Talk:Justin Berry/Archive 5

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BLP rewrite

I have nuked the history of this article and restored a version that has been shorn of content that falls afoul of our policy on biographies of living people. There is an article to be written about Mr. Berry's media appearances, activism, and the news coverage of him. That article is not the one that existed previously, which was primarily an account of who molested him, when, where, and how they were prosecuted. Please, in revising and expanding this article, consider the question of what is encyclopedic about him, as opposed to what is salaciously interesting. Phil Sandifer 19:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Are there any GFDL issues with restoring content without the history? (My knowledge on thiis is very sketchy, so please forgive me if this is a dumb question.) Trebor 19:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
None - it's a common thing to do in BLP issues - delete revisions containing BLP-offending material. Phil Sandifer 19:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
You are wrong. Either restore the history with all revisions that this version is derived from (from the last time it was stubbed until the problematic content was added) or delete the first revision and leave a new stub version (that you or someone else wrote entirely originally)... or I guess you could find someone with Clue™. Kotepho 19:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The history still exists in the deleted revisions database, which technically fulfils the requirement. Phil has plenty of Clue. Guy (Help!) 20:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
No, it doesn't. When you distrubute material under the GFDL (that you are not the copyright holder of, and wikimedia does not hold the copyright) you must include the history section (4.I.) You cannot say 'well, it's there... you just can't see it!' Kotepho 21:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Kotepho may well be right about GFDL.

So the Jimbo answer to this sort of thing is to utterly delete the article and recreate as a protected stub based on the most reliable sources, which only admins can then edit - David Gerard 21:28, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. Done! Phil Sandifer 22:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Just so we're all clear, can you remind us of exactly what the BLP violations were? The article did give excessive attention to the molesters, but I don't recall any assertions about them that violated BLP. One editor has expressed an interest in covering the bulk of the material in a non-biography. While that'd keep much of the material about the molesters out of this article, it would tend to increase the amount of material in the encyclopedia. Anyway, please describe the BLP violations a little more specifically so that this article doesn't get restubbed every year. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 22:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
The violation was in terms of the article being primarily about his molestation as opposed to about any encyclopedic content. In short, the article was doing harm to its subject - the first Google hit on his name took you to an article that detailed in agonizing specificity the history of his molestation. That was irresponsible. An acceptable article would note, pretty much in passing, that he was molested and that he ran a website of pornographic images of himself, and then move on to the content for which he is notable - the New York Times coverage and associated controversy, his media appearances, etc. Phil Sandifer 23:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
So then the issue is one of undue weight tending to skew NPOV? While that's arguably a BLP violation, it is a mild one. I don't believe that there was anything in the article that was unsourced or even poorly sourced, or that was directly POV. Would it be possible to work from the article we had, simply stripping away the excess coverage of the molestation? There's not anything derogatory there that has to be hidden. Also, was this action in response to an OTRS or other request? ·:·Will Beback ·:· 23:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
The problem is not one of weight or NPOV. It was that unencyclopedic material was being covered in salacious detail. Keeping salacious versions in our history is itself a problem, as they tend to just get linked to as "the uncensored version" and other such crap. And no, it was not an OTRS request. Phil Sandifer 23:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Then let's keep the salacious material out and leave the good stuff. The problem with blanking the article is that those who have an interest in writing it from scratch are not the most neutral editors. Unless you're willing to do so... ·:·Will Beback ·:· 23:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
I really don't see any point in having an article with no assertion of notability. If Sandifer wants a one-sentence article we should just delete it. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 04:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't want a one-sentence article. I can honestly say, considering the uproar this generated last year, I'm surprised nobody has tried to rewrite this at all. Phil Sandifer 04:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
As I mentioned before, the ones who'd re-write it would be the same ones who wrote the version you just deleted. If you're willing to take ongoing responsibility for maintaining this article, then it's yours. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 06:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
This article has already gone through WP:OFFICE and been completely deleted, after being (in large part) written by a self-described pedophile. The article has been an on & off war zone and an occasional target for vandals. You, me, and others have put a lot of work into removing unsourced garbage from both sides and trying to tell a complete story. It's sad to see it go. --Ssbohio 00:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
The subject of the article is notable precisely because of the "salacious" events of his life, including his molestation, his being depicted in child pornography, his producing & distributing child pornography, and his seeking immunity in exchange for evidence on others involved in these activities. As I understand it, policy on biographies of living persons calls for the removal of unsourced controversial material. The material is sourced, with much of it coming from Berry himself via reliable sources like the New York Times.
How would the neutrality of the article be served by removing the "harmful" "salacious" material that you speak of? How is that judgment differentiated from removing content you don't like, since it requires a judgment about salaciousness rather than more definite criteria like sourcing? This article has, since its inception, been a hotbed of argument between the point of view of the pedophiles and pederasts on one side and that of those who seek a hagiographic depiction of this subject on the other. Given the criteria described above, how can neutrality be attained? --Ssbohio 05:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
He is notable because of the salacious events, yes. But those events are not what he is notable for. Put another way, there are no doubt other people who have put on erotic webcam performances and been molested. His notability comes not from that, but because that was covered in newspapers and he appeared in front of Congress. The details of his molestation are merely the background for the actually notable business of controversy, news coverage, etc and should only be brought into the article where they are necessary to contextualize specific aspects of that. An extended narration of his molestation is inappropriate. Phil Sandifer 13:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
(reracking indent) Berry received extensive media exposure as a result of his notable experiences. He did not become notable through his media exposure, he gained media exposure through his notable experiences. What he did and what was done to him: that's the story here. Berry is intrinsically notable; the media accounts serve to prove his notability, not create it. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater does nothing to improve the product. There must, as a matter of probability, be some acceptable content in the months of work you nuked. Indeed, it makes me wonder why anyone would spend time researching, referencing, writing, & polishing, only to have everything, good & bad, obliterated by an admin who drove by. Also, I'd like you to answer the questions I asked, so I know what needs to be done with this article. --Ssbohio 00:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
On this you are wrong, I fear. Had there been no media coverage, we would not have an article about him. What is notable about him is not his molestation - it's his media appearances, his testimony, the award-winning journalism written about him, etc. A good rewrite of this article would focus on that, using the descriptions of his molestation only to provide context as needed, instead of as the meat of the article. Phil Sandifer 04:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
There are more things on Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I disagree with you. That doesn't make you wrong. The same goes for me. As honest men can & do disagree on subjective matters, I'd appreciate the same courtesy.
A good rewrite of this article would focus on the whole story, not just his media exposure. If his molestation and later activities were not notable, it's unlikely that he would have been the subject of a feature article in the New York Times. His activities are central to the issue, especially when it comes to the legal cases involving him, his grant of immunity, and the controversy surrounding the ethics of the journalist who broke Berry's story.
Berry, in part by his own action, became a public figure, and sensitivity to his plight needn't involve decimating this article. As a consequence of your action, we now have an article that looks like it would be right at home in Lives of the Saints. From my perspective, your actions failed to improve the article and actually did damage instead. Selective nuking of problem versions is one thing, but wholesale destruction just short of deletion does a lot of collateral damage. I would urge you to undo it, in whole or in part. Considering the power imbalance between us, urging is about the most I can do. --Ssbohio 18:24, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of this article

Phil Sandifer tagged the article for proposed deletion, giving the reason that "Doesn't seem like anyone cares..." If I might suggest, perhaps the people who care about this article would be more prone to make contributions if those contributions weren't under threat of unilateral deletion. The deletion of this article is anything but uncontroversial. I care, but I'd rather do other things than make edits that seem destined to fall off the face of the Earth. I expect that my feeling isn't wholly unique to me. It also strikes me as not being particularly fair dealing to reduce an article to a meaningless stub then propose it for deletion. Rather like killing one's parents then begging the Court's mercy since you're an orphan. My intent is not to give Phil (or anyone) a hard time, but rather to lay bare the extreme amount of frustration at a deletion decision I see as doing more harm to our product than it could possibly help.--Ssbohio 04:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I will confess, my prodding of this article was perhaps a shred pointy - that said, I'm surprised that this article created such outcry a year ago when it was deleted and has been mostly silent this time around. Phil Sandifer 04:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Since there was no prior discussion of the article deletion, since the deletion wasn't based on a request from the subject, and since the reasons given for the deletion was very weak, I'm inclined to restore the previous version. "Undue weight" is not a part of WP:BLP. We can easily delete any material that is unbalanced using normal editing procedures. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 05:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
BLP-violating material should not remain in edit histories, however. This is the main problem. If I could have scoured the article of the offending material, nuked the history, and started a new article from there, I would have. But that would have violated the GFDL. Phil Sandifer 13:57, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
This is one of those situations where you say there was biographies of living persons policy violating material there, and I trust that you sincerely believe that, but the question of whether the material actually runs afoul of this particular iteration of BLP is a subjective one. I desperately want to ask what the presumed violative material is, but I realize that answering me would defeat the purpose of removing the material in the first place. I've reviewed everything I could to see what the problem might have been, and I've come up empty. To my minfd, the article gave the facts in a neutral way while avoiding overly graphic depictions of the events for which Berry became famous. I'm uncertain what more can be done to resolve either of our concerns, but I am certain that the pre-deletion article was more encyclopedic than the one that exists now. --Ssbohio 15:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe that any material violated BLP to the extent that it would need to be expunged from the history. There was no unsourced derogatory material. The account of the so-called "salacious" events was sourced primarly from the New York Times. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 20:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Will, were you going to be restoring the previous version of this article? If so, I'll hold off from doing much with it, particularly since the references list is gone and the research I did on it would need to be redone. --Ssbohio 12:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
FWIW the current version appears to be blatant copyvio from http://www.cscic.state.ny.us/security/conferences/awareness/2006/bio.htm. I would delete it for this reason but I don't want to get into the middle of an existing storm. But this needs to be addressed somehow, and right away. Herostratus 19:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Due to this latest problem, and a lack of adequate justification for the article deletion, I'm going to restore the previous edition. Any salacious material which is not germane to a neutral bioography should be removed. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 23:51, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

While I can understand that the prior article might have contained some things which made Mr. Berry and those flogging the child sexual abuse agenda somewhat displeased, the facts are that an article which considers Mr. Berry's "molestation" as a passing sidenote, and tries to canonize him as a spokesperson for child protection and the dangers of the Internet, is seriously biased.

In point of fact, Mr. Berry was a successful adult website entrepreneur, who earned six figures from his business, and violated federal and state laws by exhibiting persons under the age of 18, including himself, to his customers. When he came to the attention of the press, he used the fact that he was underage to cut a deal granting him total immunity for his criminal activity, and embarked upon a new career as a professional victim, largely enabled by a tabloid press and talk show circuit.

The only people who have been convicted because of Justin Berry's testimony, are his own close personal friends and business partners, whom he ratted out to save his own posterior. He ran around for a while with a list of 1500 customers of his various websites, claiming them to be "pedophiles," but the fact remains that he advertised the sites as "all models over 18, records on file" as required by federal law, and his customers had no magical ability to know that the occasional model in their middle to late teens was not 18 as advertised, nor do prosecutors have any way of demonstrating that anyone looked at particular files on his websites. To this date, not one of his customers has been prosecuted as a result of his testimony, and his "pedophile list" is a joke.

He did give law enforcement the names of a few kids, like himself, who were making some money "camming", allowing his handlers to report these individuals as having been "rescued" from "being abused at the hands of evil pedophiles" or whatever. Big deal.

We don't say, "underage alcohol use is never the minor's fault." We don't say, "underage tobacco use is never the minor's fault." But somehow, we still think that a 16 year old sitting at home while mom is distracted, waving his penis at a webcam, trying to get items off his publicly posted Amazon wishlist, is somehow the moral equivalent of a pre-teen kid being snatched and raped in a public park.

What is it about the Internet which causes people to entirely suspend their critical faculty, and buy any nonsense hook, line, and sinker? If Kurt Eichenwald had gone down to his city's underage boy hustler zone, and picked someone to save, and pretended to be a customer, and gave the kid a check for $2000 for "toy boats and planes", he'd probably be in sex offender therapy now. He certainly wouldn't have gotten the story printed in the New York Times.

Justin Berry may not be important enough to deserve his own Wikipedia article. But as long as he has one, it should at least contain both sides of a controversial story. Hermitian 17:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


LGBT?

Out of curiosity, how does this article fit into the LGBT project? I understand he was molested by male pedophiles, but as far as I understand Justin Berry himself is straight. --Ozgod 05:26, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

From the infobox, "Explanation for inclusion in WikiProject LGBT studies: The subject of this article was involved both before and after becoming adult." Whether or not Berry identifies as gay, his acts were homosexual in nature and extended after the age of 18. Also, some of those whom Berry has accused self-identify as gay.
Further, there is no evidence that Berry was molested prior to his teens, which makes it difficult to understand what pedophiles you are referring to. Depending on one's point of view on Berry's story, Berry was either a victim aggressed upon by these men, or a prostitute or pornographer who turned state's evidence on his customers and business partners. The truth probably lies somewhere in-between.
As an aside, I'd like to see more attention paid to some of the questions raised in various media about the disparity between punishments in same-sex cases like these and cases where the ages are similar but the participants are of opposite gender. There are LGBT issues and LGBT people woven into the events surrounding Berry which could stand to be better-explained within the article. --Ssbohio 11:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The first paragraph states toward the end he was a target for male pedophiles and I am under the assumption his molestation by Ken Gourlay occurred while he was still a minor. --Ozgod 09:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Projects don't have sharply defined boundaries, unlike categories. This article would certainly benefit from the involvement of more editors. It's close enough. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

"Mexico Friends" Link

I went to that site thinking from the tame photo on the infobox that it was simply a personal site of Berry made after this thing occurred (knowing that he is now a public speaker on this issue). When I went there I clicked on a link and it took me to a page which had some "adult banners" on it which crashed my Mozilla Firefox browser. I don't know what is in that site but I have removed it from the article.--Jersey Devil 07:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I see it's been restored. I'm not sure what the link adds to the article. Is it intended as a source or as an illustration? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 05:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
It was restored under the statement that WP:NOT censored apparently. [1] All I know is that the banners on the site crashed my browser.--Jersey Devil 08:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
It wasn't until I came back to this article today that I realized I had written a reply but never actually posted it. My intent in adding (& restoring) the link to MexicoFriends.com was both to source the picture and to put it into context. The source of the picture locates it as to time and place and connects it with the events occuring at that time.
The link points to an Archive.org cache of the MexicoFriends website, not to the "live" version of the site. One issue with archive.org is its speed. Content, particularly images, sounds, and movies, is often very slow to come up, or sometimes doesn't come up at all. This can create browser problems, especially if the cached site is attempting to run code that hasn't loaded. If it's necessary, I'd be ok with having the reference to MexicoFriends remain, but delinked. --Ssbohio 17:55, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
If it's a source for the photo it needs to specify which page it comes from. The link to the archive lists doznes of snapshots, any one of which can have multiple pages. Also, if it's a source it should be linked as a reference, and so listed among the refs at the end of the page. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I didn't intend to use the term source in a narrow and particular sense. The origin of this photo is MexicoFriends.com. That is established intrinsically from the photo. Adding the information to the caption only serves to identify its origin and place it in the context of the story. --Ssbohio 01:02, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Do you mean it's a source, not for the photo, but for the existence of MexicoFriends.com? Why do we list it in the infobox? The archive link is ok for linking to specific assertions we need to source, but I don't see why we should make more of it. From what I remember of the case the fact that there's a disclaimer saying that "all modeals are over 18" is significant. That's about the only usable fact I saw - otherwise it's a skeleton. I don't see how placing the link prominently improves the articles. We can link to it as a reference from the nody text. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 10:00, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
My intent was to identify for the reader that the photo was published by Berry on his adult website. I have no problem with delinking it, but I think the caption should refer to from whence the photo came, so that it can be viewed in context. This was one of the photos Berry apparently used to entice and retain customers, which is an important part of the story. Replacing the photo and moving it down the page is an option, as well. I tried to select a photo that was clearly from Berry's website, but that wasn't salacious, pornographic, or in poor taste. I'll see if there's another photo that would work, so that this one could accompany a paragraph about the MexicoFriends/JustinsFriends websites. --Ssbohio 00:48, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Unless we have a specific page link it isn't really a source. Can you indicate where you got the photo from, specifically? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 06:19, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
In this case, I explicitly assert that I am using the word "source" to mean the place from whence it came, not in the more specific & narrow sense inherent in your question. Yes, the website, referred to by name, is really a source, even without a URL. The image self-authenticates as to source & ownership of copyright. Perhaps I've imagined that, the way I'm apparently imagining the unreal source for the image? Between your tone and your use of the royal we, I wonder at your motivation for pressing this point. This is content from a website that was once on the web, but is no more. What URL should I give, since I never went to a URL to get the image? Source is a word that has more than one meaning. --Ssbohio 18:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Pic crop

I have cropped the probably fair use image, there is simply no reason to include the Mexican McDonald's worker in this article. Come on, get your act together folk, SqueakBox 03:14, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a little more respect would be helpful rather than a little less? Perhaps, there was even a reason not to crop the photo, beyond my not having my "act together?" I couldn't see a way to crop the picture and still leave the watermark of Berry's website in place. Now, the image lacks that piece of information. It's a case of differing views, and I see your point about removing the woman from the picture, since we don't know her relation to the matter. I'm just not sure that I'd throw the baby out with the bathwater as you have. Also, since the watermark is gone, shouldn't the name of the website be in the photo caption, since Berry has operated so many adult websites? --Ssbohio 07:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The person who was not being respected before was the Mexican McDonald's worker. She is alive (to the best of our knowledge) and IMO unless we have a written statement from her allowing us to use her photo in this article that it simply not fair use. I bet she doesnt know its there (even if she uses wikipedia its likely to be the Spanish version). I also couldnt crop the image in a way that leaves the watermark but not the Mexican girl and it may be we should not use either version but to me using the pic of this girl without her knowledge and express permission is simply not on and we would be far better to ahve no pic as illustrating Berry is not a justification for vioalting someone else's privacy (and particularly given the somewhat reputation Berry has because of what happened a few years back), SqueakBox 20:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree that cropping the woman out of the picture is justified. My reply was intended to address why the photo wasn't previously cropped, to combat your accusation that I didn't have my act together. I find that sort of language to be disrespectful. I expect my fellow editors to assume that editing decisions I make are made in good faith, that they aren't the result of animosity, carelessness, or deception. I assume that in your edits, even when we are 180° apart on an issue. --21:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ssbohio (talk • contribs).
My comments certainly werent solely or specifically addressed to you in that edit summary, coming more from a sense of despair at the whole community that we arent being more careful and vigilant re theswe issues. Many people have edited the Berry article without addressing this issue so it was in no way personally directed to you, more along the lines of "come on team, lets be more vigilant" and I do assume you are coming from a good faith space as I havent sen anything to suggest that, SqueakBox 21:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
My response was predicated on the idea that I was in the group whom you described as needing to get it together, not an altogether flattering description, unfortunately. Let's be more vigilant is a much more positive and less critical way to approach the question. Based on what we've discussed here & on your talk page, I agree with your cropping the photo. I should've done it myself some time ago. --Ssbohio 23:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Michelle Malkin quote

Perhaps my dislike for its author is coloring my perspective, but the Malkin quote implies that the Times never condemned Eichenwald's behavior, which is untrue (Bill Keller, the executive editor, said "It is clear...that the methods employed in gathering the material violated Times standards."[2]). The Malkin article, however, claims that the Times offered alternative explanations, and the surrounding text refers to a "lack of condemnation" on part of the Times. Neither statement appears to be correct. If nobody objects, I'm going to remove that last paragraph; while Eichenwald's behavior was unacceptable and a violation of journalistic ethics (and Times policy), the referenced Malkin column is nothing more than a thinly veiled polemic, and the implication of the quote and the surrounding text are counterfactual. S. Ugarte 05:12, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Since the Times article you reference came out today, it's likely it simply hasn't been worked into this article yet. Malkin's quote appears to have been factually accurate as of the time she said it. Please feel free to add the additional information. I'd like to see information on the additional undisclosed payments Kurt Eichenwald made to Justin Berry (like the Times piece referenced above, as well as pieces in CounterPunch and QueerPlanet.us) be added to the existing information on Berry's business dealings with Eichenwald. --Ssbohio 06:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Of course. I added the information on Eichenwald's payments to the article on him; I wasn't sure if they were appropriate or not for this article (feel free to say they are; I just didn't want to overstep).
Regarding the Malkin quote, I don't believe it was ever factually accurate. The article it is sourced from was published on March 21, 2007; see, for instance, the Times editor's note regarding the incident from March 6[3]. Malkin implies in her full column that The Times only disclosed the payment once it became public knowledge but, in fact, had foreknowledge of it; there's no evidence that this was the case; the editor's note clearly contradicts this. In the quote sourced from the Malkin article used in Wikipedia and the surrounding context, it is further implied that The Times was uncritical in its evaluation of Eichenwald's behavior and offered an excuse for it; again, that appears to simply be false.
That's why I suggested removal of the Malkin quote. There's no point in having the quote here if it's just not true, no? Am I overreacting to Malkin's polemic, or reading a factual assertion into the quote that isn't there? I'm all for quoting sources that were critical of Eichenwald and the Times, but Malkin's statements appear, to me, to contain factual assertions that are wrong. S. Ugarte 06:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Let's look at the quote:
After Eichenwald's payment to Berry became public knowledge, Eichenwald's ethics as a journalist were questioned by several sources. Michelle Malkin, a syndicated columnist writing in the Stockton Record, questioned Eichenwald's conduct and the lack of condemnation on the part of the Times, saying that:

Eichenwald and the Times have offered explanations for the payment that don't pass the sniff test. These rationales certainly wouldn't get past the Times' own editorial olfactory nerves if any of its competitors had committed the very same sin.— Michelle Malkin, Stockton Record Mar 21, 2007[1]

Malkin rhetorically asks "can you imagine how loudly the media ethics mavens would moan if anyone other than the New York Times provided such convoluted justifications for checkbook journalism?"[1]
Both Eichenwald and the Times' editors were reporting (at the time) that the money was given as part of a ruse to learn Berry's true identity and that the $2,000 cashier's check payment simply slipped Eichenwald's mind. Malkin's questioning of this story appeared in dozens of outlets and joined a chorus of similar questioning, including on the influential (among journalists) Romanesko blog, with Debbie Nation at CounterPunch, Jack Schaefer at Slate, QueerPlanet.us, and others. Also, I don't read the same thing into the quote that you do. The quote refers to "explanations" offered by Eichenwald & the Times, not "excuses," for example. And, the Times Editor's Note did mirror Eichenwald's justification for sending the subject of his investigation $2,000, an amount we now know to be an understatement. Malkin was writing an opinion piece, after all, and her opinion is rife throughout the column. I pulled a single idea from the column to include here in order to show the extent of the media criticism. The quote is sourced and it doesn't (to my mind) assert demonstrably false information. I don't see a good reason to delete it, but I'm keeping an open mind. --Ssbohio 03:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I didn't see anything in the editor's note that mirrored Eichenwald's justification, but maybe I'm missing it. It quotes Eichenwald's justification, attributing it to him, and states that his actions violated Times policy. I don't see any explanation given by the Times at all, in fact (I can't find where they, as you claim, reported that the money was given as part of a ruse; the editor's note makes it clear that they didn't know about the money at all, and that the only explanation they can offer for it is Eichenwald's--not their own). The Malkin quote clearly refers to an explanation given by the Times editor, and criticizes it; I cannot find any such explanation in the editor's note. Perhaps I'm nitpicking the Malkin quote, but when I read it as part of the article, I assumed that the Times editor had given an alternative explanation of Eichenwald's behavior--one that was not credible, according to Malkin. It turns out that that never happened. Thus I found the quote to be misleading. As I said before, I don't consider it that big a deal, but if I dig up an alternative quote that demonstrates the same criticism, but without the misleading aspect, would that be sufficient as a replacement? I didn't want to nuke mention of the criticism, obviously. S. Ugarte 04:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
The Times Editor's Note incorporates Eichenwald's explanation into its own explanation of the events. The entire note is the Times' assertion concerning the revelation. Were it a news article, it wouldn't be an "Editor's Note." That the money was part of a ruse was Eichenwald's assertion; I accurately stated (above) that the Times reported "that the money was given as part of a ruse to learn Berry's true identity and that the $2,000 cashier's check payment simply slipped Eichenwald's mind." The statement wasn't original to the Times, but they reported it. Malkin at no point posits that the Times had their own explanation of Eichenwald's behavior. Rather, the Times quoted Eichenwald's explanation and continued to stand behind Eichenwald's reporting. As far as an alternative quote, for me to agree with your solution, I'd have to agree that Malkin's quote was "misleading," as you put it. Michelle Malkin is a well-regarded nationally-syndicated columnist. Having a criticism of Eichenwald from a conservative perspective is, to my mind, part & parcel of having a balanced article. If nothing else, it shows that not all opponents of the Berry-Eichenwald collaboration's version of events are either: (a) dewy-eyed liberals or (b) an attempt to justify and defend pedophilia.
Would you be comfortable with sourcing something like [4] or [5]? (I prefer the first; citing the Times public editor demonstrates less third-party criticism than it does internal criticism.) S. Ugarte 04:23, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
If I recall correctly, the second source was previously in the article, before the "nuking" incident. Both, to my mind have a place in the article, if only to provide additional sourcing, but, preferably, to expand and "fill in the gaps" in the article. You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many sources. ☺ --Ssbohio 18:49, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
I guess you'll not agree that the Malkin quote is misleading. So how about I simply add some clarity around it? I'm sure this strikes you as a partisan effort on my part, given your comment about "dewey-eyed liberals," but I can assure you, not that it matters, that I am not one. I was mislead, when reading the article, into thinking The Times had given an alternative explanation, and only after reading other sources did I realize that's not the case.
And do you mind the inclusion of the Shafer quote? What about in place of the Malkin quote? Shafer's hardly a Liberal or a defender of pedophiles. S. Ugarte 17:40, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I think your improvement was fine, and, to be clear, my comment re "dewy-eyed liberals" was not meant as criticism from me, but rather to stave off the complaint already heard outside of Wikipedia that the people who object to Berry & Eichenwald's business dealings are really just a bunch of liberal enablers for pedophiles. Unfortunately, Phil Sandifer didn't agree with the inclusion of your quote, or much else. Since he has a couple of extra tools, he effectively has greater say over the content of the article. So, we both lost out, and so did the readers of the article, since they'll now get a version slanted toward sanctifying Berry. Sources mean nothing, neutrality means nothing, as long as Berry can look purer than he is. His story doesn't hold water, and as many ships have found, a coat of whitewash won't keep him afloat. I don't believe that the "retouching" of Berry's article was overtly intended to buff him up to a high sheen, but the effect is the same. --Ssbohio 02:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
We are not an attack site here to attack Berry. If you want to do that go start your own website though I think there are better targets out there, McClellan et al. And if you want to help the fight against pedophiles on wikipedia you could start by trying to get Pro-pedophilia activism unblocked, SqueakBox 03:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I truly regret that you look at what I'm doing as attacking Berry. Viewed through that distorted prism, I could just as easily accuse you of defending Berry in preference to NPOV. I'm not here to attack anyone or anything. But, likewise, I'm not here to softsoap the truth and ignore valid, reliably sourced negative information about the subject of this article. You've removed factual information cited to more than one source and made claims unsupported by the content you removed. Why?
Quoting BLP, "biographies of living people should be written responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone." Simply because the information refutes Berry's self-serving statements does not make it false. Look at the sources: GenerationQ has no horse in this race. SitePoint has no horse in this race. FastAssProxy, being Berry's site, would, if anything, be slanted in his favor. All of these are references for the facts of his operating and profiting from these open proxies. Did you check the references? What did you find? what are the shortcomings you see in this information? The simple fact of its being negative information WRT Berry is not a BLP justification for its removal. The policy states that "the article should document, in a non-partisan manner, what reliable third party sources have published about the subject and, in some circumstances, what the subject may have published about themselves," and "the views of critics should be represented if they are relevant to the subject's notability and can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, and so long as the material is written in a manner that does not overwhelm the article or appear to side with the critics." The manner of writing may be open to contention, but the sourcing and facts are there for anyone to verify. Can we talk about how to edit the content so its style comports with your views?
Instead of accepting this valid, multiply sourced, factual refutation of Berry's self-depiction as a crusader for potential victims of Internet predators, you challenge it on grounds that are simply contrafactual. Berry made claims about his efforts to protect others; Sourced information about how Berry's actions run counter to his public persona are as relevant as if this were an article about a self-proclaimed firefighter and I were trying to add sourced information about his setting fires. How does the inclusion of this information to balance Berry's other current activities damage the neutrality of the article? Where is the willingness to discuss & achieve consensus? I'm happy to consider whether the section needs rewritten, but when the subject's public words and public actions don't match up, then both should be reported, not merely the part that paints him favorably. This article is no more the place for pro-Berry activism than it is for anti-Berry activism. --Ssbohio 05:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

BLP (Again)

I've removed some content from the page under WP:BLP. A couple things that should be observed before anyone goes at editing this again.

  1. This is Justin Berry, not Kurt Eichenwald. Criticism of Eichenwald's journalistic ethics belongs on that article. (Note that the Eichenwald article has had its own problems with NPOV and undue weight, and that this is not an invitation to move a bunch of stuff over there.)
  2. The Counterpunch article is not a reliable source. It may - MAY - be appropriate to mention it once as a mainstream criticism of Berry, but the editorial standards of the publication are not such that statements from the article can be made as absolute facts. Certainly not criticism of Berry.
  3. Real people are involved here, and some of them are involved because of unfortunate things they did when they were children. While it is arguable that Wikipedia ought have an article about this incident, we must remember that we have an ethical obligation to the subjects of our articles. As BLP puts it, "first do no harm." Discretion, grace, and compassion are necessary qualities in editing this article, and they have been in unfortunately short supply.

I've also blanked the revision history to remove the offending text. Please be more careful and prudent in further edits to this article. Phil Sandifer 13:02, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 08:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Phil, I disagree strongly with your actions and your rationale for them.
  1. This is Justin Berry, indeed. Criticism of Berry's profit-making activities with Eichenwald belong in this article. Problems with the Eichenwald article aren't relevent to what contant goes here. When an adult who sells child pornography on-line takes money from a reporter doing a story on him, that bears on the pornographer's reputation as well as the reporter's.
  2. The Counterpunch article is, indeed, a reliable source. It is entirely appropriate fully cover its criticism of Berry as a counterpoint to the hagiographic protrayal of Berry in the Times and other media, but the editorial standards of the publication are entirely consistent with reliable sources policy. Criticism of Nathan, a published author with a distinguished record, should not be given vent here in this article.
  3. Real people are involved here, some because of crimes they committed in the past. Further, other real people ae involved, people who have been greatly affected by Berry's criminal enterprises with his business partners. It is a nearly-unassailable point that Wikipedia ought have an article about this person and his ongoing activities, we must remember that we have an ethical obligation not only to the subjects of our articles, but to the people who rely on Wikipedia to provide encyclopedic content. As BLP puts it, "the article should document, in a non-partisan manner, what reliable third party sources have published about the subject and, in some circumstances, what the subject may have published about themselves. … Content should be sourced to reliable sources and should be about the subject of the article specifically." Honesty, truthfulness, and academic integrity are necessary qualities in editing this article, and they are in unfortunately short supply when admins take unilateral actions that, despite their best intentions, effectively "put a thumb on the scale" in favor of reporting only Berry's positive activities. Note that I believe this phrasing to be at least as NPOV as the "unfortunate things" line used above.
If we're not here to tell the truth, as sourced & referenced, then why are we here? This is an encyclopedia, not an exercise in making any article subject feel good about themselves. We should be presenting all the relevent facts that we can source, not cherry-picking favorable ifnormation and disparaging unfavorable information. Compassion is a wonderful thing, but writing an encyclopedia demands a suppression of passion of any kind. We're not here to make the point that Berry is a "good guy" or a "bad guy." My heart goes out to him for all he's gone through; My mind, however, looks at the evidence and rationally concludes that the pro-Berry version of the story is a half-truth at best.
Further quoting BLP, "If someone appears to be pushing an agenda or a biased point of view, insist on reliable third-party published sources and a clear demonstration of relevance to the person's notability." What are the reliable third-party published sources that support your contention that the article should be written primarily from one perspective and that other reliable third-party published sources that disagree with this contention should be deprecated?
  • Have you read the Times article? Their followup admissions about Berry & Eichenwald's financial ties? By your standard above, the New York Times should be considered an unreliable source.
  • Have you read the first CounterPunch article? The second?
  • All of the QueerPlanet articles?
  • The Guide Magazine article?
  • Michelle Malkin's column?
  • Eichenwald's subsequent writing on the subject of Justin Berry?
  • Berry's Congressional testimony?
  • Berry's & Eichenwald's testimony in Michigan?
  • Transcripts of the Michigan trial of Kenneth Gourlay, the Tennessee trial of Timothy Richards, and the Virginia trial of Greg Mitchel?
All of these sources were consulted in writing versions of this article that you "nuked." I've done my homework. Your repeated removal of sourced but unfavorable material about Berry at least implies that your homework remains to be done. If you disagree with particular content then remove that content particularly, not haystacks of text that contain needles with which you disagree.
These repeated redactions tread the line between using administrative tools to administer the project and using those same tools to hold the high ground in a content dispute. Bold, revert, discuss breaks down when one editor can boldly do something that another editor cannot revert. --Ssbohio 16:51, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
As you feel justified in removing the content, Phil, could you take the time to address any of my points or answer any of my questions? I don't believe that all the content you removed was justifiable under BLP, and I don't believe that admin tools should be used in what appears to be mostly a content dispute. However, I don't know whether my beliefs are warranted without knowing where you're coming from and what you've done. I've offered to discuss this off-wiki with you, if the BLP issues are of a nature to prohibit their discussion here. What more can I do to resolve this in the collaborative nature of this wiki? Anything? --Ssbohio 13:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Phil, your last comment here appears to have been left on 16 August. It's now 19 August where I'm at. Please respond to my questions and comments listed here, with particular attention to justification of your:
  • contention that because we shouldn't discuss Eichenwald, we also shouldn't discuss Berry's receiving thousands of dollars from Eichenwald while running his child pornography sites and after he became an adult
  • allegations that the sources used in this article are unreliable in a way the Times or Berry himself are not
  • apparent disregard for NPOV in favor of having Berry's self-serving statements be the means by which the readers of this encyclopedia learn about this situation.
You edited this article. You also deleted the history of previous edits, based on your applying BLP using your sole opinion about the content. That doesn't alter your obligation as an editor to engage in the consensus-building process rather than unilaterally insist on the rightness of your edits without facing up to criticism for them. If I don't discuss this with you, I'll never know what was so antithetical (in your sole opinion) that you were compelled to again delete much of the editors' contributions to this article. How else can this be kept from happening again, except by discussing the issues you have with the article and how it can be improved to meet your expectations? Or shall the editors here submit their edits to you for prior approval to avoid a third "nuking?" --Ssbohio 06:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Justin Berry became widely known when he agreeed to do a story for the New York Times about his life as an underage child porn "star" starting at age 13. A Counter Punch aritcle talked about Berry’s early life and abuse from his father who has also helped lead him down this path.

This page must be a true, balanced, unbiased story of Berry's life. Justin Berry is a former child porn "star" and one of the only ones to openly speak out, who got away from the life and took down some of the major players in the business. The true story of how this happened should be told, even if some of the information is not favorable to him. Having a favorable article to Berry would not be a true telling of the story and personal hell he went through.

The current page about Berry seems like it was written for Berry's fans and does not give a true account of media stories as well as facts that are still being put out in the courts about Berry and the people that he helped put away.--Bstone2008 01:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so can someone explain to me why Counterpunch and the Court cases are not reliable sources? Malkin obviously not a reliable source, but most of the others seem fine. JoshuaZ 15:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Proxies

I've scrubbed this section too. GenerationQ is not sufficient coverage for this to be a notable part of Berry's life. I can see the argument that it should be notable, but if this is the only source for it, it's not. Do not re-add it without a better source. Phil Sandifer 18:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

GenerationQ is not the only source for the proxy story. When you say "do not re-add it without a better source," are the multiple sources referenced sufficient? --Ssbohio 19:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I decided to be bold and restore the information, since it is more broadly sourced than indicated above. I'd be happy to add even more sources if necessary, depending on what's available. I won't re-add it if you remove it a third time, since it's better to reach a resolution here. What aspects of GenerationQ lead you to believe that its coverage is "insufficient?" To my mind, an article on the subject is sufficient, but my view is just one, and not necessarily correct. Or is it some aspect of GenerationQ itself that gives you pause? --Ssbohio 19:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
This is to me a no brainer, we shouldnt have the info here, our task is to write an encyclopedia, it isnt to make staments (sourced or not) that harm an individual's reputation, SqueakBox 19:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
It is likewise to me a no-brainer. Since Berry works as a public speaker on the dangers of the Internet, it is entirely relevent for an article on him to report that he was operating, then selling tools that are antithetical to his public stance. We aren't here to enhance Berry's self-esteem, but to write a neutral article about him. How does suppressing sourced, relevent information improve the reader's knowledge of this subject? --Ssbohio 19:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
We are not a vigilante body here to expose the contradictions in the personality of anybody, and we need to remember BLP and show sensitivity. Outing the contradictions in a well known personality is the job of journalists, our job is to write a neutral encyclopedic article that is fair to the subject, SqueakBox 19:39, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
The contradiction between Berry's words and his actions were already "outed" by a journalist in the Generation Q article. Reporting the facts in this article is part & parcel of maintaining a neutral point of view. We cannot show so much sensitivity that we ignore the facts. Our job is to write a neutral encyclopedic article that is not only fair to the subject, but to the entirety of the issue. Factual, sourced information has once more been removed from this article, first because it wasn't sufficiently sourced (not so), now because it is apparently being a vigilante to include facts from secondary sources like media reports, backed up by primary sources. Have you checked the sourcing on this? After checking, do you believe that we are outing Berry's contradictions, or reporting facts on the other side of Berry's self-told story? Apparently, we're united in wanting an encyclopedic article, but divided in what that means, in this case. --Ssbohio 19:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
SqueakBox, your contention that this material makes Wikipedia a "vigilante body" is contrary to the fact that the information was previously published. Vigilantes act alone. Reporting facts previously researched & reported by others is what an encyclopedia does. There is no policy or custom basis for removing sourced, negative material from an article under false pretenses. In fact, it's more like you yourself are being the vigilante here, removing unfavorable content in an attempt to "show sensitivity" rather than write an encyclopedia. I'm sympathetic to what Berry went through; That doesn't prevent me from wanting this article to be neutral. I disagree with you that the content of this article should bow to your passions about Berry & his plight. Writing an encyclopedia is, necessarily a dispassionate process. I invite you (once again) to justify your reversion of my edit from a factual basis, since you haven't responded her, nor did you provide an explanatory edit summary. If not, I see no other alternative but to once again restore the content, unless Phil once more draws his sword and cuts it out permanently. I fear that may happen, but I hope it won't. --Ssbohio 13:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Reader's Input

The strongest argument here is that omission of fact, knowingly or redacted, is fabrication of a falsehood. If it is generally accepted that only a "spin" of the facts that present the subject in a positive light is allowed then Wikipedia is nothing more than tabloid material. It is impossible to be considered a reputable source on any subject with an underlying knowledge that the reader is only presented partial truths should the subject matter be highly controversial. Wikipedia hasn't taken this position with other subject matters of greater weight and substance why should it now? Facts are facts and presenting them with a neutral POV is encyclopedic. If Charles Manson's Wikipedia was subjected to the egos and posturing witnessed by this article future generations might conclude after reading such edited material that Charlie was just an unlucky guy in jail with some strange friends. It's time to move past all that's been plagued here and justify your readers, remember them? They are the people who thirst for factual real truth about something they know nothing about. Let's not let them down by telling them a flowery sunshine filled half truth influenced by feelings and belief. AZ8 20:24, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

A statement on this matter

I've been avoiding this discussion for the past two or three days, but I feel like I should make one more stepping in before I leave this to larger consensus. I've looked at the deletions I made, and I do stand by them. If a consensus of administrators at AN or elsewhere disagrees, I'll respect that, but I do believe that I properly applied our policy in this case.

The issue here is this: with any subject that has the sordidness of this one, it's trivial to find sources that expose unseemly aspects of the subject's life. As important and mainstream a story as this was, it was also a very tabloidish story, and was the subject of more muckraking than quality.

Which is not to say that the article must be a hagiography. It shouldn't be. But it does mean that the criticism sections need to be done carefully - with reference to multiple sources, and care to make sure that we're reporting mainstream aspects fof this story, not small-time sensationalistic bits. And, ultimately, the Counterpunch and GenerationQ articles aren't enough for that - neither is a reliable enough source for the mass of criticism they're being used for. And that's my main problem here. I'd rather see a well-balanced article with a good criticism section. But if we can't have one of those, it's better to have no criticism section. Phil Sandifer 22:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Phil, I have a different take than you on the issues you raised:
  • As to standing by your deletions, on your talk page, you stated your belief that your actions were required by BLP policy. You've demonstrated unwillingness to discuss this belief, on- or off-wiki, unwillingness to build consensus for your deletions or to attempt compromise. Rather, you've acted with a consensus of one, insofar as I can tell. Others came on later, but you've portrayed this as your sole, unquestionable decision. You removed a lot of material. If you believe, without a doubt in your heart, that every word you removed was absolutely necessary to be removed, the so be it. If not, I firmly believe you have an obligation to reverse your action to whatever limited degree you think justifiable, or publicly state that there is not one character that you deleted that didn't absolutely have to be.
  • As to this sordid subject, the first thing to remember is that there is no "yuck" exception to NPOV. The information you've removed was not merely about unseemly aspects of the subject's life, but coverage of actual, factual issues with Berry's story. I asked before if you'd read the sources. I ask the same question again. We're not reporting on Berry's personal life, but on the public acts for which he became notable. Covering this subject requires that perspectives beyond Berry's be included. He's not the only participant, and he's surely not the most neutral on the subject. Forcing this article to become an extension of Berry's own statements will damage the neutral point of view that is vital to writing an encyclopedia. Berry has no monopoly on the truth in this case.
  • Finally, you have twice (or more) expressed disdain for CounterPunch, Debbie Nathan, and GenerationQ. Nathan & CounterPunch are well-respected in the journalistic community. Nathan is a published author and feature writer for New York Magazine, as well as a contributor to CounterPunch. Her article is chock-full of specific, factual statements about Berry that contradict his own self-serving ones. Her article is, to me, the epitome of a reliable source, and you've offered nothing to refute that beyond your unsupported opinion. I've asked you what your specific concerns are about the use of these as sources, all I get is more generalities, that each is "unreliable" in some vague, nebulous way that the community shouldn't know about, but trust you on, sight unseen. I've read the sources. I've cross-checked the facts. I've asked you if you've read the sources, only to be greeted with silence. If you refuse to give specific objections to the sources themselves, then there is no reason to avoid using them in this article. You've had multiple opportunities to answer my many questions with actual, factual, dispassionate substantiation of your claims, and you've availed yourself of none of them. I'm willing to alter my view on these sources, but I'll need more than your say-so to do it. You've made the allegation. I'm asking you to support it or withdraw it, since an unsupported allegation carries the weight of opinion and nothing more. --Ssbohio 23:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Obviously we can't fight against someone with admin tools who can delete content and its revision history at will. While little of what was deleted legitimately falls under BLP, we are stuck with trying to get other admins to oppose this one, and Wikipedia admins generally back each other up, and have numerous out of band forums where they may solicit each others assistance.
As the article currently reads, it tells the story of Saint Justin, whose life of purity and innocence was ruined by a conspiracy of evil child pornographers. Like all fairy tales, it is a made-up story told to illustrate a moral point, perhaps loosely based on a fact or two. There seems to be an attitude by some here at Wikipedia, that articles on subjects related to child sexuality and child sexual abuse, should take the form of moral parables, and that the real facts are of secondary concern. There are a handful of editors who make it their mission to run around and enforce this, either twisting Wikipedia policy in any way that enables their mission, or labeling stuff they don't like as "pro-pedophile."
As I've said before, unless you're talking about math and science articles, Wikipedia is little more than a large cache of conventional wisdom, a lot of which is biased, and much of which is wrong. Jimbo has said that minority viewpoints, even if true, don't belong in Wikipedia. On contentious subjects, Wikipedia loudly tells people what the average person wants to hear and believe, facts not withstanding. So it's not difficult to figure out which side of the current moral panic and culture war over sex Wikipedia is going to wind up on, particularly given Jimbo's sensitivity to criticism of Wikipedia from outside. Hermitian 15:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Hermitian, your ranting isn't that helpful right now. I'm currently looking into the various BLP issues, and multiple admins have expressed concern about Phil's actions here. Please try to remember that we aren't on a deadline here. JoshuaZ 18:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, given that this is about the umteenth iteration of this kind of Sex Abuse Agenda POV nonsense on various articles, I've given up bothering to fix things, and just point it out when I see it. If things can't be accurate, they can at least be clearly labeled. Hermitian 19:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe that Phil Sandifer or SqueakBox are editing this article to push any kind of agenda, and I would hope that they don't believe it of me. Our collective "agenda" is to write and edit the best article we can. Phil feels justified in completely removing content and disparaging sources without substantiating his claims about either. That's what I have a problem with. I trust him, but not without verification. I'm familiar with the material removed, and there was nothing that I can recall that warranted selective deletion, which places Phil's edits outside the realm of public review and, as has been discussed elsewhere, creates GFDL issues. To what end? An extraordinary remedy calls for extraordinary circumstances; I don't see those here, and Phil hasn't supported his contention otherwise. --Ssbohio 15:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't know about Phil, as he is at least bright enough to nuance his biases on these subjects, if he has them. But Squeakbox has practically made a career camping out on what he calls "pedophile" articles, trying at every opportunity to stick in value-laden innuendos to correct what he feels is a "pro-pedophile" slant, whatever that is supposed to mean. He has stated his support for Xavier von Erck and Perverted Justice, a gang of vigilantes also beating the pedophile drum.
Some people apparently think the measurement of "writing and editing the best article we can" should be done using a scale with endpoints labeled "anti-pedophile" and "pro-pedophile" instead of a scale with endpoints labeled "misleading value-laden tripe" and "factually accurate and emotionally neutral." I firmly believe such people should not be editing articles on Wikipedia related to minors and sex, because it changes the tone of such articles to the point where they start sounding like a spittle-laden rant by Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
At this point, I'll assume good faith on the part of Phil, although I think he's mistaken in his claims that every single word removed from the article falls under BLP. Squeakbox, who I'm sure is a very nice person, appears to be fighting some personal pedophile war, and the place for that is probably a therapist's office, and not an online encyclopedia. Hermitian 15:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I absolutely do not put value laden POV inot pedophilia articles. our personal attack without diffs is not acceptable, sounds like you are angtry and leting off steam but this isnt the place to do it. We have to follow NPOV and BLP poliocies and NPOV means reflecting societieres attitude on predatiory and other (if they exist) pedophiles, and of course I can expresss support for PJ withoput having to put up with your personal attacks. Factually accurate and emotionally neutral sounds right though, I personally ensure all my main space edits conform tot hat and to our policies. I am baffled by your belief nobody should edit articles related to minors and sex, what are these articles perfect already? and if so its only because editors have been editing them up till now, SqueakBox 16:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Therapy? That's a place for pro-ped activist, I fully agree with Fred Bauder's earlier statement ont hat one but wikipedia is the place to promote genuine POV around these subjects, an NPOV that has been thwarted by pro-ped SPAs for years (and I am no SPA or pedophile obsessed individual, SqueakBox 22:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

(reracking indent) I counted edits (by hand), SqueakBox, and here's what I found:

• 8/22: 22 edits -  7 in userspace                         = 15 remaining, of which 10 appear related to sex crimes/CSA/pedophilia
• 8/21: 70 edits - 38 in userspace -  7 in Wikipedia space = 25 remaining, of which  9 appear related to sex crimes/CSA/pedophilia

By my math, that's 36% on the 21st and 67% on the 22nd. For the two days, that's 47% of your edits being made in the vicinity of the subject you're not "obsessed" about. I don't know if this is your overall pattern, or just a current phase, but if half your mainspace edits are in a single topic area, I can see why Hermitian might conclude that this topic is your focus. --Ssbohio 22:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I have edited 8451 pages and that makes me not an SPA under any definitions of the term, SqueakBox 22:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry you took that away from what I wrote. I meant what I said: the contributions that I looked at let me see why Hermitian might think you particularly focused on this subject matter. Is it so? I doubt it, but I'd have to count a lot more edits to know. I think you're trying to do the right thing; Hopefully, you think the same of me. The issue I see is that we disagree on what, precisely, the right thing is. --Ssbohio 23:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Yep, focus on the editor and not the edits, I am actually involved in another major issue (User:Vintagekits indef block which is over British/irish politics) and keeping a tight eye on the Alice Bailey article (and that is a personal interest), SqueakBox 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
First, please don't edit my talk page comments. That said, I was, as I've explained, demonstrating how, in good conscience, someone could conclude that you were inordinately focused on this issue. I've explicitly stated that I don't think you are. Look at my edits; I'm sure that many of my edits the past few days have been on this article's talk page. I did notice your edits on both of the topics you mentioned. I only sought to establish what proportion of your edits were on this sort of topic. Never did I intend to shift the focus to you. --Ssbohio 00:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Counterpunch and GenerationQ

As far as I can tell, Counterpunch is clearly reliable, and GenerationQ appears to be meet WP:RS as well. Moreover, the information appears to be relevant. Unless I hear a really good objection in the next 24 hours I'm going to restore through 3-8-06. JoshuaZ 18:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Counterpunch seems to me to occupy a level of reliability above blogs and below, say, the Washington Post. Certainly something that describes itself as a "muckraking leftist newsletter" does not strike me as a shining example of what we want to be using as a source. But on the other hand, there's a certain amount of venerableness to Counterpunch that might make its views somewhat notable. In this case, though, I see no evidence for that - searches for Berry's name and the author of the article come up with blogs, not with mainstream media coverage. So what we have is an attack on Berry published in a self-professed muckraking newsletter that did not get mainstream coverage. This is not sufficient to introduce negative criticism of the sort that the Counterpunch article was being used for.
It should be noted, I am in no way averse to criticism in this article. I think a sentence or two of expansion about Eichenwald is in line. I think any of the criticism from the Counterpunch article that got wider play should be mentioned. But we do not include every little bit of criticism that has come out on a subject, and neither the Counterpunch nor Generation Q articles seem to me to have gotten any substantively wider play, making them unsuitable. Phil Sandifer 18:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I would also note that BLP issues are not something that should be undone with a 24 hour ultimatum. The maxim here has always been "it's better to leave the article in an incomplete state for a while so a good discussion can be had than to leave poorly sourced material up." Phil Sandifer 19:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like a reasonable compromise is underway here. The reliability of Counterpunch as a source for factual claims is perhaps borderline, it is more of an editorial/opinion place than simple factual journalism, and yet, it is hardly random crap. I would recommend being cautious about using them as a single source for factual claims of any kind, and couching anything from them as being the opinions of critics. "In an article critical of Barry, Counterpunch said 'blah blah blah'" or similar.
Joshua, since I am the one who originally blanked the article, and since I have spoken in the past to Mr. Berry about this article (he was quite upset, and justifiably so if you ask me, about pedophile POV-pushing, one only need to review this talk page to imagine what it was like), I have taken a personal interest in our being very careful. I wonder if, rather than restoring 24 hours from now, you post a proposed paragraph or two here on the talk page for further discussion. It looks like Phil is eager to compromise, and you are too, and so we should be able to resolve this reasonably. As you said, we aren't under a deadline here. --Jimbo Wales 19:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Ok, pursuant to that, I'll have a suggested draft in a day or so based on the above. I do have to say that I have trouble seeing criticism as Berry as pro-pedophile (we've certainly had pro-ped POV pushing on a variety of articles in the past but I don't see much of it here). Also, as I have pointed out before, Wikipedia articles do not exist to make people happy, especially when they are public figures. In any event, I'll post a compromise version when I get a chance that should hopefully satisfy people. JoshuaZ 20:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
"Pedophile POV-pushing" is another one of those terms which says a lot more about the person using it, than about the thing it is directed at. Wikipedia should be concerned with verifiable facts, not what gives warm feelings to either side in a culture war. While I agree that we are not on 24 deadline here, it seems to me that having Justin not be upset, and having nothing in the article that will cause the CSA dittoheads to experience self-serving politically motivated hysterical paroxysms, is being given priority over verifiable facts about this story, even if they aren't the facts some people wish to hear disseminated.
"Innocent Young Boy Victimized by Evil Gang of Child Pornographers" is so much more digestable for some people than the actual tale of a tear-jerking opinion piece written by a high profile investigative journalist, undisclosed payments, more undisclosed secret payments under an assumed name, federal immunity, an alleged list of "1500 pedophiles" which turned out to be nothing of the kind, alleged "child porn" sites that were marketed as "all models over 18, records on file," and the enjoyment of a new career as a public speaker, after having made a hundred thousand dollars and ratted out all ones business associates. Not to mention functioning as a speaker on the topic of protecting children from the Internet, while simultaneously running a profitable proxy network designed to let kids bypass filtering software at home and at school.
Oh what a tangled web we weave... Hermitian 19:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I certainly disagreew ith yiour ideas re pedophile pushing, Hermitian,a dn Jimbo has a good point both in this article and in other pedophile related articles. To claim that pro and anti pedophile activists are engaged in a cultural war is your opinion but IMO has no basis whatsoever in reality where pedophiles are marginalised and when they offend criminalised. Berry is at least acknowledging his wrongs and trying to build himsslef a new life, all credit to him and it is not our place to criticise him for that. NPOV isnt some kind of wierd pseudo scientific objectivity, we are here to reflect how things are in the world and in the real world pro pedophile activists dont hold any weight whatsoever, SqueakBox 19:58, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Our place is to state the facts. "Pro-pedophile activists" exist almost entirely in the imaginations of those flogging the Sex Abuse Agenda. There are a very small number of "out" self-identified pedophiles. There are people who don't like the direction sex and porn laws are going under the influence of religious and political conservatives. There are even a few organiztions, notably short-lived, which have popped in and out of existence when groups of people became concerned over some of these issues. But the idea, for which absolute no evidence exists, that there is some sort of grandiose "pro-pedophile movement" with an "agenda" that works tirelessly to sneak their POV into things, and which takes great comfort when anything seems to not castigate the side of an issue some people imagine a pedophile might take, is nonsense, pseudoscience, and flim-flam, and dicussions which pre-suppose such stupidity have no place on Wikipedia. Hermitian 20:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I should also point out that the "Culture War" has on one side religious and politically motivated nuts that wish to recreate all our 1950's hangups about human sexuality, reverse decades of progressive thinking, and make "liberal" a curse word. On the other side are the freethinkers who don't want to see these neuroses reinstated, and written into law. The characterization of the war as between "Pro-Pedophile" and "Anti-Pedophile" activists is just another Big Lie by the nutcases, who try to reduce all questions on underage sexuality to their canonical image of very young child being victimized by some older adult. Hermitian 20:51, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
(ec)Actually and IMO pro-pedophile activism tends to exist in the minds of those who promote such a philosophy while those pursuing the very real protect children from child sexual abuse agenda have tried more than once to delete the pro-pedophile activism article or merge it inot pedophilia with no success. The pro-ped article was created by Zanthalon, see his block log, SqueakBox 20:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Nutcases is a personal attack and your opinions on liberal and other agendas are, IMO, plain wrong, SqueakBox 20:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
"If it doesn't apply to you..."  :) Hermitian 21:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


We shouldnt call anybody a nutcase, I am certainly involved in whatever editorial disputes are happening re the pedophile articles, SqueakBox 21:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you tried to AfD the NAMBLA article claiming it was pro-pedophile propaganda. Did that go well? Hermitian 21:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
It couldnt have gone worse, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/North American Man/Boy Love Association, SqueakBox 22:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey guys, this is not a forum for discussing each other or the politics of sex in America. The only topic on this page is improving the article. Please avoid personal remarks and off-topic disputes. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

A perfectly good article was pre-emptively un-improved, and now a large number of people are having their time wasted in endless soul-searching on whether the un-improvement should be reversed. Even more strange, some of them seem to think the metric to be used here is calibrated from "anti-pedophile" to "pro-pedophile" instead of from "deliberately misleading" to "factually accurate." Go figure. Hermitian 00:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Well except that it wasnt a perfectly good article, it was a flawed article which is why the changes were made, SqueakBox 00:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
The reasoning goes: it was a flawed article, that's why it was changed; it was changed because it was a flawed article. Circular reasoning doesn't establish your point. You have claimed flaws, but you haven't provided a factual basis for those claims. If you were to demonstrate that all the material removed was flawed to the point of requiring removal under BLP, then you'd have a point. Saying it was flawed is a statement of opinion only, not the equivalent to showing it was flawed. --Ssbohio 04:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually no circular reasoning here. We started with a flawed article.....SqueakBox 22:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Therein lies the circular reasoning: your evidence of the "flawed article" is that Phil Sandifer nuked it, and your evidence in favor of the nuking is that the article was flawed. It uses A to prove B, then uses B to prove A. Circular reasoning. If you believe the article is flawed, then give examples, make arguments, provide support for your contention beyond the circular logic. --Ssbohio 01:17, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

An Anonymous Coward giving his .02$ again: There is no pro-pedo / anti-pedo culture war on WP, as Peverted-Justice has seen to having [most] all of them banned, "for the good of the project."  ;^) The internet has given these people a medium and voice, tho this "culture war" is like David vs. Goliath (or more like an ant vs. an elephant). Hermitian, try to avoid names like "nuts" for people, it gives people a way to distract themselves from debating on merits and just dismiss you outright. And Squeaky, having become a fan of talk pages and edit histories over actual articles, you do seem to have WP:IDONTLIKEIT problem from time to time, especially concerning PJ's project here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.155.24.8 (talk) 09:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Adding some subheadings to try to make the thread of discussion easier to follow. I will sign each paragraph so people can jump in and create a more threaded discussion of these issues. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Counterpunch

Counterpunch (CounterPunch.org) bills itself as a bi-weekly muckraking newsletter. Muckraking is, despite the vaguely desultory impression given above, a good thing. Early muckrakers like Upton Sinclair and Ida M. Tarbell exposed problems in public and private sector alike, issues not covered in the mainstream media. In the modern day, muckrakers like Ralph Nader and Woodward & Bernstein do a similar service. CounterPunch is described as as must-read by Noam Chomsky, and enjoys a good reputation for factual accuracy. It's importasnt to note that the content of the Counterpunch newsletter is not always published to the website, since the former is by subscription and the latter is free of charge. This may explain why the article isn't amenable to Googling. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Phil Sandifer allows that Counterpunch's "views" are possibly "somewhat notable." In this case, however, it's not the views of Counterpunch that interest us, but the factual feature story written by Debbie Nathan, a respected journalist and published author on the subject of child sexual abuse allegations. Facts Debbie Nathan reported have been used to improve this article. Counterpunch's views have not. Since he has access to the deleted revisions, Phil knows this. Knowing that the issues are of fact, but focusing on opinion, can mislead a reader not familiar with the article itself. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Debbie Nathan does a very good job of researching the story of Justin Berry, interviewing people from Berry's life, before & during his pornography activities. She has also done a lot of expositive work on the intimate monetary, legal, and publicity-generating connections between Berry & Eichenwald, which, despite Phil's minimization, would take more than "a sentence or two of expansion" to make sense of. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Phil goes on to say that "it's better to leave the article in an incomplete state for a while so a good discussion can be had than to leave poorly sourced material up." This presupposes a couple of things: First, that the article is in a benign "incomplete state" rather than a misleadingly POV one. Second, there is the presumption that the matterial in question is actually poorly sourced. No one has provided support for that view, except by innuendo. No one has attacked the article itself, but only Counterpunch's political position. Debbie Nathan doesn't write political screeds or leftist editorials. She does research, writing books and articles that are within the accepted standards of professional journalism and nonfiction authorship. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

GenerationQ

The article in GenerationQ is a bit more of a new kid. It doesn't have the weight or reputation of a print publication like Counterpunch. That was one of the reasons that I referenced the source documents (Berry's proxy site & auction) which supported GenerationQ's reporting. This was not because I doubted GenerationQ. I'm familiar with their work and trust them as a source. I just felt that, in a controversial article like this one, it was better to secure additional sources for the information. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

BLP issues

I agree with Jimbo about the original state of the article. It was a hatchet job against Berry, subject to massive back & forth editing from both sides of the debate. It felt like there was more patrolling and reverting going on than actually writing content for the article. While I still view the OFFICE astion as somewhat excessive, I understand the motivation behind it and the need to preemptively act in clear cases. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

This, however, is hadly the same thing. Negative information that was entirely removed ("nuked" in Phil's parlance) was properly sourced and factual. It neither overreached the facts, nor did it extend into truly personal information. Because of the allegation on the table, I'll refrain from going into detail, but to call the information a BLP violation would be (to my mind) overreaching. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

It's also important to look at the influence of passion in this issue. SqueakBox, for example, made reference to editors' "pursuing the" … "protect children from child sexual abuse agenda" and their attempts to delete content. Protecting children is a laudable goal, and actions taken that further the goal are intrinsically good. They just aren't good for writing an encyclopedia from a neutral point of view. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Even a noble passion like protecting children can shade an editor's perspective. As WP:TIGER says:

“ "we feel about strong views the way that a natural history museum feels about tigers. We admire them and want our visitors to see how fierce and clever they are, so we stuff them and mount them for close inspection. We put up all sorts of carefully worded signs to get people to appreciate them as much as we do. But however much we adore tigers, a live tiger loose in the museum is seen as an urgent problem." ”

There are real, factual, verifiable issues that call Berry's story and his actions into question. Does this diminish the victimization he was subject to? No. But, neither is it something that can be overlooked because of Berry's victimhood. To an extent, my sympathies are with Berry. I simply cannot let those sympathies tell me how to write this article. Here, as with the research I do both professionally and academically, I am obliged to go where the sourced facts lead. --Ssbohio 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

We should write sympatyhetically about all living people as we are an encyclopedia not an attack site, SqueakBox 22:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
No, we write from an NPOV perspective. No matter what. JoshuaZ 14:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
By your logic, then, in the Michael Jackson article, we should be sympathetic to him and not report about his legal problems regarding an interest in children? Seriously, think of the vilest living pedophile you know: should we write sympathetically about him, since he's a living person? Being an encyclopedia does not mean that we see every one of our subjects through the eyes of Pollyanna. Justin Berry's story, like that of any other living person, cannot be told only from his perspective, either directly or through his sympathetic chroniclers like Kurt Eichenwald. As Benjamin Franklin said, "half the truth is often a great lie." If we tell half of Berry's story, then we lie to every person who comes to read it. I'm pretty sure that not lying to people is important when writing an encyclopedia. --Ssbohio 22:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Well lying would be saying he was born in England or something deliberately false. I dont want to get too involved in Jackson because he got found not guilty but I dont think we can compare Berry to say Gary Glitter (po star in Vietnamese jail for child sex abuse). I think rapists who are only notable as rapists should have their articles deleted. I've only come to these views after a lot of consideration. Free press is one thing (and with good libel laws and journalists who arent anonymous and are trained to write without commititng libel) but we arent the press. I agree we shouldnt hide Hitler's crimes but he is a historical figure, we would need to be much more careful about Kim Jong-il (N. Korea's leader) bvecause he is living, SqueakBox 22:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Lying also involves telling part of the truth, such that the reader is misinformed. Do you believe Ben Franklin was wrong in the quote I used above? Omitting facts is clearly a form of lying. Such omissions can be considered perjury, for example, and many witness oaths admonish their takers to tell "the whole truth." I could lie about you by selectively quoting your words, to give another example, without ever having to invent anything.
  • We had difficulty before on your talk page about my making comparisons. Let me clarify: I'm not saying Justin Berry is equivalent to any of these people. Rather, I'm taking your all-encompassing statement and choosing some examples where (to me) your assertion doesn't work.
  • I agree with you about the rapists, unless the rapists' crimes became notorious enough to meet WP:N.
  • I also agree that we're not the press. We're writing an encyclopedia, and that means telling Berry's story not from his point of view, not from his abuser's point of view, but from a neutral point of view. Telling half the story doesn't do that. --Ssbohio 23:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Compromise

Jimbo voiced the opinion that Phil Sandifer "is eager to compromise." My attempts to engage Phil in dialogue here and on Phil's talk page were all to no avail. I got no explanation of his issues with the sources; I even offered to discuss the BLP issue off-wiki to avoid republishing any material potentially BLP-violating. There was no explanation of his reasons for his actions or his disparagement of these sources, just stony silence. Considering his behavior here and his previously having his deletion reversed by another admin, rather than discussing the situation and working toward compromise, I'm not seeing where he's willing even to discuss, much less compromise. My contributions here have been deprecated & deleted, and my name stripped from them. I've been trying to begin a discussion, but, given this degree of intransigence, where is compromise to start? --Ssbohio 01:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Propose alternate wording. I'm not averse to either section's inclusion so long as there are multiple independent sources for the criticism. Phil Sandifer 16:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
    Agreed. Subject to our key policies such as verifiability and neutral point of view, any reasonable proposal for alternate wording would be worth looking at. --Tony Sidaway 16:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • What would be necessary in the alternate wording? I still have no idea what the exceptional problem is with the wording that existed. Phil's original nuking was of more than just the section on Berry's open proxy business, and the latest nuking has excised even more from the history of the article. Phil's version of NPOV and mine seem to be very different.
    I want to reach a compromise solutions, but my original point remains: Phil, if you're unwilling to support your allegations, then the history should be restored, if for no other reason than to comply fully with the GFDL, but, more importantly, to show respect for the effort that I and other editors have already put in here. Nowhere was there the kind of extreme BLP violation that would justify selective deletion, as far as I can see.
    If we are to pass everything through a prior restraint filter, so be it, but I need to have at least some idea what was found to be so gravely unacceptable in the original article to justify wholesale scorched earth destruction. I'd also feel better if we can agree that admin tools should be put aside and not used to further either side of this content dispute. --Ssbohio 19:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
So your interest in compromise was, what, I restore the content? No. I've told you the problem - it needs a second, independent source. If you find that, I have no objections to the content going in. This is straightforward. The difficulty is not my lack of explanation, but your lack of accepting it and doing something to deal with it. Phil Sandifer 01:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
As you haven't provided justification for your action ostensibly taken under BLP, then, like the previous time you tried this, restoring the deleted content would be a good first step. We have a content dispute in this article. Admin tools are far too blunt an instrument to reach compromise when the disagreement is over content. The Counterpunch feature story is a reliable source. As you persist in evading my question as to whether you've read it, I have to operate on the presumption that you're arguing without evidence. The story is factual, and those relevant facts belong here. --Ssbohio 15:55, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree, assuming they meet the basic standard of having been picked up in a second, independent source. Phil Sandifer 15:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
There is no requirement for a second source, outside of your insistance that there be one. Counterpunch meets RS. There mere fact that you say it's unacceptable doesn't make it so, anymore than my saying it is makes it acceptable. If you want the rest of us to see it your way, then you need to provide support for your assertion, not a restatement of it. I ask again: Have you read the article? From what do you argue that this source should be deprecated? Make a showing of the basis for your complaint, so I'll know why you believe as you do and be able to respond meaningfully to the issue you raise. --Ssbohio 17:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
We only need "alternate wording" if the original deletions were justified. So far, Phil hasn't provided a shred of substantiation for his actions. I would therefore suggest that discussion of rewriting the removed parts is premature, and the current discussion should center on whether any legitimate reason exists for not restoring some or all of the removed material verbatim. Buying into the "alternate wording" compromise seems to me to suggest both that the original removals were justified, and that Phil gets to be the arbiter of what rewordings are acceptable. Given Phil's penchant for regarding policy as an impediment to his editing productivity, that's a can of worms I'd rather not open. Hermitian 20:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Policy schmolicy. If it's good writing, it goes in the encyclopedia. Those were bad writing. Phil Sandifer 01:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
An employer of mine was fond of saying Some people ride trains because they like trans, and some people ride trains because they're headed in the right direction. It seems (and only seems, since we don't know your mind) you are willing to cite policy (BLP) when it agrees with or supports your views and actions, but simultaneously willing to deride policy when it doesn't. I don't often find myself in agreement with Hermitian, but he has a point. You believe that the content you nuked should stay that way, but you won't tell anyone why that is. If it's a question of having one source where you think there should be two, I'm not seeing the reason to "nuke" the content on that basis. Perhaps you could show how your contention is supported? --Ssbohio 17:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Multiple independent sources is a classic requirement - one not codified in Wikipedia (at least not here - it's all over WP:N), but familiar to the journalism world, where it's the basic requirement for running a story or claim. Phil Sandifer 23:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Um so what? Journalists are dealing with primary sources we are dealing with secondary ones. Single sources are quite acceptable on wikipedia. See Biaxial nematic for example.Geni 01:17, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
There is a difference between a single source that is a peer reviewed scientific publication being used for a totally uncontroversial topic and a single source that is a partisan, muckraking newsletter being used for negative criticism about a highly contentious living person. Phil Sandifer 01:22, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Despite your sneering at the "partisan, muckraking newsletter," you have yet to offer any specific criticism of the article. Debbie Nathan has been writing for years on child sexual abuse. She's been published in multiple reputable publications. Counterpunch meets the definition of a reliable source. The article has nothing to do with partisanship, so raising a false flag like partisanship doesn't contribute to evaluating the source. Without some concrete support for your complaint, it mostly resembles WP:IDONTLIKEIT, albeit dressed up to go out. --Ssbohio 04:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Biaxial nematics are totally uncontroversial? Did you miss the decades of fasle claims of sucessful synthersis? Wikipedia has no multiple source requirement and you do not have the authority to try and create one out of thin air.Geni 01:32, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
The article certainly misses the decades of false claims. And again - sourcing requirements are more stringent for BLPs than they are for liquid crystals. You know this. Stop being querrelous. There remains no evidence that these allegations are notable. They happened in minor, partisan news sources and fizzled. That's not enough to go into an article as criticism sections, and it never has been. Phil Sandifer 01:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
The article is far from complete what of it? You have failed to provide a case that the allegations whatever they are are not notable. It would certianly appear they have been published by a third party source.Geni 01:53, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
The original argument was whether the criticism was notable. Then, the focus shifted to sourcing. A work, written by a well-regarded author with expertise on this subject, published in a respected publication, is a reliable source, presumptively. At this point, I'd welcome something resembling support for Phil Sandifer's contention that the information is "poorly sourced" as alleged. Absent that, no amount of merely saying it isn't reliable will make it such. --Ssbohio 04:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
You are mistaken in seeing those as different arguments. They are all very much the same argument - that criticism of a living person sourced to a single source of questionable reliability that did not get picked up more widely and did not make a larger impact is not appropriate for an article, and are particularly and egregiously inappropriate for an article on such a sensitive topic as this. Marginal criticisms we can't fully trust are not acceptable. Hence the demand for a second source, which would fix these problems. Phil Sandifer 13:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Phil, you continue to insist that there is something unreliable about the source, without ever identifying what is unrelaible about the article. It was written by a respected author on this topic and is replete with facts. I cited some of those facts in the article. Your comments are the textual equivalent of leering glances and innuendos: they suggest that there's something unseemly about the source, but they never quite deliver on what they promise. If you have actual, factual criticisms about the article, then bring them forward. If all you have is a pair of raised eyebrows, then let me get on with editing an encyclopedia instead of asking you (for the fifth time) have you read the article? Strong views, pro-Berry or anti-Berry, aren't the stock-in-trade of this encyclopedia. If an administrator who can demonstrate more neutrality and less high-handedness wants to step forward and restore this article, that would be a good place to start. It would put all the editors on an equal footing, instead of giving those favored with an extra bit the upper hand in this content dispute. I feel like I'm up against a brick wall trying to find out what the facts are that underly Phil's actions and his insistence that his opinion, unsupported, should carry the weight of law here. --Ssbohio 19:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I have supported my opinion, and noted my objections. Numerous other editors - Squeak Box, Will, and Jimbo - agree with me. That you do not like my explanation does not mean that I have not given it. Phil Sandifer 21:27, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Mischaracterizing my request doesn't help matters, Phil. I've asked you to support your contentions numerous times. You've rephrased, paraphrased, and otherwise restated your objections, but never provided anything that supports them. An argument is supported by facts, not more argument. Muckraking is a good thing. Watergate was reported in a single source by a pair of muckraking reporters. A political slant to the editorial content of Counterpunch doesn't alter the facts that are being reported. Neither of those contentions makes a source unreliable per WP:RS. Furthermore, you've steadfastly refused to discuss the article itself, preferring instead to cast stones at the publication in which it appeared.
When Kurt Vonnegut wrote for Playboy, he was still Kurt Vonnegut. When Debbie Nathan writes for Counterpunch, she is still Debbie Nathan, and her reputation as a knowledgable writer on the topic of child sexual abuse has not been impeached anywhere in this forum. You give me the impression that you believe your word should be enough for me, that you have no obligation to support your accusations with facts. This is not so. We're both editors here; you're merely an editor with some buttons I don't have. Your opinion is as open to challenge as mine. Unfortunately, you've exercised the power to enforce your opinion, where I have no such power. I never asserted that you haven't given your explanation, I asserted that you haven't provided support for it. I have repeatedly asked for facts; I repeatedly got opinions. I have repeatedly asked you if you read the source documents; I repeatedly got silence. You keep telling me about the bricks (arguments) you make, and I keep asking you "where's the straw" and getting no answer. If you have facts, post them; If you don't, then restore the article. I have no interest in kowtowing to you for the rest of my tenure here. --Ssbohio 16:06, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Debbie Nathan is not inherently notable, nor do I see any evidence that she is an especially well-regarded journalist. That it is by her adds no particular reliability or notability to the claims. Phil Sandifer 22:10, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Phil, the question is not of Debbie Nathan's notability, but of her credibility as an author and journalist. She is particularly reputable on the subject of child sexual abuse, having written a book on the subject that's been published by a major house. The book, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, is well-regarded by reviewers such as Philip Jenkins, Prof. Robert A. Baker, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Women's Review of Books, The American Enterprise, the San Diego Union-Tribune, The Nation, and the Brisbane, Australia Sunday Mail. It is considered a seminal work on the topic. It is required reading in Prof. Cecil Greek's graduate seminar in the University of South Florida's college of criminology. Nathan is clearly a bona fide specialist in this field. Considering the evidence (which took me all of 10 minutes to find), would you now concede that she enjoys some regard for her abilities as an author? However, I applaud your decision to raise specific factual issues with this source, so that I can offer information to expand your understanding. I have, by the standards set forth in RS & BLP, provided reliable sourcing for the facts. I'm happy to discuss any further factual objections you have. I'm glad we're finally getting somewhere. Please let me know what you think of the critical and academic opinions of Nathan and her work on this topic. Also, please satisfy my curiosity: have you read the article? --Ssbohio 00:12, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
How nice. I'm unblocked. There being evidence, and you seeing the evidence, would seem at this point to be two completely different and orthogonal axes. I am surprised, however, to see that Debbie Nathan doesn't have her own Wikipedia article. She's a lot more notable than Berry is. Hermitian 23:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Phil, in order to better understand your views on the Justin Berry article, I've been reviewing some of your edits on similar subjects. I notice that on the 28th of May, you blanked the entire "Child Pornography" article, deleted the revision history, and reduced the article to a one line stub which read "Child pornography refers to pornographic images of children. Such images are almost always illegal." Subsequently you and Squeakbox sat on the article, reverting virtually everything that was added to it, and it is presently only two paragraphs in length. At the time, you stated on the article's talk page that the article was an "abomination" consisting "entirely" of information denying the damage of child pornography, and that the article stressed that "child pornographers are secretly good and upstanding folk." An opinion, I might add, which did not seem to be shared by anyone except yourself. I wonder where I might find a copy of the article before you deleted it, to see whether your description of it is as cognitively distorted as your claims that no credible sources exist for any of the material you removed from the Berry article. I like to assume good faith, but I'm seeing a pattern and an agenda here. Hermitian 01:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
It seems Phil also reduced the Bio of Richard Steve Goldberg to a stub on the 28th of May and blanked the revision history. Seems Phil didn't like the mention of a single word in the article, which he thinks might be used to search for child porn files on file-sharing networks. The term is dated, blocked by most P2P networks, and a Google search of it yields 205,000 hits, a mixture of porn spam, news stories on porn busts, crime reports, legal blogs, and the odd torrent tracker. I think we can safely say that having it occur in an article on Wikipedia isn't the moral equivalent of serving up porn to our customers. Phil seems to have a talent for unilateral action with his admin tools, obliterating all traces of many kilobytes of other peoples hard work, every time he sees a word or sentence on the topic of minors and sex which displeases him. I don't think we need Phil as our moral guardian, and the consensus approach to writing and editing such articles seems to work just fine as far as I'm concerned. Is there any way we can propose Phil's admin privileges for deletion, so that he will no longer have an advantage over the majority of Wikipedia editors who can't just run around permanently erasing things at will? Using admin tools to win content disputes seems extremely tacky. His user page is a testimonial to his view that rules are only for the little people. Hermitian 05:08, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
You'd want to do that at WP:RFAr. I encourage you to bring your concerns to them, in fact. Phil Sandifer 13:57, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Without passing judgment one way or another on Hermitian's concerns themselves, I'd expect, as a matter of public responsibility, that you'd be willing to justify your actions that would otherwise be seen as simple destruction. It's important that you distinguish your actions from censorship, if for no other reason than to deny cover to the pedophiles who would criticize you in order to advance their agenda. --Ssbohio 00:12, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[resetting margin] These things are not "allegations" or "criticisms." They are verifiable facts. Concrete evidence for them exists in unsealed court records, auction logs, and in the comments of the principals when asked about them. Bloviate all you want, Phil, but it's pretty obvious that an unwritten policy of not "upsetting" poor Justin is taking precedence over full disclosure of the facts of this case. The constant non-responsive bobbing and weaving you are doing, no doubt with Jimbo's blessing, isn't fooling anyone.

If the best Wikipedia can do on the Justin Berry story is to egregiously lie by omission, then the article should be deleted. Justin's claims have turned out, in retrospect, to have been overperformed and oversold. He's not unique, nor special, nor notable. There are thousands of people just like him who don't have their own Wikipedia articles. Just delete the thing, and we can spend the countless hours this argument is wasting writing and improving articles that actually matter. 66.109.192.50 14:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I see this is your first edit to the Wikipedia. Welcome! Personally, I'd suggest you register for a username, so you can comment and edit without needlessly exposing your IP address. As to your comments, I agree with you, in part, and disagree with you in part. Debbie Nathan amassed a tremendous amount of factual information, did countless interviews with people uninvolved with the current issue who knew Berry before, and wrote a highly balanced, nuanced, and detailed article about how Berry got to be where he is today. She did all of this without paying Berry over $3,000, as another well-known writer has. --Ssbohio 19:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I happen to agree with the anonymous user above, as the article stands it is very POV. It's entirely positive snipits, not truthfully biographical by a long shot. I mean, for the #1 Google hit for his name, the rest of the 1st page hits have WAY more biographical information. I'm not suggesting the article reflect his job as "motivational speaker/professional victim", but such criticisms are important for balancing what some perceive as "propaganda". Where's the bit about the immunity from prosecution and his fall into "other bad elements" that helped his turn his life around? 24.155.24.8 08:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Justin Berry

Here is where we part company. Berry would be a non-notable person if he had come to the fore then faded away, like many people in the news will do. Berry, however, hasn't done this. He worked with Kurt Eichenwald on a major exposeé in The New York Times, and has continued to thrust himself upon the public stage, appearing on many mass media programs, testifying in well-publicized Congressional hearings, and even hiring professional representation to sell his services as a public speaker. At this point, it's no longer a question of whether he is a public figure, or whether he wants to be. By his own actions, he is one and has remained one of his own volition. --Ssbohio 19:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Let's look at the reasons why Berry might be notable. It's certainly not because he claims sexual abuse. Lots of people do that. It's not because he makes the rounds of the talk shows and meetings of special interest groups and speaks on the topic of sexual abuse. Lots of people do that too. Perhaps it's because the story is more salacious because the Internet is involved? Hmmm. No. He's hardly the only inappropriate sexual thing happening on the Internet. Perhaps it's because of his stirring testimony before the US Congress where he tells of being groomed and says he has a list of 1500 "sexual predators" to turn over to prosecutors. Unfortunately, as we've later learned, this was more about Justin's entrepreneurship than other peoples grooming efforts, and the "predators" were just regular folks most of whom thought they were signing up for what Justin advertised as an ordinary legal adult site. (You can look at archive.org, and see what Justin's home pages looked like.)

Now there are a few things that make Justin stand out from the crowd here. One is the magnitude of his earnings. Few kids rake in $100,000 tax-free from illicit Webcam performances. Another is his partnership with Kurt Eichenwald to sell his story. Although at this point, I suspect Kurt wishes he'd stuck with writing books on Enron. The demand for Justin as a public speaker is going to wind down now that he's yesterday's news.

So I'll grant you he's barely notable for two things: As a very successful former adult Website entrepreneur, and as the large anchor that will forever be fastened to Kurt Eichenwald's career, reminding people of Eichenwald's ethical lapses while reporting the story.

So, perhaps he deserves his own Wikipedia article after all...

But...

The only Justin Berry article we seem to be able to write here on Wikipedia, is one which basically parrots Justin's preferred version of events, and omits vast amounts of irrefutable sourced material which clarifies many things about the story which weren't known when it first broke, and which Justin and Kurt have frantically tried to keep out of the media by getting court records sealed and threatening to sue people.

Whenever the complete Justin Berry story is told here on Wikipedia, it's only a matter of time before Jimbo suggests out-of-band that some admin might "help him out" by giving it a rewrite, or pops in here to relate that Justin called him on the phone, and Justin is "Unhappy."

So given that Justin is barely notable, and Wikipedia is not an advertising service which permits people to promote things from their personal POV, Wikipedia is better off without this article. Or to put it another way, a Justin Berry-centric fluff piece is worse than no article at all. 66.109.192.50 23:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous Comment here: I watched the Congressional hearings on C-SPAN when Justin Berry first appeared. I ROTFLOLed. My thoughts at the time were, "Here is some kid crying because he made A LOT of money off internet pedophiles and got caught. And now he's in a full blow 'born again christian guilt complex' playing the victim." And with the speaking career, looks like he's taking FULL advantage of his "crimes". Call me trollish, but that's my .02$ from having seen the testimony. 24.155.24.8 07:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

This article makes no sense

As it now stands, this article makes absolutely no sense. Eichenwald's ethical lapse in paying Justin and the subsequent payments he made are not discussed. I learned more about that part in the article about Eichenwald himself, and that should be included here.

Further, the article doesn't even attempt to explain who Ken Gourlay is. It only says he was accused of molesting Justin. It seems to me that there are potential WP:BLP violations in this, since that is stated without giving any references to back that up. Why is he pictured in the article, too, and named, if there is no context given? It is also strange that there are so many external links to him in the article, as the article is not about him and he appears in only one sentence. Those I shall be removing per BLP.

I also don't understand why Justin's getting immunity to testify is not discussed in thew article, or the fact that he could also have been charged with sexual abuse once he was over 18 and procuring minors for his sex site. That is basic info and needs to be included. It was in the NYTimes article, so it is definitely verifiable.

All in all, this article is a mess and a shame on Wikipedia. I read another version (one deleted by Wales himself) that was a hell of a lot better. I don't know why it was deleted, as it seemed to be verifiable, and replaced with this piece of crap. I hope the obstructionist and deletionist editors willstep aside and allow a decent article to be written once again. Jeffpw 13:41, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it. Proper and effective deletions is what this encyclopedia is crying out for, in spitye of the obstructionists who think it is fine to add material but not remove it but oif course never quote policy to back this up. If you see BLP vios please feel free to delete yourself but take great care while adding material. We are an encyclopedia not an attack site for notable people and we need to keep this in mind while editing this article which, IMO, is seriously improved over what it was, SqueakBox 17:35, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggested changes to put in BLP related material

Ok, three suggested changes. First, in the NYT section mention that he was given immunity by the feds(cite to NYT). Second, for the earlier problematic material from GenerationQ add the following: "On May 29, 2007, GenerationQ, an online magazine devoted to GLBT issues claimed that while Berry was engaging in payed public speaking concerning his exploitation, Berry had also been running a series of for-profit open proxy websites, enabling users to bypass content-control software and visit websites otherwise off-limits, as well as hide their IP addresses while doing so.. Berry subsequently sold these sites ". Finally, for the Counterpunch material "In April of 2007, the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch published an article by journalist Debbie Nathan entitled "The New York Times, Kurt Eichenwald and the World of Justin Berry: Hysteria, Exploitation and Witch-Hunting in the Age of Internet Sex" claiming that there was "serious mishandling" of the reporting of this story by Kurt Eichenwald. The piece argued that Berry is at least somewhat culpable and that consequently his immunity deal may have been appropriate." JoshuaZ 17:37, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

These look like good compromises to me - they are restrained, they make clear the nature of the sources, they steer clear of salacious detail. Phil Sandifer 18:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Indeed it also avoids the original research that somehow his open proxy websites encouraged pedophilia (some of thwe worst OR I have ever seen), and we should avoid the word muckraking as we arent here to do down the reputation of counterpunch either, but otherwise it looks fine, SqueakBox 18:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The open proxy Websites specifically recommended their use to bypass school filters, at a time when Berry was speaking out recommending closer monitoring of Internet use by minors. I don't think this has anything to do with pedophilia, per se, but it does strongly suggest he was simultaneously playing both sides of the issue. I think GenerationQ oversold the "Justin Selling to Predators" angle a bit. While it's true that predators could cloak their IPs just like anyone else using the services Justin was providing, there's no evidence to suggest this was Justin's specific intent. Hermitian 19:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd also change "claimed" to "reported" in the suggested text. "Thinks," "claims," "feels," and "believes," are the four most commonly used weasel words. Hermitian 19:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Open proxy websites have many uses (wikipedia blocks as many as it can find) and there are so may non-predatory uses of open proxies that it seems far fetched and implies that in order to protect people from predators we should not allow open proxies, which is an extreme minority view with no place here. Were there a source that it was Justin's intent that would be a different matter but as you say we have no evidence that it was his intent, just the OR of a journalist trying to make a story that sells money and possibly pursuing a different agenda (ie anonymity on the internet). I agree that claimed could beb changed to reported in this case, I'll go for either, SqueakBox 19:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The text which Phil deleted sourced the statement about using the proxies to bypass Internet filtering directly to the advertising copy for Berry's website FastAssProxy.com. Is Berry's website an unreliable source about what it, itself, says? --Ssbohio 00:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Counterpunch refers to itself as a muckraking newsletter, so I have no problems repeating the statement. Perhaps "self-profsessed muckraking newsletter" to make that clear? Phil Sandifer 19:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I see that now (hadnt looked at that article). Muckraking implies our judgement so self-styled muckrakers etc would be much better, SqueakBox 19:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Self-styled muckraking seems a bit negative in connotation. The term "self-styled" is often POV even if the denotation is not. Can we maybe find a reliable source that calls them muckraking and just cite that also? JoshuaZ 13:29, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Self-proclaimed, self-identified, "which describes itself as a muckraking newsletter?" Phil Sandifer 13:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I like that last one. It is a bit wordy but seems to handle the issues well. JoshuaZ 14:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The editorial or political stance of Counterpunch has no bearing on the reliability of this particular article; Rather, including it would serve to throw dust in the jury-men's eyes. This article isn't the sort of thing that Counterpunch carries ordinarily, and Debbie Nathan, as I've shown above, is well-credentialed as a writer on the topic of child sexual abuse. Injecting the term muckraking, because of its negative connotation, would serve to mislead the reader about the cited source. Counterpunch didn't write this article, Debbie Nathan did, and Debbie Nathan is regarded as an experienced writer in this field. It's bad enough that the pro-deletion argument here relies on leering innuendoes with no evidentiary backup, it would be doubly so if such a salacious point of view were allowed to insinuate itself into the facts of this article, however well-intentioned the addition would be. --Ssbohio 00:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
The fact that Counterpunch does spend time trying to dig up dirt is arguably relevant. When in doubt, we should have more information. In this case, more info about Counterpunch is a good thing. If you are concerned, one solution may be for you to write an article on Debbie Nathan and have her wikilinked which will maybe make it more clear that she's generally reliable. It appears that there is enough info about her to make a decent stub. JoshuaZ 01:36, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for addressing yourself to my concern, Joshua. I take your point, and my objection is not that more information is being added bout Counterpunch, but that the information added has a negative connotation in popular culture and is being added without any balancing positive information about the quality of the reports Counterpunch publishes. Including the sobriquet "muckraking" also denies the reality of this article: that it was written by Debbie Nathan first, then published by Counterpunch, arguably because other publications are wary both of criticizing Berry and of Eichenwald's litigious nature. I'd rather see Counterpunch wikilinked and the reader can follow the link to find out more about it than have a pejorative term attached to this source, but, if it has to be, then it should be balanced by a positive reference to its reputation for truthfulness & Debbie Nathan's reputation as an expert in this field. The article is culled from hours of research and interviews, and to reduce it to "muckraking" serves to deny that in the reader's mind. --Ssbohio 11:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Interesting, the word muckraking doesn't have negative connotations to me. If it does have serious negative connotations that may be a problem (although since they self-identify as that, it is hard to see it as that problematic). JoshuaZ 14:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
It does have negative connotations, implying a certain level of tabloid journalism. That said, I think those negative connotations are important here - Counterpunch is the sort of publication that would be interested in publishing this kind of criticism. That it identifies as such is significant. Phil Sandifer 16:02, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I think this is going to be the closest were likely to get to a consensus about what to stick in. If no one else objects, I'll add it to the text. JoshuaZ 02:53, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
By using the term muckraking in such a way as to play up its negative connotation when Counterpunch uses the term in its original meaning, that, to me, misleads the reader. (See my comments above) The facts in Debbie Nathan's article are either true or not true; tarring the publication in which her work appeared with these negative connotations does not serve to either support or refute the facts. Counterpunch (on its homepage) quotes another magazine's description of it as "America's best political newsletter." Its connotation is as positive as "muckraking" is negative; I think the facts should speak for themselves, but if we're going to take shots at Counterpunch, they should be balanced by positive statements, instead of having the negative connotation given undue weight by standing alone. --Ssbohio 05:41, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I think "which describes itself as a muckraking political newsletter" hits this perfectly. The editors of Counterpunch are not unaware of the connotations that "muckraking" carries - they are almost certainly embracing them to be a bit inflammatory, and noting that this is their description carries far more than just the meaning of muckraking - it's an elegant shorthand for much of their attitude and approach. Phil Sandifer 15:47, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
And I think that only including a negative comment about this source is, however well-intentioned, a tactic which would both deprecate the source and bias the reader. You, yourself, have used muckraking to imply something unseemly about Counterpunch without ever providing a factual basis for the insinuation about its reliability. I'm aware of your opinion of Counterpunch. I'm also aware that this isn't OpinionPedia. If you want to challenge the source, back up your accusation with facts. If you want to present the subject neutrally, then allow both a positive and a negative description. I'll even go a step further: you can describe it as muckraking on first reference, and I'll wait until the second reference to balance the scales. You'll be able to impress upon the reader the unreliability of a thoroughly-researched article by an authority in the field solely because of where it was published. Pro forma, but without hope of an answer, I'll ask again: have you read the article? My proposal above is a compromise that still gives your perspective the advantage in the article. Are you amenable to it? --Ssbohio 17:47, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Just Wikilink Counterpunch and add the material in, so we can all get on with our lives. Hermitian 16:10, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Censored?

I've heard that some Wikipedia administrators cleansed this article of critical views of Berry and then deleted the previous revisions. I found the old version here (along with its wiki syntax). I don't see anything wrong or POV about it. Why was this action taken? 67.55.48.34 04:16, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I see this is your first edit to the Wikipedia. Welcome! Personally, I'd suggest you register for a username, so you can comment and edit without needlessly exposing your IP address. As to your comments, I agree with you, but I'd avoid calling this censorship when the evidence is inconclusive. I explicitly assume good faith in Phil Sandifer's motives, although the fact that he tried this before and was reverted by another admin suggests that a bit less boldness in favor of reaching consensus would have been an even stronger expression of good faith.
I do, however, believe that these amorphous challenges to sources & content are at least partially driven by the content of the sources rather than their quantity. Kurt Eichenwald has suffered a loss of credibility on this issue, yet there has been no hue and cry to remove information cited to that source. It would be more consistent to cast the same jaundiced eye toward sources favorable to the subject as to those either unfavorable or merely objective. We can't let our deference to Berry cloud the requirement that we write verifiably and with neutrality, showing neither fear nor favor. --Ssbohio 12:06, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
BLP is quite specific that being 'bold' is encouraged. And I have to say the version you linked to does appear to violate BLP so its deletion was quite proper Nil Einne 19:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
This is the same issue that has with Phil Sandifer's "nuking" of the article. Saying the article appears to violate BLP doesn't really tell us anything. What about it violates BLP? Where is the support for your contention? I'd be happy to discuss any aspect of the article, but the vague and nebulous allegation above lacks any foundation or factual absis to discuss. I (presumptively) don't see BLP problems in the article as written, pre-"nuking." Additionally, even if I were to grant your premise, there are issues of propriety in an administrator using their powers to support a particular version of an article about which they have been involved in content disputes. But, leave that aside: what are your BLP concerns with the article as it previously existed? --Ssbohio 00:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Ethics of using Berry's image

I am pretty freaking amazed that an image created as advertising for an underage prostitute is considered ethically appropriate for Wikipedia. Another child prostitute, Masha Allen, told CNN in an interview:

"My pictures that are on the Internet disturb me more than what Matthew [her abuser] did because I know that the abuse stopped but those pictures are still on the Internet."

Not only were images of Masha's face scrupulously removed from photos associated with her case even when being used as evidence, but I see that her article itself has now been removed from Wikipedia.

Is the posting of Berry's picture considered less abusive because the prostitute in question is male?

I just couldn't be more astonished to see this allowed under the fair-use policy, when ordinary promotional shots of artists are barred.

DanB†DanD 02:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

To directly refute your assertions, I have a hard time seeing the image as one that advertises Berry as an underaged prostitute. The photo is the least salacious I could find that pictures Berry as he looked at that time. The photo of himself as a young teen that Berry uses now on his modeling page is far more salacious and titilating, though legal. Berry's gender isn't the issue, though it has been published that male-male child sexual abuse is punished more severely than its male-female counterpart. As to your concern about the use of this photo, the fair use rationale given on the image page is fairly detailed. Have you read it? The photo is not a mere representation of Berry, but a specific image of Berry as he looked at the time the events that brought him notoriety were taking place. One cannot take a picture of Berry now in order to illustrate his appearance then, any more than one can take a picture of Soldier Field now in order to see what it looked like in the past. Furthermore, to allay your concerns about treating Berry respectfully, Berry, himself, uses at least one image from his Internet pornography business as part of his current actor/model profile. He, unlike a victim such as Masha Allen, has embraced and cultivated his image, starting as a teenager, and continues to do so even to this day. I know people who are survivors of child sexual abuse. It's difficult for me to know what I know about Berry and think of him in the same category as them. --Ssbohio 01:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any evidence that the image was created as "advertising for an underage prostitute." It looks like an ordinary tourist photo to me. The fact that Berry was an underage prostitute doesn't mean that every photograph of him depicts him engaging in such activities. Hermitian 20:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
While I don't agree with the inclusion of the pictures, the double standard may have more to do with the fact that while Justin Berry may have been abused he also appears to have been actively involved in the production of the pornography and websites and its promotion including after he became an adult. Wasn't the Masha case one where she was raped by her adoptive father from something like age 5 who specifically adopted her to rape her and posted the pictures? Also in terms of fair use we generally only fair use images of living people if they are unique, can't be resonably replaced and is intended to show more then just what they look like in general. Clearly a promotional shot of an artist is none of these, it's intention is to simply show the artist it can be resonably replaced because it's general rather easy to get a photo of a living famous person particularly an artist. Nil Einne 19:15, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Deleted before?

It appears from poking around that this article has been deleted and restored from deletion in the past. I am having a difficult time imagining what can have been the justification for keeping it -- it seems to plainly violate the Presumption in favor of privacy, and Berry is notable for only one event -- he is not even connected through his testimony to relevant legislation as Masha Allen is, or with an activist foundation like Shawn Hornbeck. All this is quite beside the question of the photos.

I would nominate the article for deletion immediately, but I don't want to go over ground that's already been covered. What can have been the justification for restoring the article after the first time it was deleted?

DanB†DanD 03:26, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

He is a notable individual whose story appeared in the NYTimes, and he retold it on several talk shows including Oprah, which is broadcast internationally. Since he has babbled on ad nauseum about his .....adventures, any privacy concerns would seem to be misplaced and unneeded. Jeffpw 04:22, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
As I suggested in my comment above, the fact that he has been a big news story does not mean that he is enduringly notable. Similar big news stories who have appeared on talk shows and testified before committees do not have articles of this sort. Shawn Hornbeck, another sex abuse victim who was all over the news and widely accused of complicity in his own abuse, is now nothing but a redirect to the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation -- the remaining notable aspect of his story.
Further, the subject of an article's self-representation is not typically taken as a guide to how they are represented on Wikipedia. I understand that Justin Berry is now an editor here. The best of luck to him, but his is not the most neutral judgment in deciding whether he is a suitable subject for an article - any more than any other person is a good judge of their own notability.
As for the photographs, they are not photographs of him appearing on Oprah, or testifying to Congress, or walking down the street. They are photographs of him engaging in underage prostitution, and the fact that they are not nudes does not make them any the less direct depictions of illegal activity, and debatably illegal in themselves.
Wikipedia is not censored, but it is also not a scandal sheet.
DanB†DanD 04:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I could be mistaken, Dan, but the photos used in the article are not of him as an underaged prostitute, but after he reached the age of majority and had set up new sexsites encouraging other underage prostitutes to join in on the fun and games. So if your concerns were that Wikipedia was exploiting the pain of an abused youth, I think you are laboring under a misapprehension.

As to your comments about Berry himself, I don't think he edits the article anymore. That had been a problem in the past.I do grant you this article sucks as written now, but the sourced, well written and researched version was nuked by another editor and may not be restored. Where we differ is your opinion that this is seemingly not fit for Wikipedia, for whatever the reason. Jeffpw 04:46, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The photographs are not dated - they probably should be! Berry had recently turned 18 when he began working with Eichenwald. DanB†DanD 04:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
To clarify the facts: Berry turned 18 on 24 July 2004. Kurt Eichenwald first met with him around June 2005, 11 months after Berry turned 18. Although Eichenwald's hidden payments go back farther, it's a stretch to say that Berry had recently turned 18 when he began working with Eichenwald. --Ssbohio 01:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree the pics should be dated to avoid confusion, Dan. I juust checked and what I mentioned is correct--he is over age in the photos. This link provides the proof of that. It is one of the external links. interesting reading. Jeffpw 05:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
That link doesn't mention these photos in particular at all. It sets forth an argument supporting the idea that Berry must have been 18 in any photos on his website at the time he was working with Eichenwald, because he had recently turned 18.
This does not seem to me a very convincing argument -- Berry could very easily have continued using year-old pictures of himself. There's also no indication of how the website-promotion image got from the illegal porn site to Wikipedia. Did someone save it to their hard drive? When? Before or after Berry became a news story? Before or after he turned 18? How did it get from the person who saved it to the person who first uploaded it to Wikipedia? Given the fact that it is a commercial product, did the people who saved it have any legal right to reproduce or distribute it, always assuming that it is not in itself an illegal commercial product?
The photo of Ken Gourlay with Berry was allegedly taken by Gourlay himself and recklessly posted to his personal blog. There is no indication of when any of that happened -- although apparently it was still online when the scandal broke, and was copied without Gourlay's consent by rubberneckers.
From general googling, I have begun to relaize that I've stumbled on quite the hornet's nest in this article. I'm happy to back off about the individual notability of Berry if everybody is thoroughly tired of arguing about it -- although I do think that it's inconsistent that Shawn Hornbeck, Crystal Gail Mangum, and so on have been made redirects to general articles about the case they are associated with, whereas this one remains focused on an individual as if his character were what is notable.
However, I just don't think the use of the photos is defensible at all.
DanB†DanD 06:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
On the contrary, the use of the photos is eminently defensible. Berry, himself, published the lead photo on his own website. The photo was even watermarked with the MexicoFriends.Com logo before it was cropped in deference to the other person previously pictured to Berry's right. The photo of Gourlay with Berry was published on the Web by Gourlay himself. It depicts him & Berry interacting with one another some time after he allegedly abused Berry. I'm using care in saying alleged because Gourlay was convicted solely of the age-of-consent offense, not of rape, assault, or other violence. While you've described the photos as possibly illegal, I presume that you aren't accusing anyone of a crime in so doing. Fair use has been met in both of these images, and Wikipedia is not censored to protect a subject from his own published work. --Ssbohio 01:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The photos, like all other Web content that is not protected by robots.txt, are permanently saved at archive.org, the Internet Archive. Berry may request their deletion any time he decides he doesn't want the publicity. The photo in question shows Berry at a McDonalds, where presumedly, he is not engaging in any illegal activity.

I agree with you on the notability thing. The last five people in Meatspace I've said "Justin Berry" to have responded "Who?"

The problem with the article is that the Berry story is a complex one, and Jimbo and crew manage to delete everything which doesn't sing Berry's praises. This leaves the article as little more than a fluffy advertisement for Berry's public speaking career, which I can think we can all agree isn't an appropriate use for Wikipedia. Hermitian 20:26, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a tone in your words that I'm picking up on. Maybe it's my perception, but I want to say up front that I don't believe it's a pro-Berry bias on the part of Wales, Sandifer, etc. that drives the article to favor Berry's point of view. Rather, singing Berry's praises and relying on his own self-serving statements is the safest approach to take in an article that has previously been the subject of office action, among other things. Berry is notable not only for his self-developed career in Internet pornography, but also for the impact that their dealings with Berry has had on other people, and for his continued efforts at self-promotion, including taking up acting and becoming a paid public speaker. As for how many people in Meatspace know his name, I suspect that the same results could be had with the names of dozens if not hundreds of other people deemed notable enough to be covered by Wikipedia. --Ssbohio 01:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
The fact remains that the article has been gutted. Even though we have consensus, with the minor exception of whether Counterpunch is "muckraking", the material has not been re-inserted. It's like an unwritten rule here at Wikipedia is "Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Jimbo's Pet Camwhore." As with many stories on the subject of sexual abuse, the claims made in the initial news stories turned out to be overbroad, and the real story which emerged later was somewhat more nuanced and complex, and was covered with less enthusiasm by the mainstream media. It is clearly lying by omission to present the article as it exists now, sourced only by the initial portrayal of Berry by Eichenwald as the poor naive child victim of a vast conspiracy of pedophiles, and omit all contrary information which later came to light. Wikipedia is not a place for Justin to advertise his speaking services, and if the article can't accurately represent Berry's story, it should be deleted. Given that the Office action was little more than Jimbo pre-emptively doing what I've described above, it is tautological to suggest it justifies this ridiculous one-sidedness. The article either needs to get fixed, or it needs to go. Real Sex Abuse Agenda bias is a lot more onerous than imaginary pro-pedophile bias.
Hermitian 03:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I completely agree with Hermitian. The version that stands now is a disgrace to Wikipedia, and it boggles the mind that this is the version that Wales prefers. The version that he authorised nuking was much better, and completely sourced, as well. I don't know what kind of agenda Wales & friends have in this matter, but there is an obvious pro-Berry bias at work here. Until this situation is resolved, this article will remain as evidence that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information. Jeffpw 05:09, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I am so totally withdrawing from this. Drama for no! DanB†DanD 05:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


I can't speak for Wales or anyone else, but I can say that I think everyone is just plain tired of dealing with this article and its turmoil. The current version is short and to the point, and is probably in keeping with the overall notability of the subject. Engaging in the production and distribution of child porn isn't notable, nor is testifying against a child molester. The subject is not notable for what he did, and is only barely notable for being the subject of a big newspaper story and for testifying in front of a congressional panel. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Let's see how fast the alleged tiredness with dealing with the article vanishes the minute anything controversial is put back into it. One solution would to be to have an article on Justin Berry Case(Criminal Investigation), include a comprehensive set of facts about all aspects of the case, and the individuals involved, and redirect Justin Berry to point to that, since he's only infinitesimally notable for anything unrelated to his pornographic adventures. While the case is notable, and Kurt Eichenwald is notable, Berry without the case and Eichenwald is just another "Disease of the Week" episode of "Oprah" no one cares about any more. If the article continues to be nothing but deceptive pro-Berry promotional fluff, I am going to AfD it after a suitable period of time to demonstrate that no one cares enough to fix it. The recent vandalism demonstrates how much of a joke a lot of people feel this article currently is, and it reinforces the (probably accurate) belief that Wikipedia rewards neurotic persistence by people pushing an agenda over accuracy. Hermitian 01:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect to Kurt Eichenwald

I suggest making this article a section of the Kurt Eichenwald aricle and redirecting Justin Berry there.

Yeah yeah...drawn back to the drama, what can I say?

DanB†DanD 23:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Having reviewed the existing Justin Berry section of Eichenwald's article, I think it's perfectly sufficient for the story's notability. I think this article can simply be made a redirect. This would be consistent with what's happened to the articles of other briefly notorious people.
I'm also nominating the pictures for deletion, for the reasons I've outlined above.
DanB†DanD 23:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
A patently false accusation of invalid fair use claims does not constitute a valid reason to delete these images. The bottom line is: you don't like the images or the article, and you can't expand your perspective beyond the narrow view that this is all about Kurt Eichenwald. Many other people are involved, and Berry became notable for his own actions ,both before & after he met Eichenwald. He has continued to assert himself as a public figure via public speaking, advertising as an actor, and marketing himself as a paid public speaker. Also, even if this article is deleted, the images are valid fair use in Kurt Eichenwald as well. Don't look for a forum in which to win the day. Voice your concerns here, substantiate the problems, and work on a compromise. Attempting an end run is less than fully professional. --Ssbohio 01:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
All of the subject's notability derives from his interactions with Eichenwald. The relationship between them is now known to have been more extensive than previously revealed. I support the proposed merger/redirect. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Sounds okay to me, SqueakBox 23:45, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
If it were true. The evidence is that Berry publicized and marketed himself both before & after his meeting Eichenwald. His actions have impacted hundreds of lives, including the teenagers he filmed. He is notable enough to have been the subject of multiple feature-length articles. It is incredible that the facts of the matter can be so roundly ignored in order to carry forward a deletionist agenda with regard to Berry. Restore the article & judge it fairly, rather than redacting it until your point can be won. Phil Sandifer previously tried deleting almost all of the article, then nominating it for deletion. In discussion on his talk page, he admitted that doing so was "POINT," that is to say, an attempt to disrupt Wikipedia in order to make a point. --Ssbohio 01:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Just a brief note to point out that court records unsealed yesterday in Nashville show that Eichenwald was an administrator on one of Berry's porn sites, and that Eichenwald paid Berry some huge amount of money for pictures, in addition to the $2k he disclosed to the Times. Eichenwald has now supposedly retained the same criminal defense attorney Berry is using. Counterpunch and GenerationQ, Phil's favorite news sources, are both running with this. It remains to be seen how much coverage it's going to get in the more mainstream press, for fear it might debunk the Oprah-esque fairy tale that is being sold to the public about this story.
Wiping this piece of Berry-fluffing nonsense, and redirecting it to the Eichenwald article, is fine with me. Berry is now a mere sidenote to the giant career implosion Eichenwald is about to experience. Hermitian 02:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Disagree per Ssbohio's logic and other concerns. If in 2 or 3 months after things have settled down it looks like Berry is just a side-note to Eichenwald then a redirect might be in order. But we have a large number of sources that are about Berry and mention Eichenwald only in passing. Berry has continued to be in the news post the Eichenwald matter as an independently notable person. As a basic test for notability, Berry meets it. JoshuaZ 13:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
It is also worth noting that this has, at least so far, not sparked significant news coverage - none of the Saturday Morning news sources seem to be running anything, so this is limited still to Counterpunch and GenerationQ. Phil Sandifer 13:50, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Phil, the article was published online yesterday. Hardly time enough to "spark significant news coverage". That said, the NYTimes responded to the reporter and has launched its own investigation. I haven't a doubt they will be publishing their own article. That will certainly be significant. Berry is at the center of a very large scandal involving reporters, how they deal with sources and who knew what when. He is not only notable for being a teen internet porno star and pimp, he is also notable for casuing the downfall of a journalist's career. This is an obviously keep. Incidentally, I am starting an RFc on this today and will be posting it soon for the community as a whole to comment on. I don't think many people know about this situation, and outside comments from uninvolved editors are always a help. Jeffpw 17:55, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Ah yes, the one more source rule ensconced at WP:RS/Phil Sandifer Rule; It's a redlink because there is no such rule. The coverage it has now is entirely sufficient, and a lack of current publicity does not bear on whether Berry is notable. The Duke of Marlborough hasn't seen much press coverage this century, yet he is certainly still notable enough for an article. People whose names passed out of public discourse many years ago still have Wikipedia articles. I'm not arguing inclusion by comparison to these articles; I'm providing a factual basis to support my contention that your reasoning is flawed. Where are your facts, Phil?
Debbie Nathan is a reliable source. CounterPunch is a reliable source on matters of fact. GenerationQ is less so, as it seems to have weak editorial controls. The argument that this is merely a sidenote to Kurt Eichenwald's story would be laughable if you hadn't deleted the rest of the article, Phil. What factual violation of BLP have you been able to cite? And, for the 10th(?) time, have you read the CounterPunch article? How about the new article? I know you'll keep it out of the article by hook or by crook, but at least read it before judging it. --Ssbohio 17:27, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
He hasn't caused the downfall of a journalist's career yet. That's just speculation. If it develops in that direction, that's one thing. As long as it's been broken on a pair of questionably reliable websites, this is something that needs to be treated carefully. Phil Sandifer 18:04, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
The unsealed court records are publicly available on PACER. We could always just cite those as a primary source, and bypass quibbling over whether Counterpunch and GenerationQ are reliable. Hermitian 18:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
We could, but it would surely be original research. Phil Sandifer 18:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
It's only OR if original conclusions are drawn. There's nothing OR about checking court records--THEY are the research. It's becomes OR if we then say "and clearly...on the basis of these court documents, Justin Berry is guilty guilty guilty!" DanB†DanD 18:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I misunderstand the Wikipedia concept of original research. When something is published in an official government record, we must wait for a newspaper or other publication to repeat it and say that it is true before it can appear in a Wikipedia article? I thought original research was synthesis of material from multiple sources in a way which had not been previously published. Hermitian 18:49, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
There was a similar situation at the Twinkie Defense article. Some controversy about what a witness actually said at Dan White's trial. It was finally decided after much discussion (including at least two administrators of Wikipedia) that the best way of dealing with the situation would be to get the trial transcript and directly quote fro it. Nobody concerned mentioned that it would be WP:OR; indeed, it was felt that was the most objective, neutral way of presenting the material. As stated above, no synthesis of the material was used, and the reader could draw their own conclusions. Jeffpw 19:06, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Phil, will you please explain why you think CounterPunch is of questionable reliability? From everything I have read, it doesn't seem unreliable at all, what with its stories being either rerun or expanded upon by newspapers as diverse as Harper's and The Washington Post. If either of those magazines/newspapers were concerned about CounterPunch's reliability, I doubt they would have anything to do with it. Not liking what a news site has to say doesn't make it unreliable. Ditto Debbie Nathan. She's been published in both The Village Voice and The Nation, among others, and has had more than one book published. At a certain point, your continual raising of the bar for reliability begins to look like a way of keeping material you are not comfortable with out of this article. That it has worked so well for so long says something rather sad about Wikipedia. And this is from an editor who has never edited this article, but merely stumbled upon it. Jeffpw 18:21, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
CounterPunch occupies, to my mind, a strange middle ground in reliable sources - they often do good work, but on the other hand, they are an unapologetically partisan and self-professed muckraking publication. I tend to think of them as influential, but not necessarily reliable - their coverage will often spark things that get expanded on by other, more reliable sources that follow up on the original articles. Similarly, Debbie Nathan is a journalist who has published in a number of sources. That makes her plausibly reliable, but, for me, doesn't seal the deal. And, in both cases, this is balanced with notability - if a major New York Times journalist gets embroiled in a scandal and nobody but CounterPunch picks it up, is it a notable scandal? Maybe notable enough for a line or two, but not much more. When that scandal all but accuses him of being a pedophile, I'm inclined to be very cautious. Phil Sandifer 18:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
BTW, Phil, whatever happened to that arbcon proceeding about your deleting the child pornography article. It was taken to email and I wondered if a decision and a paper trail of the arguments pro and con had been rendered. You also haven't responded to Ssbohio's request that you explain why your pattern of removing material from a number of articles with similar subject matter should not be considered Censorship. Hermitian 18:49, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Request for comment:Justin Berry content dispute

Summary of dispute

This article was reduced to a stub from a long, sourced article by Jimbo Wales and another administrator, with the advice to make sure it did not violate WP:BLP. No detailed explanation of the problem with the article were given. After it was re-expanded, Phil Sandifer once again reduced it, and nominated it for deletion. He admitted at the time that his action was WP:POINT. Since then, editors ahve had difficulty expanding this article, as sourced material has been removed by other editors out of concerns for WP:BLP violations. Other editors feel that is an excuse, and that the article as written was sourced, neutral and verifiable. At this point, another editor wishes to nominate it once again for deletion, and a different editor questions the reliability of some core sources, while others think the sources are strong and verifiable. Comment by outside, uninvolved parties would be helpful in clarifying the issues and moving forward.

Relevant discussion

Involved editors

Statements by involved parties

Statement by DanB DanD

I am pretty sure I wandered onto the scene long after Jeff became actively involved in this quarrel, so I'm not certain why he gets to be an "outside observer" while my poor little talk page is listed as the first relevant area of the dispute.

Sorry about my nonfeasance, everybody!

Anyway, I don't really care about Justin Berry. I think he's of very dubious notability and I think the argument over his story is really a semi-veiled version of the argument over underage sex that is one of Wikipedia's most reliable crowd-pleasers. I think the best solution would be a redirect to Kurt Eichenwald, as it is really his journalistic ethics that have been the enduring subject of public notice.

However, I think the fair-use rationale used for the images in the article is about the most transparent thing I've ever seen. If the fact that an image showed "what an individual is known for" then a vast proportion of the commercial and private images of musicians, actors, and other performers that have been deleted under the recent stricter application of fair use would have to be restored. And I'm not thrilled with the ethics of showing a possibly-underaged person engaged in sex work.

And yes, I think it is obviously sex work to appear in an advertisement for a underage pornographic website, and to give a big hug to a customer and business associate of your underage pornographic website.

DanB†DanD 20:04, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Ssbohio

I've been trying to get this statement just right for a week now, and I finally decided that I would post it the way it is and hope that any errors or imperfections will be looked on with mercy by my fellow editors.

To better understand this conflict, here's a chronology of what's happened, taken from logs and other sources:

Article chronology

The issues

Deletion

Phil Sandifer deleted a great deal of encyclopedic material and has heretofore refused to provide a factual basis for his assertion that the deletion was necessary to comply with biographies of living persons policy. He has repeated in August a deletion he made in May which was found to be unwarranted and reversed. This (extremely slow motion) wheel war is nonsensical, since Sandifer was constructively on notice that his deletion was controversial and lacked consensus.

I assert that there was no BLP problem in the deleted article that required the deletion of hundereds of edits to remove. If a few edits contain material that is legitimately deletable, then so be it, but wholesale destruction of the article (which Sandifer calls nuking) is unwarranted and a denegration of the hard work of all who have edited here. It gives the appearance of abuse of authority and bad faith action in knowing opposition to consensus.

Restoration of the article is, to me, needed for any informed discussion about it; Unless sufficient factual support is provided for the deletion, I see restoration of the deleted article as an essential first step in any resolution. I've previously offered to discuss this with Phil Sandifer off-wiki, but he has maintained his silence, refusing to either accept or reject my offer.

Notability

Berry is notable. In addition to the December 2005 feature story in The New York Times, in 2006, Berry has appeared on Larry King Live, the Oprah Winfrey Show, in Congressional testimony on C-SPAN, and on NBC's Today show, among others. His case has been (more or less) dramatized by Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2007, he continued his public relations efforts, appearing as a public speaker at several events and appearing on CTV's Canada AM and the Australian 9 network's 60 Minutes. He has engaged in public speaking and has hired an agent for that purpose. He offers his services online as an actor and model. He has played a significant role in the Federal prosecutions of Kenneth Gourlay, Greg Mitchell, Aaron Brown, and Timothy Richards. He has been written about in Counterpunch, in GenerationQ, in Gawker, in Editor & Publisher, in Slate.com, and in numerous other sources. Theclaim that he is nonnotable is belied by his continued media appearances. It is frankly unfathomable to me that he could be considered non-notable.

Sourcing

Berry has been covered in media that meet the test for being reliable sources. Sources critical of Berry are derided here as unreliable, while sources favorable to him are never given such attention. Like with the deletion, every attempt to address Phil Sandifer's concerns about sourcing is thwarted by his refusal to provide factual support for his allegations of unreliability.

Counterpunch

Counterpunch is a noted and well-regarded newsletter dealing with law and politics in America. It has been praised by such noted Americans as Noam Chomsky. It enjoys a stellar reputation for factual accuracy and truth-telling. It has published two stories by Debbie Nathan about Justin Berry, exposing factual material absent from other media accounts. The article and its publisher are both of easily sufficient quality to be relied upon here. Phil Sandifer, who has objected loudly to the use of this source, has kept silent on whether he has actually read the story in question, despite numerous requests that he do.

Debbie Nathan

Debbie Nathan is personally and professionally respected for her writing concerning child sexual abuse. She has written a book on the subject that has received very good reviews and is used in college-level courses. She writes for New York magazine, the New Yorker, CounterPunch, and numerous other publications.

GenerationQ

This is a more difficult source to evaluate. Its editorial content is largely written directly by its editor. While I personally find this source reliable, because of its editorial structure, I would support using this source only where it can be employed in conjunction with another reliable source.

The New York Times

Unlike with Jayson Blair, this time, the Grey Lady has been very slow off the mark in terms of admitting the editorial lapses in this story. They have published an Editor's Note. Their Public Editor, Byron Calame, has written about the issues. Each time, however, the Times has continued to doggedly insist that the underlying story is untainted. I can't see deprecating a source as august as the Times, but in this circumstance, its version of the story must be balanced by other voices in the interest of providing fair & balanced coverage.

Images

I've deliberately been extremely conservative in selecting images for this article. Image:Justinpicture1.jpg is easily the tamest picture of Berry I've heard of from the time he operated his last website, JustinsFriends.net. It was difficult to find, considering the "taint" that attaches to anyone who admits having dealings with Berry. It was a free photo available to anyone browsing the website, as opposed to a members-only photo. An anonymous poster on another website had the photo and, to preserve his anonymity with me, I had him register an account and upload the photo. I provided a detailed fair-use rationale and the photo sat undisturbed under that rationale for months. While I originally resisted SqueakBox (talk · contribs) in his attempt to crop the photo to remove the second person pictured because it would also remove the site watermark that identified its origin, he made a strong, well-supported argument and I came to see it his way. The image itself is important because it gives the reader a chance to look at Berry's story & the self-serving protestations of those his evidence has imprisoned and decide for themselves whether Berry's customers should have known better than to believe the site was 18+ upon seeing him. Instead of opining, we leave the final judgment to the reader.

As far as Image:Ken Gourlay & Justin Berry.jpg, what could be more topical than depicting Berry with Ken Gourlay, the erstwhile business partner who turned out to have engaged Berry in unlawful acts for which Gourlay was convicted in Michigan. It depicts their seemingly cordial meeting in Mexico a few years after Berry alleges he was molested by Gourlay. It was Gourlay's trial that exposed the first payment from Kurt Eichenwald to Berry such that the media picked up on the story.

Conclusion

My views:

  • That keeping the article's history deleted denies any editor here the opportunity to review the purportedly BLP-violating materials.
  • There has been no supported, factual argument made to justify the deletion of the article's history entirely.
  • There has been no supported, factual argument made to justify the deprecation of Debbie Nathan & Counterpunch as sources.
  • There is ample evidence of Berry's notability.
  • Restoring the article would amply demonstrate that Berry's story is more than simply an adjunct to Eichenwald's
  • The images are integral to telling the story and are not replaceable because how Berry looked at the time and how he related to others involved in these activities is an important piece of information for the reader.
  • Almost all of what's been done to decimate this article has been done in good faith, but some have carried their good faith efforts beyond what consensus supports in their zeal to preserve BLP and avoid naysaying a self-described victim of sexual exploitation.

I am open to questions, comments, & criticisms, but I prefer that arguments made be factually based, and I offer to have discussions via email if anyone feels they have something to say that shouldn't be placed on-wiki. --Ssbohio 03:56, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Statements by outside observers

Statement by Jeffpw

I stumbled upon this article on another site, which was hosting the original article, and offering a side by side comparison with a Wikipedia version similar to what we have now. I couldn't believe so much sourced, reliable material had been removed, and so many important facts were refused entry into this article. I was also surprised that discussion and consensus, core policies of Wikipedia, were being cast aside by both the founder of this site and administrators, with only the vaguest reasons given for these actions. Since that time, I have watched editors struggle to add sourced material, only to be told their sources were not reliable enough. While I understand WP:BLP concerns, and support Wikipedia in complying with all applicable laws regarding libel, I think several editors have erred on the side of caution, and this article should be treated the same as others on the site,and not made an exception. I feel sources such as CounterPunch and GenerationQ should be allowed to be used, and verifiable facts, no matter how uncomfortable they are to the subject of the biography, should be admitted into the article.

I also would add that the article as it stands is the subject of continuing, ongoing vandalism, by anonymous IPs who object to the sanitization of it. While that in itself is not a reason to alter the article, it is clear evidence to me that as it now stands, it is a detriment to Wikipedia's credibility.

Lastly, I would like to state clearly that I feel Justin Berry is a notable subject for an encyclopedia entry. His experiences as an internet porn star and later procurer, his testimony in Washington, his appearances on talk shows, and his current work as a public speaker all point to this. His presence as the subject of multiple newspaper articles both about his and those associated with him also support this assertion. I see no reason beyond simple expediency to delete this article, or even merge it with another. Jeffpw 19:39, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the vandalism - I hope this doesn't come across as mean-spirited or wikistalking, but given the fact that the vandalism refers to an administrative dispute internal to Wikipedia, and the language used is a porned-up version of what we see posted to the talk pages, wouldn't a checkuser on the IPs of the vandals be useful? (I don't really know how checkuser works, hopefully I'm not saying something stupid or impossible.)
I mean, presumably it's just the Wikitruth people and Encyclopedia Dramatica having fun -- but just so that everything is quite clear.
DanB†DanD 20:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
It's far more likely that the vandals are reading the talk page, and following the controversy, than it is that one of us is wasting even more of our time making the article entertaining, although I must admit I laughed at the "Fluffer to the Normans" variation. Hermitian 03:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I can't agree it's likely that anyone not party to this quarrel would bother to read through the page! DanB†DanD 04:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Benjiboi

Well I want simply offer my insight in hopes that it does help. Frankly, the article seems promising until you get past the first two sections then, for those of us who saw the Oprah Winfrey show (she's big on stopping pedophiles), the meal falls flat. I learned much more from Oprah about how pedophiles operate online, who are they and some basic misconceptions. The article, in short, could be doubled just by using the Oprah transcript. For instance Why would Berry accept that money? It should explain how he got started. This is useful and appropriate information that would actually be fascinating and might even prevent other kids and their parents from being naive. Before we get to the juicy scandalous stuff was he a good business owner? And how exactly were any other kids employees of his operation? We can be clinical-ish and dry but what did they do, was it solo work? Were they ensnared in the same way or did what?

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't this case blow the lid open on the public's consciousness of pedophilia issues?

Eichenwald requested demonstrations of the workings of Berry's online business which Berry provided, including live conversations with subscribers. Typical conversation? Was it pure lecherousness? How did this develop? And what were those workings? If I remember he was a tech wiz and had his own apartment?

Eichenwald persuaded him to discontinue the business and turn his information about those minors over to the authorities. So what happened? Resulting in ... (ahh you're killing me!)

Members of the committee said his testimony had fueled a new effort to toughen up the laws against the producers and purchasers of child pornography and... did anything happen? Why?

Berry created InternetSafety.tv as a world-wide anti-child pornography resource.[2] Really?! Do they do anything? any success or is it just a front of some sort?

It would be nice to add something to the lede that suggested a little more of the impact his story has made.

To me it would also help to have more of a timeline from Berry as porn provider to public speaker (whatever that is); wasn't he in Mexico through part of this? I remember his dad being a partner in Mexico?

Also Public speaker[2] & former webcam pornographer[1] in the bio box seems to miss the mark that he was victimized and was a pornographer (quite the loaded word) as a minor. Public speaker is also odd to me as well, it seems vague as I've never heard someone call themselves a public speaker. Activist, educator, motivational speaker - all of those but save public speaker for the tax forms. The equivalent in taxesse for former webcam pornographer, by the way, is "retired film director." Benjiboi 03:31, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Brendan Lloyd

The subject, and events involving the subject, appear to lack notability, while the article itself falls short of WP:BLP and resembles several flavours of what Wikipedia is not (eg. tabloid, blog, soapbox, memorial site, battleground, web host, indiscriminate collection of information). To quote the latter, "Someone or something that has been in the news for a brief period is not necessarily a suitable subject for an article in their own right." The section on Gourlay is semi-biographical of him (not the subject). I support article delete.--Brendan Lloyd [ contribs ] 13:03, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Jeffpw's reply to Danb DanD

I listed you as an involved party because you nominated an image for deletion, edited the text of the article and have suggested deleting this article and merging the content into another article. I listed myself as an outside party because I have never edited the article nor have I initiated any administrative actions related to it. I assure you there was no attempt to obfuscate my role in this dispute. I have made my preferences for a resolution clear both elsewhere in the talk page and here in the Rfc. However, I have no intention of editing this article at all, and thus feel I am outside of the dispute. Jeffpw 20:21, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Just a clarifying note - my only edits to the article have been to add the notice of the ongoing IfDs to the captions of the two images. DanB†DanD 20:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


I'm not understanding something here. We had a set of decent texts that Phil and others agreed would work. The vandalism problem simply means we need to ask a few more admins to keep watch over the article. I fail to see why we need this RfC. JoshuaZ 14:58, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Going through the RfC process and getting input from outside editors will result in a higher barrier to arbitrary removal of material from the article in the future. In addition, it counts as mediation, and we can then go directly to arbcon if Phil acts unilaterally again. Hermitian 19:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Goals

To me, the obvious goal is to expand this article using reliable sources until it includes all relevant facts about Berry's life. Conforming to WP:BLP is essential, but we mustn't be afraid to write what is factually correct out of misplaced fears of being sued or damaging somebody's reputation. Jeffpw 19:38, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Jeff, thanks for putting this up on the LGBT notice board, clearly Berry's later activities fall under the scope of that project. As for action to be taken here, I have no opinion since I have no idea why the article was deleted by Jimbo in the first place. I would suggest that someone with access to the man find that out first, so that we may act accordingly. Haiduc 20:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
The original article was deleted under WP:OFFICE after Justin called Jimbo on the phone and complained that parts of the article which were critical of him constituted the pushing of a pro-pedophile POV. Although the version of the article which was OFFICEed had been worked on by numerous editors and was mostly well-sourced and balanced, a large part of it had initially been written by a now-banned self-identified pedophile editor, which placed Wikipedia in a somewhat awkward position, PR-wise, and it was decided that the article should be rewritten from scratch by uninvolved parties.
Some time later, the completely rewritten article was gutted by Phil Sandifer, citing WP:BLP, although he has provided no justification for his action. Subsequent attempts to expand the article have been thwarted by admins, who cite the "sensitivity" of the subject matter.
Given the history of this article since its creation, the unwillingness of Jimbo to take heat over anything that can be spun as being unkind to a sex abuse victim, the fact that the article has made Wikipedia a laughing stock and attracts repeated comedy vandalism, the marginal notability of its subject, and the amount of peoples time this thing is wasting, which could better be spent creating and improving other articles, I'm tilting towards deletion or redirection, although obviously, if the article can be fixed, we should keep it. Hermitian 21:39, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
It is always difficult to do justice to articles that involve children - or adults, for that matter - who have been victimized. How to balance the desire to not aggravate the suffering of that individual, with the need to maintain accuracy? Yet Berry has decided to become a public person, and has turned his misfortune into a worthy cause. This not an embarrassing matter, but a success story. Not that we are in the morality tale business here, but only to point out that as long as we maintain a "strict constructionist" approach to the article it can become a valid entry and need not tread on toes. I am not available for that task, but it seems that there are enough interested and knowledgeable editors already involved. Haiduc 23:58, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
The "toes" in this case cover the entire space of possible articles, since the topic is extreme flame-bait. Treading is going to occur. Some people are going to be angry if Justin's story is sanitized to revolve solely around his reported victimhood, or other people are going to be angry if that isn't done. It's a classic no-win situation. Remember that holding a balanced position in a political firefight just means you get shot at by both sides. Hermitian 00:41, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
That's how you know you have succeeded. I do not speak from inexperience. Good luck. Haiduc 01:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Sourcing accusations

We're now through the weekend news cycle and Monday morning's papers, and no reputable source has picked up this story from Counterpunch and Generation Q. I have serious reservations about including the information at this point - the accusation is basically that Eichenwald is a pedophile, and yet nobody has picked it up. That's very, very troubling in terms of the reliability of the source. Phil Sandifer 15:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Unsealed court records accessible to the public over the Internet reveal that Eichenwald was an admin on Justinfriends, and that he paid lots of money to Justin for pictures. No publication has stated that Eichenwald's interest in Berry was sexual, and even if it was, that hardly makes him a pedophile, since Justin was hardly prepubescent at the time.
At worst, he's a middle-aged married guy who wanted to have a fling with an older teen, or a muckraking tabloid journalist who was secretly funding and controlling something he wanted to get another best-selling book out of. To the best of my knowledge, no publication is presently claiming those things. They're just reporting the somewhat peculiar facts as they emerge, and leaving readers to draw their own conclusions. We should do the same. Report the facts in an emotionally neutral manner, and let the chips fall where they may. Hermitian 16:13, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
No. We should not report critical, scandalous information on the basis of two minor publications when that information does not get picked up by any larger or more reliable sources. That is about as fundamental an application of WP:BLP as they come. Phil Sandifer 16:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Since the facts are in publicly available court records, we need not rely on any publications, major or minor, to interpret them for us. Hermitian 17:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
If nobody is picking up on them, I question their significance. Phil Sandifer 17:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Court records are by definition both accurate (people are sworn in) and significant (insignificant facts are stricken). If this article is to include anything from the Eichenwald article, it must also contain any relevant information concerning the motivations and therefore the accuracy of Eichenwald's writing. If the court records (which Eichenwald incidentally strove for months to keep sealed) are not considered significant, then everything in this article sourced from Eichenwald's exposé must be removed. Radak 22:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Court records are dangerous primary sources that have to be handled with the greatest care. They are not reliable by themselves. For example, depositions in divorce cases are notorious for containing outlandish allegations about the parties. Further, it is difficult for non-lawyers to interpret them properly. For example, they may contain lengthy arguments that appear important but which have little legal standing. Lastly, an arbitrary set of records may omit other records that contain conflicting or exonerating information. We should only refer to court records in instances where we already have reliable secondary sources on the issue. As previously discussed, Counterpunch and Generation Q are marginally reliable sources. If this material is truly noteworthy and accurate the information will likely appear in more reliable sources at some point in the future. There is plenty of time to get this story right, and no biography is complete until after all the subject has passed away. In the meantime we need to limit ourselves to what is reliably sources, and can be neutrally presented. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
You make valid points about court records, but I still think that the appearance of these records calls into question the accuracy of any of the information cited only from Eichenwald's article. Just as several people have suggested that information cited only from Counterpunch's article is questionable, the revelation of these court records equally, if not moreso, calls into question the accuracy of any information cited from the Eichenwald article. Without citing the Eichenwald court records, it still seems reasonable that without secondary citation (itself not referencing the Eichenwald article), any information information from his article cited only to Eichenwald should be carefully reviewed and probably removed due to a fairly obvious conflict of interest. Once all the Eichenwald information is removed, it seems like Justin becomes truly irrelevant, and this article is fodder for deletion. Radak 23:44, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree that Eichenwald's integrity has been called into question. However articles printed in the New York Times rely on that paper's fact-checking and corrections policies. They have issued major corrections in past cases of journalism scandals, such as Jayson Blair. Until such time as they revoke the articles, we can use them as reliable sources. I would not extend the same credulity to pieces written by Eichenwald without editoral review, such as blog entries. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
The problem here is that NYT won't retract an article that the vast majority of the public sees as "combating evil pedophiles", so no such retraction will ever happen, no matter the evidence against Eichenwald's veracity. This was a relevant article in NYT a couple of years ago and they're not about to touch it again, even in light of new information. I think that we, as Wikipedia editors, can do a better job of remaining consistent with current data than traditional newspapers can, and this is a perfect example of an opportunity to do so. You know as well as I do, that in a time when there's real news happening all over the world, NYT will not bother incorporating this new information in a retraction, but we can. I think most people involved in this discussion want this article to be accurate, myself included, and given the recently-exposed questionability of Eichenwald's credibility, from fairly reliable sources, we need to give that data some serious reconsideration, even if NYT doesn't consider it worthy of a retraction. Radak 00:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
This is an important point. We should avoid stating things as fact, when they are sourced only to Eichenwald. "Eichenwald said," or "The NYT reported," are important qualifiers that we should be careful to employ in the article. Newspaper stories get obsoleted by newer information each and every day, and retractions are almost never issued, except in cases where it is alleged that the newspaper "knowingly" misreported something, or a principal from a story is threatening to sue them. It would be unheard of for the NYT to retract an article this old, even if it were later demonstrated to be total nonsense. The same goes for stuff sourced solely to Berry. We should avoid using language which suggests that independent knowledge exists as to the truthfulness of the events and/or actions Berry alleges took place. Hermitian 02:22, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
To my knowledge, we usually report things from major mainstream media (CNN, New York Times, BBC) without qualifications unless there's an explicit reason to call it into question. (i.e. a later retraction, a high profile accusation of inaccuracy, etc). The "Source X says Y" formulation is generally used for more controversial information. Phil Sandifer 16:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Precisely, Phil, and court records indicating a significant conflict of interest on the part of an author are one of the best examples I can think of of an "explicit reason to call it into question." It's become quite clear that Eichenwald had ulterior motives in everything he was doing when researching his article, so even absent a NYT retraction, it's time to remove all Eichenwald-sourced facts from this article. Radak 10:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Reracking indent Major mainstream media is not the consensus standard of Wikipedia, reliable sources is. No one advocates relying on GenerationQ for its judgment of Berry's or Eichenwald's actions, just for its reporting of the facts, backed up by primary sources establishing those same facts. We don't have to engender sourcing or OR concerns by telling the reader what to think. Laying out the facts of Berry's "retirement" from being a porn webmaster, Eichenwald's paying him $100 or more a piece for photos, and giving Berry over $3000 in total, after which Berry reinvigorates his porn sites, including making a pornographic video of himself (then 18) masturbating with a 14 year-old who I'll refer to as T. These are all facts, verifiable by both primary & secondary sources. We cannot pretend sourced facts don't exist simply to be nice to Berry. We have a primary obligation to our readers to avoid lying to them, and telling them half-truths is a form of lying. Restore the article or justify its decimation. Allow sourced facts but not unsupported opinions. If the criticism itself is part of the story, then it should be cited as "X says Y," above, but facts should stand on their own, free of quibbling or qualification. --Ssbohio 04:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Sexuality

Reading through this article, I'm getting kinda puzzled as to whether Justin Berry is actually homosexual or whether he just fell into being gay for pay. Are there any sources that deal with this? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 19:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, he does not consider himself gay and has had one of more girlfriends. I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the literature to easily find a reference for that though. The best I can find in a quick search of a newspaper archive is some testimony from the Gourlay trial:
  • In June 2002, Gourlay invited Berry to his home and sexually assaulted him, Berry said. "I remember him trying to convince me I was gay," Berry said.
But that's not clearly definitive. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 17:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Also, in the New York Times article, Berry asserts that he first went on his webcam in order to "meet girls." To be clear, I believe that his presumably authentic heterosexuality does not lessen the relation of this article to the LGBT community. Also, "gay for pay" may be an oversimplification. From his own statements in the Times and elsewhere, Berry seems to have initially been motivated by a desire for friends, rather than for money. Things changed fairly rapidly thereafter, but I think the complications of loneliness & a desire for acceptance by his father contributed to his advancement of and continuation in the world of pornography. --Ssbohio 04:44, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh, right. Can we put something in the article about that? It's something of a grey point. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 17:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Finally, a good source

[6] looks to me like it can readily be used for an actually well-done overview of the controversy here. Phil Sandifer 01:10, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Since you made your opinion the heading for this section, do you consider this to finally be a good source because it supports your view of the controversy? That's how it's most readily differentiated from the sources you denegrate. The dividing line between sources you approve of and thos you don't seems to be how well they agree with your view of the controversy. We all have to work from the same core policies here, and a source doesn't become better or worse based on how well it fits your view of the situation. --Ssbohio 15:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I was thinking it was a good source because it was from a mainstream journalistic source and provided an overview of the situation instead of an editorial screed. Phil Sandifer 16:27, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Mainstream source reliability

Considering the Times role in all this, it appears that being "in the mainstream" is no guarantee of reliability. Conversely, a source's being out of the mainstream doesn't make it unreliable, especially when it comes to matters of fact. You've raised this oblique criticism before; What's your basis for alleging unreliability on the part of another source (presumably, you speak of Counterpunch)? --Ssbohio 16:59, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

And of Debbie Nathan, an explicit advocate on issues relating to child sexuality, yes. An uninvolved mainstream source writing a general overview is preferable to a partisan source of questionable reliability written by an advocate for a particular perspective who is actively trying to advance that perspective. Phil Sandifer 17:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Should we also discount Kurt Eichenwald, since he is an "explicit advocate" when it comes to Justin Berry? Advocacy journalism is still journalism. Nathan has been published in multiple places, and has written a book published by a mainstream house. The facts are what they are. Nathan's or Eichenwald's opinion surrounding those facts doesn't make the facts they report less citable. --Ssbohio 17:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Overview

In what way does it provide an overview of the situation? It doesn't even cover all the information Eichenwald disclosed in the interview. By my reading it discusses Eichenwald's actions from Eichenwald's point of view and barely mentions any other part of the situation. It's a good source for a statement about Eichenwald's reported failure to recall being caused by his epilepsy, but I'm not seeing the overview of which you speak. --Ssbohio 16:59, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

You're joking, right? Phil Sandifer 17:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Not joking. If you could rephrase that comment, however, I'd appreciate it. --Ssbohio 17:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Gourlay beating

Why is this in the article at all? Gourlay being beaten in jail is completely immaterial and frankly not noteworthy. Jailhouse beatings are ridiculously commonplace and the only reason this one even made the paper was its timing. I am afraid, Ssbohio, that you are experiencing some symptoms of WP:OWN here. This is irrelevant information and in no way tells me anything about the subject of the article. It's prurient and tabloidesque; there is no significance to the beating. All articles should be edited ruthlessly for improvement. Send it for Good Article review, and watch the comments come in. I don't do edit wars, so won't remove this nonsense again. Risker (talk) 14:18, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Taking your points in turn:
  • You ask why is this in the article at all, yet you go on to pronounce it completely immaterial and not noteworthy without even waiting for an answer to your question. Are you interested in the answer? This article is about not only Berry, but his abusers, those he accuses of breaking the law, and the consequences all have faced. The beating is one of those consequences.
  • You speak of the commonplace nature of jailhouse beatings. Had you read the sources provided? Gourlay wasn't in the jailhouse when he was beaten. He was beaten while still at court minutes after his conviction, with one of the inmates who beat him specifically referring to his conviction as the reason for the beating. Despite all this, you describe the only reason this ... even made the paper as its timing. Can you see how that is at odds with the facts of the matter?
  • You assert that I am experiencing some symptoms of WP:OWN. I ask that you assume good faith on my part, or, at the very least, make your case instead of merely making an assertion of impropriety on my part. You objected to sourcing; I fixed the sourcing. That's not claiming ownership of the article. That's improving it in response to your criticism. Of course, you could've improved the article yourself to the same effect, so my doing it doesn't create ownership for me any more than your doing it would have for you.
  • You claim this to be irrelevant information that tells you nothing about the subject of the article, that it's prurient, tabloidesque, and has no significance, and that it is nonsense. These are all pejorative terms. Are you willing to consider that there may be another perspective other than yours, or is your mind so firmly made up as to deny even the possibility? I don't tend to describe others' contributions in pejorative, degrading ways, even if I object to them. Do likewise and there's common ground for discussion.
In your initial complaint, you had no objection to the presence of the content -- you objected strictly to the sourcing. I resolved your objection by improving the sourcing. Unsuccessful in that vein, you now advance a different argument. This article is not about Justin Berry in a vacuum. What he has done, what men like Gourlay have done to him, and the consequences therefrom are all relevant to this article. Why did you hold back your concern the first time around? It would've been easier to address the whole thing at once, rather than for you to wait until your first attempted deletion was rebuffed to raise a different objection. --Ssbohio (talk) 05:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh please. Unacceptable references mean the content goes, regardless of anything else. There was no reason for me to look further at that point, and I had no intention of researching further or continuing the discussion; it was a straight BLP-issue deletion. In fact, I had unwatched this page and wouldn't have bothered to come back except for your big to-do on my talk page.
Almost every single person convicted of child sexual abuse is beaten at some point during their custody, and indeed some are beaten to death. This guy is no different; there is nothing special about his beating. Even your own references indicate that he was beaten because of the charges he had been convicted of, not because of his association with Justin Berry specifically. The beating is not part of Justin Berry's history, it it is part of Gourlay's history - thus, it is irrelevant to Berry, who is the subject of this article. This is the article about Justin Berry, not the article about people who have been beaten while incarcerated for abusing children; I wouldn't have any intellectual objection to the latter article provided it was properly sourced, but there really isn't a connection between the two. Risker (talk) 14:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
If you don't believe the material is relevant, than you should edit the article to that effect. I disagree with you on that point, and I've given you a detailed rationale as to why. Gourlay wasn't in custody for any reason other than his unlawful sexual contact with Berry; He was beaten because of his conviction on crimes against Berry, a conviction largely based on Berry's testimony. The connection is as linear as it gets. However, the point is a minor one in the larger story, and removing it on content grounds is certainly within your purview. All I said on your talk page is that, instead of deleting what you saw as poorly sourced content, you could've taken the 10 minutes I did and improve it instead. It's a general point, not one specifically about this article. It's easier to destroy than to build; That doesn't make destruction a better choice. --Ssbohio (talk) 15:26, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I am inclined to agree - Gourlay's misfortunes in jail do not have any relevance to Berry. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
You are inclined, as usual Phil, to ignore me except when you have a chance to cast your lot against my approach to this article. You deleted almost 700 contributions from this article's history, with no declared factual basis for doing so. I've been asking you for months to tell me what specifically you objected to in this article, so I could work on it within your personal bounds of acceptability. Unfortunately, I've only been met by your silent derision. Why the double standard when it comes to replying here? --Ssbohio (talk) 05:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Your non sequitur arguments in cases like this do little to make me think you're interested in improving the article, and I see little to add to my past objections - insufficiently reliable sources were being used. You have yet to persuade me that Debbie Nathan (redacted), writing in a questionably reliable publication constitutes a sufficiently reliable source for the sorts of accusations that were being reported. Now - how is this beating relevant to the biography of Justin Berry? Phil Sandifer (talk) 13:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
How is my argument a non sequitur? I addressed Risker's points and questioned your use of a double standard with regard to this article and me. You deleted 700 revisions. You've steadfastly refused to identify the factual substance of the problem with those revisions. Surely, you're not suggesting that they are all tainted by the use of Debbie Nathan as a source (as they predate any reference to her at all)? Further, you make a sucrrilous accusation against Nathan without evidence. That's hardly sporting. Then, you accuse the publication of questionable reliability, again without evidence. Lastly, you ask how this beating is relevant. I've explained the relevance above. That's more than I can say for your history deletion. If you provided me one fact to support your action, I'd fall off my chair. I've been asking for months, only to get more argument & innuendo, rather than fact, from you. The mind boggles to consider upon which flights of fancy you'd've based your ArbCom decisions. You've been a steadfast defender of Berry's POV in this article, to the exclusion of those facts that don't fit your prejudices. If you have facts, bring them. Facts are the stock in trade here, not the opinions of an imperious administrator. --Ssbohio (talk) 15:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
This is not an article about the general Justin Berry scandal - it is a biography on one participant in the scandal. It should not be used as a coatrack for concerns outside of the biographical facts in the life of Justin Berry. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:35, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
One biographical fact of Berry's life is that he accused a man of having unlawful sexual contact with him, an accusation which resulted in the man's conviction and subsequently being beaten severely enough to require hospital treatment. However, since you're advancing the novel hypothesis that this article isn't about the only notable area of Berry's life, what article title would you suggest? It seems like a question of nomenclature, the way you put it. Also, you still haven't answered me. I'd appreciate if you did. --Ssbohio (talk) 16:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems less like Berry's accusation against Gourlay led to the beating so much as Gourlay's having unlawful sexual contact with Berry. And I have no new answers - the Nathan sources are not, by our standards, reliable. Other sources have been mentioned in the past few months that would be reliable accounts of the incident instead of using Nathan's articles. I do not owe to you further explanation. If you continue to object to my deletion, take it to AN/I, RFC, RFAr, or some other forum of dispute resolution. I'm tired of your insinuations and personal attacks here - take it to a meaningful dispute resolution or stop. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Your first point fails the "but for" test. If all that had happened was that Gourlay had sex with Berry 2 months before his 16th birthday, there would have been no arrest, no trial, no guilty finding, and (presumably) no beating.
You had no old answers either, Phil, only opinions and vague concerns. It's your obligation as an administrator to explain your actions. You've stated that the prior revisions violated BLP, but you've continually refused to say how, in fact, they did so. If you won't back up your assertions with facts, then withdraw your assertions.
As for the Nathan sources, your saying they're not reliable isn't the same as their not being reliable. You accuse Nathan (redacted) without backing your accusation up with one fact. By a plain reading of WP:RS, CounterPunch and Nathan are both reliable sources. I can't sit on my hands forever hoping that you'll specify what, particularly you object to, so I can address or avoid it.
Concerning what you "owe me," you don't owe any of us anything. However, if you want to administer this project, you should be willing to specify what you object to so we can move on. Until then, you could call any editing I do a recreation of the material you deleted & revert it on sight. How does that serve the project?
It's interesting that you consider me to be making insinuations and personal attacks. What am I supposed to think when I gove you multiple opportunities to answer any of my questions, only to be met by cold silence. You won't even tell me whether you've read the Nathan articles, much less what your specific objections are. I'm at the point where the only conclusion I can draw is that you don't actually have specific objections, but rather vague assertions designed to delay and deny any meaningful expansion of this article. If you deny that, then come forward with facts. I'm not asking for the moon. --SSBohio 22:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


I agree that Gourday being beaten up has no place in this article, sex offenders often get beaten up in prison, and while lamentable it has nothing to do with the sex offenders victims. Thanks, SqueakBox 18:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Please, if you don't read the sources, at least read what I wrote here, Squeak. He wasn't in prison when he was beaten up, and it's notable because his attacker disclosed the motive for the attack, a motive intrinsically linked to Berry's testimony. As I said, it's a minor point, and I won't weep to see it removed, but at least read the sources. --SSBohio 22:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Why was Gourlay beaten

(unindent) SSB, you are completely missing our point. Gourlay was beaten because he was accused and convicted of having sex with a minor. The name of the minor is completely irrelevant; in fact, he was convicted of having sex with *two* minors, so one could just as easily say he was beaten up for having sex with the other boy. Such events are unfortunately commonplace, and they happen at every step of the custodial cycle; exactly where he was in that cycle is also immaterial. Justin Berry did not cause Gourlay to be beaten up. Risker (talk) 22:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I've twice agreed that you have a defensible position in removing the sentence about Gourlay's beating from the article based on your view of its relevance. Short of removing it myself, I'm not sure what more I can do. Gourlay was beaten because he was in a cell with someone who had no reservations about beating him. Whatever else Gourlay did, he wasn't sentenced to be beaten and hospitalized, but to be imprisoned. As far as your assertion that one could just as easily say he was beaten up for having sex with the other boy, one could only say that if one were entirely unconcerned with the facts. He was beaten following the Berry verdict, not following any other verdict. His assailant specifically referred to this conviction as the reason for the beating.
Also, to quote your latest provocative statement, you are completely missing my point. The beating is relevant to this article because but for Berry's actions, none of the subsequent actions in this case would have happened, including the beating. That doesn't make the beating his fault any more than it makes the beating Gourlay's fault; To assert that it does is to argue a flawed position. No matter what you or I may think of Ken Gourlay, Berry's role in his conviction is notable.  :Whether a detail like the beating is relevant is a matter of editorial discretion, not a foregone conclusion. We each can have a perspective on the question without either of us being wrong. I think the detail warrants inclusion, but I don't think it's important enough to dispute over. This all started with a complaint about sourcing, and my initial point was only that the sourcing could have been improved without deleting the content, as I did. --SSBohio 23:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
It should also be noted that Berry had responded to the beating by saying this:

"In no way do I condone what happened to Ken Gourlay on Friday. It is unfortunate when anyone is hurt. Ken Gourlay has personally hurt me, and other children. It is nice to know he is gone for the next while, and cannot hurt anymore children. Ken Gourlay is a dangerous child molester and needs to be watched for the rest of his life." - Justin Berry http://www.justinberry.info/

Can this be included to justify the reference? A picture of Gourlay with two black eyes taken after the beating can be found on the sex offender registry as well (not sure if they're "public domain" or what have you). 66.111.51.110 (talk) 09:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
It may, in a general sense, bear noting, but whether or not the beating itself is notable is the real question, and I'm not sure that Berry's statement makes a large enough difference to that question to win over those who oppose its inclusion. Whether the beating is notable in this article is legitimately a question that can be argued either way. I think it's notable enough for inclusion as is, and I think Berry's public statement on the matter is likewise notable. Others do not. It's an issue that's more "shades of gray" than "black & white."
Were I to include it, I'd write that, Responding to Gourlay's conviction, Berry released a statement, saying that "Ken Gourlay has personally hurt me, and other children. It is nice to know he is gone for the next while, and cannot hurt anymore children. Ken Gourlay is a dangerous child molester and needs to be watched for the rest of his life." Referring to GOurlay's beating immediately after his conviction, Berry said "In no way do I condone what happened to Ken Gourlay on Friday. It is unfortunate when anyone is hurt." Whether this will pass muster with the pro-Berry editors is an open question, but it's a t least sympathetic to him without being overly sympathetic to Gourlay. --SSBohio 19:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)