Talk:Kevin Zeese

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 7 July 2006. The result of the discussion was redirect to Maryland United States Senate election, 2006. The decision was appealed through the deletion review process on July 14th. As a result of that discussion, the article was restored on July 19th .

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[edit] POV

This page is cleary sided in favor of Zeese, calling his campaign "unique in Maryland history" etc. --tomf688{talk} 20:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I think I've given the article a neutral POV at this point, but I'm relatively new to this practice and so didn't want to remove the tag. I personally don't even know who Zeese is, but linked here from the community portal for something to do.
I also considerably altered and cleaned up the article, and removed the "cleanup" tag as I think it looks quite good now. I did tag it for lack of references as well. - Dharmabum420 07:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
To clarify, I understand that Zeese's campaign is unique in Maryland history in that he will attempt to appear three times on the ballot as the Green, Libertarian and Populist candidate. The article looks fine w.r.t. NPOV; I'll remove the tag. Lafuerzasindical 17:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Added this page to the 2006 Maryland elections category. robbblack 15:59, 25, January 2006

[edit] Don't delete this page

Someone has suggested deleting this page. The page is accurate. The subject, Kevin Zeese, is running for United States Senate. Many people will see his name on bumper stickers or lawn signs, or a reference to him in a news account, and want to learn more, and will naturally come to Wikipedia. Zeese is not someone who simply announced a political candidacy as an act of vanity. Zeese is a public figure and a person of public interest. He is a lawyer who has litigated important cases. He is a public intellectual whose commentary is regularly published in a wide variety of media.

The suggestion that his wikipedia page be deleted smells of an effort to limit the ability of the interested public in learning more about a figure who is articulately and effectively challengig the political establishment.—Preceding unsigned comment added by EricSterling (talk • contribs)

[edit] Auto, OR, and POV issues from the AfD

I see the article is back from the dead... I still have the concerns (WP:AUTO, WP:OR, and WP:POV for your reference) from the AfD, specifically, that the IPs of the subject, his son, and some coworkers were revealed. The history shows:

— RevRagnarok Talk Contrib Reverts 16:41, 19 July 2006 (UTC) (Who, coincidentally, is a Libertarian from Maryland who was accused of being part of a left wing conspiracy in the AfD)

Then perhaps you should start editing to remove uncitable claims and otherwise improve the article yourself until your concerns are eased. Conspiracy babble doesn't really get us anywhere. Fearwig 21:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Fearwig, you may be misunderstanding RR, who changed his vote to Keep in the original AfD, and is saying that he was accused of being part of a conspiracy, not that that a conspiracy existed. I think we're all agreed ("we" being the reasonable folks here at the discussion) that the article severely lacks sourcing, and that opens all sorts of possibilities of inappropriate content. On the other hand, while the list of things Zeese has done is lengthy, none of them are that grandiose (and I removed one claim, discussed below, for lack of proof, earlier today).
Unfortunately, we may all be busy people who have higher priorities than chasing down sources and doing copyedist of what, to be blunt, probably isn't really that important an article. John Broughton 00:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The page is back?

Why was the AfD decision overturned? What is DRV? Surely with ongoing POV concerns the redirect should be re-enabled? BlueValour 16:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

See the 'back from the dead' link above. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib Reverts 16:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
As I mentioned to BlueValour, changing a redirect back into an article is a normal editorial decision that doesn't require any administrator action. For example, if this article were deleted, an administrator is required to undelete the article. Since I merely redirected the article, any editor can come along, go to the article history, and restore the article. For the record, I have no problem with this, because a redirect is just a specific "Keep" action. This talk page would actually be a better way to determine overall consensus for the article as to whether it should be kept or redirected. AfD is to determine whether an article is deleted or not deleted. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:26, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I am surprised that as the AfD proposer I was not alerted to this DRV so I could take part in the debate. BlueValour 17:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, DRV is a review of the closing admin's actions. Even the closing admin often isn't notified of these things. I started notifying admins a little while back, but I don't think it's necessary to notify the AfD nominator, as the DRV is a review of the AfD closure, not the nomination itself. --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect or article?

I made a point in both the initial AfD and the subsequent review that I don't believe have been responded to and that goes to the heart of the matter. (To be more exact, it was responded to, but with what turned out to be a mistaken argument.) Perhaps those who believe a redirect is appropriate could comment on it? John Broughton 19:14, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

And the point was? trialsanderrors 11:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm ... that would explain why no one responded to it, here. The point was that a google search on Kevin Zeese returns over 200,000 results; since he's a minor candidate, these are obviously mostly about the other parts of his career. 200,000 ghits is a pretty strong indicator of notability. John Broughton 16:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing down the article

I trimmed down the political career section to an acceptable level. The middle part needs trimming too and the intro line should probably be about his career in drugs. If we can't get this to stick because of POV pushing a second AfD might be in order. Also, three of the links were dead. ~ trialsanderrors 11:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

And I put the section back, and more. There is now a total of ONE paragraph (six lines) that talks about what his campaign is about (issues/positions). That is the absolute minimum (in my opinion) needed for a reader to get a sense of what he is arguing for. It would be POV only if there were a LOT more.
The rest of the section on his political career consists of one paragraph discussing his involvement in several campaigns, and two paragraphs about the process of getting on the ballot in the 2006. All of the rest of the section is clearly factual, brief, and NPOV.
There is no question that the article is unbalanced (political career versus everything else). But the solution is to add more about the rest of his life, NOT to shorten the political section. In other words, an unbalanced article with the right amount of info about one thing and too little about another is preferable to a balanced article with too little information about everything. For the former, editors can easily add more. For the latter, an editor who wants to add more would, in theory, have to add to all aspects of the subject to avoid imbalance, which is VERY demanding.
Also, the citypaper link was dead because of an extra / at the end. I'm moving it to the campaign article.
Finally, the "main" link to the campaign article seems a bit odd because, in fact, there is less about Zeese there than in his article. But I'm not willing to get into a fight in the campaign article about the "right" amount of coverage for a minor party candidate; and the campaign article DOES contain more info on the campaign than in the Zeese article. So I believe the link should be left as is - this is the format for the candidates in all of the other 33 Senate races this year (most of which I've edited). John Broughton 16:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Broughton's statements in part, but there's more to it than that--the political is really more important, at least right now. Wikipedians tend too much to the biographical, anecdotal, not enough to the issues, when it comes to covering politicians past and present. That doesn't mean you should strip the biogrpahical information, as it's quite useful, but you definitely shouldn't remove the political information just to make it look "balanced"! As a candidate for US Senate (even one unlikely to win), it makes sense that a great deal of the article would cover his politics and his participation in the race in general. I could see the information being scaled back after November, but until then it is very, very useful, more useful than anything else in the article to most people who would put Kevin Zeese into the search field.
More importantly, there is rarely such a thing as "too much information" about a candidate for a national office, even a third party candidate, and I usually find it very difficult to believe absolute political neutrality in the motivations of those who make that claim. I'm not a Zeese supporter, but ready access to information about candidates is part of a healthy democracy. Wikipedia is a great forum for "objective" candidate information (tentative statement), something that's very hard to find otherwise--in that sense it provides a great service. Certainly this is a better use of Wikipedia than a great, great number of the articles out there (see: List of fictional universes, List of left-handed people whose names include the letter "r", ad nauseam), and I think one should be damned hard-pressed to prove why such an article shouldn't exist, or why it should have perfectly useful information stripped from it. Excuse my rant, but it seems there are a number of people who think just that. Fearwig 21:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tulia story

I can't find any sources for Zeese's involvement in the Tulia story. The story itself has been extensively covered, but looking at major and regional news sources, I found only one mention of Zeese in passing, bottom of the article. Some of the drug war protesters met with representatives for Bush before the conference, said Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy. Zeese said he hopes it will initiate a prompt dialogue with Bush, especially as the presidential election nears. Austin American-Statesman (Texas)September 30, 2000. I don't know how that qualifies as "bringing national attention to". Was he a lawyer for the defense? ~ trialsanderrors 18:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I've deleted the text, based on your research. At this point, it's up to someone else who wants to add the info back into the article to provide a source for it. John Broughton 16:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)independence mean sto be

[edit] AfD template

It is essential that this remains at the top of the page since this is where editors would check for it if, for example, they decide to renominate this article. This is consistent with all other AfD results. BlueValour 17:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I've added information so that editors who are considering renominating the article for deletion can see the full results of the process. John Broughton 19:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Nice move! BlueValour 20:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)