Talk:Bruce McMahan

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This article was nominated for deletion on 28 January 2007. The result of the discussion was nomination withdrawn.

This article was nominated for deletion on 9 February 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

This article is a frequent source of heated debate. Please try to keep a cool head when commenting here.

Archives /Archive 1

[edit] Broward Palm Beach New Times

What we have here is a campaign by a single local newspaper. The purported facts have not been printed independently of that publication, although they have been reprinted at least once. We need an authoritative secondary source which considers this stuff to be significant - for example, a Wall Street Journal profile which mentions it. Jimbo has noted that this article is a disgrace, we have a pressing need to fix it by reference to independent sources. See also Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/WebEx and Min Zhu. Just because something is printed in a tabloid does not make it true, and even if true that does not make it significant. We are not required to write a hagiography but we are required to do our damndest to be fair and not simply facilitate muckraking. Please, reliable independent sources for the significance of the problem text. Thanks. Guy (Help!) 22:55, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Please try reading the entire discussion page before posting sweeping generalizations and dismissals of all that has come before your arrival on the scene. This article has been plagued with controversy, vitriol, edit wars, hostility and hyperbole for months. Your accusatory and name-calling post frankly does nothing to improve the situation. I've avoided commenting on this article recently because I wanted to let the rhetoric calm down a tad, but I think you just stirred the pot considerably. Hilarity may ensue. Ronstock 03:07, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No names were called. No vitriol was thrown (by me - the New Times is a different matter). As the primary source, the New Times is not a source for the importance or notability of the claims. Feel free to cite the reliable secondary sources which consider this to be a notable or important case. Guy (Help!) 08:01, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Guy, I have no side here, and if this material cannot stay by the rules then so be it. Certainly there was only one source for some of the material, but the basic story was reported in three separate major metropolitan areas on two continents. OK, the B-PB New times isn't a top-notch source, but the Village Voice is generally considered reliable, and the company rinted its article in both. OK, the Evening Standard is a lousy source, but the New York Post, for all its failings in the same regard, is supposedly the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, and it ran articles on four consecutive days with independent reporting (at least, they gathered quotes from principals that did not come from the B-PB story). If the Voice and Post are not considered independent of each other, that's news to me. I don't think we should rely on The Star or Soap Opera Digest level material, but I would not have thought that use of these two publications presented such a problem.

Moving forward, you simply chose an example, but I don't think the WSJ is likely to mention this anytime soon. May we assume that (say) the Miami Herald or another New York daily is acceptable? Or are we limited at this point to only the topmost-topmost publications acknowledging the existence of the charges for us to report them? Where between these two sets of publications is the line to be drawn? There was no small effort made to craft an NPOV article from the available sources. --Dhartung | Talk 04:11, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I have read the discussion. The "New Times" is the primary source of the allegations, and there is a dearth of evidence that reputable secondary sources have considered this to be significant. Guy (Help!) 07:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll take that non-answer as a desire not to wikilawyer regarding what secondary sources are, in fact, reputable. I guess the only answer will come if the story gets more coverage outside of the publications which have advanced it to date. --Dhartung | Talk 08:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy at this page resolved

I've been concerned over the apparent manipulation of WP by users who may not be independent of the subject and who were attempting to censor WP, and thus opposed the removal information about the Shutt allegations. However, I have become increasingly concerned over the encyclopedic nature and validity of the allegations by Shutt et al, and the motivations of those who have supported the inclusion. I am happy to see greater participation in this article by long-term and broad-based editors who have opposed the inclusion of the New Times information. I support the recent changes, and also support the notability of the subject independently of the incest controversy. --Kevin Murray 17:04, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? What you appear to support is essentially removing all "notable" content in the apparent interest of achieving politically-correct non-conflict. Do you really think that is what Wikipedia should be about? I don't. I've made one last one last attempt at reverting this article to what I feel is a rational consensus, and then I'm going to bail. I have no more time for what, to me, seems like weasel-worded and controversy-dodging appeasement.Ronstock 03:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Ronstock, Guy is an administrator, and a fairly senior and well-regarded one at that, and he has pretty much said that Jimbo Wales forcefully believes the Cramer article and all material derived from it are out of bounds. I'm surprised at that, but clearly I was wrong to believe that the threshold of significance had been reached, and there's really nothing to do but accept it. This isn't going to change unless the scandal is covered by "reputable secondary sources". The meaning I take from that is that the actual publications themselves are not the problem so much as the lack of widespread coverage of the "scandal" resulting from the publication. It wasn't that the article wasn't sourced in detail or that it wasn't NPOV, it is simply that the lawsuits and the explosive charges contained therein did not get widespread interest in the news media. Cramer's work is being treated here as a primary source rather than a secondary source (I don't see the entire logical foundation there, myself, but I believe I see the general point in terms of our policies). Cramer's reporting would have to be reported on by a broader, more important spectrum of the media to make it significant enough to overcome the privacy concerns of our policy. In any event, what Guy said was not a suggestion or an argument, but a closure of this discussion. --Dhartung | Talk 04:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

As a small follow-up, I'll explain here that what academics consider primary sources or secondary and what Wikipedia considers primary sources or secondary share a basic similarity but in practice are somewhat different. From a policy standpoint, we're using the Wikipedia definition. --Dhartung | Talk 05:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

I've archived the old discussions as they are pretty much obsolete at this point and having them on this page will only serve to reopen discussion that can't go anywhere. If there are any particular discussions on /Archive 1 that an editor believes need to be here, feel free to bring them back, but it probably isn't an especially good idea. --Dhartung | Talk 05:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)