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February 2006 – March 2006

I've archived some of the older discussion because there was so much text on the page. (Many of the commenters here are rather wordy, myself not least!) —Chris Chittleborough 11:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Notes for New(ish) Editors 2 General Structure of Article 3 Blogs and Blogging 3.1 Link to Burton/Leiter Blog Item 3.2 "no bullshit" blogging style 3.3 Re xoxohth.com 3.4 That rightreason.com item 3.5 Eastern Europe?

[edit] Notes for New(ish) Editors

Wikipedia is a big project, and naturally has a great many policies, guidelines and conventions.

• You are not expected to learn them before you start editing.
• You are allowed to edit Wikipedia without creating an account (but most experienced Wikipedias will strongly recommend creating one).
• You will not be banned if you make a mistake. (One of the core ideas behind Wikipedia is that editors will fix each other's mistakes. Experienced Wikipedians should politely help inexperienced editors to learn the ropes — which works much better if you have an account).
• Everyone else is free to "mercilessly" edit what you write.
• We strongly encourage you to "sign" your comments in discussion pages by typing 4 tildes in a row ("~~~~") at the end. (You can use "Show preview" to test this effect.)
• Wikipedia has an ongoing problem with vandalism. Most vandals edit anonymously, but someone has created an account named "Brianleiter" and vandalised this page and the article itself.

I suggest you read the Welcome for newcomers page, which has lots of useful links, but you are quite free to edit Wikipedia without reading those links or even the page itself.

—Chris Chittleborough 11:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General Structure of Article

Comment by User:67.187.55.95:

Prologue

If this entry is going to survive in any useful form, it needs to be edited into the following sections.

Neutral Background Information

Normal background, the short intro:

Born

Educated

Professional Career

Interests

Languages

Awards

Blogs:

philosophy

law

subthemes (professional philosophy, law school ratings)

Additional Background

Normal additional material (spouse, her poetry, themes in his writing, etc.) all of his favorite sub-themes ('intelligent' design, etc.)

The Critics

Since they won't go away, might as well organize it all. This would be a simple list of critical blogs. Can the commentary

The Vitae

His ssrn and other vitae style information.

Misc. Slanders and Praise

(end of comment by User:67.187.55.95; indentation added by Chris Chittleborough)

Thanks for this suggestion. Wikipedia does not have hard and fast rules for biography articles, but it does have "Template:Biography" (a suggested outline) and "Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)". A lot of biographies on Wikipedia have a "Controversies and Criticisms" section. Do we have enough material concerning BL's work in Law and Philosophy to justify such a section, or is it only his blogging that is notably controversial? If the latter, I believe that a few links to blog posts with brief descriptions would be better than a text paragraph. (Unfortunately, I incline to verbosity.) —Chris Chittleborough 12:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up the formatting.

Brian may not be terribly controversial in his law school ratings or his philosophy school evaluations, but he is very influential in those areas and well worth reading. My guess is that long after this conflict dies down, most people coming to Wiki for information are probably going to come from one of those sources. In addition, he has some ssrn articles that are quite good and worth reading.

Controversies and Criticisms is pretty much limited to his blogging.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.187.55.95 (talk • contribs).

Good. Then I would say that paragraph about blogging in this version of the article is perfectly acceptable, (Replacing "... has won him both fans and detractors" by "... is controversial" would be just as acceptable, and shorter.) —Chris Chittleborough 08:08, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blogs and Blogging

[edit] Link to Burton/Leiter Blog Item

User:70.178.85.72 added a good link to a blog posting by Steve Burton, who got a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Michigan at the same as as BL did. The post is an over-the-top attack on BL; at the end, Burton reveals that "nearly all of [the attack was] cut and pasted from Leiter's blog, minimally altered to fit the present case", then suggests that BL should tone down his habitual superciliousness. In the first comment on the post, BL outs Burton. A vigorous exchange between Burton, BL and other commenters ensues, including a (qualified) apology from BL (timestamped "July 12, 2005 07:35 PM").

Why is this a good link?

1. The post itself criticizes BL's writing style, not BL himself. (I'm sure we could find lots of attacks on Leiter and/or his politics; this is much more relevant to our article.) Moreover, Burton used BL's own words to make his point.
2. BL participated in the discussion, writing several comments.

Now we need to work out how to describe it in the article. Here's the last few descriptions:

1. A conservative blogger attacks Leiter.
2. A libertarian blogger mocks and criticizes Leiter's aggressive style; in response, Leiter outs him and declares their friendship over.
3. A libertarian blogger attkcs Leiter and Leiter responds.

Discussion:

• Burton is libertarian, not conservative.
• That the linked post attacks BL's writing rather than BL himself is important.
• When replacing #2 (my wording) above with #3, User:70.112.222.175 said "obviously not NPOV to adopt Burton's characterization of Leiter's response". (I had assumed from that apology that BL had accepted that characterization. What do other people think?)
• I see it as important to mention that Leiter participates in the comments.
• I don't see why Burton's political orientation is relevant.

I have therefore changed the description to

A blogger mocks and criticizes Leiter's hostile style and Leiter strikes back (in the comments).

I'm not real happy with "strikes back". Can someone else do better? (Please discuss your edits here. Also, please use "~~~~" as discussed above.)

— Chris Chittleborough 10:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm replacing "strikes back" (which now annoys me) with "argues with him". Feel free to edit me. —Chris Chittleborough 06:51, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "no bullshit" blogging style

User:71.242.85.232 removed the sentence

His blogging style has been dubbed "the no bullshit" approach, which has won him both fans and detractors, usually lining up along political lines.

I've replaced it with

His "no bullshit" blogging style[1] has been controversial.

and added a link to http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/on_rhetoric_civ.html, in which BL explains the reasons for his approach in some detail. I've also split the "Other Links" section into "Publications Edited" (is that the right wording?) and "Blogs and Blogging".

My interpretation of the 2 BL blog posts linked above is that he accepts (actually, delights in) the description "no bullshit blogging". If anyone has evidence to the contrary, we'll need to do some more editing.

—Chris Chittleborough 07:25, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Chris C. is very biased against Prof. Leiter and should stop editing this thread. Chris, you are not a lawyer, not a law student, not a philosopher, or philosophy student. You are a right wing blogger which seems to be your main source of interest and which would explain your bias. One sign of bias is that you at one point took seriously Krazy Keith's blog, which no one in their right mind does, no matter how often Krazy Keith pretends people are writing to thank him. (Some people are reading for sure--it's like having a window into a psych ward. But notice he has no counter on the site. You can guess why.) I give you credit, though, for coming around on that subject. But your bias shines through again with regard to the Burton attack on Leiter. You basically accept all of Burton's claims, like his attack on Leiter was just "cut and pasted from Leiter's blog" and that Leiter "outed" Burton. I have read Leiter's blog for a long time, and while some words sound familiar from stuff on Leiter, the context is totally different. And Leiter and others posting comments deny there was any outing. Here's what one wrote:

You guys think you caught him in some type of 'blunder' but you haven't. YOU are the ones equating an offhand mention of his ex's name, from which one could infer that he's gay, with using the writer's sexual orientation against him. Please understand that most of us do not see homosexuality as a sinful secret, and it wouldn't even occur to us to "use" it against someone. You may consider pointing out that someone is gay to be an insult. Normal people do not.

By the way, the fact that a gay man is posting on a right-wing website IS a notable fact in and of itself, considering the right's tendency to inflame anti-gay bigotry. I don't know about you, but I'd find it notable if a black man joined the Klan, too.

Posted by: J. at July 11, 2005 04:41 AM

Here I thought it was Democrats outing Republicans in the 2006 election. Silly me. Gotta love the high standards of wikipedia, right? BonniePrinceCharlie 05:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

So your reasons for saying this is a "good link" just reflect your bias against Leiter and that you have adopted this nasty guy Burton's interpretation of the whole event. (You even insist that libertarians aren't conservatives, and apparently know Burton well enough to know which he is.) None of this is worthy of Wiki. The only justification for mentioning blogging was the line that you or someone else removed, and which I'm restoring. It's all right wing bloggers, like Burton and you, who attack Leiter, and that line should be in there.

But really Chris, I think you should stop editing this entry. You are biased against Leiter and apparently want to smear him. That's not NPOV and not what Wiki is about--a UT law student.

(Indentation added by Chris Chittleborough)

Woops, I should have replied to the above much earlier.

Whether a Wikipedia editor is biased about the subject of an article is not of prime importance; what is important is that the article must not be biased (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view — one of only four key policies at Wikipedia). Otherwise, how could we have an article about (say) Fred Phelps (warning: disturbing material). But I don't think I'm "very biased against Prof. Leiter", and I certainly do not want to smear him. What I want is for Wikipedia to have a good article about Prof. Leiter, and I intend to keep editing this article to that end.

Actually, I think this article is fairly good as it stands ("douchebag"?). In connection with blogging, the key link is this one. It raises some interesting and important questions. For example, should one (try to) be civil about Holocaust deniers? How about when talking to them? If there are people beyond the bounds of civility, where should you draw that boundary? Does civility have intrinsic value, or is only a means to the end of winning debates? (And so on.) If provoking thought in readers is the measure of a blog item, that's a very good one.

I should probably respond on some other points. I disagree that Leiter denies outing Steve Burton; in fact, I intrepret the comment timestamped "July 12, 2005 07:35 PM" as an apology to SB. You're right that I did blindly accept SB's claim that he "cut and pasted from Leiter's blog", and I'm afraid I'm not going to work up the energy to check that claim. I think that my 2 reasons for calling this a "good link" still stand. More importantly, as many conservatives have found out the hard way, many libertarians will be very offended if you call them conservative; some of them can get quite energetic on the topic. (Luckily for us, Burton describes himself as "conservative/libertarian". Whew!) The current description of this link is not very informative, but has the decided advantage of being short.

—Chris Chittleborough 21:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re xoxohth.com

Johnnyb82 (talk • contribs) added the following text, which 70.112.222.175 (talk • contribs) has since deleted:

His detractor's include the law school admissions board XOXOHTH.com which sprung from his belief that the site is anti-Semetic. The board devotes a separate page attacking Leiter while many of his fans coordinate campaigns to remove mention of the board on Wikipedia.

Does anyone contend that this article should mention xoxohth.com? (I do not.) If so, please comment below.
—Chris Chittleborough 14:56, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

YES, Should reference that page: Leiter is largely notable for his online presence. His back and forth with xoxohth.com is a well know episone that has helped define that presence. Interestingstuffadder 20:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Chittleborough. Most of what you posted is factually inaccurate (I searched Leiter's blog, he did not say the site was anti-semitic; also no evidence that fans of Leiter coordinated any campaign, you've just made this up) and irrelevant (comments by some anonymous college and high school students in an obscure chat room not encyclopedic). There was also no "back and forth," and the episode is not well-known (I am longtime reader of Leiter's blog, had never heard of this discussion board), though you are trying to make it well-known. Stop defacing this article, which thanks mostly to Chris's efforts is now fairly good--a philosophy student

I have provided a reference for that statement. [2]Adding information that is perhaps somewhat unflattering to Leiter is not "defacing" the article. --a law student. Interestingstuffadder 20:42, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

The link you provide does not support your points. Did you even read it? Leiter says in reply (follow the link) that the statement is false and defamatory. Please stop vandalizing this page.

But the dispute between Leiter and xoxohth is real and was a source of major publicity -- why don't you just take out the statements you think are untrue (i think his statements do amount to acusing the site of being anti-semitic, by the way)? I am all for compromise, but this is a notable nugget of informaiton about Leiter and should be included in some form. Interestingstuffadder 21:16, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

It appears to have happened over a year ago, if that's what you mean by real. And perhaps students on this board thought this was "major publicity." But this discussion board seems to have had its own Wiki entry deleted. Not everything that happened is encyclopedic. The entry already includes a link to a critique of leiter's blogging, which is more relevant to the entry.

Yet there is very limited informatin in this article about Brian Leiter's law school ranking activities, which is perhaps the activity for which he is best known (in terms of quantity of people). If the very controversy for which Leiter is best known is non-notable, then maybe in fact Leiter himself is non-notable (not all profs are notable). Alas, since "[n]ot everything that happened is encyclopedic", perhaps this article itself should be nominated for AFD. Interestingstuffadder 21:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

1. "Vandalism" has a pretty specific, and powerfully negative, meaning at Wikipedia (and we hates it, we hates it forever ...). User:Interestingstuffadder's edits are not "vandalism".
2. As Interestingstuffadder knows, but others might not, listing this article at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion has a WP:SNOWBALL's chance: Leiter is WP:Notable as an academic (named chair), a blogger and for his law school rankings.
3. I agree that the article should say more about his rankings, especially what criteria he uses and why. If you know something about this topic, please expand the article.
4. "...was a source of major publicity"? Were there any items about it in a newspaper, TV news show, etc? (My hasty google for "Leiter (xoxohth OR autoadmit)" didn't find any.) Any such items would greatly strengthen the case for mentioning this stuff.

—Chris Chittleborough 05:20, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't much about his law school rankings, though I sometimes read his law school blog. But Interestingstuffadder is not adding anything about the law school ranking, but a link to some pretty sick discussion board. It's totally silly to say that Leiter's "law school ranking is perhaps the activity for which he is best known." What is the evidence? Some prelaw students maybe know mainly about that, but he is much better known probably for his philosophy rankings (which have been in the New York Times and other major publications), for his blog, and for some of his books, like The Future of Philosophy, which was reviewed in The Economist not long ago. By the way, his philosophy rankings have their own entry on Wiki.

(1) I wish I'd known about Philosophical Gourmet Report a lot earlier; I've added a cross-reference to it. (2) We should cover all of Prof L's several claims to fame, without giving undue weight to any of them, or making unsourced assertions about what he is best known for. (3) A Personal Request: I've been assuming that a lot more Americans care about law school rankings than philosophy rankings. If I'm wrong, please educate me. —Chris Chittleborough 16th April

I agree with the last comment. It seems extremely reasonable to believe that way more Americans care about law school rankings than the nuances of hgih-end philosophical thought or rankings of philosophy graduate programs. Moreover, I am more than OK with you modifying the reference to this discussion board -- as I have said repeatedly, you are free to edit this seciton as long as something about Leiter's law school ranking activities and some detail about the controversy they have generated remains. If you look at my comments, unregistered user, I have repeatedly sought compromise on this issue and have sought to be reasonable. You, on the other hand, have continually reverted my edits without responding to my arguments and have also repeatedly cast aspersions me. Interestingstuffadder 19:33, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] That rightreason.com item

A couple of anon editors have been deleting the external link to http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2005/07/if_i_were_brian.html on the grounds that it makes no sense. I claim that the blog post itself is a substantive critique of Prof. Leiter's blogging style, and the comments are also very informative. I do not claim that either are short or easy to read. It seems to me to be entirely fitting that we use a critique which requires some intellectual exertion in an article about a prominent philosopher.

If I knew of a short, easy-to-understand item that was as informative as this one, I would substitute it immediately. But I don't. Maybe someone else does? Suggestions and edits welcome!

BTW, Cheers, CWC(talk) 03:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll bite (even though I didn't delete the Right Reason item, but I kind of agree with some of those anons who did). You "claim" it is a "substantive critique"? How so? What is the substance of the critique?

I see the post as an attempt to demonstrate that Prof. L's "incivility" is counter-productive, because it "succeeds only in making one look like a supercilious jerk" (emphasis added). Burton says the BL would be more persuasive if he relied on well-constructed arguments instead of snappy ad-homs, with the additional benefit of not leaving himself open to similar attacks (and charges of hypocrisy, I guess) when he (as is practically inevitable for such a prolific writer) makes the kind of mistakes he criticises others for.

(As you probably can tell, I'm interested in fascinated by the meta-discourse about how to conduct political discussions. See for example, this from normblog. I've seen plenty of righties chasing "traitors" away from internet forums and plenty of left-wingers making good arguments, but the aphorism does seem to have some validity. You can see some of the same dynamics at play within the U.S. Democrat party. There are lots of interesting and important questions. Is BL's no-bullshit approach more effective than being "civil"? Should we decide between these approaches on the basis of utility, or is civility good in itself? Etc, Etc.)

And now I've run out of time to go through the comments on the post. Sorry.

Cheers, CWC(talk) 14:10, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone (I forget who) replaced the rightreason link with a link to a post on the Volokh Conspiracy, a group blog. It turns out we have an article on Orin Kerr, who wrote that post, so I've rewritten the description accordingly. I've also restored the rightreason link and mentioned that Prof L made some of the comments, which I think adds greatly to the link's value. Cheers, CWC(talk) 18:11, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I am with earlier editors, this Right Reason link doesn't illuminate issue you raise above. BL has arguments about when and why persuasion is effective, and nothing in Burton tirade is responsive to any of that. It's just a long list of insults. The comments illuminate nothing of substance, as it appears to be a personal dispute between former friends. It really isn't encyclopedic to include this kind of personal dispute in the entry. Kerr's response is substantive, so I vote with the others in favor of that against Burton. Chris, I also see others have raised before issue of your bias against BL. You should think about that in this context.

I will keep linking to the rightreason.com item, because it provides a great deal of information about Prof L (at least for anyone who is willing and able to read it) which is what an encyclopedia article should do.

Given Prof L's status within various internet communities, many people will conclude that the reason various anonymous editors keep removing this link is not that that "doesn't illuminate" but that it illuminates too much.

It stays, unless replaced with something clearly superior. Cheers, CWC(talk) 16:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Reviewing the discussion, I see you are changing your position, since you have been challenged repeatedly on this, and have clearly been outvoted by others. So please stop reverting against the consensus that has emerged unless you can convince others. (It is not for you to decide what stays and what remains, you know this is not how Wiki works.)

First you said on July 6 that the Right Reason link should be removed if someone could find another link. Someone found another (much more) substantive link (to Kerr), which is an actual critique of BL's blogging style. Now you insist that there should be two critiques of Leiter's blogging, including the Right Reason link which several editors have found irrelevant or obscure. What does it "illuminate"? It reads like a smear, which supports the worry expressed early on about your bias. Since BL's post on blogging indicates he does not aim to persuade, how could a blog entry which argues he'd be more persuasive if he adopted a different rhetorical style even be relevant? And what do the comments on the RR post illuminate? That Burton hurt BL's feelings? That two old friends made the bad decision to have a quarrel on a blog site? How could that be relevant. Third, the earlier version of this link made no mention of the comments, and Burton was correctly described as a right-wing Blogger. You've now removed all that (as you did with Kerr) to make it look like this is some kind of neutral critique, which it is not, and that BL is responding to the critique, which he is not.

Looking at Wiki entries on other prominent law bloggers (Volokh, Reynolds) I see no links to critiques of them at all in their entries, even though there are many such critiques on blogs. The only difference is they are on the right, and BL is on the left. This again suggests you really just have it in for BL. (I notice you edited the Reynolds entry. Why didn't you add critiques of Reynolds?) What is your interest in BL? What is your connection to law or philosophy? I join with an earlier editor on this page who said you seem to lack a NPV. But whether you are committed to neutrality or not, you have failed to respond to the arguments against the Right Reason link given, and you must stop re-inserting it again and again, especially now that someone met your earlier request to find a substantive critique. BL's blogging style is not a very interesting topic, even if it is interesting to you.

[edit] Eastern Europe?

Eastern Europe is now Anglo-American? Very good to know. When did that happen?