Talk:CASA of Maryland

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[edit] Notability?

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia. Please provide sources to establish the subject's notability. Of course, the need for sources goes beyond notability. Information added to an article must be verifiable, and facts included must be attributed to a reliable source. Thanks. --Evb-wiki 00:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Please check the sources for verifiability and reliable-source. Hopefully the ones recently provided will suffice. Thardman22 22:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I could use some help

I could use some help, if it's not too much to ask, with getting this page into the "standard format", with a summary in the first few paragraphs, the "blue box" directing to specific sections within the article, and some advice or pointers on how to do footnoting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thardman22 (talk • contribs) 00:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

It's improving. It still needs cleaning up and has formatting issues. Please see Wikipedia's manual on style and citation forms. Notability might be there. I'm still not sure, as the sources are not always on point. --Evb-wiki 01:12, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay to the cleanup and formatting, I've done plenty of webpages but this is my first stab at at a new wikipedia entry.

As to the sources not being on point, that's because CASA is a bit of a slippery creature. There are almost no news articles that are _about_ CASA of Maryland, though they are almost inescapably mentioned in any article in local papers which deal with immigration (legal or otherwise), the Salvadoran expatriate community, day labor, etc. They're sort of everywhere and nowhere... which is one of the reasons I am spending time on this. I'm trying to develop a definitive and citable resource. Thus I welcome any critique and assistance. In particular, thanks for the assist with the template and formatting.

About the task of getting things to be on point, perhaps it might be useful to me to directly and appropriately quote small elements from the sources, with appropriate citation and reference credit, with a link to the full articles in the attribution? Thardman22 14:19, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability tag

I am pretty sure that this page now shows the notability of the organization. Many verifiable sources have also been provided. Can we please get the notability tag removed? Thardman22 19:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I will remove the tag I placed. It's still not clear how notable Casa is, but I'll give it the benefit of doubt. The article still need to be cleaned up. In particular, it contains a large number of external links that are only tangentially related to the subject. Please see WP:EL, which says:
  1. Links should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links, or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.
  2. External links should not be used in the body of an article. Instead, include them in an "External links" section at the end or in the appropriate location within an infobox.
  3. Try to avoid linking to multiple pages from the same website; instead, try to find an appropriate linking page within the site.
Please also see Wikipedia's manual on style and citation forms for ideas on how to clean up and improve the article. Thanks for your contributions. --Evb-wiki 15:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks so much! I'll try to fix it. I'll look through the style manual, but for now I probably mostly need clues about getting standard ref-number format working. If I had been able to find that, I'd have used it from the beginning. Standard bracket-ref-closebracket and end-notes is my standard style, it's just not clearly noted in the wiki edit pages about how to call out that sort of citation. My regards and thanks for all of the help! Thardman22 03:24, 6 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Revert

I believe the revert of several (5) careful edits were not, as characterized by the editor who reverted them "vandalism, slanted journalism supporting political viewpoint, weasel words" Wholesale reversion was not warranted. Scarykitty (talk) 02:28, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

For example, how is adding the title of a public official (Secretary of Labor, Licensing and Regulation Tom Perez) vandalism, slanted journalism or weasel words? Scarykitty (talk) 02:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Response: It's the cumulative effect of the edits, some of which remove information which is vital for encyclopedia understanding. For example:

Over time, there were huge blocks of information removed, specific to the controversy over Real ID and CASA's efforts to block it. Changing the section title from "Controversy" to "Current Issues" changes the encyclopedic content from "history" to "news". Try to avoid that sort of revisionism.

I _should_ update that to reflect that the issue has been somewhat mooted by the grant to Maryland of extended time to comply. However, that would be updating history, rather than burying history and only posting current status, which would be "news" instead of "history".

Here are the Weasel Words: editorial characterization of Brad Botwin's "Help Save Maryland" as "anti-immigrant" is outrageous editorializing and introduction of unfair slant. "Help Save Maryland" is in fact not opposed to LEGAL immigration nor to legal immigrants. "Help Save Maryland" is in fact opposed to ILLEGAL immigration and there is an astonishing difference, on which you might reflect, between "legal" and "illegal" as adjectives when applied to the noun "immigrants". Failing to make and to continue to reference that signal distinction is Weaseling.

If you want to start a page on "Help Save Maryland" and or on Brad Botwin, go right ahead, it's Wikipedia and you will go through all of the same challenges that everyone does who starts a page, especially when it concerns controversial political organizations. Keep in mind that I am not here to defame or decry CASA of Maryland, I am here to faithfully document them and their history, and I am trying to be as unslanted as I possibly can be. I am also trying to keep them in the context of their time and place in history and the influence they have exerted and continue to try to exert. some of that id admirable and laudable and I try to point to that. Some of that may be arguably less than laudable and I try to point to that. However, I try very hard indeed to not insert my own editorializing couched in slanted wording.

There are things that I will always pounce on: blatant slant or clear factionalism on the one hand, and false conflation of the "legal / illegal" dichotomy as a unary "immigrants".

The blatant politicking over AG Ashcroft's inclusion of Federal deportation warrants in the NCIC database had to be removed. Again, this is introduction of personal slant and extraneous information, Weaseling in the semantics. Furthermore, you weasel even more when you falsely oppose Community Policing to the nationwide "Best Practices" standards of running all contacts through the NCIC database. If you're going to make a statement like that, you had best support it, for example with a link to external sources or to a wikipedia internal source demonstrating that these practices are in opposition.

Probably I should have let stand, with a little editing, your revision about how CASA was "advocating" to have the County Executive require the police department to abandon "Best Practices". You might also want to do a little research into law-enforcement "best practices" and "interdepartmental cooperation" not to mention the concept of "interagency trust". See also the concept of "full faith and credit" from the Constitution, which is considered a wellspring of interstate cooperation in the apprehension of all kinds of fugitives. CASA was effectively advocating that Montgomery County police either stop checking for warrants altogether -- which would lose them their accreditation with the professional brotherhoods of police agencies and officers -- or disregard certain types of warrants, which would have the same effect. CASA was in effect demanding an end to professionalism, but that's more editorializing and slant than _I_ would want to put on a wikipedia entry.

As to clipping the mention of the ongoing migration from Prince William to Maryland, CASA's Virginia branch is noted in the cites, and Atty Landeo is one of the main people to whom CASA refers immigration cases, according to sources that don't have wikipedia-citable distributions. It's relevant, and will doubtless become more publicly relevant as time passes. Remember, try to not change "history" to "news". And also try to not remove links to news that documents history. That's revisionism, which is worse than weaseling. Thardman22 (talk) 14:49, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I have reverted to the pre-revert edition and addressed your concerns. (for example removing unsourced characterization of HSM as anti-immgirant, and changing reference from AG to "government" as is supported by the Washington Post article. Please take up future concerns on this page or make selective edits rather than reverting many edits to a version you prefer.

Reference to immigrants moving from Virginia to Maryland does not belong in an article about CASA of Maryland unless there is a reliable published source which links the two concepts. At present there is none, so I did not re-include that segment. I could find no reference to a CASA Virginia site and I do not believe there is one. If you want to start an article on Immigrant migration from Virginia to Maryland, go right ahead. CASA referring people to a particular attorney (even if sourced by a reliable published source, which it is not) still does not establish a link between people moving from Virginia to Maryland and this organization.

Regarding REAL ID. I think the section is correct as stands, but you are of course welcome to edit it to reflect current status. Scarykitty (talk) 01:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

This revisionism is getting out of hand.

I'll be making some changes.

As to the article about illegal aliens migrating from Prince William County VA to Maryland not being relevant to CASA, it cannot avoid being relevant to CASA because they then become CASA's constituency which is thus increasing. The article speaks directly to the growth of CASA. I shall point that out.

Look, I realize you're trying to promote a political agenda here, try to avoid that sort of thing. Let's just stick to the facts and leave out the editorializing. I have little interest in getting into a wiki spat. 65.205.1.230 (talk) 17:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)