I provided above do relate to the 'world outside tech', i.e. the 'wider world', as per your own definition in Eich's talk page. Yet such important examples related to that same 'wider world' have been ignored. Both the Gates and Bezos pages also have a 'good' rating despite that.</li><li>The only evidence of Eich contributing against same-sex marriage is prior to 2010/11. There is no evidence he is currently still engaging in that, and obviously, it is not possible to find an article that does not exist. Perhaps he still retains the view that same-sex marriage should not be present, but for a tech page's infobox, that trivia is not relevant. If it is, the info about Gates, Bezos, Musk & Cook (etc.) are also relevant.</li><li>As a matter of fact, Sam Yagan of okCupid had also donated to political candidates who were against same-sex marriage. Though he later claims it was a mistake, it is not mentioned in his article at all, forget the infobox. There is no such mention in okCupid's page either. Bias much?</li><li>There are several other noted CEO's with wikipedia pages who have campaigned quite strongly against LGBT, spending millions of dollars, and yet their pages only have the relevant action as part of the article, not the infobox.</li><li>I do not understand why such differential treatment is present. It is not objective and does not follow the standard set by 'good' rated tech person pages, which do not include irrelevant non-tech activities in the infobox, even though they are CURRENT actions, as opposed to Eich's which is a past action. If you believe that just providing citations gives you the lien to mention such non-tech info in Eich page, the same should be applied to the Gates & Bezos pages - it would be unbelievably simple to provide over a dozen citations that focus exclusively on their wealth and describe it in detail. But doing so would be irrational. As examples from wikipedia already show, tech people should have tech-related info only, in the 'known for' field.</li></ol>
 * 115.97.47.153 (talk) 21:06, 27 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I think you're not taking on board the fact that you've convinced nobody here - David Gerard (talk) 07:36, 28 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @David Gerard, since when did you represent everybody? People can take the time to review and respond, just like I had waited over 24 hours for you, thinking you would properly review things and respond. Kindly do not overlay your opinion onto everyone else's.
 * And I believe I have made several statements with citations that comply with WP:RS, WP:BLP etc. Which of those are you disagreeing with and what is the new excuse now? The fact that you aren't taking the trouble to discuss the article and are ultimately shielding yourself behind a paper wall, only displays the fact that you do not have any tangible arguments against my valid points, points that conform to BLP & RS much more than yours. The only thing you have are 'your feelings'.
 * 115.97.89.201 (talk) 15:21, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That's great, thanks - David Gerard (talk) 15:36, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You're welcome, @David Gerard . And despite my best at trying to assume good faith, I still see no objective feedback on what you have a problem with. It appears you are unable to suggest further improvements to what I have added. Perhaps your schedule is too tight to spend time on the Eich article. Others like Elephanthunter, DIYeditor and Nil Einne may have a view on how to further improve certain wordings, so as to not make things sound ambiguous. Great care must be taken to ensure the page does not present misinformation by quoting poorly written & unresearched articles, which might affect the reputation of living people, for the better or worse. What the Eich page needs is more objectivity & balance, and less speculation & sensationalism (which is what over half of the existing citations contain). In the meantime, thank you for your time, despite your pressing commitments. You may take a step back from the Eich wiki page at this point and let others take care of it. 115.97.89.201 (talk) 16:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I still see no objective feedback on what you have a problem with. I have stated a number of times that I have a problem with you removing extremely well-sourced claims from a BLP. Apparently you read that and went "WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT". Though at least you've stopped trying to edit-war them out - David Gerard (talk) 19:16, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Where is the objective feedback lacking here, @David Gerard ? For starters, I have not been removing extremely well-sourced claims from a BLP, it was Elephanthunter, with you commenting 'it is fine'. You have clearly not read through my comments & notes. Effectively, the one who is WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT is nobody other that you. We have a BLP here where poorly-written & sensational articles are cited as claims for important issues. The ones that have a more even-sided view of the issue have been removed. Yet your view is it is fine. That does not compute! It is only going to turn into an Attack Page next. And I'm far more experienced than you imagine to get into an edit-war, thank you very much. It is okay if you are unable to perform your duties neutrally/diligently on the Eich page. Others will be able to handle this. 27.4.120.95 (talk) 05:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)


 * @Elephanthunter - thank you for the changes made, but I have some feedback on them
 * It is not only CNET that reported 'only Lilly left due to Eich'. The announcement was by Mozilla and the announcement was covered by ZDNET and Washington Post as well. Here's another link from BBC. Your own link from inc.com has a clarification at the bottom stating the same.
 * You have added further citations referring some editorials that use the word 'widespread criticism'. The number of employees & third-party developers who engaged in such criticism is still less than two dozen. Merely the fact that dozens of articles use the same term without providing a count does not make it factual. The only place a count is mentioned are in mozilla's FAQ and the various publications that reported mozilla announcement. There has been no counter-argument publication to the number provided by Mozilla. It certainly is disappointing that the majority of articles present are sensational in nature without any proper checking done, focusing only on selective reactions and largely ignoring the wide range of reactions across the Mozilla community. Citing these articles seems as valid as using a conspiracy theory article that states 'Obama's liberal policies made Eich resign'. It is also as logical as stating the flat earth theory in the earth page based on the millions of posts by flat-earthers across our blue marble. I recognise that wikipedia is neither factual nor the place to do investigative journalism, but at the end of the day, we are only abiding by what is sensational rather than straight-forward. 27.4.120.95 (talk) 05:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

There is a very specific reason I used that CNET article. Consider these two hypothetical reports:
 * Bob the unicorn left Skittles Inc due to his dislike of Skittles. We saw a tweet where Bob grumbled about how much he hates Skittles. A Skittles Inc insider even confirmed Bob's face gets all red when he sees Skittles. -- This is a secondary source, like the CNET article.
 * Skittles Inc sent us an update: 'Bob left due to Skittles' -- This is a primary source, no matter how many news outlets report on it

You can read more about secondary sources at WP:SECONDARY.

As for your concern over the phrase "widespread criticism": A quick search revealed that multiple secondary sources use the exact phrase "widespread criticism", and there was sufficient evidence to indicate that it was not remotely sensationalism. There are three things you are not taking into account: Unless you have new information, it's my opinion this section is sufficiently balanced and well-written. --Elephanthunter (talk) 07:39, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) The Mozilla FAQ only refers to Mozilla employees, not literally everyone else in the world. There was a full-page anti-Firefox message on OKCupid mentioning the Eich situation, remember? In 2014 OKC had 3 billion monthly page views, of which 12% saw that message.
 * 2) The Mozilla FAQ specifically says tweets on or prior to March 27th
 * 3) Mozilla is a primary source, with clear ties to the situation!


 * @Elephanthunter ,
 * I am not arguing against using the CNET article. I'm saying CNET alone did not report it, and they certainly did not report it as their own creation. ZDNET and BBC also reported this as a regular article. Washington Post used Mozilla's announcement word by word, so you may ignore it. The Primary source here is Mozilla, and as per WP:PRIMARY, there is nothing wrong in using mozilla's announcement since it complies with "original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved." Hence your phrasing "CNET later reported that of the three board members who had left" should be changed to "Mozilla later announced that..." etc. There is nothing wrong in using a WP:PRIMARY source where it relates closely to a BLP and as per WP:BLP & WP:RS, there is nothing wrong in referring to the BLP's blog also, if required. The specific phrase used in BLP is "Avoid misuse of primary sources", not "Avoid use of primary sources" - and this primarily relates to not using legal documents or Government records as citations, for the sake of privacy.
 * I've noticed a general confusion regarding the use of primary sources by many editors. Here is the policy info for you: "Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation." - in this case, there is no policy restriction for using primary sources. The only restriction in place according to BLP is WP:NOR i.e. no original research / original interpretation must be conducted by the wikipedia editor themselves, based on the primary sources. There is no argument that primary sources are the most reliable in most situations, unless secondary sources are able to refute the claims of the primary source with tangible evidence, and not vague words (like 'widespread', without quantifying & proving the spread was indeed wide). Since there are no interviews or comments from the directors who resigned, the various articles that claim 'the directors resigned due to Eich/Proposition 8' contain factually unreliable & unprovable hyperbole and sensationalism. These cannot be regarded as reliable sources. The cause for the directors resigning has been announced by Mozilla and reported by various secondary sources including CNET, BBC, ZDNET, The Verge, and others. I don't think there is any necessity for further discussion regarding this, so I ask you to kindly go ahead and change the phrasing as mentioned in the previous point. Let me know if you disagree and why.
 * I concur that multiple secondary sources had indeed mentioned "widespread criticism" - which is also something I addressed earlier. Despite the sources using the term, they only repeatedly refer to the few Mozilla employees, a few third party developers and okCupid to support the usage of that term. This is hardly a substantial number by any manner of definition. The only widespread thing that happened was the widespread re-reporting of the criticism which is why you can see tons of articles containing the same twitter references of the same parties. None of them report anything beyond what was reported in the first two or three articles. None of the secondary sources reported a high number and most don't report any number at all. The only secondary sources that reported an actual number reported only low numbers. The only 'widespread' that happened here is the widespread media coverage. My next point will cover okCupid.
 * OkCupid is a website and does not represent all its users. It is only an assumption and original research to consider that the billion viewers who saw the message all agreed with OkCupid. OkCupid did not make any announcement about the number of users who agreed with or disagreed with their action (e.g. by downloading & signing in from another browser shortly after their message). Claiming that the criticism is 'widespread' using okCupid's action as evidence is original research and unreliable. This applies to any other website also.
 * Ultimately, the use of the term 'triggered widespread criticism' without any quantifiable value to back it, is only hyperbole, i.e. it is just a figure of speech used by the editorials for the sake of over-emphasising the actual thing. It is untenable. If you think I am incorrect, I ask you to please cite a link that states an approximate number of the comments/actions against Eich/Mozilla during that time. If the number is indeed high, I will not argue with you about the use of the term 'widespread'. I would like to suggest an alternate phrase 'triggered substantial criticism' which implies it was sufficient enough to be reported, which is the case here. I feel is a more neutral wording - neither too low nor too excessive-sounding.
 * In contrast, tens of thousands of people had openly posted death threats and homophobic abuse in Mozilla's feedback website. A number of over 59,000 negative reviews has been clearly reported by PinkNews (an online news site for LGBT) and ZDNET. There is no such quantitative parallel reporting the number of people criticising Eich's appointment. Only the term 'widely criticised' is used without quantitative proof. There are also several tweets from the anti-gay community criticising the resignation by Eich. There were even some comments from the pro-gay community who expressed disappointment at Eich's resignation, including comments by Andrew Sullivan, Hampton Catlin, Emily Moulder and Justin Lee (among others). However, there is no mention of the criticism that had been expressed by tens of thousands on Eich's resignation, in the Eich page. This is a strange oversight.
 * It was widely reported (incorrectly) that Eich was forced to resign by Mozilla, when both Eich and Mozilla mentioned otherwise. It was also widely reported (incorrectly) that 3 Mozilla directors resigned due to Eich's appointment, while Mozilla announced otherwise. You can find multiple headlines from reliable sources reporting that Eich had been forced to resign due to pro-gay marriage protesters. There are a number of publications mentioning this phrase, but that does not make it right. I haven't bothered sharing such links since Mozilla's official position on this is more salient than third-party speculations, however reliable those reporting organisations are supposed to be. We all know how irresponsible the media can be and are - just yet another example of how secondary sources can be unreliable. Using Primary reputable sources like Mozilla's announcement is far less controversial in this case. We are talking about a living person and as per verifiability, we must not rely on poorly sourced material containing unsubstantiated gossip, rumor or personal opinion in a page, if it might damage the reputation of living people.
 * This was a pretty serious incident and it makes no sense to dilute it into a sentence or two for the sake of convenience. The issue ought to be expressed in detail on the wiki page with reactions from all sides. Ignoring reactions from one group over the other is nothing but bias from the editor conducting the edits and not in line with BLP. Based on the information shared above, it is my view that the section presents a distorted view of what had happeend.
 * 27.4.120.95 (talk) 13:09, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Regardless of whether it should be in the infobox, it is misleading to say that a thing Eich is known for is. He is known in that context for being something about gay marriage. Among proponents of Proposition 8 neither the amount he donated nor his effect on the outcome are notable. Part of the controversy concerned Eich's donations to Tom McClintock, presented in the article as being connected to the latter's support for Prop 8, but McClintock's extensive BLP doesn't even mention Proposition 8. The OP's comparison to Tim Cook is apt: Cook isn't known for but for being one of the first examples of a  and it would be misleading to say he was "known for his homosexuality". 73.149.246.232 (talk) 03:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Tim Cook being gay wasn't literally headline news in multiple international RSes, Eich's opposition to gay marriage literally was. More specifically: one is a personal characteristic, the other is specific activism - David Gerard (talk) 12:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, the controlled experiment was done. Eich's opposition was not international (!) headline (!!) news before he was CEO, despite this matter being known for years, published on his blog, and the list of donors available and data-mined since 2008-9.   This was of interest on gay websites, Mozilla forums, maybe some Silicon Valley gossip sites, before the 2014 appointment as CEO.  Eich was CTO of Mozilla for years before and after his Proposition 8 donations and as such not notable enough to make international headline news in mainstream outlets. That things blew up only when he was made CEO suggests the notability is as "noted technologist CEO embroiled in controversy over" opposition to gay marriage, not the un-notable fact that he was one of 60000 individual donors to Proposition 8. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 18:20, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Another independent problem with this (whether the topic belongs the infobox or not) is that there are 3, previously 4, citations to the "opposition to gay marriage". This is an indication of POV-pushing and that Eich is not, in fact, known for that, or for that tendentious phrasing of something else related that he actually may be known for. Such as being a (something something gay marriage). If he were so well known for it, that would either be obvious without citation, or be apparent (also without infobox citation) to the average reader of the article from the sections related to gay marriage. Stuffing the box with citations to prove the point is pre-empting the interpretation for the reader, pushing for a particular view to be reached. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2020 (UTC)


 * You're literally arguing "it can't be true, it's too well cited to multiple reliable sources"? - David Gerard (talk) 22:46, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * A ridiculous straw-man.  The actual argument is that (1) the sources do not support what they are cited to demonstrate but are (2) posted in the infobox, in a highly unusual fashion, in order to pre-empt the question of whether the material is tendentious and inaccurate.  73.149.246.232 (talk) 18:03, 8 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I really haven't been following this convoluted discussion, as it's just all over the place, but I will point out: that is not a straw-man argument. It's actually a rather astute, albeit incomplete, characterization of your argument. An example of a straw man would be the Tim Cook comparison used above. The real problem with your arguments, aside from the other fallacies they contain, is that the reasoning tends to be circular. In other words, you keep ending with what you begin. On top of that, your arguments keep changing. It starts out, "No one else became notable for their donations, and it's not even in their articles" to "he was not notable for this before he became CEO, so he can't be notable for it afterwards", to "too many sources is POV pushing, if he were known for it there would be no sources" and finally to "the sources never actually say he is notable for that." Seriously, make up your mind already, but any way you choose, there are serious logic problems with your positions.


 * Simply put, for the purposes of Wikipedia, what a person is "known for" (most notable for) is determined by a preponderance of reliable sources. The sources don't have to specifically spell it out, or use the actual word "known for". In a case like this it is more of a "sky is blue" situation. We Wikipedians can figure out what he is most known for by simply weighing the sources against one another. That's what we do. In this case, with 21 out of 38 or so sources being about this issue, we can definitely say he is more known for his stance on gay marriage than anything else. As you said, he became CEO and then it blew up in the media. He is most notable for whatever got the most coverage.


 * Now I think there are very good arguments for not putting it in the infobox, and for not directly stating what he is "known for", but you haven't touched on any of those, and I really don't have the time to get involved too deeply into this. All I'm saying is that the arguments your using aren't going to convince anyone. I hope that helps, and good luck. This is not a BLP violation, so I'd recommend taking it to the talk page and going through the normal dispute resolution process. Zaereth (talk) 20:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * (OK, I registered an account. I am the IP 73.xxx above)


 * A rather astute, albeit incomplete, characterization is exactly how the more effective (or dishonest) sorts of strawmen are constructed, so pointing out that Gerard's comment has those features does not remove it from the straw-man category. At best he assumed his conclusion, that the citations are most accurately summarized by "opposition to gay marriage" rather than the other formulations (e.g., "CEO in controversy over").


 * Your own walloftext isn't much better, though it's quite a lot longer, louder and far heavier on unsupported chest-beating. If you have concrete examples of fallacies, circular reasoning or whatever, feel free to share.


 * Whether the Eich material is a BLP violation is one of the points in question, and unsupported declaration that it isn't doesn't achieve much. I'll note that for encyclopedia purposes none of the sources actually demonstrates Eich was ever in "opposition to gay marriage", any more than sources on OJ Simpson demonstrate he killed his wife.  They are evidence of that, but the more objectively accurate summary would refer to (CEO something something) support for Proposition 8, just as in OJ's case it would talk about his court cases or other objectively known stuff rather than things that are merely likely inferences.  Eich has refused to discuss his past or present views on gay marriage, and for all we know he may have supported Proposition 8 out of concern about courts overruling a landslide referendum. Sesquivalent (talk) 06:36, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Bigot EllenCT (talk) 06:42, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Piers Robinson
User 78.144.90.55 is defaming this living person in edit summaries here and here. The first of those edits removed material supported by RS (which indicates “Piers Robinson, a scholar of the CNN effect at the University of Sheffield …”).

How to handle? Block, ban, sock puppet check? (I’m new at such issues.) Humanengr (talk) 12:06, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * We have had a few issues with new editors at that page recently. Would it be worth while raising the bar for the article? I noticed that you didn't revert the IP's changes. I considered it but thought it may inflame the situation given the edit summaries. It also appeared that the edit summaries were deliberately inflammatory in order to create a scene. Burrobert (talk) 16:39, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I am also concerned by this new edit which contains a number of serious allegations . Burrobert (talk) 13:20, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

2014 University of Minnesota rape case
There are serious problems in this article full of BLP implications. inserted a huge chunk of material, much of it sourced to Twitter. But note especially what is happening with the "did you guys have consensual sex?” question: it is a very seriously misleading summary of what the original article and the source say. The whole article needs to be rewritten from scratch (I'm not sure if older versions were much better) and I need y'all's help for that, but I am going to look further into this editor's work. Drmies (talk) 15:21, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

After looking further into the matter, I reverted to the pre-Jaxon version, and revdeleted the lot: there were some pretty outrageous things in there--victim blaming, SYNTH about investigative methods, editorializing about the alleged perpetrator's innocence and claims. I can't decide if the editor should be indef-blocked on the spot or not. The article, of course, still needs some work. And I'll just note that I wouldn't have come to the article without the edits of --thank you. Next time, write better/more edit summaries and you might not get reverted. , I will grant you that the two edits you reverted were unexplained, but I wish you had looked at the actual edit, which you are required to do before you hit rollback or whatever; you might have noticed that you re-inserted serious BLP-violating material. You should have noticed that. Drmies (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that :P ◊ <b style="color:#095">PRAHLAD</b> <sup style="color:#707">balaji (M•T•A•C) This message was left at 15:34, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@Drmies Being new to editing Wikipedia I fully understand removing the two pieces of material referencing a single twitter post and a reference to the subject matter's blog post matter, but it's a stretch to say "much" of my inserted material was sourced from twitter. The current version you reverted to is still quite sensationalist and inaccurate. At the very least the sentence about the alleged physical injuries, "He left claw marks on her body, bit chunks of her breasts, and shoved his fist so far into her mouth that he tore open part of her tongue during the attack.[2]" alluding to 1st or 2nd degree criminal sexual assault conviction is not correct and should be removed as they are just allegations. The referenced source, crimewatchdaily.com got it wrong and sensationalized the story. Drill-Mellum was only convicted of 3rd degree criminal sexual misconduct, involving lack of consent. I appreciate your consideration in this particular modification.

Limkokwing University of Creative Technology
Edit-warring over this content about allegations. We should not include allegations. -- Deep fried okra  ( schalte ein ) 19:01, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Oh, hell no. The only sources for that is an op/ed column based mostly on twitter accusations, and the twitter accusations themselves. This is a clear violation of BLPCRIME, BLPRS, BLPPRIMARY, and SPS. I have removed the section, but have a feeling it may return. It may be worth giving it some page protection until this thing cools down. Zaereth (talk) 22:10, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Rob Heydon


I first noticed this when an IP removed some fairly egregious BLP-violating material. But this article was created by and has recently been edited by accounts with similar names to the subject. Lots of IP and SPA additions over the years. The article itself is just a scattered list of items with no sourcing to indicate notability. This is pretty well outside my comfort zone, and some extra eyes would be appreciated. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 14:38, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * That article is in terrible shape. It looks like a resume that someone might post on facebook. There is obviously a lot of COI editing taking place, from conception to date. And there is a total lack of sourcing except for a movie review that only mentions his name in passing. If I ever saw a candidate for AFC, this is one. Now I see that there are some news articles out there on this guy, but more about the pot store that he owns than his movies it seems, but perhaps there's a way to salvage it, but if nobody has the time to do that soon then this may be a case of WP:Blow it up and start over, just because it's in such bad shape. Zaereth (talk) 22:36, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Deepak Paladka
Person is not an actor. Simply paid volunteers to create a wikipedia page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bangala10000 (talk • contribs) 09:49, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Dov Seidman
I’d like to request that a false allegation of serious wrongdoing be removed from the biographical article about Dov Seidman for the reasons described below. I am asking for the help of independent editors to resolve this situation -- I have a personal relationship with Seidman.

On June 10, 2020, a user with the IP address 76.119.33.74, who had never contributed anything to Wikipedia before this attack, added the following to the bio, in the subsection, "Legal Dispute":

In 2019, Seidman, another 2 board members and LRN were sued by a shareholder for breaching their fiduciary duties to LRN shareholders. The suit alleged that the group schemed to increase Seidman's control over the company by coercively purchasing shares from outstanding stockholders at an unfairly low price, immediately before completing an undisclosed sale to an external buyer. The price Seidman and the other defendants ultimately received for their shares was almost six times higher than the suing shareholder received, generating a $182 million windfall for Seidman. On February 25, 2020, the Delaware Court of Chancery denied a motion to dismiss the claims. [Source redacted]

The allegations are untrue. Seidman is not famous, so a lawsuit against him is not newsworthy - and in fact, the only secondary source cited is a niche trade journal that summarize legal proceedings as case notes. It uses outside law firms to write these case notes in exchange for an adjacent advertisement. . Publishing accusations of serious wrongdoing that have not been proven in a court, or published in a mainstream publication, is entirely unfair – and goes against the Wikipedia value of verifiability, especially in biographies of living people.

What’s more, the person who wrote this passage on Wikipedia distorts what’s in the National Law Review case note. Nowhere in the case note does it say “that the group schemed to increase Seidman's control...” There’s nothing about a “scheme” - the use of this inflammatory word shows that the editor was intent on attacking Seidman, not making the encyclopedia better. Nor does the National Law Review case note say the stock purchase was “immediately before completing an undisclosed sale.” The case note says the merger was one year later. Not immediately before. The intent to smear Seidman is fully revealed in the following sentence, which is straight editorializing, not found anywhere in the National Law Review article: “The price Seidman and the other defendants ultimately received for their shares was almost six times higher than the suing shareholder received, generating a $182 million windfall for Seidman.” This editor may be taking accusations from the plaintiff’s legal complaint, which they perhaps have access to, but it does not come from the cited secondary source.

The passage was later refined two days later by User:JohnPulsipher, a user account that was also set up to do nothing but smear Seidman. It has edits to no other articles and is likely the same user as the IP address. JohnPulsipher changed the word “immediately” to “shortly”, which is still entirely inaccurate – one year is not “shortly,” a critical distinction that this editor is trying to blur. To clarify, the ruling not to dismiss the case means that the complaint states a prima facie case if it were proven to be true. The Delaware court is required to assume the allegations are true for the purpose of deciding a motion to dismiss - there has been no evidence presented yet or finding of fact by the court. It’s just the beginning of the process, consisting of unproven allegations.

Yesterday, I removed the passage based on what it says on top of the Talk page -- “Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately...” I disclosed in the edit note that I personally know Seidman. The editor User: 17jiangz1 restored the passage, except they rightfully removed the full sentence that editorializes about a “windfall for Seidman”, as “undue” according to the edit note. However, the entire passage should be removed for the reasons I’ve sincerely described.

If it absolutely has to stay in, then the second sentence should be removed because it’s inaccurate and biased. A bit more explanation could be given in the first sentence by adding to the end of it: “...by buying back their shares at a lower price than the share price of a company merger one year later.” In this case, the word "allegedly" should also be added to the first sentence: "In 2019, Seidman, LRN, and another two board members (Lee Feldman and Mats Lederhausen) were sued by a shareholder for allegedly breaching their fiduciary duties to LRN shareholders."Wikiqueen32 (talk) 01:27, 17 June 2020 (UTC) ——————————————

This request by User: Wikiqueen32, a friend of Seidman's, is a blatant attempt to manipulate the Encyclopedia by hiding unflattering facts that Seidman's friend would rather not be publicly disseminated. Additionally, the request itself contains numerous falsehoods and/or unverified claims.

First, User: Wikiqueen32 states that the allegations in the lawsuit are "untrue." There is no way for the editor to know this, and it has not been proven in court. To the contrary, as the editor acknowledges, the Delaware Chancery Court decision on the motion to dismiss reviewed and rejected defendant's claims that the suit had no merit.

Second, the claim that "Seidman is not famous, so a lawsuit against him is not newsworthy" is ludicrous. Seidman is a well-known author and speaker on the topic of ethics, frequently appearing on television, in print and at events such as the World Economic Forum. On his website Seidman highlights pullquotes describing himself as "the Hottest advisor on the corporate virtue circuit" (Forbes) and one of the "Top 60 Global Thinkers of the Last Decade" (The Economic Times). The fact that Seidman's fame stems from his purported expertise in ethical behavior makes public allegations of serious corporate wrongdoing especially newsworthy.

Third, the editor attempts to claim that the National Law Journal is not a "mainstream publication." The NLJ is widely read and referenced within the legal field, and the Encyclopedia's own entry on the NLJ notes that it has been in circulation since 1978, and is a sister publication to the New York Law Journal, published since 1888. As a reference, the NLJ easily meets the bar for source verification.

Fourth, the editor claims the following: "What’s more, the person who wrote this passage on Wikipedia distorts what’s in the National Law Review case note. Nowhere in the case note does it say “that the group schemed to increase Seidman's control...” There’s nothing about a “scheme” - the use of this inflammatory word shows that the editor was intent on attacking Seidman, not making the encyclopedia better." This is because the reference is taken from the Chancery Court decision, not the NLJ article. The introductory paragraph of the Court decision states: "The self-tender was allegedly part of a scheme to increase the founder’s control over the company by excising outstanding stockholders at an unfair price before completing an undisclosed sales process that was underway at the time of the self-tender. Through that sales process, the individual defendants received a windfall when they cashed out at $7.00 per share, and the founder secured other benefits for himself." Thus, both the word "scheme", the word "windfall" and the amount that Seidman received are part of the public record.

Fifth, User: Wikiqueen32 attempts to distort the record about the timeline of Seidman's windfall at the expense of his shareholders. As the Court decision notes, the negotiations to sell LRN were allegedly "underway" at the time of the self-tender. Whether it's "immediately" or "shortly", the Encyclopedia has no obligation to use Seidman's preferred description of the timeline over that of the Court.

Overall, this request is an obvious, bad-faith attempt by an interested party to manipulate the Encyclopedia to their advantage. Everything that User: Wikiqueen32 objects to is well-sourced, accurate and fair. The fact that the editor is unhappy that people know about Seidman's controversial behavior is not a reason to censor the Encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Socrates549 (talk • contribs) 02:55, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * UPDATE: the user who responded above, User: Socrates549, is the third single purpose account being used to attack the article Dov Seidman. (along with User:JohnPulsipher and the IP address 76.119.33.74.) The account Socrates549, set up a few hours ago, has been used for nothing but responding here and attacking the article. [] This Socrates account added this editorializing attack back into the article: "The price Seidman and the other defendants ultimately received for their shares was multiple times higher than the suing shareholder received, generating $182 million for Seidman." which User:17jiangz1 had removed as "undue."   and as I pointed out, did not appear in the secondary source.Wikiqueen32 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 15:20, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * UPDATE: correct - I am a new editor to Wikipedia, as it seems User: Wikiqueen32 is. In fact, it seems that User: Wikiqueen32 is an account created only to suppress unflattering information about Dov Seidman. I created this account to rectify that. And again, quoting undisputed facts from a Delaware Chancery Court decision, or from an article in a law journal summarizing that decision, can in no way be described as an "editorializing attack." It is sharing verified factual information which User: Wikiqueen32 simply does not want to be seen. Socrates549 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:42, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't have time to go through this and see if the source is a good one, and besides it is too big to fit my screen. Half the text is either covered by ads or runs off the edge of the screen. But I did remove the court documents from both there and here as a violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY. Just from a quick glance, however, given that there is only one source I think this is getting way too much weight versus the size of the article, and at the very least should be whittled down to the bare bones. If someone else has more time and the ability to check through the source, it would be appreciated.


 * Aside from that Wikiqueen has fessed up to their COI, and appears to be trying to handle this in the correct way. We do seem to have a lot of new SPAs adding this info, so it does raise some red-flags of a possible COI and perhaps even some socking going on with these other accounts, so that may be something to keep an eye on. Zaereth (talk) 18:55, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I can't speak to anyone else, but I have no COI. Not a shareholder or connected with the lawsuit in any way. Just someone interested in the world of ethics. I found the dollar figure Seidman got from the sale - $128m (p.15 of the court decision), so I assume it was a typo by the original poster. Regardless, I think the reason this case is significant is because Seidman charges a huge amount of money to advise people on ethical behavior, so allegedly cheating his shareholders seems like a noteworthy issue. Anyway, seeing how this works has been an interesting experience. As Seidman himself has said, "To rebuild the trustworthiness and reputation of your business, you must trust people with the truth, engage in candid conversations about critical issues, and recognize the capacity people have for doing the right thing." Socrates549


 * Hmmm. First, since you're new, we don't use court documents as sources. Second, you should read our policies, including WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR, WP:Right great wrongs, and most importantly, WP:BLP, which must be observed in all articles, talk pages, user pages, and anywhere else in which it may affect living people. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, which means we try to use secondary sources to gather our info. Then we have to summarize that info to a size that is balanced with the rest of the article. To determine this, we do so by a preponderance of reliable, secondary sources. In other words, we don't decide what is noteworthy ourselves, we have to let the sources do that. If they think it's notable, then they will write about it, and if it really is notable, other sources will pick up on it. We Wikipedians figure out how much space it deserve --in comparison to the rest of the article-- by weighing the coverage in sources against each other. If this were being reported in the Wall Street Journal, I would be much more inclined to see it stay than if written about simply in a law journal that would interest only lawyers. If it were picked up by the NY Times, LA Times, Wa Post, and suddenly is in every newspaper you see, etc., then it would demonstrate some serious significance to his notability, but it all really depends on how much coverage it has gotten. The question to ask is, in the entire scope of this person's life and career, how significant of an impact did this have on that life and career and to his overall notability?


 * Then we have to determine just how much weight (space) to give it in the article. In this case, we have one, weak source. When I compare that to the other lawsuit, which has several sources from respectable, widely-read newspapers, I have to conclude that it doesn't deserve the same amount of weight as that one. When I compare that sourcing to all of the sources out there in the world about this person, and try to put that into proportion with the rest of the article (which is rather short), I have a hard time seeing how it deserves even a single sentence. I say this just by weighing the sources against one another. So I think there is a lot of undue weight being given to this lawsuit. I would really want to see it in some better sources before I would put it into the article.


 * But someone with a better computer should check out the source and see if it's even a good one. From the bits and pieces I could read, it looks like it's just providing a synopsis of the court records written specifically for lawyers and others in the legal community. I question whether it is much better than using the court records themselves, or if it even counts as a reliable, secondary source, but I can't really tell without being able to read it. Zaereth (talk) 21:06, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Vikas chottu
Vikas Chottu is Social Worker of india. He liveing in Amritsar Punjab.

vikas chottu is a social Worker of Punjab. He was helping to poor peoples. And Old peoples.

He is Professional Event Organiser of india.

and he was helping to new singer with paromoting to get Success in Life.

Official Name: Vikas chottu (Vikas Sherma)

Father Name: Jaspal sharma

Mother Name: Neelam sharma

Born: Amritsar Punjab. Date of birth: 14sep 1991 Study: +2 & Event Management Coures P.T.Address: opp japani Mill near water tank chheharta Amritsar Punjab. Official Work:Artist,

Event Organiser , Music Promoter, Social Worker , Artist Promoter. Vikas Chottu company Name: Vikaschottu Productions new artist Promoter. Punjab Film Permoshans.

Latest Music Promotide Project's Song Name

Mouka 7janam Babe Vs Akh Honda city Mashoor Gal bat wakhre

Life style: Vikas Chottu is Social worker .He live in Punjabi. He was Helping to avery person. to need ha help For avery Work. Natcher Happyness .Best Event Organiser of Punjab. He is working with All Punjabi singer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2409:4051:9:4BBE:0:0:F68:80A1 (talk) 11:13, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Karan Johar sexual orientation
In this edit by at Karan Johar, the editor indicated that "Karan Johar is openly gay". Pilot03 used this India Today source, in which he says "Everybody knows what my sexual orientation is. I don't need to scream it out. If I need to spell it out, I won't". That, to me, does not say that he is openly gay, particularly when there is supplementary information there where he expresses a concern about police retribution. To me, it's hard to interpret that reserved attitude as "open", so I removed the content explaining in my summary that the quote doesn't match with "openly gay". The content was silently restored by Pilot03, and rather than perpetuate their edit war, I figured I'd see what people here think about the suitability of the content. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:13, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , I agree that "openly" is contra-indicated by the cited reference. In the context of Indian law, he cannot state he is, in fact, gay and keep his job and avoid legal trouble but he also acknowledges that "everyone" thinks that he's gay.  It is the cageiest, most circumspect version of "open" I've ever seen. I suggest a formulation such as: "Johar has acknowledged that the rumors of his sexuality are mostly correct but has not made a definitive statement, citing legal and financial consequences of openly declaring himself gay." and cite the same source. I hope this helps. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:22, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Your feedback is appreciated. Curious what others might say as well. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:38, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I like the approach that the article has been updated to use, incorporating the direct quote.--Trystan (talk) 18:14, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I actually find that prose extraordinarily vague. A reader who doesn't know anything about Karan Johar isn't going to walk away with anything other than a supposition. "Everyone knows", except for the reader... Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:57, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It's vague because he was vague. I don't see how we can make a more definitive statement than the subject himself made.--Trystan (talk) 00:27, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Right, that's the essence of my point. If Johar is being cagey about his sexual orientation, then maybe it's not worth including. The subject isn't known for being gay. It's not even a reason why they're somewhat known. It's a bit of salacious knowledge that the subject, for whatever his reasons, doesn't want to explicitly state, which suggests pretty plainly that he isn't "openly gay" as Pilot03 would have us believe. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:20, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that we can't include his sexual orientation, because, per WP:BLP and WP:EGRS, we would need a clear public statement from him. But we can include his statement that he can't share his sexual orientation for fear of legal consequences. That is neither salacious nor trivial, and is well-sourced. It's not an indirect way to get the reader to guess his sexual orientation, it's sharing a direct quote about a significant way in which the law impacts his life.--Trystan (talk) 13:30, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I like your suggestion Eggishorn. This would be more appropriate. "Johar has acknowledged that the rumors of his sexuality are mostly correct but has not made a definitive statement, citing legal and financial consequences of openly declaring himself gay." Cyphoidbomb seems to be working for Karan Johar. I can provide atleast 100 references if you need me to. But you can't simply delete his sexual orientation from this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pilot03 (talk • contribs) 02:14, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Personal attacks won't be tolerated at Wikipedia, and unless you have some sort of empirical evidence that I am working for Johar, which I am not (given my 145,000 edits across 17,000 pages), your toothless snipe is a ridiculous supposition. Elevate your behaviour, please. You added a very poorly-sourced claim containing potentially defamatory information about a citizen in a country that criminalises homosexuality. You were reverted, you silently resubmitted it, you were told why this was problematic, and now the community gets to decide what the appropriate solution is. I've done you a favour, and you are welcome. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:20, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Tony Buzbee


I was trying to WP:RPP this article because a series of IP editors (I'm pretty sure it's the same person using multiple incognito windows) keeps removing negative information about Tony Buzbee. This is despite the fact that the negative information is well sourced with WP:RS. The reviewing admin over at RPP declined the request due to BLP concerns and lack of consensus. In my opinion, the way it is written, it passes WP:BLPPUBLIC. Based on the diffs, it even seems like there is a general consensus to include this information. Should this info be removed? (Tony Buzbee).  Bait30  Talk 2 me pls? 17:50, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * From my perspective the bigger problem here is that he's not actually notable in Wikipedia terms, and the article probably shouldn't be here at all. As a failed election candidate he doesn't pass WP:NPOL and other than that he's a lawyer and a business person, but I'm not seeing anything that elevates him above many thousands of other people in similar lines of work. Yes, he appeared on the cover of the New York Times magazine but that's based on an interview with him and is more concerned with the Deepwater Horizon incident than him personally. I'm in favour of sending it to WP:AFD. Neiltonks (talk) 07:58, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * If you want to you can, but I'm pretty sure he satisfies WP:NBIO, which is why the issue being presented is solely on the DWI stuff.  Bait30   Talk 2 me pls? 20:21, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Just from the citations in the article, it's clear he meets the WP:GNG which overrides WP:NPOL. Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:38, 18 June 2020 (UTC)


 * While I think the question of notability is a good one, it does seem he has had enough coverage about him, as more than just a mayoral candidate, that I think it may likely survive AFD, although when I read the notability policy in its entirety, I don't really see enough material out there to really make this into a decent article about this person. There are several sources, mostly local, but no multitude, so I would vote delete.


 * But that aside, the question about the DWI case seems simple. The subject's very notability is questionable, and he doesn't even come close to rising to the level of a public figure. Per WP:BLPCRIME, this should stay out unless a conviction is secured in a court of law, and that conviction is discussed in reliable sources. And if that ever does happen, we need to make sure what we put in the article is balanced with the rest of it, and as written we're giving it way too much weight. But that is all moot without a conviction. Zaereth (talk) 21:31, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree that he is not a public figure. He was the primary challenger for mayor of the fourth largest city in the United States. He definitely made himself known throughout the city with his campaign. There's a reason why those local reliable sources covered a simple DWI arrest and seeming conflict of interest in the dismissal of the charges. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:39, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Also articles about him from before his campaign .  Bait30   Talk 2 me pls? 22:59, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Also the most recent removal of the content was by an IP address from Buzbee's zip code so I suspect a conflict of interest editing. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:04, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Harjan Alexander
My name is Lakshman Arjuna Mahendran. it remains unchanged to this day. however scurrilous attempts to claim i have changed my name have appeared. these are false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arjunnam (talk • contribs) 00:16, 19 June 2020 (UTC) }


 * The person may be contesting this page move. Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:05, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Also the person removed these cited assertion claiming the allegations of a name change was false. Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:11, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Warren Ellis


There is a small debate on the Warren Ellis page about whether to include accusations of "sexual coercion." The sources have gotten a lot better then they were when I originally removed the section but I and a couple other editors would be interested in the Noticeboards view on whether this should be included and if so how it should be presented. Polyquest (talk) 21:44, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Mary Elizabeth Taylor
This article is politically sensitive. The sole source cited to explain why politician Mary Elizabeth Taylor resigned is the subject's own letter quoted in newspapers. That source is not sufficient for Wikipedia to call it a fact. Objectively speaking, the article should say, "According to her resignation letter" or "In her resignation letter, she asserted . . . ." This rule should hold true for all such references in any biographical article, unless there is external verification.Ukweli100 (talk) 16:14, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Ms. Taylor was a political aide, rather than a politician. Anyway, her letter was summarized and quoted by the New York Times. She quit the job, she said why she quit the job, her career in the job is noteworthy, and her cause for leaving is noteworthy. Why she left is not in dispute, nor does it seem controversial to me. To call the New York Times a "sole source" and imply there's some doubt or debate about the cause of her exit is an odd proposition. Mcfnord (talk) 22:00, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Rupert Sheldrake
This is not the first time that Rupert Sheldrake has made it to this noticeboard. This extensive discussion took place in 2013, without resolution. In addition to BLP, there are several other problems with the article, including NPOV and ownership, and these overlap significantly with the BLP issue. The article is currently being used as a vehicle for a core group editors to promote their POV. They have essentially locked it down, to the extent that permission must be obtained by members of this core group to perform even minor copyediting work.

Although the article is a biography, much of the text is devoted to the idea of morphic resonance and a repudiation of it. The rejection of the idea is repeated throughout the article, but starts in the very first sentence, where the idea is described using the weasel word "conjecture". Criticism of morphic resonance occurs in multiple sections, and this has led to the article becoming a coatrack article. A link repository to invariably critical sites has been established within the article. As an example, this sentence in the lead is tagged with no fewer than 22 critical references: ''Morphic resonance is not accepted by the scientific community and Sheldrake's proposals relating to it have been widely criticised. Critics cite a lack of evidence for morphic resonance and inconsistencies between its tenets and data from genetics, embryology, neuroscience, and biochemistry. They also express concern that popular attention paid to Sheldrake's books and public appearances undermines the public's understanding of science.'' Further links to critical websites are given in the Notes section and throughout the article. Within the Notes section there are no links to material offering an alternative view, even though a Google search results in numerous instances of such material being available. Undue weight is being given to the idea of morphic resonance, and in particular to a criticism of it. The constant criticism makes it difficult within the article to differentiate between criticism of Sheldrake himself and criticism of his ideas.

Despite there being numerous external references to Sheldrake being a biologist, any attempt to describe him as such is immediately reverted. A comparative example is Brian Josephson. Even though "In the early 1970s Josephson took up Transcendental Meditation and turned his attention to issues outside the boundaries of mainstream science," he is still called a physicist because of his notable work in the field. It would be absurd to make the argument, as some have with Sheldrake, that since his work in mainstream science took place several decades ago, he is no longer a scientist. While some will argue Sheldrake's work in mainstream science was not notable, we should point to his discovery of the chemiosmotic model of polar auxin transport. (See more info here ) We can also point to the Guardian, which called him "one of the most promising Darwinians of his generation", the New York Times, which refers to him as "the biologist Rupert Sheldrake" , the Washington Post, which describes him as a "well-regarded plant physiologist" , Scientific American, which calls him a "renegade biologist" , and the Telegraph which states that he was "once a cell biologist at Cambridge." . And here is a more recent article in the Church Times, a reputable source already used in the article: and describing Sheldrake in the headline as a biologist.

Further to these points, the Talk page has recently attracted disparaging remarks about Sheldrake. For instance, Sheldrake has been described as a "wooster" (whatever that might be, but obviously a pejorative description) by User:Roxy the dog; see Talk page, Archive 21, and as a "confirmed charlatan", by User:Eggishorn here. These are just some recent examples. A glance at the talk page and its archives show that there is a core group of about five editors that repeatedly express hostile views of Sheldrake as an individual. Of course, they are entitled to their opinion, and scientific consensus on his work should be reflected in the article's text. But per BLP and NPOV policies, the editor's voice should not be used to demagogue, and many of these editors have insisted upon just that.

A potential solution to the BLP problem proposed by was to create a separate article about morphic resonance, and to use summary style regarding the subject in the article, shifting its focus to Sheldrake as an individual. Of course, good faith editors may disagree on whether this is the appropriate solution and should all have the opportunity to make their case either way. Unfortunately, the discussion about this possibility was quickly closed down here.

A read-through of the discussions will show that many of these concerns have been ongoing for years. A number of editors, many of them veteran contributors to Wikipedia and some of them newcomers, have raised these issues and more. They have invariably been met with hostility, incivility, accusations of disruptive editing and even threats of blocking for simply raising said issues on the talk page and attempting to have a good faith discussion about them. While I know that editors will disagree on how exactly to proceed, I hope we can at least agree that good faith contributors should have their ideas considered and that greater collaboration on the article would do it some good.

HappyWanderer15 (talk) 00:57, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Or, alternative interpretation: A small group of enthusiasts for ideas not accepted by science are crying BLP to avoid the obvious fact that Sheldrake is only notable for his WP:FRINGE ideas and WP:CANVASSED support for this post to avid complying with the WP:CCP. Fringe_theories/Noticeboard is also of interest. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 01:04, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * , was WP:CCP really what you meant? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:49, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , you are, of course, correct. WP:COPO Thanks for catching it. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:05, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't think that and  discussing the best way forward in the face of difficulties amounts to WP:Canvassing.


 * If so, then this across at the Rupert Sheldrake talk page might also be construed as canvassing or "rallying the faithful": "For info, Arcturus is plotting a BLP noticeboard appearance. [diff] -Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 17:05, 22 May 2020 (UTC)"


 * As for this report being brought on behalf of a small group of enthusiasts, many individual and largely moderately-minded editors have attempted to make changes to the article over the years, mostly to simply add the word "biologist" to describe Sheldrake, or to blunt the heavy-handed criticism of him, and their edits have inevitably been reverted, to the point of page ownership.


 * I'm sure that the opposing group of editors and their supporters have the best interests of Wikipedia and truth at heart, but their brand of militant, dogmatic – and above all proudly-uncompromising – scientism creates unnecessary difficulties and animosity, imo.  Esowteric + Talk  09:02, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I admit that when I first saw the infobox and lead I wanted to edit it to say biologist like Buzz Aldrin is listed as an engineer in present tense. A PhD is a lifelong label isn't it? Then I saw that his history as a biologist or biochemist or whatever is mentioned in the first paragraph and thought there must be a reason. —DIYeditor (talk) 09:28, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * When Sheldrake worked as a scientist, he was not notable. If he had not become a woo proponent ("wooster"), there would not be an article about him, as a scientist or otherwise. All journalist sources you gave are from a time when he had already joined the other team. Before he did, none of the publications would have found him interesting enough to write articles about him.
 * When Josephson worked as a scientist, he was very notable. If he had not become a woo proponent, there would very obviously still be an article about him. His article contains lots of material about his work as a scientist.
 * So, "he is no longer a scientist" is true of both, but one of them has once been a notable scientist and the other has not.
 * Comparing Sheldrake to Josephson, regarding mention of their scientific field in the lede, is apples and oranges. A better example is Angela Merkel: She is not notable as a physicist, and she is not called "physicist" in the lede, but her article is in Category:Physicists, as Sheldrake's is in Category:Biologists. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:02, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * - actually, "he is no longer a scientist" is true of neither. Josephson and Sheldrake both retain their scientific credentials, despite their interests in other areas outside the bounds of mainstream science. The Josephson article acknowledges this in its wording. The Sheldrake article does not. If Sheldrake were not notable as a scientist, it seems unlikely to me that the editor of Nature would take the time to write an article condemning his work in that journal. I'm sure he would not have been the first, nor the last, minor scientist to become interested in parapsychology and write about it. The difference is, rarely are any of the others acknowledged, and certainly not by the editor of one of the most prestigious academic journals in the field. HappyWanderer15 (talk) 00:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , please re-read the core content policies I linked to above because argument and interpretation are not helpful here. We don't write what we think about subjects, we write what the best possible reliable sources say about subjects. If you want to Sheldrake's article to present him as a legitimate working scientist, you need to present good quality sources which describe him as such.  Context matters in evaluating sources. Trawling through search results to find passing mentions and presenting them out of context is not helpful.  E.g., in the NYT 3,615-word lifestyle profile of Andrew Harvey (religious writer) you link to above, the sum total of the reference to Sheldrake is: "This fall, a television documentary about Harvey's own life, "The Making of a Mystic," will be broadcast in England in a British religious series called "Witness." In it, Harvey conducts dialogues about his beliefs with his friend Dame Iris Murdoch ("for the Platonic view," he says); Anne Baring (a Jungian and the author of "The Myth of the Goddess"); the biologist Rupert Sheldrake, and Sogyal Rinpoche." That is not a reliable source for calling Sheldrake a biologist.  It is a reliable source for stating that Harvey called him a biologist and Harvey is a mystic and scholar of Eastern religions, not an authority for scientific qualifications. Similarly, the WaPo article is by the founder and long-time editor of the Post's Style section. Despite all the digital ink spilt in Sheldrake's "defense" no reliable sources that are qualified to evaluate Sheldrake's scientific credentials and make the point you want made have ever been presented.  NPOV does not mean, "present both sides". NPOV means, "present what the sources say without taking a side". For example: Maddox did not "write an article condemning his work". He reviewed Sheldrake's A New Science of Life and said that "even bad books should not be burned."  That you are phrasing it in that manner indicates that you are trying to inject Sheldrake's perspective because that's how Sheldrake writes about the review on his own website. He's apparently still unhapppy about that review almost twenty years later.  Bottom line: the quality sources that are independent of Sheldrake do not and have not and probably never will describe him as a scientist or biologist or biochemist.  They describe him, at best, as a "former" scientist, etc. etc.  Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 02:10, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * As it turns out, I am quite aware of the core content policies you cite. These policies are not dogmas and there is not only one way to interpret them - i.e., through the lens of Lunatic charlatans without balancing it with other concerns. I find it especially strange that sources such as NYT and WaPo are, to you, "unqualified" to evaluate Sheldrake's scientific credentials, and yet opinion pieces like this and this, are cited in the lead as if they were objective pieces of journalism. Yes, NPOV means "present what the sources say without taking a side." But this does not mean that we only permit sources which represent one point of view to be cited, particularly when these sources are opinion pieces. Of course, we note the mainstream view that morphic resonance is generally considered pseudoscience, but we don't need 22 references for that, and we don't need to belabor the point 3 times in the lead alone. HappyWanderer15 (talk) 05:28, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Fine, you have your own private interpretation of the policies. That allows you to tell yourself that your opinion is still within the boundaries of the policies, but it is not enough to convince anyone that your private interpretation is right and that the article should be adapted to them.
 * After that piece of special pleading, which could be used almost word for word in every other case where someone wants to go against policy and is therefore worthless, you suddenly change the subject. Before, this thread was about calling Sheldrake a biologist in the lede, and now it is about reducing references? Does that mean you give up? Starting a new section would be better then. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:07, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * "No longer a scientist" means "no longer working as a scientist". Irrelevant nit picked and unpicked. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:07, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , if you look at what I have written above, you will see that I raised a number of concerns. Among them: Sheldrake not being called a biologist despite many sources calling him one; needless repetition and POV pushing regarding Sheldrake's work; an excessive number of references intended to "debunk" all things Sheldrake (WP:COATRACK), as if an individual, and not his ideas, can be debunked; undue weight given to the subject of morphic resonance. It was argued by Eggishorn that my sources were not reputable. So, I pointed to other sources currently being used in the article which are clearly questionable as well. The purpose is to get a dialogue going as to just what sorts of sources are acceptable. Are opinion pieces OK, or should we go for objective journalism? HappyWanderer15 (talk) 06:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * That depends: if you call scientific reasoning "opinion pieces" and false balance that gives equal weight to science and fringe, or more weight to fringe, "objective journalism", then opinion pieces is definitely the way to go. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:42, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , most of what needs to be said has already been said by but I need to respond to this: "...you have your own private interpretation of the policies." A: Every editor has their own interpretation of the policies because every editor is an individual human and policies are designed to be flexible and encompass multiple viewpoints.  Stating that I have a "private interpretation" does nothing to invalidate what I've said. B: What I posted was not, in point of fact, an interpretation of the policies; it was an evaluation of your sources.  If you want to propose sources to support your point, you should expect that other editors will evaluate them and try to verify that they support the point.  Your sources failed verification, one of the foundational (yes, I'm sounding like a broken record at this point) core content policies.  If you can't provide a source that survives verification, then the point (no matter how positive or flattering of the article subject) isn't going to be allowed in an article.  That is what BLP means. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:47, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Please provide example(s) of what would be classed as - in your words - "a quality source". Arcturus (talk) 17:59, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * See WP:RS. You are welcome. -Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 19:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , I have several recent examples of reputable sources, such as the BBC, describing Sheldrake as a biologist. It's difficult to work out precisely what you require of a source, but it seems you're suggesting that the only acceptable material would be some academic research, with the specific purpose of determining whether or not Sheldrake is a biologist. Is that where you're coming from? Arcturus (talk) 18:19, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You know, if you really wanted to describe Sheldrake as a biologist (rather than wanting to deny it, come hell or high water), I'm sure you could easily rustle-up sufficient mention from the results of a Google Scholar search (obviously ignoring Sheldrake's own publications). But clearly, as Stafford Beer pointed out, "The purpose of a system is what it does".  Esowteric + Talk  18:28, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * To quote the instructions at the top of this page: This page is for reporting issues regarding biographies of living persons. Generally this means cases where editors are repeatedly adding defamatory or libelous material to articles about living people over an extended period. Nothing has been said here to establish such issues, only that there is a content dispute.  Further discussion of sources should take place on the article talk page.   I have taken the consistent position that no good-quality sources have been presented to justify the requested edits.  To ask me to produce such sources myself is a mix of asking me to prove a negative and flipping the burden of proof. I decline the invitation to do other editor's homework for them. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 00:13, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , as you know, attempts to reach agreement about this article on its Talk page invariably result in stonewalling and closing down of the discussion. However, I'll do as you say and present a series of references, including material mentioned by User:Esowteric. If no legitimate argument against the references is forthcoming I'll add the material about Sheldrake being a biologist to the article. I'll provide a number of references, any one of which would, on its own, be sufficient. A valid counter argument against each will be needed. As to this being a content dispute, yes, the issue of Sheldrake being a biologist or not is just such a dispute. Unfortunately, there are several other problems with the article and some of them do relate to BLP. Nevertheless, let's take things one step at a time. I'll come back to the other matters, either here, or on other relevant noticeboards, once we've sorted out the current issue. Arcturus (talk) 18:53, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , as you know, or, at least, should know, "I will do this unless I am satisfied with the arguments against it" is not how WP:DR works. It is, in fact, a very good definition of WP:TE. It is certainly not complying with consensus.  I would suggest that the course of action you suggest is likely to lead to sanctions. Please step carefully. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:17, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is quite interesting that, regardless of the forum in which editors who disagree with the current state of the article raise their concerns, they are invariability met with stonewalling, intimidation, or misdirection tactics from the article owners. One of these tactics has been to say "this is not the proper forum for you to raise these issues," only to be told the same thing again (by the same people) once the issues are raised at a different location (such as a relevant noticeboard). Often, this has devlolved into wonton incivility towards dissenting editors. A perfect example can be found here from the same user who, ironically, warned me against making personal attacks here. HappyWanderer15 (talk) 02:30, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion as to whether or not Sheldrake should be credited as being a biologist continues at the article Talk page. I assume the discussions here are now closed, prior to archiving. I'll take up other related issues at the relevant noticeboards. Arcturus (talk) 16:11, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking at sources, it seems Sheldrake used to be a Cambridge biochemistry don, but his notability derives from his later claims. Thus the current article lede appears to be admirably policy-compliant. Alexbrn (talk) 14:53, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think continuing the discussion elsewhere could be shading into being WP:DE since from the widened participation of this noticeboard, there is apparently no consensus to make the pushed-for change. Probably time to let the poor WP:DEADHORSE be, and move on to something productive instead. Alexbrn (talk) 16:43, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Before this thread is archived, perhaps I could ask a question, which can hopefully be answered by uninvolved editors - i.e. editors who have never edited the article in question and who are not interested in WP:FRINGE and the like. Is it acceptable, from a BLP point-of-view, to use the terms found in these diffs to describe Rupert Sheldrake, albeit on the article Talk page:

   

Thanks, Arcturus (talk) 19:44, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , one of those comments is mine. I said: I would defend that as a simple statement of fact. When you are promoted as a sage by the likes of David Icke, that's a pretty clear indication that you've departed Planet Reality.
 * You can get opinions from editors experienced with fringe topics at WP:FTN but I don't think you'll get a different answer wherever you go. Sheldrake is known for exactly two things: morphic resonance; and complaining at enormous length about how science is evil and bad because it won't drop its standards to the level where it will accept morphic resonance.
 * Without morphic resonance and his endless and highly public war with real scientists over it, he would almost certainly fail any of our relevant content inclusion guidelines. And without his war with science, morphic resonance itself would not be notable - it's a one man conjecture with no credible evidence to support it. There is only one topic. I think we should have the article at morphic resonance, but consensus is that it should be at the current title. Most of the confusion comes from the fact that this is presented as a biography. This is a common issue with crank theories. Guy (help!) 10:42, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Susie Boniface
I got a very upset phone call earlier from the subject about this article, which claimed she was a domestic abuser, and cites a 404 link, an uncheckable radio interview from 2013 and a blog post from the subject that she says is taken well out of context, and is being used to portray the opposite of the situation. She tried fixing it herself as, but admits she doesn't really understand our bureaucratic procedures.

The claims removed from the article were:


 * Boniface separated from her husband, a Sun journalist, in 2006.[24] Her book described both her work as a journalist and their divorce, in which she referred to him using the insulting pseudonym, Twatface.[25] In a 2013 interview on BBC Woman's Hour, Boniface admitted to abuse of her husband such as using his toothbrush to clean the toilet.[26] In a separate incident she was arrested and received a formal warning from police after assaulting her husband, having repeatedly kicked him in the testicles and smashed a window at his house.[27] Boniface also admitted to hacking into her husband's voicemail.[28]

These are extremely strong claims about the subject, and I'm pretty sure that's really not adequate sourcing to back them up.

I deleted the text, locked the article for now and put a note on the talk page that I was doing so under the provisions of WP:BLP and that I'd bring it to BLPN forthwith.

Ms Boniface forwarded me her description of events, which she submitted as the way she'd write it up:

"Boniface separated from her husband, a Sun journalist, in 2006. Her book described both her work as a journalist and their divorce, in which she referred to him using the insulting pseudonym, Twatface.

In her book, after describing how a friend was beaten by a partner, she describes herself being a victim of coercive control, now recognised in legal terms as domestic abuse.

It says: "I suppose it was my fault for arguing back. He said it was, anyway. I can't even remember what we rowed about now. There were quite a few times I was scared, when I thought we were both unsafe, and afterwards I'd curl up in a ball and cry and he'd make me apologise to him. Once or twice, when he came home, I locked the bedroom door. He didn't like that." After a section discussing cocaine abuse in Fleet Street, it adds: "My kind and loving husband turned into an angry, evasive stranger [...] I struggled with the thought my husband [...] could possibly be in the same category as the vicious thug who almost killed my friend. Could it really be I was at one end of the spectrum and she was at the other? [...] I remember the time Twatface made me get down on my knees and beg, in tears, for it all to stop. I did it because I just wanted things to be better. Remembering it now I was appalled at my own denigration in a way I had not been at the time. He broke me and I hadn't noticed."

It goes on to say "he might hurt me properly next time. I couldn't spend my life waiting for that".

She describes staying with her husband despite this, and later discovering he was cheating on her. She confronted him and describes a fight that followed: "He threw me against the concrete wall next to the steps. I fought and yelled, and as I pushed off the wall we spun around and I was thrown against the wall opposite as I struggled and screamed. A neighbour came outside, and a passer-by pushed between us, and told my husband to stop. 'It's all right,' said my husband with one of this charming smiles, as though it was a reasonable explanation for a street fight. 'She's my wife.'" She describes giving "two solid kicks to his testicles" and escaping, before the pair "wrestled" over a terracotta flower pot which "flew from our grasp" and smashed a window.

Boniface accepted a police caution for criminal damage over the window, and this was expunged from her record in 2012 under the normal expiry period in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

Her book launch was held at Century Club in Soho in 2013, and all monies raised were donated to domestic abuse charity Refuge. (Link: https://twitter.com/fleetstreetfox/status/300953889782509569?s=20 also https://twitter.com/fleetstreetfox/status/302022539440451584?s=20) She has given talks and donated the fee to Refuge (Link https://twitter.com/fleetstreetfox/status/339366961903435776?s=20) In 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, she started a lockdown community project selling plants to raise money for a local domestic abuse service. (Link: https://twitter.com/fleetstreetfox/status/1258862815554789380?s=20). Refuge has promoted her writing on the topic (Link https://twitter.com/RefugeCharity/status/257815691057565698?s=20) and thanked her publicly for support (Link: https://twitter.com/RefugeCharity/status/268684758588985344?s=20)

In 2013 during a radio interview on Woman's Hour to promote her book, Boniface told host Jenni Murray how on one occasion, after he had been thrown out of the house, she had used her husband's toothbrush to clean the toilet."

We probably wouldn't use that text as-is, but it's there if someone wants to start off from it. Certainly it's clear pointers to relevant WP:BLPSELFPUB.

And I'm pretty sure claiming in the subject's article that she is an admitted abuser from the evidence submitted, with no context for the statements or situation, is not acceptable on Wikipedia.

She stressed that as a journalist, if something negative is well-sourced then that's fine - but that this was not.

Anyway, I'm putting what I have on this situation here for the review of others - David Gerard (talk) 11:30, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Most of the content in question was added by Shakehandsman., what specific evidence do you have to back up your claims, considering the very strict Biographies of living persons guidelines? Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:54, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well this is a strange one. The passages posted above are remarkably different to the "same" segments posted in the Times, with the later having substantial amounts of material missing. The sources provided did support the claims when taken together, but it looks like someone at the Times has either been very naughty or made some sort of mistake and butchered the content to make it more sensationalist and more one-sided. The controversy still warrants inclusion, but if The Times have indeed twisted things and caused this problem, then we'll have to completely discount that source and use the book itself as the reference instead. I've had a look on Google books and fortunately the relevant passages are available there to view in their definitive form Shakehandsman (talk) 00:17, 12 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The book itself is a SELFSOURCE (since it was published by a third-party publisher, not technically a BLPSELFPUB). Perhaps a different editor should decide its noteworthiness, wording and sourcing? - David Gerard (talk) 11:29, 12 June 2020 (UTC)


 * There appear to be coordinated off-wiki attacks on the subject, making these claims about her (which I won't link, as obvious BLP violations), which the editor may have been misled by. As such, I'd strongly suggest leaving indefinite protection on the article under WP:BLP as a precaution, and running all proposed changes through the talk page - David Gerard (talk) 11:05, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The statistics for the page show interesting patterns, for no obvious real-world reason - David Gerard (talk) 11:10, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Boniface appeared on "BBC News, The Papers" on the following dates this year: 26/02, 13/03, 14/04, 1505, 12/06. Each of those dates coincides with a significant increase in page views. The other increases are probably as a result of other appearances she's made in, or on, the media. As for keeping this page protected, I would suggest not. This is basically a content discussion (not even a content dispute) and the editor who added the material is discussing it here. What are these off-wiki attacks? What evidence is there that they lead to adverse editing here? Preemptive protection is not generally favoured on Wikipedia. Boniface is controversial, at least when she appears on The Papers, so such attacks are only to be expected. Arcturus (talk) 15:40, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * A now-deleted blog post which was much-touted around Reddit coinciding with the recent additions, for example - David Gerard (talk) 16:41, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The now-deleted blog post is very interesting. It is still available googlecache and was published on June 11th in the morning GMT.  I have saved a copy in case anybody is interested.   The article talks about two living people Susie Boniface and Geoffrey Boycott. Curiously, Shakehandsman edited both articles -  including adding material specifically discussed in the blog - on the 9th-10th  for Ms Boniface and on the 10th  and very early on 11th  for Mr. Boycott. ie before the blog post was published.    Slp1 (talk) 13:17, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
 * could you put the link on my Talk page or email it to me? what do you think about unprotecting the article? If anything untoward happens, edits can be quickly reverted and the article protected again. Thanks, Arcturus (talk) 15:16, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest leaving it a bit for now, given the apparent organised attacks on the subject seem to me reasonable precaution within the wording "or believe that inappropriate material may be added or restored" of Biographies_of_living_persons - let's see in a few days if anything else turns up - David Gerard (talk) 17:43, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I will email you the links, Arcturus --Slp1 (talk) 18:07, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, got it. Interesting stuff, but I would think most of the material is unsuitable for a Wikipedia bio, except perhaps as a brief summary. Yes, seems sensible. Perhaps give it five days and see how things develop? Arcturus (talk) 21:25, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It is totally unusable material. An absolutely unreliable source. You have missed the point.  Shakehandsman was not "misled" by the off-wiki attacks (as suggested above by David Gerard). He was writing them. Slp1 (talk) 21:30, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , if you have evidence of that then you probably need to email it privately to ArbCom per WP:OUTING. If you don't, well, you probably need to withdraw it. Guy (help!) 12:56, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The blog is an anonymous blog- that I have not linked to- and there is no outing of personal information such as "legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, other contact information, or photograph", as specified by WP:OUTING. There is evidence (as described in part above). Emailing Arbcom is a good idea, though. Thanks.  I will do that.Slp1 (talk) 13:23, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Does DAILYMAIL need a disclaimer, or even guidance on how it can be invoked?
I've raised a general concern about DAILYMAIL on the Reliable Sources noticeboard, but there seems to be a specific concern in play too.

Does the conclusion of DAILYMAIL need to be made more specific that it is not an accusation or allegation against any identifiable individuals, that it is merely a presumption of inaccuracy in material identified from a particular source?

Or is it unavoidable that if you remove a specific piece of journalism from Wikipedia and you claim DAILYMAIL as your justification, you are in effect always accusing an identifiable individual of professional misconduct. Given the nature of mainstream journalism, mostly at least, is that any piece will always have an identifiable author and an identifiable editor, and to take it to its logical conclusion, an identifiable corporate officer responsible for ensuring its staff do not engage in professional misconduct.

If I were a journalist, editor or compliance officer, I would certainly be wondering if I should be engaging a lawyer to protect my reputation, if I saw the sort of statements I have seen being made about my work on Wikipedia, that are not based on any identifiable error in the work, but simply based on my choice of employer (or in the case of freelancers, who chose to buy my work).

I am thinking specififally about the Keith Blakelock incident, which is still there on the RS noticeboard, but it seems like it might be a broader issue. People obviously have the ability to sue anyone on Wikipedia for any reason, but it seems to get complicated when it can be reasonably said the harm is being caused by the collective act of Wikipedia editors. DAILYMAIL being the claimed consensus of Wikipedia editors.

While Wikipedia's corporate owner can't be sued for such statements until they stand by them, it might cause them an issue in situations where they are perhaps asked to take down a statement, and have to decide how much of that statement was a reasonable interpretation of DAILYMAIL, and how much was the editor's own personal view, and therefore how exposed they are if they were to decline. It may not even matter, if it can be shown that DAILYMAIL arose out of a lack of ensuring volunteer editors act responsibly in their collective decision making.

Perhaps a solution is to add a restriction on individual editors in DAILYMAIL that says they may only remove material with DAILYMAIL as a justification if their actions are explained through specifically quoting (or reasonably describing) the conclusion of DAILYMAIL, and any deviation means their comment shall become their sole personal opinion, if not in its entirety, then for all the deviating parts. Brian K Horton (talk) 12:15, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , is this a legal threat? —  Newslinger  talk   12:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand the reason for your question. Brian K Horton (talk) 12:40, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Legal threats are prohibited on Wikipedia, so if your comment contains a legal threat, I would need to ask you to revise or retract those parts of the comment. —  Newslinger  talk   12:52, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's a reasonable reading of my comment. Brian K Horton (talk) 14:12, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it's perfectly reasonable reading of your "comment", since it's just a warmed-over rehash of your failed FUD attempt at WP:RSN. Your logic convinced no one there, and rephrasing and moving it to different forum won't help. --Calton &#124; Talk 15:27, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It is unnecessary to take any measure to defend the Wikimedia Foundation from perceived legal risk beyond what is required in . If you have a legal question, the Wikimedia Foundation accepts legal questions and requests by email and by physical mail. —  Newslinger  talk   14:24, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm confused. We already had two very lengthy RfCs regarding the deprecation of the Daily Mail, and WP:DAILYMAIL even gives guidance on how it can be invoked. Certainly editors can invoke policies wrongly, something I've done myself in the past, but the policy itself still stands.
 * Claims of WP:LIBEL, WP:COPYVIO and WP:COI are actionable on Wikipedia, as they relate to (respectively) libelous statements added specifically about a certain real-life person, copyright violations and infringements, and conflict-of-interest edits or editors who are editing specifically with an ulterior motive and without following Wikipedia policies - note that declared COI editors can edit in-line with policy, and aren't automatically taken down.
 * However, WP:DAILYMAIL is targeted at the source on the whole - not a specific editor or writer. Some Daily Mail articles don't even have a named writer on them, and I'd assume staff turnover would mean that if WP:DAILYMAIL applied to specific authors, you'd end up with a very long list of They Used To Write For The Daily Mail and Therefore Aren't Reliable editors you'd have to chase up. You can see how a neat little package of DailyMail threads could turn into a rampant, spread-out mess the minute one writer left or went elsewhere.
 * It's also pointed out in the first RfC that the Mail is reliable for some things - historically, it had a greater reliability than it does now, whatever that reliability was or currently is. A key sentence from the end result of the RfC is that:
 * "There are multiple thousands of existing citations to the Daily Mail. Volunteers are encouraged to review them, and remove/replace them as appropriate. [Emphasis mine]"
 * As the above quote emphasises - there may be situations in which it is inappropriate to remove a Mail link. This is, of course, the key definition between a banned source and a deprecated one. I'd assume that would count for something, perhaps.
 * As per WP:LEGAL, pleas to have libelous, copyright infringing, and conflict of interest edits taken down are usually respected, if they're valid and put through the right channels; general legal threats, however, are not. If it doesn't count as specific libel, a copyright infringement, or a conflict of interest edit, then it just isn't going to be actioned unless, I suppose, the Wikimedia Foundation feels it's serious enough for something a little more ground-breaking to happen.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 15:19, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * On a point of fact, an extraordinarily large amount of DAILYMAIL focuses on one readily identifiable person and ties its findings to their decisions, decisions they would presumably make at any other title they worked for, given their incredibly successful results at the Mail. It doesn't really hold water that people aren't meant to assume DAILYMAIL isn't about people as much as it is content. That is what is meant by culture, after all. Quite a lot of it was about the morality of accepting a job at the Mail, what that says about you as a journalist, and a person. And that's one of the few parts of the debate where anyone was actually discussing something other than their own opinion. Conclusions are easily drawn. Brian K Horton (talk) 16:23, 21 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The only question I have, is if you're trying to gaslight me. It took a while, but I have now satisfied myself that my post is an entirely legitimate one for this noticeboard, precisely because it concerns whether or not Wikipedia editors are properly complying with "Wikipedia policies with legal implications". And I think you knew that, just as I think you probably already knew at RSN that it is infact Wikipedia policy that a consensus is invalid if reasonable concerns were not addressed. Brian K Horton (talk) 15:50, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned in my previous comment, your legal inquiry should be directed to the Wikimedia Foundation. If the Wikimedia Foundation determines that the community needs to take certain actions for legal reasons, they will directly inform us. Your arguments in failed to gain traction with other editors, and attempting to achieve the same objective in a different noticeboard is forum shopping. —  Newslinger   talk   16:12, 21 June 2020 (UTC)


 * This second attempt at casting FUD should be hatted, and brand-new editor should have more experience than 13 entire edits before making sweeping proposals again. --Calton &#124; Talk 15:27, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

McKim, Mead and White
I have spent considerable time editing, correcting, and adding content to this article on a major American architecture firm--one of the most important of all firms. The previous article was an abomination. Even with my edits, the piece is messy, especially in the gallery section. It needs a good clean up from someone familiar with how to do that. I have tried to include most of the bibliographical essentials, but there are still books and articles missing that I could not reference easily. Wikipedians should recognize that a firm like this one has been given its due in the last several decades, following many years of neglect. Samuel G. White, one of Stanford's great grandsons, continues to write and publish on their legacy.Hewittarch (talk) 20:56, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * From the lead: "The scope and breadth of their achievement is astounding." I for one would definitely say the work of this firm is, indeed, astounding.  However, I'm not sure that's what Wikipedia should be saying.  There's a lot of that going on in this article. "...the city was dazzled" etc, etc.  Ditch &#8733;  20:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Dr. Sharon Mitchell
The person listed on Wikipedia as Dr. Sharon Mitchell is a former porn actress, and is not a Doctor of anything. She has never attended an accredited educational institution of any kind, at any time. She was involved in an unaccredited and questionable organization, which was allegedly funded by Porn's Mitchell Brothers. She claimed to have gotten a medical degree from this organization, which, of course, is not accredited to issue degrees of any kind. I knew Sharon Mitchell for many years. I doubt she ever graduated from High School. Yet many in the general population believe that she is a medical doctor because someone uploaded that false claim on Wikipedia. it's about time that Wikipedia began fact checking information that is uploaded to its data base. My name is Shaun Costello, and I know the aforementioned to be absolutely true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:702:4200:38E0:FCFB:7192:9456:3F12 (talk) 16:32, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The New York Times article used as a source in the article states that the subject "went back to school for a doctorate in human sexuality", and refers to her as "Dr." throughout. I think we can safely say that the New York Times reported such. I'll put the claim into a quote. BD2412  T 16:49, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm going to believe the New York Times and The Lancet did their appropriate fact checking over the musings of Mr. Shaun Costello. The quotes are not necessary as it's not a controversial statement of opinion but rather than mundane facts. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:24, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I removed the honorific, but not because it was disputed. We don't usually use forms of address like this in article text. Ditch &#8733;  19:51, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Saying "I doubt she ever graduated from high school," is, while your opinion, which is fine for you to hold, at best, not very nice, and at worst, a BLP violation in and of itself. Considering the source for this is the New York times, I wonder if you should strike this now faced with pretty solid evidence to the contrary? Ditch &#8733;  22:45, 21 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The article doesn't call her a doctor. It does say that she "obtained a MA and Ph.D. from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality". This links to Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, an article that starts "The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (est. 1976) was an unaccredited, for-profit, degree-granting institution and resource center in the field of sexology located in San Francisco, California"; and it continues to give the impression that the "institute" and its degrees were near worthless. So how about a change to "obtained a MA and Ph.D. from the (unaccredited and now defunct) Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality"? (Or are the NYT and Lancet instead referring to a real PhD, obtained elsewhere?) -- Hoary (talk) 00:02, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * We do not need to press that caveat into the article per WP:NPOV. People can easily review the Institute wikilink and form their own opinion whether the degree is worthless. Morbidthoughts (talk) 00:31, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * "Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality" is a name curiously (and perhaps with deliberate deceptiveness) reminiscent of "Institute for Advanced Study". Compare our treatment of Gillian McKeith's putatively academic background:

She claims to have received an MA in holistic nutrition in 1994 and a PhD in that same field in 1997, both via distance-learning programmes from the non-accredited American Holistic College of Nutrition, later the Clayton College of Natural Health in Birmingham, Alabama (but since closed). She is a member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants, but this association runs no checks on the qualifications of its certified members, permitting Ben Goldacre to register his dead cat for the same qualification as McKeith.
 * Of course, "other crap exists", but the McKeith article is s-protected and its content has been laboriously discussed, as its talk archive will show. -- Hoary (talk) 01:17, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Other crap does exist but this biography should state what the sources directly say about the subject rather than introduce commentary or caveat through synthesis. Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I've advertised this discussion here. -- Hoary (talk) 01:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

If a biography indicates that someone has an academic degree and that degree is from an unaccredited institution then that needs to be included, too; to naively and credulously include unaccredited academic degrees as if they are equivalent to degrees from accredited institutions would be a disservice to our readers and an NPOV issue for editors. Of course, we must also be careful to ensure that the information is properly sourced and accurate especially in instances where an institution's accreditation status has changed over time as there are certainly examples of people who received degrees from institutions that were accredited at the time but later lost that accreditation. And unless the reliable sources point us in a different direction we must also be careful to not add our own commentary or judgement e.g., don't assume or state that an institution that is unaccredited is inherently and incontrovertibly "bad," "illegitimate," or a "diploma mill." Unless there are reliable sources that make those kinds of claims, it's usually sufficient to simply state that the institution is or was unaccredited.

I am also assuming that if someone's academic degree(s) are noteworthy enough to include a biography and they're from an unaccredited institution, especially if the institution is not legitimate or the degree is a fraud, there are reliable sources that clearly state that. If there aren't then the odds seem pretty good that something somewhere has gone wrong i.e., the person isn't really notable enough for a Wikipedia article, the degree isn't noteworthy enough to include in the article, we're mistaken about the status of the institution or degree. ElKevbo (talk) 01:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The lack of accreditation only needs to be mentioned if the sources comment on that without synthesis. The cited sources about her doctorate do not. Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You've made your position abundantly clear in the comments you've already posted above; please give other editors space to share their views and discuss this issue. ElKevbo (talk) 03:06, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think it merits mention unless the source mentions it, otherwise its akin to synth. Interested readers can explore the refs provided if they so desire. Sorry, didn't realize I was parroting Morbid's thoughts until I fixed the indent, but will let the comment stand. Ditch &#8733;  02:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Julia Lescova
The subject does not meet notability requirements. No citations provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BenjaminSky (talk • contribs) 02:52, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * , there is no such article nor is there evidence that there was such an article that has since been deleted. Neither can I find an article that has a similar name that looks possibly-related.  Are you sure you meant to post this at this project and not another language Wikipedia or related project? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:09, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * has in the last few minutes corrected "Jula" to "Julia". Benjamin, are you saying that the article should be deleted? If so, then here's what you can do about it; if not, then please explain. -- Hoary (talk) 04:03, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Kira Dikhtyar
The article does not have any citations. The subject does not meet notability guidelines. No reliable secondary sources provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BenjaminSky (talk • contribs) 02:48, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * , are you suggesting that the article should be deleted? If so, then here's what you can do about it. -- Hoary (talk) 09:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Kira Dikhtyar
Does not have citations — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.96.114.213 (talk) 03:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Then you're free to look for and add some. If on the other hand you believe that the article should be deleted, then get a user ID, make some constructive edits while logged in under it, and then follow this, of course after reading and familiarizing yourself with the relevant policies. -- Hoary (talk) 09:52, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Pedro Julio Serrano article
Disruptive editing going on there. See. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 23:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well I tried to intervene and filed a 3RR. We need an admin to lock him. Morbidthoughts (talk) 00:32, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:38, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Holy **** that's a clear case of NOTHERE! Yeah, that editor needs to be indef'ed Springee (talk) 00:57, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I've deleted the edits and their summaries. (But please ping me if I've missed something.) -- Hoary (talk) 10:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Graham Linehan concerning subject's comments about transgender related issues
Editors with experience in applying WP:BLP are requested to weigh in at the following RfC:

Talk:Graham_Linehan

Crossroads -talk- 13:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Karol Sikora
Getting a bit concerned with this article. Someone with a clear disagreememt with the subject has been canvassing on Twitter to get the page edited, reinsterting a variety of grab-bag tabloidesque 'controversies'. The talkpage also contains borderline libellous, unsourced statements regarding 'rumours' left by an IP some years ago - clearly a few things going on here.

I am trying to get the article into a reasonable state overall. No connection with the subject.Svejk74 (talk) 12:44, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm concerned that the above represents a significant misrepresentation of what's been happening on this article. Svejk74 has been doing a lot of editing of the article over the past month, and a lot of their edits seem to have had the effect of minimising and removing some of the controversial statements and actions of the subject of the article. I think that a fair representation of the recent media statements of the subject is possible, but Svejk74's consistent editing of the article has undoubtedly attracted the attention of people concerned with the direction of their edits. I noticed someone asking Wikipedia editors to look at the edit history of the page on Twitter, which is perfectly in keeping with the guidelines on canvassing, and I put back in some of the references to controversial statements made by the subject. I would also appreciate other neutral editors taking a look at the article and discussion on the talk page and giving their opinion on the discussion there. Jwslubbock (talk) 15:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * There's been no intention of minimising controversial issues; indeed I've expanded and clarified some points (e.g. his genuinely controversial views on NHS reform) where this seemed appropriate.


 * What I object to is the curating of various disparate news mentions over the years under the heading 'controversies' even if the stories themselves were one-off mentions. That is what's happened here, and the previous wording made the article perilously close to an attack piece, hence why I fixed it. Random news mentions without career context do not a bio make.


 * "I noticed someone asking Wikipedia editors to look at the edit history of the page on Twitter"; what you neglect to mention is that this person was throwing around intemperate rubbish like "Shipman"; "someone should investigate his oncology work"; and immediately assuming my edits were paid. This isn't mere "concern" and I note we have already now had some IP vandalism - perhaps as a result of this very pointed way of directing people to the bio.

Svejk74 (talk) 15:29, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Jan Joosten (biblical scholar)
This article should be locked so that its subject stops taking out references to his recent conviction for possessing child pornography. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enheduanna13 (talk • contribs) 16:19, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , such requests are generally handles at the requests for page protection noticeboard. I took a look, and there is definitely a multi-sided edit war going on so I went ahead and requested it myself.  In the future, you'll probably get a quicker response there. I hope this helps. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Do not attribute edits to particular people without evidence. In general, do not claim a particular account belongs to a particular person. Mcfnord (talk) 22:16, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Is Tucker Carlson a white supremacist? Would an RFC on his talk page say so if he was?
I am considering asking that Talk:Tucker Carlson be re-opened, and I would like to ask initial impressions of such a request here, first, please. Thank you. EllenCT (talk) 01:26, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , the question that has to be asked is: Has anything changed since the last RfC or would re-opening it just be presenting the same evidence and arguments that were part of the last RfC? Re-litigating RfC's without new evidence and new sources is rarely either successful or pleasant for all concerned. If there is new evidence or Carlson has made a notable statement or set of statements, then it could be under WP:CCC. I don't follow Carlson so I am asking as an honest question.  Given the current BLM moment we're living through in the US, it is certainly possible he's made some such statements or old stuff has newly come to light. In the absence of anything such as that, though, I would advise against reopening it. I hope this helps. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 03:33, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, it would be far better to open an adjunct discussion elsewhere. EllenCT (talk) 03:46, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you mean WP:FORUMSHOP? Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:12, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It's been a third of a year. Do you believe the talk page watcher respondents reached the same conclusion a wider cross section here might reach? EllenCT (talk) 03:32, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Meh, your argument is speculative and based on faulty premises that this noticeboard would bring any wider of a cross-section than a WP:RFC. Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Is that an RFC you made with sources to Media Matters and Salon? PackMecEng (talk) 03:37, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes; why? EllenCT (talk) 03:46, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Just making sure. Neither of those are appropriate sources for that kind of information. PackMecEng (talk) 03:47, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * What is the evidence that MMFA doesn't have good data on white supremacist agitators? EllenCT (talk) 06:40, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources, depending on definition of "evidence". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * To which specific provision do you refer? Are you claiming that there is any evidence the source list isn't entirely reliable in this specific context? Any evidence that any of its hundreds of entries are fabricated or misrepresented? EllenCT (talk) 03:32, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The RfC was closed just 4 months back. It was clearly against inclusion.  What has changed in the last 4 months?  Has the list gained new notoriety or credibility?  Was their something improper about the last RfC?  If not then this absolutely shouldn't be reopened.  Springee (talk) 14:08, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The person, just since I opened this section three days ago, has been the subject of a so far very successful boycott campaign accusing him of being a white supremacist agitator. How many months do you believe is required, and because of what policy or guideline? Why is this not a bona fide WP:CCC situation? EllenCT (talk) 03:32, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with Springee. Where is the proof that he's a white supremacist? Was he wearing a white sheet at his graduation, or during his program?  Did he wear black face paint? Did he say he was a white supremacist, or is it somebody's opinion because he is a conservative and they are liberals, and this is an election year?  We need substance to support such claims per our BLP policies. Please provide evidence. <span style="text-shadow:#F8F8FF 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em,#F4BBFF -0.2em -0.3em 0.6em,#BFFF00 0.8em 0.8em 0.6em;color:#A2006D">Atsme  Talk 📧 16:15, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * how many of the 200+ timeline items mentioned in the original RFC have you evaluated so far? EllenCT (talk) 02:56, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * In response to your question, Ellen, I read enough to feel comfortable participating here, but why don't you share with me 5 of your top picks from the timeline items that were most convincing to you, or did it take all 200? I'm willing to change my position if the evidence is convincing and not just opinion by detractors, political opposition or clickbait competitors. I look for RS that are closer center in either direction unlike Media Matters which identifies as a progressive research and information center who believe they possess the qualifications necessary to oversee/analyze/criticize their political opposition and conservative media. May I also recommend an article authored by Jason L. Riley, WSJ editorial board? He wrote an excellent piece that speaks to this labeling issue much better than I can on such short notice. The Atlantic published another good article that addresses these issues. Actually, I try to adhere closely to WP:LABEL, WP:REDFLAG, WP:NPOV and WP:BLP in these instances. <span style="text-shadow:#F8F8FF 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em,#F4BBFF -0.2em -0.3em 0.6em,#BFFF00 0.8em 0.8em 0.6em;color:#A2006D">Atsme Talk 📧 04:17, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Given 1) We have in the article on him already, and 2) an issue of the original RFC that will not have changed was the leading of Media Matters, I don't see any need to change it. If a more thorough examination of Carlson's show white supremacist discourse has been offered by a highly reliable source to add to that list, that's something to consider adding to the above statement. --M asem  (t) 03:04, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Request to remove personal information from the article titled "Saida Muna Tasneem"
Dear Wikipedia Team,

This is Dewan Mahmaudul Haque, Counsellor (a senior diplomat) in the Bangladesh High Commission in London, UK. I would like to draw your kind attention to the fact about an account in Wikipedia which is by name of Saida Muna Tasneem, who is the Excellency High Commissioner of Bangladesh to the United Kingdom. As I work for her, she has instructed me to write to Wikipedia regarding her account on Wikipedia (which is a public information) wherein her personal information concerning her spouse has been published which has nothing to do with her official business and career. I edited the paragraph but it did not get published.

Now, Her Excellency Saida Muna Tasneem has instructed me to ask Wikipedia as to if her personal information concerning her spouse could be deleted and the reference as well. And please suggest how her edited profile can be locked so that no other private individual can edit it further.

If this is possible, she has humbly requested to kindly delete that particular paragraph and the corresponding reference from her Wikipedia account.

If that is not possible by Wikipedia, does she possess the right to tell Wikipedia to totally delete her account.

We shall greatly appreciate if you please respond.

Thank you. Dewan Mahmudul Haque Counsellor, Bangladesh High Commission, London writing on behalf of Her Excellency Saida Muna Tasneem High Commissioner of Bangladesh to the United Kingdom

Please note the link to her profile in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saida_Muna_Tasneem

And the specific paragraph she want's to delete from her Wikipedia profile is the follwoing:

"Career

Tasneem began working with the Bangladesh Foreign Service in 1993.[3]

While working as a senior consular official to Bangladesh's mission to the United Nations, on October 23, 2003,[5] her husband spent US$129,626 at a strip club in New York City on four credit cards. After news agencies began to report on the incident, the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs recalled Tasneem from her position on June 4, 2004, alerting her and Chaudhury to return to Bangladesh immediately.[6][7]"

--

With profound regards,

Dewan Mahmudul Haque Counsellor (Political) Bangladesh High Commission 28 Queen's Gate London SW7 5JA, UK Telephone: +44 20 7584 0081 Extn. 239 Cellular: +44 7944 211 077 E-mail: Dewan.M.Haque@mofa.gov.bd Web: www.bhclondon.org.uk — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dewan.M.Haque (talk • contribs) 12:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

For context, the full portions of the text with sources are: "She is married to Tauhidul Chaudhury." "While working as a senior consular official to Bangladesh's mission to the United Nations, on October 23, 2003, her husband spent US$129626 at a strip club in New York City on four credit cards. After news agencies began to report on the incident, the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs recalled Tasneem from her position on June 4, 2004, alerting her and Chaudhury to return to Bangladesh immediately."

I agree that the allegations don't directly relate to the conduct of Saida Muna Tasneem herself, but they are worth mentioning, possibly in a more oblique form, as the allegations (aside from the NY Post), are well sourced. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:24, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see a case for including this material. I suppose if "oblique" means that we say "Tasneem was recalled from the UK her UN posting in 2004..." then fine -- but with no details or mention of the husband.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:42, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with something like "Tasneem was recalled from her UN posting in 2004, for issues not related to her conduct" would be fine as it would make clear that the recalling wasn't to do with her actions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:12, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Reasons
(Moved from article talk page) (And now moved back, since it was moved without permission and discussion of edits to the article belongs there.) Sorry about this edit summary, I was working on it and accidentally submitted. What I was planning to write was this: first, your addition is not supported by the source, it's your personal interpretation. Second, either the reason she was recalled is encyclopedic and should be discussed in her biography, or it's not. I happen to agree that it's not. But if it's not, then we shouldn't discuss it at all, rather than making vague and somewhat mysterious remarks about it. 's edit accomplished what needed to be done. --JBL (talk) 01:44, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Joel, try not to insult other editors additions to articles as "terrible", it is incredibly rude. Nomoskedasticity thanked the edit. I am not interested in being scolded and you should refrain from acting like this to editors in the future. Unkind regards. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:34, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

The reason I added it in the first place was to avoid casting unwarranted aspersions about a BLP subject, which is supported by the citation. The fact that you felt that it was appropriate to @ me to scold me and tell me I am "wrong" for trying to adhere to the BLP policy when you could have simply undone the edit and have been done with it is asinine. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:39, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

RFC opened
For some no one informed this noticeboard that an RfC has now been opened Talk:Saida_Muna_Tasneem.Nil Einne (talk) 19:09, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing this. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:24, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Dominick Mitchell
Would a BLP expert please have a look at, a newly-created page, which as well as requiring copyediting for formatting issues, uses a number of non-compliant sources. It was drafted on a User page of an account with no other edits. It may be perfectly legit, but may also fail WP:GNG. Thanks (and sorry, BLP isn' my area of expertise), Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:24, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It's pretty obviously a vanity article. Start by deleting sections making claims not supported by independent reliable sources (I have made a start), and then see what's left. I suspect it would then end up ar WP:AFD. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 11:05, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You are correct. I AFD'd it. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:24, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * And it got speedy deleted before that really got started. Job done. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 07:55, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Ferdinand Leon


I attended UCLA with Ferdinand Leon. If my memory is correct, he was there from 1955 to 1959. I believe he was a French major. I believe he was born on February 29, 1936, in New Orleans, LA. Plese fact check me and let me know the results. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anita Blyth (talk • contribs) 16:02, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi are we talking about the correct person here? Our article on Ferdinand Leon is about a Black TV writer born in 1922... GiantSnowman 16:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The sourcing on birth date in that article is weak, and the latter birthdate being suggested is at least more in line with breaking into TV writing in 1968 and with writing a book that was scheduled for publication in 2014 (although I find no record of such a book.) 1922 is not impossible, but the rare 1936 birthdate is more in line. So Anita may be right, we may be wrong, but I don't know what source to look at to verify. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:01, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

George Magan, Baron Magan of Castletown


A new editor is removing content from the legal issues section of the George Magan, Baron Magan of Castletown article. The articles content is sourced to Independent.ie and the Irish Times and concerns his financial struggles and legal battle over the estate he was living on. The removal cites the entries to be "erroneous or misleading" and "relates to ongoing litigation". Can experienced BLP editors have a look to see whether these concerns are valid? Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Upon my (American) cursory review, I could not identify specific errors or misleading claims, though the situation is complex. Regarding ongoing litigation, that could be the case, but I consider verdicts as reported in the NPOV press to be among Wikipedia's most repeatable claims, as very neutral primary source conclusions within conflicts. Not sure if two of the claims about rent are part of the same situation, possibly meriting condensing. Mcfnord (talk) 23:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)