Talk:Jim McCrery

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We have a complaint about this article and it does in fact seem at bare minimum to be extremely unbalanced to treat an obscure magazine article that we admit wasn't picked up by other sources as if it is 50% of the story of this Congressman's life.

For now I blanked this section, pending fact checking and relevancy review, but what would be really grand I think would be to have this article become high-quality. And comprehensive. :)--Jimbo Wales 22:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo, I did hours of work on the last congressman you asked people to help with and I think I did a great job (here's what it looked like before I got to it; a handfull of other people helped a little bit as well.) However, in this situation I am reluctant because I'm not sure where the boundaries are. The section you blanked is verifiable [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], and has apparently never been denied, at least as far as I can tell from McCrery's web site. I would be happy to help if there is some assurance that the blanked section, or an improvement on it, can remain in the article. Is that going to present a problem? --James S. 00:37, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think Jimbo's point (if I may surmise) was not that it wasn't true but that it didn't merit to take up quite so much of a short article. The best bet would be to cover his policies and history and then include the Advocate information. Incidentally, probably only the first paragraph of the passage Jimbo removed is usable. Chick Bowen 01:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Done. --James S. 05:03, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
This article from USA Today also mentions the Advocate article. However, where the Wikipedia article states "McCrery's press office did not deny any of the assertions when contacted to comment by author Chris Bull, and there is apparently no record of any confirmation or denial on the part of McCrery since.", the USA Today article says "During the 1992 campaign, the Advocate, a national gay magazine, quoted a Dallas teacher as saying he formerly had a relationship with McCrery and accusing him of pandering to his conservative constituents by opposing gay rights. McCrery and his wife, Johnette, vehemently denied the allegations." Until this can be resolved I am removing that passage from the article. Jacoplane 17:34, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Since there is an actual dispute, I've removed the entire passage. Unless there's an independent confirmation, a single news report with a denial in another shouldn't result in inclusion. --James S. 17:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I re-added the controversial section with the {{dubious}} tag because I've found some more reports of "no comment," and some more reports that McCrery is well-known homosexual, mostly from blogs. So I have asked one of the people making such claims to contribute sources here. --James S. 18:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Im a political Science/Law Student. In addition, this is my Congressman. These rumors are unfounded and create a sentiment of dislike in people in the Shreveport/Bossier area towards Wikipedia. This is unfair and the media has no right to dive into his personal life like this. This man just delivered $3 million dollars to Centenary College, an excellent school! Ironically, one of my great-aunts attended to the care of his children when they were younger-now I will be working along side the Congressman in the future. I said that to say-the judgement needs to be left to those that know him best. Wales, you dont want Oreilly and Limbaugh on you!

{{sofixit}} (kidding). But seriously, you have to understand that we Wikipedians go on the verifiable information that we can gather about a subject. You obviously have a lot of knowledge on the subject, so please help us in improving the article. As you can see in the discussion above, we are very concerned with making sure that the information we provide is accurate. Sure, we make mistakes, but I hope you understand that these are not malicious mistakes, but rather stem from inaccurate or incomplete information (although there are some vandals who purposefully insert false information, which is something we struggle with every day). Regarding someone's privacy, that is not up to us to decide, as we are not a primary source. That is, any information about someone's private life should only be covered in the Wikipedia article if it has been covered by the mainstream media. If you have any other questions or comments, please don't hesitate to ask me on my talk page. Cheers, Jacoplane 23:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Someone added the blogactive URL again. Is there any documentation of a denial, such as a press release, or an actual newspaper article quoting the denial? The Advocate article is sourced, and I don't know how to weigh anonomous requests to squelch a sourced article. I would like to have this settled once and for all. --James S. 23:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Would somebody, preferably a constituent, please phone the congressman's office and get a real, up-to-date denial? I've been removing the allegations in light of the USA Today reports of denials, but there is a lot of evidence on both sides. I'm ambivalent, but agree that we should give the benefit of the doubt when there is an actual primary source for the denial. Given the Advocate article sourcing, a secondary source denial is just weak. Someone please call his staff. --James S. 04:14, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I also strongly agree with the caution mandated by WP:BLP. Yet, I see Google New hits to articles documenting the denial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch here, The Washington Post hereand the Dallas Morning News here. Those three publications squarely meet both the standards of WP:BLP and WP:V. Then, why is this denial blanked in the article? SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Also, a Google Book Search points to several books that discuss this 'outing'. This appears to meet the threshold of WP:BLP and WP:V. What do other editors think about this? See for instance here and hereSaltyBoatr (talk) 23:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Congressional website

Congressional website (http://mccrery.house.gov/) not working as of right now Mattbrundage 03:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Site working again. Mattbrundage 04:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)