Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Hillary Rodham Clinton article.
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[edit] Equal treatment in candidate biography articles

It looks like Noroton has identified a number of examples of inappropriate POV/Soapboxing in articles about other people. Some of them really are quite egregious. He would do Wikipedia a great service to remove (or at least heavily trim) those digressions into third persons that partisans put into other politician articles. If Noroton does not get to it, I might make an effort myself to clean some of that up (obviously though, as we've seen here, cleaning up to encyclopedic standards can often meet great resistance from anti-Bio-Subject partisans). Unfortunately, I can't personally improve millions of articles at once, probably not even dozens where the subjects are living persons of high general interst. LotLE×talk 06:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC) -- From the Talk:Barack Obama page (diff)

One useful way of checking the neutrality of an article is looking at how similar articles are edited. Right now there's a discussion at Talk:Barack Obama (in fact, it's a long, ongoing debate taking up most of the page, but the active section right now is at the Attempt to build consensus on the details section. I looked through this McCain article and the ones on Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani to see how negative information was treated in each, particularly how much information was presented about people associated with the candidate. The debate over on the Obama page is about whether to include any information on people associated with him (Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko, specifically) and if so, how much information to include about each. My own opinion is that, since there are articles about each of these people and their relationship to the election, we can have a very small amount on each, but we should have just enough so that the reader immediately knows why the person has become controversial in the election. For Bill Ayers, for instance, people should know that he's controversial because he's said to be unrepentant about violence with the Weather Underground. Other opinions are that this description unnecessarily lengthens the article or has nothing to do with Obama or that it's an opinion, not a fact, that he's unrepentant. It would be useful if people interested in this page would participate in the discussion there, because, as the quote I've put at the top of this section shows, editors there may be coming here to make changes.

Here's what I found in looking into negative information in three similar articles, particularly as it relates to people associated with the candidate who have become controversial. I'm re-posting it here for the information of editors who are unlikely to see it at Talk:Barack Obama. Any comments about this comparison as it relates to this article would be useful on this page, of course, and any comments on how the Obama article should treat information on associates would best be posted on that page. Please keep in mind that whatever happens in that discussion may well affect this page, with a good number of editors willing to form a consensus that might force changes here. A centralized discussion on the common points may be best on that page, where it's already started:

  • Hilary Rodham Clinton — numerous mentions of various people that put Clinton in a negative light. Regarding people associated in some way with Clinton:
    • The Presidential campaign of 2008 section has three sentences on Norman Hsu, who was certainly less close to Clinton than the Rev. Wright has been to Obama.
    • The same section has several sentences on comments by another Clinton associate who puts the candidate in a bad light: Bill Clinton's controversial comments about race and the campaign. Surely that is worth keeping in the article on Hilary Clinton.
    • The same section has two sentences on Geraldine Ferraro's comments that put the Clinton campaign, and by extension, Hilary Clinton, in a bad light in the eyes of some.
    • Regarding other negative information on Clinton (usually full paragraphs on each thing mentioned), there is the cattle futures contract (in two different places in the article), conflict-of-interest charges in Arkansas regarding the Rose Law Firm; controversy involving her term on the Wal-Mart board of directors; the controversy/investigation on missing legal papers in her East Wing White House office regarding the Whitewater controversy; and Clinton's sniper-fire gaffe during the campaign (a sentence).
  • John McCain:
    • Information on Richard Keating (footnotes 84-87; John McCain#House and Senate career, 1982–2000 section: Amount of space: two paragraphs
    • ADDED POINT: The article does not mention the Rev. John C. Hagee whose controversial remarks about Catholics and about the Holocaust caused McCain to disassociated himself from the minister. The article also does not mention McCain's ties to a lobbyist that some suspected was having an affair with him. (Personally, I think the Hagee stuff belongs in that article, in a sentence or two, and a link to the lobbyist controversy article should also be there, but it's a point in favor of the exclusionist side in this discussion that those two people are not mentioned in the article.)
  • Rudy Giuliani:
    • Rudy Giuliani#Early life and education: This section opens by telling the reader his father "had trouble holding a job and had been convicted of felony assault and robbery and served time in Sing Sing" and worked as a Mafia enforcer for his brother-in-law who "ran an organized crime operation involved in loan sharking and gambling at a restaurant in Brooklyn." Mind you, this last quote is about Giuliani's uncle.
    • The Mayoral campaigns, 1989, 1993, 1997 section has a subsection called "Appointees as defendants" consisting of a paragraph each on scandals/controversies involving Russell Harding and Bernard Kerik, and the Kerik paragraph is preceded by: "Main article: Rudy Giuliani promotions of Bernard Kerik" Kerik is mentioned in at least two other places in the article. "Post-mayorality" section is one ("Politics" subsection), and the "Family" section, where the last paragraph is a sentence stating that Giuliani is godfather to Kerik's children.
    • Other negative information on Giuliani includes part of the Legal career section, which opens with details his draft deferment in a paragraph; another paragraph is devoted to criticism of his setting up public perp-walks for arrested Wall Street bigwigs and then eventually dropping prosecutions of them. That paragraph is larger than Giuliani's leading the prosecution in one of the biggest Mafia trials in history (perhaps the most important).

Presidential candidates are big boys (and a big girl), and they get tough treatment in the media because they are trying to get a very powerful, very important job. We don't overprotect them on Wikipedia just as the U.S. media and international media don't protect them. The exclusionist side of this discussion appears to want far higher standards for inclusion of information about Obama than we have for Hilary Clinton, John McCain or Rudolph Giuliani. This goes against both Wikipedia practice and policy & guidelines. Noroton (talk) 14:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dropping out

ABC is reporting that she will drop out of the race on Friday at a rally although the word likely is still not convincing enough to mention just yet. Remember yesterday about the report that she would drop out but immediately denied shortly after. But it is a heads up. --JForget 23:02, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Like you said, remember the bogus AP story yesterday. Reporters get rewarded for scoops; we get paid the same whether we're first or not. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Wait, you didn't get the memo announcing the raise? Tvoz/talk 23:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Ha! ... by the way, do you or anyone know why MiszaBot has stopped working on this page? No archiving since April, and there are some old threads above ... Wasted Time R (talk) 23:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Don't know but I could archived some of it right now by myself.--JForget 23:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
It's better when the bot does it, because it creates an index too. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Looks like the archiver is a separate bot, that has been running, so it should index archive 12 tonight. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I was about to send a message to Misza13 about that matter before I saw that new bot. So I guess we will have to archive manually now. --JForget 23:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I've only left a commented out note on our campaign article about the report for now until more media (i.e CNN, CBC, NBC, BBC) will mention it on theirs home page or a real announcement. CTV has also mention of it in their headlines. --JForget 23:20, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't do bots. Tvoz/talk 04:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Technically, Clinton isn't dropping out. She's suspending her campaign; she's no longer running, but she's still a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination (just like Ron Paul is, for the Republican pres nomination). PS- Ya gotta hand it to her & her supporters fighting spirit; already they're pressuring Obama to give her the vice presidential nomination. GoodDay (talk) 18:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Hopefully she will run as an Independent candidate, she would make a great President. Go Hillary! Astrotrain (talk) 20:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't turn this into a forum. No support messages, no flags, no patriotic flags, no rockets!! guddamit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.201.1.109 (talk) 16:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why can't we edit??

This is supposed to be Wikipedia the encyclopedia anyone can edit. And I can't. Why not?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.64.19 (talk) 07:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Beacuse you don't have an account with WIKIPEDIA. You only have an I.P address, and to keep people from making bad edits they keep people who havn't had an account with them for a few months or so. It's just to help keep out vandals. Make an account if you want to do some editing--  Jrobb525 07:43, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Please see also Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed. ffm 14:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
In other words, it is all a ruse. I get it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.64.19 (talk) 14:30, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
There's only a handful of semi-protected articles like this one. There are over two million articles that you can edit right now, no questions asked. So no, not a ruse. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:48, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
When is this super-sensitivity (entitlement) of the HRC Wiki going to end? I would think that most of the vandals have moved on. No? Oxfordden (talk) 20:22, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
That's for the admins to decide. Wasted Time R (talk) 22:51, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Technically, still a candidate?

Not to upset folks, but isn't Clinton status with the Democratic race, the same as Ron Paul's status in the Republican race? She's suspended her prez campaign (not ended it). Thus she keeps her delegates - Doesn't this mean she's still a candidate for the Dems prez nomination? PS- Yes, I know most sources says she's not a candidate anymore. GoodDay (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Well... she suspended her campaign... so it depends on how ridgidly you want to define the term candidate... personally, I think a suspended campaign should count as not being a candidate (I could envision some rare exceptions to this but generally that should be the rule). She has effectively announced that she is no longer running therefore she is no longer a candidate. Otherwise, we could argue that Mike Gravel, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, etc. are still candidates as their names appeared on ballots even after they eneded their campaign. Now if, you want to talk about the definition of the term superdelegate I would really get technical there, that term is so misused ut's amazing.--Dr who1975 (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

No prob; I just wanted to be sure. PS- I'm still waiting for Donna Brazile to make an endorsement. GoodDay (talk) 18:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The difference with Ron Paul is that he explicitly has not endorsed McCain, while HRC explicitly did endorse Obama. The suspension status is a technicality due to getting funds to pay off her huge campaign debts. Wasted Time R (talk) 22:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)