Talk:Marshalltown, Iowa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Iowa, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Iowa. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale.
Additional information: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Note: Use the "B-Class-n=" parameters to evaluate the article. Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked

	It is requested that a photograph or photographs be included in this article to improve its quality. Wikipedians in Iowa may be able to help!
	The Free Image Search Tool (FIST) may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.

[edit] Bias over Swift raid, racial conflicts, etc.

I removed the entire paragraph covering the crackdown on illegal workers at the Swift plant. It was heavily biased, and while it is understandable that the raid did negatively affect many people in the community, the article needs to remain unbiased and professional. Even though the paragraph was constructed to appear factual and relevent, if it gets reinserted again it needs to be free of opinion. This isn't an editorial; the moral and political issues are completely up to the reader, we just give them the facts.Wingman1331 01:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I restored the deleted section. Better to edit the section for accuracy, and add information, than to delete wholesale an entire section of sourced factual material. (Incidentally, as far as I can tell, there is no material in the section reguarding any racial conflict within the Marshalltown community. The conflicts referred to in the article per se seem to be between some Marshalltown residents and federal agencies involved in the raid.) --Ramsey2006 00:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I guess it's more how the section is phrased; to me it sounds like something out of a newspaper rather than encyclopedia. In particular, the line that stands out is the "the baby refuses to eat" sentence. I wouldn't have said anything about the rest of the section if it hadn't been for that line, because as soon as I read that I immediately assumed that the author was attempting to make an emotional appeal, and then I couldn't help but read the rest of the section with an eye for bias. I understand that it is all sourced material, but it just seems to not fit in with the article, and in turn with all the the other Project Iowa articles on cities. However, I have no problem with it staying; I'll take a look at the sources and try to find a more encyclopedic way of phrasing it, and possibly try to balance it out by adding a line or two about why the government decided to crack down on illegal workers so we can get both sides of the issue covered. Wingman1331 20:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The subsequent paragraphs (after the initial, reasonably factual opening paragraph) go beyond the stated purpose of the subsection to describe "Marshalltown in the news." They basically channel a series of one-sided human interest stories, all of which flow from the raid on Dec. 12.Ottoump 17:46, 20 July 2007 (UTC)