Talk:Steve Stanton

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An entry from Steve Stanton appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 8 March 2007.

This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2007 press source article for details. The citation is in: Sue Carlton. "A chance for Largo to show its progress", St. Petersburg Times, March 21, 2007.

Contents 1 City of Largo nondiscrimination policies 2 Biographical information 2.1 Other bio content 3 Does he really count as a "politician"? 4 Language (pronoun useage: he or she?) 5 Done for now 6 Cites style / format 6.1 Example of the citation style used by Yksin 7 Summary of changes/additions to article 7.1 March 3, 2007 7.2 March 5, 2007 7.3 March 8, 2007 8 Sections. 9 Caution when moving or revising text 10 POV? 11 Firing motion

[edit] City of Largo nondiscrimination policies

I'm not sure the nondiscrimination policies currently cited in the Reaction section of the article would prohibit the City discriminating against Stanton.

Article text currently reads " If the vote to fire Stanton is upheld, the City of Largo will be in contravention of its own non-discrimination employment policies," citing | A-3. Implementation of Discrimination and Harassment Prohibition Policy.

The source, dated in October 2003, reads:

A-3. Implementation of Discrimination and Harassment Prohibition Policy

Human Resources Director Sinz reports that the City Commission has approved the Discrimination and Harassment Prohibition policy effective immediately. The new policy specifically prohibits bias, prejudice, intimidation, coercion and harassment by any City employee at the work place, during business trips, or at City functions. The new policy mandates treating all human beings with respect regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression. Any verbal, physical, or visual conduct that belittles, demeans, denigrates, or shows hostility toward an individual or group will disciplined up to and including discharge.

The policy thus mandates "treating human beings with respect" with regards to gender identity/expression, but does not actually say prohibit employment discrimination based on gender identity/expression. Given that in 2003 the city had just undergone a contentious debate specifically about whether or not to include gender identity/expression in its human rights ordinance -- a battle which was lost by those opposing discrimination -- I doubt the city would have implemented a nondiscrimination policy for city workers. -- Yksin 01:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• The article states that they would be in contravention of their own policies, which isn't to say that they're being prohibited from discrimination with respect to employment. I noted this and worded it accordingly before adding it to the article. As you say, though, they may contravene their own policy, but so what? It's largely a toothless policy anyway; just lip-service to the concept of non-discrimination :-/ I suggest taking out the word "employment", just to remove confusion. PS: Well done on the article creation!- Alison^<talk> 01:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah, the city was essentially saying, "We'll be civil to you even as we continue to violate your rights to fair treatment." I'll try to come up with language that takes care my issue without losing this source. Great find! -- Yksin 01:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

HA! Well it turns out that the policy is in fact an anti-discrimination policy covering city workers, passed unanimously by the city commissioners in October 2003 just a couple months after a city-wide antidiscrimination ordinance failed. Found a newspaper article saying so. So you were right to begin with. Will be adding citation info for the article I found. --Yksin 19:50, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of what the policy is or isn't, and rather than interpreting for ourselves, we can report HRC's take on it precisely. I've done this here. — coelacan — 20:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Now do we need to find somebody who states the opposite to maintain balance (NPOV)? ZueJay (talk) 20:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biographical information

The article is leaning a little heavily towards the current controversy. It'd be nice to fill it out with some additional biographical information. I've added what I could in that regard but have run dry - Alison^<talk> 01:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed there. I picked up some additional sources online yesterday that help to fill out some of the picture, but haven't yet had time to add them in. But I'm also betting Stanton shows up in some print directory or Who's Who of city officials, which can probably help out with other aspects of his biography. I've already got another person I need a trip to the library for; I'll just add Stanton to my list. --Yksin 01:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that's basically it. He was rather a quiet city official until this brouhaha erupted. In fact, in today's Tampa Tribune, some people were interviewed and told the reporter that they couldn't have told you who Steve Stanton even was before this happened. Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 03:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

That's all I've found (online anyway). Is there a citation for his wife's name? I can't seem to find a source... ZueJay (talk) 03:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, the source given for his wife's name actually only gives her first name, not her surname. --Yksin 03:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

While not published, it is certainly public (the Pinellas County Clerk of the Circuit Court gives many public documents with the name "Donna Becker Stanton"). Wouldn't that be enough? It'd be a bit cumbersome to cite a random leasing agreement from the search results to prove that this is her name. Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 04:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

There are proper ways to cite legal documents properly. Unfortunately, I've had persistent problems accessing anything on the site, apparently because my home connection through my ISP doesn't give me a stable IP, & at work there are numerous computers all going through as the same IP address through a common router or whatever, & tech support at the Pinellas County Clerk's site told me maybe I can't access because we've already had our tally of 50 access from our IP for they day. From Alaska...? right. And I'm not about to cough up $60 to have paid access. Even though it would be nice to look up some info about some of my relatives who lived in Pinellas County too.... So maybe someone else can access this site so we can tie up our loose strings by having a cite on her maiden name. I'm wiped out, & going on to other things... like maybe some wine & a Xena DVD.... Cheers! -- Yksin 03:09, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other bio content

I've got access to Newsbank, a newspaper database covering newspapers from all over the country, & just did some looking up. Found a bunch of stuff to help fill out his career. Will start adding some of the info thus derives after I've eaten. --Yksin 03:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Does he really count as a "politician"?

Based on the career info I've found, he's got an M.A. in Public Administration & most of all of his career has been as a public administrator, in Berea, KY & Largo, FL. (Again, will add these facts & my citations after I've eaten.) But that's a different story from standing for public election, which is what politicians do. Isn't it? He's worked for the pols, but he's not a pol himself. So I would reckon the categorization as a politician oughtta be removed. This is the logic I used in not categorizing him as a politician when I created this article yesterday. --Yksin 03:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, based on the discussion of Politician in Wikipedia, which helpfully gives a link to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, I can live with the characterization of Stanton as a "politician." -- Yksin 04:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Trust me. From personal experience, he is a consumate politician and an outstanding public servant. Cheers, :) MikeReichold 03:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Language (pronoun useage: he or she?)

Shouldn't the article refer to Stanton with female pronouns ('her', 'she', etc)? Stanton has obviously identified as female, and evidently prefers to be so. Other Wiki articles on transsexuals refer to them by their own gender identification. --Ratbat 06:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Currently, Stanton is pre-social transition, so I'd say 'no' on that count. It's somewhat inappropriate at this time until s/he at least goes 'full-time' - Alison^<talk> 06:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Pronoun change should not occur until Stanton legally changes name & sex. Also, I'm wondering if Stanton's activities when legally identified as a man should use the male pronoun...? -- though I'm doing my best to minimize that either by using "Stanton" or using sentence constructions that minimize pronoun use altogether. -- Yksin 08:26, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping my language right. Edit to learn.
Changed redirect on sex reassignment from sex reassignment surgery to sex reassignment therapy ZueJay (talk) 20:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that sex reassignment has been disambig'd (I think). ZueJay (talk) 06:07, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Just saw on the Stanton support website www.savestanton.com that "Steve has asked that he be referred to using male pronouns until he transitions." --Yksin 02:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this discussion should be added to the entry, just so that readers understand that we talked about this and came to this conclusion. Also, Stanton's official crossover date is APril 2nd, 2007 -- at least that's what he wrote in his email to employees^[1] when he announced his change. -- Sexperts 13:34 9 March 2007 (UTC)

A news source very conveniently mentioned the pronoun usage issue today, so I've added a reference at the top of the article and also at an appropriate place in the body of the article. --Yksin 00:36, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Done for now

Other than minor fix-it edits, I'm done for now. Thanks everyone else who also contributed to this article, & to all those who will keep contributing to it. --Yksin 03:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cites style / format

Hi editors. Can we agree on a particular style for cites and references? I've changed a few to {{cite web}} and {{cite book}} etc so they come up in Harvard format. I know that Yksin has her own format too & I don't want to mix-and-match things too much. Right now, it's kinda both and I can see benefits to both formats but lean towards citation templates for maintainability. Thoughts? Whatever we agree upon, I volunteer to go ahead and fix every one of them to comply :) - Alison^☺ 03:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

My biggest problem with the cite templates is that they're not necessarily set up for "in-line" placement. If they're kept in-line with the text, I don't mind using those templates for consistency; they seem to produce a reasonable format. I noticed citation format is something reviewed for FA nominations and can be considered during GA noms - why not take care of that now? ZueJay (talk) 03:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

It would have been nice to have sought consensus before changing all my original citations after I started this article two days ago. (See article history to see how I originally did the cites -- which someone then changed -- & which I laboriously reverted by hand so as not to lose other writing changes.) I've been going with mine mainly because the vast majority of writing on this article thus far, & hence also the vast majority of citations, has been done by me. Per WP:CITE#Templates:

The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged by this or any other guideline. Templates may be used at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with the other editors on the article.

Some editors find them helpful, arguing that they maintain a consistent and accurate style across articles, while other editors find them annoying, particularly when used inline in the text, because they make the text harder to read in edit mode and therefore harder to edit. Some templates (such as {{{title}}}.  and "{{{title}}}". ) now also include machine-readable COinS tags.

Because they are optional, editors should not add templates without consensus'.' (emphases in original)

All that said, I'm done with this article for now, so do what you want with it. No hard feelings. But please do not interfere with citation or reference styles on my Peter Kalifornsky or Alan Boraas articles, which I'm still doing intensive work on. Thanks. --Yksin

amendment: "my" articles only in the sense that I am currently the dominant, in actually the only, editor working on them, & amongst other things I'd like to keep them at with a consistent citation style. --Yksin 05:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

If there was all ready a consistent cite format (I didn't review the edit history so I'm taking all this discussion in good faith), we should probably stick with that to reduce the amount of work - I'd rather invest the time working on article content (or other articles) instead of changing cite formats here. ZueJay (talk) 03:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Again, I'm not gonna have any hard feelings with what people decide after me, & whatever consistent style is decided up in the final analysis, I will adhere to if I come back to this article. (I do have additional info relating to his career, specifically about some of Stanton's achievements & crits of him during his years as Largo's city manager -- but not right now, I'm a bit burnt out & really want to get back to those other projects that are near & dear to my heart.)

But just as an FYI, one of the problems I have with the citation templates is because they leave so many possibilities out. Believe me, I've been in the business of having to do bibliographies & footnoting/endnoting for countless research products of a university department for 16 years now, & I know what these templates leave out. They are seriously inadequate, beside being stupendously cumbrous & awkward not to mention butt-ugly when you're trying to read text. This is why in my work on the Peter Kalifornsky article -- but better yet see the Alan Boraas article because it's in a "more done" state -- I started using a combination citations/references style which really cleans up the text for the purpose of editors being able to read & edit, & also makes the references (i.e., bibliography) nice & clean with all the authors in a nice pretty alphabetical order that will look very lovely should either of these articles ever make it to FA level. I had actually started this article using that citations/reference style too, but someone came along & decided against that (without first obtaining concensus), too. --Yksin 04:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I looked through the Alan Boraas article and didn't see mention of anyone changing cite styles. All I did to it was add {{reflist}} and {{sourcesstart}} templates [2]. Your editiorial comment went in immediately afterwards [3] and I left. Is this what you're referring to? - Alison^☺ 04:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I was talking about | this in comparison with the following edit in the Steve Stanton history, & my fear that someone would do similar things to the Boraas or Kalifornsky articles. The edit you did to the Boraas stuff was not a problem, actually taught me about the reflist & sourcesstart templates, which I hadn't previously known of... I was delighted in fact to learn that reflist also has optoins for two & three columns. --Yksin 06:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

*sigh*. There is the matter of WP:BOLD and all that. Lookit - I'm sorry I ever brought it up. It's your article after all. :-/ I'm kinda done on this article anyways so I'll keep out from here on in. Back to pharmacology stuff :) - Alison^☺ 05:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Now, now. Articles don't belong to any one editor; though there might be a dominant editor. I think this was a wise issue to raise and consistency should be established. The editor who first changed the cite-style, and any editors who used a different style thereafter have nothing to worry about; neither do editors who changed the style in good faith. How about this: Allison, is there something specific about the previously used styles you might suggest a change to? For all, is posting a proposed/chosen/agreed-upon cite style on this page for all editors to see & thus use a good alternative to using a template? ZueJay (talk) 05:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

"Articles don't belong to any one editor" - I agree, and it's against general WP ethos. Then again, I didn't say; "do not interfere with citation or reference styles on my [...] articles". Re. cite styles, well .. the whole thing about GA and FA status was already mentioned so you know all about that already. I also agree with your comment on templates and in-line refs. This is starting to get a little hurtful, so I'm back to other stuff. - Alison^☺ 05:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, articles don't belong to any one editor -- & I am sorry for my unfortunate wording in saying "do not interfere with citation or reference styles on my [...] articles" as those aren't "my" articles... please attribute that to me being really tired & burnt out at the moment, plus having a frustrating time with missing my cat's vet appointment. My intent is just to say that those two articles referred to are articles which I'm investing a lot of time & effort in right now, & nobody else is, so in that sense, yeah, they're "my" articles, for the time being anyway.... As for this article -- it's been extremely rewarding to actually have other people working on the article at the same time, and making improvements that I didn't myself have time or thought to make... but I do believe that calling for consensus on citation styles of an article should happen before changing someone else's styles instead of afterward. And I will say that while I was not the person who started doing that, I did continue it... so I'm guilty of it as well -- we were kinda having a silent "citation style edit war" I guess. For my participation in that, I apologize. But again, I'm done with this article for now, & I am completely willing to accept everyone else's consensus on the citation style for this article. I've gone back to the projects that this one sidetracked me from. --Yksin 05:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Ack! Don't both jump ship on me - I was working on my consensus building skills ;) If you want to pause talking about this point for awhile, that's fine; but please don't halt your'alls awesome work here. ZueJay (talk) 06:42, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

No worries, I'll be back at some point, I still have that stuff I looked up in Newsbank about some of Stanton's accomplishments & controversies as Largo city manager. But I need a break from it just now. And it did seriously sidetrack me from some other stuff... I just happened to notice the story about Stanton in Google News the other day, started the article, & off I went down the slippery slope. I'm glad I did, but... gotta do that other stuff. --Yksin 07:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't propose the cite change on the talk page first. It's something I do regularly and I've never encountered objection before so I didn't think anything of it. I can see how they can be inadequate for some things but the ones I changed didn't lose any information. Anyway, if anyone changes them back, please take into account that some of the URLs have changed, because there are direct sources for some articles instead of the subscription Newsbank service. Yksin, for those things that you feel the citation templates are missing, it would be great if you suggest improvements at template talk:cite news, for instance. And what was wrong with this edit? That I don't understand. — coelacan — 06:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

It was the loss of having both a citation (or notes) & a separate reference (or sources) section, which I started the article out with. At the time it didn't seem such a big deal, but now there are so many citations that it's very confusing to keep track of, esp. since several writers (e.g., Lorri Helfland) recur. By comparison, an article like this (granted it's a demo, granted I don't agree with everything this user says) looks a lot cleaner & less confusing to me. It helped me a lot to figure out how I wanted to deal with these very complex, citation-saturated articles I'm working on.

I did make one suggestion on the citation styles talk page about an otherwise fairly useful template that doesn't implement page numbers. Which, when citing books, makes it next to useless. It was suggested that I use the cite book template then. But that doesn't have other features. At that point, I gave up on the citation templates altogether, in favor of something that works... which is just doing them according to standard intelligent bibliographic styles that 16 years as a publication specialist has taught me. --Yksin 07:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I should add as well that another reason using the citation templates is problematic for me is that for the major things I'm working on, I'm starting the work in a notetaking program (Circus Ponies NoteBook on the Mac, if you're curious), often while I'm offline, & I'm doing the bibliographic info on the fly as I write, just standard written bib styles. Using the templates amounts to having to do the bib info a second time over, with a lot of cutting & pasting, which is very hard on my hands (repetitive stress injury stuff going way back). Obviously other editors work differently, nor indeed do I expect all of them to do as I do. If I work on another article which has already developed a consensus of citation style, I will adhere to that style for that article. But this whole discussion has taught me a valuable lesson that if I start another article, I should ask other editors who join in to discuss this issue early on, so we don't end up with disputes & hurt feelings... as has unfortunately happened here. My apologies for my contribution to that. And now, I had just really better go & vege out for awhile... my head is incredibly tired. --Yksin

[edit] Example of the citation style used by Yksin

FYI, here's the style I was using -- pretty easy to keep consistent especially when almost everything here was a newspaper article.

<ref name="keyword"/>Lastname, Firstname. (yyyy-mm-dd). [URL "Article name."] ''Newspaper name''. Retrieved on yyyy-mm-dd.</ref>

Example:

<ref name="helfandabrupt">Helfand, Lorri. (2007-03-01). [http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/01/Tampabay/Stanton__Abrupt_firin.shtml "Stanton: Abrupt firing a surprise."] ''[[St. Petersburg Times]]''. Retrieved on 2007-03-01.</ref>

Produces:^[2]

What's really nice too I can be remember this style without having to go back to copy & paste from compicated template, if I have to do a cite on the fly. (It helps that I know HTML, so I'm accustomed to using tags.)

FWIW, YMMV. --Yksin 07:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally, that seems a reasonable style; very similar to the style we used in school. (PS - I like that - YMMV - cute) ZueJay (talk) 05:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Summary of changes/additions to article

[edit] March 3, 2007

Not done after all, I guess -- added some info today on results of a public survey about the Stanton firing by the St. Petersburg Times and confirmation that the National Center for Lesbian Rights is working with Stanton to try to reverse the commission's decision. Also some external links. As well did some reorganization of sections & subsections. Cheers. --Yksin 04:21, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] March 5, 2007

Addition re: support of local interfaith religious coalition. Some section header/subheader renaming. --Yksin 18:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] March 8, 2007

Updated with info re: Stanton's appeal of his firing made yesterday; re: protest at City Hall March 6; pronoun usage also now addressed in article with cite to a credible news source. --Yksin 00:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sections.

I think this article is really, really cool, and when the outcome is known this really ought to be taken to FA. My only issue is that there are too many subsections. Really, you need to merge half these sections into some really good paragraphs, not separate them into bitty half paragraphs with catchy titles. It'll look absolutely fabulous then. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 22:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Caution when moving or revising text

Be careful when moving or revising text, or even just in breaking it into different paragraphs: citations sometimes are lost that way, or sometimes a cite that covered facts contained in an entire para no longer cover those facts if the paragraphs are broken in two. This is especially problematic when not all the sources (such as the stuff from older articles out of Newsbank) are not available to all editors. Thanks. --Yksin 01:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Noted. ZueJay (talk) 05:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV?

Hate to be the downer on this but... the article lacks balance with regards to Stanton's dismissal as city manager. The viewpoint of the LGBT community and locals who support Stanton is well addressed; however, the opposing viewpoint is not. For instance, actual statements from city commissioners regarding the dismissal or folks, organizations, etc. who support the majority opinion of the city commission should be included. Unfortunately, I have looked for this kind of info on the net and have not met with success. Maybe ya'll can help out on this one? ZueJay (talk) 05:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• I have a bunch of quotes here, with reliable references. I'll add them here later (someone else can format the refs, ok?) But yeah, I agree. It needs a little of the other side to balance things out- Alison^☺ 06:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Needs NPOV. --Yksin 19:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Firing motion

There's something wrong with the wording regarding the motion to fire Stanton.

On 23 March during a six-hour meeting of Largo city council, the motion was made to terminate Stanton's employment. Commissioner Black tabled a motion to terminate the city manager's contract of employment. After a brief deliberation, this was upheld by five of the commissioners while Mayor Pat Gerard and Commissioner Rodney Woods dissented. Thus, at five minutes past midnight, Stanton's employment officially ended.

This wording says (1) someone moved to fire him, (2) Black moved to NOT vote on whether to fire him, (3) everyone agreed to NOT FIRE him, (4) therefore he WAS fired. That doesn't make sense, and can't be what happened. The linked source is dead, so I cannot check what actually happened according to that source. The City of Largo webpage has the meeting agenda and text of the resolution but does not yet have minutes specifying how the actual meeting took place.

--zandperl 03:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)