Talk:Lousewies van der Laan

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I noticed that you removed reference that I inserted in the article Lousewies van der Laan. References are demanded by Wikipedia policies. Besides it has been my experience that contents without references are removed by other contributors. Please do not again remove references. Thanks. Andries 19:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

(I moved Andries' comment on my talk-page here, so it could be a more open discussion.) Andries, I am aware of wikipedia-policy endorsing references, but there are five reasons not to include these references here
1) they are unnecessary and irrelevant: it is not contentious, disputed or likely to be challenged that Van Der Laan is married or has a child. It does not concern specific quotes;
2) the pages references are in Dutch, this is an English wikipedia;
3) the references concern the most trivial facts of Van Der Laan's political carreer. Things that might have merited a reference are switch from European to Dutch politics or her appointment to the position of party leader;
4) the references were part of an edit that was not laid out very well (there was a full stop in the middle of sentence for example);
5) the articles cited are not relevant further reading, the facts referenced are not the primary subject of the referenced texts, but are mentioned as side notes.
Furthermore, I personally would like to see the reference to Van Der Laan's husband removed. The are unnecessary intrusions into the personal life of a politician's family. Van Der Laan's husband is not a public figure. The strange name of Van Der Laan's child and the fact that she is combining politics and parenthood is relevant.
One last note, mentioning that Van Der Laan's husband was interviewed by government paid site is irrelevant and tendentious.
I hope that this convinces you that I removed the reference after some thoughtful deliberation. C mon 19:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
ad 1. Irrelevant. References are recommended for all statements. The fact that other statements are not referenced is something that is still to be done
ad 2. That is why I made a translation as per the Wikipedia policy Wikipedia:verifiability Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Sources_in_languages_other_than_English
ad 3. Irrelevant. References are recommended for all statements.
ad 4. Then improve. Please do not remove
ad 5. So what? Statements have to be referenced.
The reason why I wrote that Hesseling was interviewed by a Dutch government sponsored website is because I thought and still think that this helps the reader to assess the credibility of the website. (It is not just a personal homepage that are considered not a good source in Wikipedia)
Andries 20:22, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I fully admit that the reference section is completely unbalanced, but this is not solved by removing referencing but by adding references to other statements. Andries 20:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
First of all, references are not recommended for ALL statements otherwise one paragraph of this article should have looked like this:
In 1999 she became head of the D66 list[1] for the European Elections. She became chairwoman of the parliamentary party and member of the parliamentary party board of the ELDR[2]. In the European Parliament she was active on a range of issue focusing on civil liberties, environmental affairs, budget and foreign affairs. In the European Parliament she was vice-chairwoman of the Committee on Budget Control between 1999 and 2002[3], vice-chairwoman of the Committee on Liberties and Civil Rights, Justice and Home Affairs between 2002 and 2003[4]. She was member of the Committee on the Rights of the Woman and Equal Chances between 1999 and 2003[5], the delegation for relations with the Palestinian Authority between 1999 and 2002. Between 1999 and 2002 she was a substitute for the Committee on Environmental Protection, Public Health and Consumers' Policy and a substitute for the delegation for relations with Slovakian Republic[6]. Between 2002 and 2003 she was a substitute for the Budget Committee[7]. She founded the Intergroup on Food Safety, the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform[8].
1) Most of these references are unnecessary and superfluous. The Wikipedia:Citing sources states: "If you add any information to an article, particularly if it's contentious or likely to be challenged, you should supply a source." (italics mine) The information is not contentious.
2) There is no short article about a non-anglosaxon politician which has more than one, if any references. Sadly your argument lacks precedents.
3) You did not answer my point that this involves the personal life a politician and therefore should not be part of wikipedia. Should we mention the names of the spouses of all non-anglosaxon politicians (again doing that would lack precedents). Or include other trivial facts about their private life: whether they smoke, what the name of their not-public family is, (their fathers, siblings, mothers), whether use cocaine, if they had pleasant youth, whether they practice extra-marital sex? I think not. Wikipedia should not be filled with useless trivia, and politicians have right to some private life.
Please show me precedents for your referencing (biographies of politicians which are as small and have one or more reference), and convince me, but for now you dispute the relevance of my argument against the relevance of your references. Is this a very relevant argument?.
C mon 10:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I do not understand why the fact that she is non Anglo-Saxon and that the biography is still short is relevant for this dispute. The article Tony Blair which is a Featured article mentions the name of his wife. So why not for this politician? An article in which I am involved has the same format of referencing that I thought was a scholarly and scientific standard. See list of charismatic leaders, Sathya Sai Baba Andries 17:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I do not think that there is anything anymore left to discuss between us and I think that we are not coming a millimeter closer. You can ask a wikipedia:request for comments if you want. Andries 17:28, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Four things:first I don't think that this merits RfC yet; second the level of sophistication of biographies of non-anglosaxon politicians, when compared to anglosaxon ones (by the way Mrs Blair is a public figure and she accepts that and acts accordingly, the wife of Menzies Campbell, the English counterpart of Van Der Laan, is not mentioned on her wiki); third the articles you have given as precedent were heavily disputed, thus meriting sources; and fourth if you give some precedents I'm willing to adopt your position, just give me one, and I'm willing to move those millimeters. C mon 18:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
  1. It is basically irrelevant that this biography is not sophisticated. Sophistication in Wikipedia is obtained by accepting that some parts are temporarily well or over-developed (such as in this case the references for the trivia section), not by cutting down or removing well-developed parts. Other parts will develop naturally to a sophisticated level. Andries 11:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  2. Dennis Hesseling is a member of D66 too and not just a husband who wants to lead a private life. See here for example in Dutch Andries 11:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  3. All articles sould mention sources, not just heavily disputed articles.(It is true that I come from a background of having my edits challenged and as a consequence I developed the habit of providing sources.) It is heavily recommended by the policies to mention sources. In contrast, removing references and sources, such as you do, is in not in any way endorsed by policy and guidelines, at least not that I am aware of. If you think that this is recommended by policies and guidelines then please show me these policies and guidelines. Thanks Andries 11:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
You're right this discussion is getting nowhere. I propose some sort of compromise. (1) We keep the references, but delete the reference section at the bottom, taking the lead from the Rita Verdonk article. (2) Also we both we seek atleast two references to outside articles, making the referencing less lobsided, atleast one of which proves that Van Der Laan is indeed married to Hesselink (of which I can find no prove). Offcourse my terms are debatable. C mon 21:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
The formatting of the references in the article Rita Verdonk is not endorsed by Wikipedia guidelines as far as I am aware. I added a reference for the name of Hesseling as you requested. Andries 21:37, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I do not see the problem with the way I provided references. Some other biographies have exactly the same format of referencing only many more. See e.g. Prem Rawat.21:40, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I will make a request for comments, because we have not come and probably will not come a millimeter closer even if we contineu to discuss this dispute for a hundred years. Andries 21:43, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the reference! That last reference includes all information of that trivia-bullet. Could we atleast agree to put only one reference for that bullet? C mon 12:15, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
This is very unusual. In all articles that I am involved in, contributors request and demand references and here a contributor requests and demands that the references are removed. I am a bit confused. :) Andries 21:11, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] RFC

Hi there, came in through an RFC.

Kind of a relief, cause most of the other RFCs are discussing whether to use the term "terrorist" or "Islamofascist", so consider yourselves relatively lucky :-)

Anyways, about references. I've always learned that, when in doubt, it is usually better to add things to an article rather than remove them. The same applies here. The Wikipedia:Citing sources guidelines clearly state that you should use sources whenever possible, especially when you think such information might be contested. Now I know it will hardly be contested (perhaps that the kids name is Helix - I always thought that name was silly), but again, why remove information when it could be useful even 2% of the time. Thats a good enough score IMHO.

Then about the relevance. Family members of famous people have always also attracted some attention. Although I agree with you that we shouldnt want to dig too deep into their life, soe degree of primary information certainly seems warranted; age, studies, job, that kind of thing. In fact you'd have a hard time stamping these things out of the wiki, for example, the artivle of (Random article) Sacha Baron Cohen mentions his father has a shop in Piccadilly. Should that be removed? If you ask me, no.

Only remove stuff when it clearly violates policy (NPOV). Otherwise, just leave it in.

Cheers, The Minister of War (Peace) 07:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Andries Editing Of Relative's Article

To maintain transparency, Lousewies van der Laan is Andries cousin, by his own admission [1] [2] SSS108 talk-email 14:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please do not remove references

Now the references for the name of her husband has been removed without any explanation on the talk page. Removing references has been done many times on this article without ANY support from wikipedia policies and guidelines. If you think that removing references is fine then I think you deserve to be banned from Wikipedia for disruption. I am losing my patience with it. Please restore references. Thanks. Andries 18:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

In re-integrating the "new trivia section" (now called "Family background") I was forced to remove the reference to her husband, since I was unable to find the year they were married, and since the article is written chronologically, it made no sense to include a reference to her husband. As you removed the fact that she is a vegetarian from the article, when you moved & renamed the "trivia section". BTW not that in your favored example, Tony Blair, Cherie does not merit a reference either.
I'm sorry if that upsets you and please feel free to put the reference in yourself.
But please remain civil! And please do not make demands or threats against other users.
I think the fact that you are loosing patience, is a good example of why people should edit articles about people to close to home. Simple wikipedia rules like neutral point of view are in danger of being broken.
C mon 18:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your explanation, but I think I have all the rights to lose patience after references have been removed so many times from this article in violation of policies and guidelines. I do have the right to demand that you follow policies and guidelines and I do have the right to make the threat that you deserve to be banned if you repeatedly after several warnings continue to break policies and guidelines. Andries 18:28, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the references on only a few occassion, in February during the edit war, before the RfC. In the edit war after the RfC, in August, I did not interfere until people started to create sections that go in against a common style of Dutch politicians.
So please do make threats against me. Finally I would like to point your attention to the civility guideline. Which for instance includes among the more serious examples of uncivil behaviour: "Calling for bans or blocks". C mon 18:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no policy or guideline Wikipedia:Dutch politicians. You repeatedly violated Wikipedia:verifiability and Wikipedia:cite your sources in spite of a warning and in spite of an RFC. Andries 18:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
By the way I do not agree with your characterization of the section Family background as a "new trivia section". I consider a section Family background perfectly acceptable. Andries 09:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Your forgot your third reference I included it for you. C mon 19:01, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chronological but not logical

The section political life now mentions her marriage and family life. This strikes me as wrong. I noticed that the same structure has been used for several Dutch politicians, but I think the Tony Blair structure is more natural and logical i.e. a separate section for personal background. Andries 19:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that a brief mention of a politician's private life (that she is married, and has children) is reasonable to mention in her article. If she were to become a major party leader would her husband attend state functions? Would her children attend any politics related activities? If the answer to either question is in any way shape or form, "yes", then some mention of family is acceptable.
There are a few politicians who successfully leave their families right out of their political lives. But from my observation of current affairs this is increasingly rare. Garrie 04:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Got" a son?

The article mentions that Ms van der Laan and her husband "got" a son. Did the son come about in the usual way? Was the kid adopted (or possibly kidnapped)? "Got a son" is an awkward and confusing construction in English, and I'd like to fix it. (disclaimer: this is not to disparage the language skills of any Dutch person who can write in English). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dukeofomnium (talk • contribs) 16:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC).