Talk:Ann Althouse
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This article was nominated for deletion on December 12. The result of the discussion was Keep. |
For clarity, older discussions from this talk page are archived.
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[edit] Proposed: replace entire "controversy" section with brief description
This whole blog spat is entirely non-notable and deserves no more than a sentence or two mentioning the conflict. Agree/Disagree. Pusher robot 23:43, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
- Personally, I agree, and would far rather this article focussed on the well-respected legal scholar whose name appears in the title, rather than the ceaseless yapping around her heels of some very small dogs. Nevertheless, I've reluctantly accepted that other users are determined to include this event, and are determined to have the treatment of it written in way that smears Althouse. I'm willing to compromise to the extent of allowing the former, but the latter is unacceptable insofar as if it was written the way some evidently want it to be, it would not only be defamatory towards its subject (which is unacceptable in any event), but in clear violation of both the purpose and policy of Wikipedia (specifically, NPOV). As I noted uppage, if the Valenti/Franke-Ruta business is mentioned at all, it must be handled even-handedly, accurately and without taking sides. In short, it must be NPOV, and POV can creep in as much through omission as inclusion.
- My inclination is to treat this the way the "Scalia hand gesture" incident was treated: I considered the whole thing non-notable, but other users were determined to include it, and in the spirit of "go along to get along," I was willing to accept that section, as long as it remained NPOV. In due course, it's been whittled down, and eventually it'll disappear into a footnote. Same thing here. This is a minor incident that I find very difficult to believe wasn't manufactured specifically to give Valenti a publicity boost (at a minimum, the controversy that gives Valenti her sole claim to fame reignited at an extremely fortuitous time).Simon Dodd 14:06, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
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- As discussed up-page, I now see that I was wrong on Apr. 10: the disputed section should be removed entirely. A mutually-agreeable text that fully describes the controversy is clearly impossible. Since no mention at all will clearly be unacceptable to Althouse's detractors, and a POV article is unacceptable to me, I have replaced the entire section with a very brief, terse, neutral paragraph noting that (a) there was a controversy, (b) Althouse's perspective of what the controversy was about, (c) Althouse's critics' perspective of what the controversy was about, and (d) that the controversy reappeared earlier this year. To be sure, I am not happy with this version, and regard it as a significant compromise on my part: There is no mention of the Valenti book, and very little explanation of the (wholly exculpating) context. Nevertheless, I think this version of the text is as close to a mutually-agreeable text as we're going to get, and I have requested page protection to bring a halt to an absurd edit war that has defaced this article.[1]Simon Dodd 13:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Request changes to blogging section
In the 2nd paragraph "late 2005" should be "late 2006", as per the first related post [2] I also suggest "Althouse's critics on the left" be shortened to "Althouse's critics" since without sources it does not seem appropriate to categorize the unnamed critics, especially if (per the previous paragraph) Althouse perceives herself to be on the left ("represents herself as politically liberal").—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wnjr (talk) 19:02, 9 April 2007 (UTC).
- I agree with changing the year, that was a typo on my part. I'll ask an admin to attend to that. [UPDATE: I've asked user:SlimVirgin, as an admin who's had no contact with this dispute, to make the change at her leisure.]
- As to the point about the description of critics as being on the left: The main folks who criticized her were blogs like LGM, Tapped, Firedoglake, Matt Yglesias, Pandagon, Feministe, Feministing of course, and so on. I'm not aware of any blogs on the right who criticized her over the original incident with Valenti or the subsequent episode with Franke-Ruta (and even if there were a few isolated examples to the contrary, the vast majority of the criticism came from the left). Unless you have some compelling examples of "Althouse's critics on the right" to bring forward, it seems unexceptional to speak of "Althouse's critics on the left." So I would not support the change, because the evidence clearly points out that virtually all of Althouse's critics over this incident are on the left and it seems fair to note that point.Simon Dodd 15:02, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] BLP
I was asked to fix a date correction in this protected article, but when I looked at the section, it seemed to violate the BLP policy, which says that unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material should be removed immediately. The critics were unnamed and there were no references. If the sources are blogs, these are not allowed in BLPs, unless the blog owner is the subject: see WP:V and WP:BLP. I also removed the unsourced date of birth, and I removed the tag in part because the contentious section is no longer on the page, and in part because it was drawing attention to a dispute, which can be a BLP problem in itself. It's best with biographies of living persons to err on the side of caution and discretion. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 16:48, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think all that's eminently reasonable, and I heartily approve of the article as instantly constituted.Simon Dodd 16:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
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- Given that all those issues with the contentious section were the result of your overzealous editing, it seems rather bizarre to congratulate SlimVirgin for correcting your errors. I expect the section will return in some form in due course.Wnjr 11:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Protection
The article is still protected, but without the customary legend to that effect. If the protection is to continue, it should be noted at the top of the article.
Alternatively, is there any reason not to unprotect? I haven't been involved in editing this article, but there's apparently been no discussion of any disputes on this talk page for more than a month. That would normally be a reason to unprotect. JamesMLane t c 08:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] This article is essentially worthless
While Althouse may be a "repected legal scholar" who is suffers the terrible ills of having "small dogs" "yapping" about her heels, the simple fact is that in this crazy internet of ours she is largely known as a BLOGGER. That is, she blogs. Perhaps this wikipedia entry should mention that crazy fact? I understand that she is a political blogger, and like most political topics there is no acceptable NPV that is not the author's NPV. But refusing to discuss the thing which has made her most well known in the world is silly. Or do you think she was brought to the attention of the NY Times and got to write those those op-eds on the basis of her legal scholarship? (Speaking of which, perhaps this article should mention, or link to, those Op-Eds?) Glen Reynolds has a blog, a rather popular one at that. He is also a law professor. And somehow, his wikipedia page manages to mention both of those facts.128.84.218.156 04:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
