Talk:Save Our Species Alliance

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This article was nominated for deletion on 12 February 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

this article is biased. In particular, the following uses unsourced weasel words:

"It has been criticized by environmentalists as a front group for wealthy cattle and timber interests which consider Federal environmental legislation an impediment to profit. Attempting to give the appearance of a grassroots organization makes the SOSA web site an example of Astroturfing, an increasingly common phenomena wherein a formal public relations project deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. (the word "grassroots" is mentioned no less than five times on the SOSA "Take Action Now" page)."

The first sentence is more objectionable than the second, and although possibly true, we aren't given any background as to why these anonymous insults might be true. What did the group really want? Nssdfdsfds 00:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it uses weasel words, but it's not beyond repair. The following text, cut from the intro, is key:

It has been criticized by environmentalists as a front group for wealthy cattle and timber interests which consider Federal environmental legislation an impediment to profit. Attempting to give the appearance of a grassroots organization makes the SOSA web site an example of Astroturfing.

We just need to say WHY environmentalists called it a front group - or at least QUOTE a specific environmentalist, or even a blogger. Like Joe Schmoe of The Smog Blog called SOSA a "front group" for timber interests. ^{[citation needed]}

Still better would be to tell HOW (rather than asserting THAT) it attempts to give the appearance of a grassroots organization. Otherwise, it's probably enought to say that it calls itself a grassroots organization but that some say^[who?] it's not representative of the masses at all. --Uncle Ed 21:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, why not just copy the SourceWatch entry verbatim? Their stuff is all GFDL isn't it? --Uncle Ed 21:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the content Ed unsurprisingly chose to remove rather than find proper sources, which took all of 5 minutes, and I've attributed the views and added the sources. FeloniousMonk 22:46, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Is that a personal criticism? I hope not, because that would be uncivil. I do not have ready access to the same sources you have. We should work together for NPOV.

It is, I believe a Wikipedia guideline, to use the Wikipedia:text move technique rather than simply deleting problematic text. I notice that several articles I've tagged with {attrib} or {weasel word} got fixed quickly, as well. This is the purpose: to get the article fixed!

I'm not concerned with what the article says today, so much as next month and the rest of the year. So many of our articles on politics or politically controversial environmental and scientific issues are sloppy and/or one-sided.

But the corrections you made improved the article, for which I thank you. Often you can do in 5 minutes what I don't seem to be able to manage even in 1 hour. --Uncle Ed 02:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)