Template talk:John McCain
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The whole (daughter) (spouse) etc thing next to family members looks kinda ugly - can we change it? Nobody else has something like this.
[edit] Controversy sections
Could we please remove the "lobbyist controversy" link and if possible the "Keating five" link? The first one is a tempest in a teapot that does not seem to be getting any ongoing coverage in the campaign, and as such looks like coatracked disparagement of the candidate. The "Keating Five" incident is a rare scandal in McCain's career but it does not seem central to defining who he is. Each candidate in any major race has lots of controversies, scandals, and accusations that arise, and many get quite a bit of press. But that's part of the political game in election cycles. The template is supposed to give people a quick point of reference to find the various articles about the candidates. I think it makes things less encyclopedic, and lowers us to news-like coverage, if these templates start to become directories of political attacks made against the candidates. Moreover, for the most part the norm here has been to not use the templates to point to every latest scandal, only the key major issues and events about a politician. Wikidemo (talk) 13:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- I see there are some other sections that are not controversial, but may be too peripheral to be listed on a template. The 1967 USS Forrestal fire is a fascinating, well-written article, but McCain's role in that as a near-victim and pilot assigned to a plane that exploded seems to be peripheral - if it did have a big impact on his life, the article doesn't make that clear. The McCain Detainee Amendment is also very interesting, but is that on par with his most important legislative accomplishments? Given the President's signing statement the legislation would seem to be largely symbolic. Thanks, Wikidemo (talk) 14:12, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- I thank Wikidemo for bringing this up here, as a similar discussion is going on at Template_talk:Barack_Obama#Remove flash-in-pan "controversies". Happyme22 (talk) 22:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- [This comment was left by me at the {{Barack Obama}} talk page:] I think the Wright controversy has impacted Obama himself enough to merit inclusion - that's not a partisan, coatrack, shoehorn, POV-pushing, whatever you want to call it :) viewpoint. He had to give a race-relations speech because of it, it gained widespread media attention with questions about his personal and moral values, it has significantly damaged his relationship with his one-time "mentor", and he has given up membership from his church because of it. I understand the election issues point, which is a good one, but I don't think that legitimate parts of someone's life that may have related to the campaign or started with the campaign and gone of into a different direction, as this has, should be omitted because they were/are "campaign issues". The same goes for McCain - his lobbyist controversy brought up questions of his moral character and was only a campaign issue for a short period of time. But just because it was, I don't think a moral issue relating to John McCain the man should be omitted either. So it goes both ways. Happyme22 (talk) 23:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- These are navigational templates, they should be value-neutral and just point to all the articles where McCain is the main subject or a key subject. As for Keating Five, it was a huge event in his political life; it endangered his career for a while, and after he emerged from it he made campaign finance reform his central effort in reaction to it. He devotes over 40 pages to it in his second memoir. So that clearly belongs. So does any article with McCain in the title, including the 2008 lobbying thing. If you think that subject no longer deserves an article, then AfD or merge is the proper course, not removal from the navigational template. The Forrestal fire article is an example of one that should not be in the template, since McCain is not a key subject of it. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- Well, I think of templates as something a little more grand and instructive than that and the standard for inclusion on a template is something other than notability of the subject. A template is a way of telling someone, here is where to go to learn more about a subject, and here is the way to find what you are looking for. We can't list every article that involves McCain or Obama in their respective templates...think of the much larger-purpose templates - there are templates for wine, for different nations, for types of entertainment, etc. They hit the main point as a top level navigation, and tell people where they can get an overall view of the subject. As I said, my concern is that by focusing on scandals we are implicitly saying that scandals are on equal footing as a relevant feature of politicians' lives, on par with legislative history, family background, political positions, and elections. On the far side, of course you would have to mention Watergate in a template about Nixon. But in a template about Ronald Reagan we wouldn't include all his Microphone gaffes, even though they got a lot of press. So, if there's a threshold for inclusion how high is it, and on what standard? Wikidemo (talk) 23:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- Well, I stated my view. Template:Hillary Rodham Clinton ended up becoming the subject of long-lasting edit battles on this score, and after a while I just decided this would be one area I wasn't going to worry about. I'll likely do the same here ... Wasted Time R (talk) 00:09, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
- Well, I think of templates as something a little more grand and instructive than that and the standard for inclusion on a template is something other than notability of the subject. A template is a way of telling someone, here is where to go to learn more about a subject, and here is the way to find what you are looking for. We can't list every article that involves McCain or Obama in their respective templates...think of the much larger-purpose templates - there are templates for wine, for different nations, for types of entertainment, etc. They hit the main point as a top level navigation, and tell people where they can get an overall view of the subject. As I said, my concern is that by focusing on scandals we are implicitly saying that scandals are on equal footing as a relevant feature of politicians' lives, on par with legislative history, family background, political positions, and elections. On the far side, of course you would have to mention Watergate in a template about Nixon. But in a template about Ronald Reagan we wouldn't include all his Microphone gaffes, even though they got a lot of press. So, if there's a threshold for inclusion how high is it, and on what standard? Wikidemo (talk) 23:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- These are navigational templates, they should be value-neutral and just point to all the articles where McCain is the main subject or a key subject. As for Keating Five, it was a huge event in his political life; it endangered his career for a while, and after he emerged from it he made campaign finance reform his central effort in reaction to it. He devotes over 40 pages to it in his second memoir. So that clearly belongs. So does any article with McCain in the title, including the 2008 lobbying thing. If you think that subject no longer deserves an article, then AfD or merge is the proper course, not removal from the navigational template. The Forrestal fire article is an example of one that should not be in the template, since McCain is not a key subject of it. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
