Talk:United States Senate election in New Jersey, 2006

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[edit] POV Editors -- Kean Jr Campaign Members Editing This Page

RobbyKyer is definitely from the Kean Jr. campaign. His IP address (see the page history for his IP address) is the same as the one used by Kean Jr. campaign headquarters to send out emails. This has been shown in the NY Times and NJ Star-Ledger. See here: http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2542

This article has a problem with anonymous editors, and single issue editors such as RobbyKyer, inserting only POV propaganda against unfavored targets. Check their contributions, they contribute only to articles that harm Bob Menendez. Abe Froman 17:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Allegations against menendez

Editorials are meant to show opinion and therefore it is not fact so these citations are null. Get news articles and the allegations are good.


[edit] Polls

Having polls grouped together by institution is confusing and does not make sense. Polls should be listed by date only unless you want to make an extra section for "by institution".

[edit] Spadea is NOT a candidate.

See for yourself: www.billspadea.com

69.39.172.3 09:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please refrain from deleting cited information

All information under "Attacks on Menendez's character" are CITED and SOURCED in mainstream newspapers. While you may not like the quotes, the public has the right to see what newspapers are saying.

Please refrain from deleting cited and true material from this article.

--RobbyKyer (from Kean Jr. campaign) 15:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Politics NJ Is Not a Reliable Source

re: RobbyKyer's contributions: Citations in the hatchet-job section of the article rely on a blind link to an advertisement on a political blog, www.politicsnj.com . This does not meet the conditions set in WP:CITE and WP:RS. Passages anchored by politicsnj should be removed because they are not cited correctly, and the source is unknown and unreliable. Abe Froman 15:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Why not? politicsnj.com is not a blog by definition, and because it has a seperate editor, hired reporters, and lawyers it certainly meets WP:RS. The only part of it that is a blog, is the Inside Edge column - that link should be removed and the fact re-sourced. Virtually every campaign in the state submits its press releases to politicsnj, and has them hosted there. As an archive of actual sources, I see no reason not to use politicsnj as a resource for factual information. --Jim Miller 21:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NYTimes opinion articles used as fact

re: RobbyKyer's contributions: Three citations on the hatchet-job section of the article use The New York Times op-ed page as fact. This is not in accordance with WP:RS, so the passages should be marked as opinions or removed. Abe Froman 15:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hatchet Job

The hatchet job op-ed quotes against Menendez were condensed into a single paragraph, but anon's have seen fit to restore the unwieldly and clearly biased passage. The previous condensed version was superior, and easily readable. It should be restored. Abe Froman 16:05, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] restoring quotes

Just because you dislike what mainstream newspapers and newssources say about Bob Menendez does not mean you have the right to hide it from the public. All quotes are cited and sourced.

If you feel it is biased, add your own cited quotes in favor of Menendez, but refrain from deleting the sourced quotes I posted.

--RobbyKyer (from Kean Jr. campaign) 17:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The quotes are unrelated to each other, blatantly POV, and do not belong as 20% of the article's content. Clean it up, before I do. Abe Froman 17:15, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV passage removal (again)

I have removed the POV passage until the www.politicsnj.com quotations are properly cited, with one click to the material. Currently the click goes to politicsnj.com alone. This violates Wikipedia:Citation. The passage was also removed because throwing random quotations up on the page does not make an article. I tried to integrate the quotations into a coherent paragraph, but POV editors insist on damaging the article by reinserting the random quote chaos. Address these two issues, politicsnj.com citation and quote integration, before restoring this tendentious material. Abe Froman 15:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
The quotations must be integrated into a coherent paragraph instead of the current stochastic laundry hit list. Take a shot at it. Abe Froman 15:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unbalanced criticism

If Kean operative RobbyKyer insists on including these unsubstantiated calumnies against Menendez, he (if not the Wikipedia community at large) is also duty-bound to provide relevant criticisms of Kean, perhaps relating to the latter's inexperience, media evasion, poverty of ideas, etc. As presently constituted, the article clearly violates the undue weight provision of Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, and I recommend flagging the article until the situation is satisfactorily resolved. --PWilson 17:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree - if you can find cited and sourced criticisms of Kean (good luck) then by all means go right ahead and post them. --RobbyKyer (from Kean Jr. campaign) 19:50, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

RobbyKyer- Removing a non-NPOV tag without effecting any substantive changes to remedy the situation is shameful and audacious. Users like you undermine Wikipedia's credibility as an unimpeachable source of encyclopedic authority. You're benefitting from the negligence of more senior editors, but if you persist in hijacking and converting this page into an organ of the Kean campaign, appropriate action will be taken. --PWilson 23:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

If you wish to make the article more balanced, add your own quotes, don't delete the one's already there. It isn't my problem that the only thing people can find are quotes exposing Menendez's dirty past. And though it might surprise you, I have nothing to do with the Kean campaign - I'm just a New Jersey citizen who is feed up with Democrats lying to us, and I have broken no wikipedia rules by posting substantiated and perfectly cited material. --RobbyKyer (from Kean Jr. campaign) 14:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Failure to maintain NPOV

We all have an obligation to ensure that all articles, and this one in particular, are written with a neutral point of view. This means providing balance on both sides of an issue, not merely adding material that supports your own point of view or removing material that contradicts your perspective. Writing in NPOV regarding an issue that you feel strongly about is incredibly difficult. But, to quote from WP:NPOV, "Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikipedia principle which states that all articles must be written from a neutral point of view, that is, they must represent views fairly and without bias." It's hard to argue that either RobbyKyer or Abe Froman (among other editors) are complying with this regulation. And don't claim that one side is neutral but the other is the problem; this is a bi-partisan violation. We all need to take a step back and read WP:NPOV before starting another cycle of partisan edits. Alansohn 15:08, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I just edited the paragraph in question to be NPOV. How much you want to bet the POV laundry list will return within an hour? Abe Froman 15:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree even more. A list is much more clear than a vague paragraph. --RobbyKyer 17:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article could use some more background information

After reading the article, i thought it would be good if someone threw in some more information on the background of the election such as the resignation of the former NJ Gov, replacement by Jon Corzine, appointment of Menendez. Might also discuss some of the general attitudes of the NJ public after the democrat-controlled-government shutdown.

I feel like the shutdown hasn't quite had a longterm effect. the budget changes, on the otherhand, have.

[edit] Recent Ethics Complaint

Anon editors are all over this article pushing the recent Menendez ethics complaint, and immediately removing any material added that wasn't added by them. This will lead to a block if kept up, so why not talk it over in the Talk page? Abe Froman 21:55, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suppression of Kean suffix

Anon editor 128.230.217.95's deliberate suppression of Tom Kean, Jr.'s suffix "Jr." is politically motivated. The "Jr." conveys essential semantic information, namely distinguishing the incumbent state senator and U.S. Senate candidate from his father, the former governor. Anon user is acting under the widely held assumption that eroding the distinction between father and son is politically advantageous to the son's campaign or that the postnominal somehow diminishes or disparages the son. Such a practice is disingenuous, if not outright deceptive, and probably violates Wikipedia's guideline on not disrupting a page to illustrate a point.

I seek consensus from the editorial community on the proper naming convention. Please respond to this post with arguments for or against inclusion of the suffix. Until such consensus is achieved, I will consistently revert suppression or correct omission of the suffix. --PWilson 00:25, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

We've had enough POV trouble with this article that it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing charges of POV based on how a candidate's name should be listed. The Wikipedia standard means to title articles for individuals is based on what they call themselves, not on the person's formal name or what other individuals want to call the person. The "About Tom" link on Kean's campaign web site is titled "About Senator Tom Kean Jr.", and the first sentence in the item refers to him as "Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr.", continuing to clearly distinguish him (and mark him as a descendant of) the former governor, Thomas H. Kean Sr., then listing the rest of his political lineage. Yet virtually everywhere else on the website he is referred to as "Tom Kean" and the tag line on the web site and on ads is "Paid for by Tom Kean for U.S. Senate". Every ad and banner I've seen says "Kean" in big bold letters without the "Jr." included. Whether the "Jr." is left in or omitted, there are people who will charge that the choice was "politically motivated": left in to emphasize the father/son relationship; removed to blur it. That said, regardless of motivation (perceived or actual), I don't see any reason that we should not defer to the candidate's choice of self-reference, which seems to be "Tom Kean". Alansohn 13:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
We will see both sides arguing on the suffix issue. The candidate does, however, call himself "Tom Kean" and his campaign's actual title is "Tom Kean for U.S. Senate". That being said, I see absolutely no problem with using simply "Tom Kean" in the article, as this is what he seems to refer to himself as and what his campaign for the office is listed as. At the point in the campaign we are at with all of the media coverage and the campaign commercials, I am more than confident that New Jersey voters will know he is not the former governor anyway. Vin127 10:39, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kean campaign reps editing this article?

I saw this post at a blog, and thought that the matter discussed bears watching/investigation here, if true. More info, and partial confirmation, here. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 18:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Kean reps are not barred from editing the article, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Just add the article to your watchlist and keep an eye on it. Abe Froman 18:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Kean reps editing the article would be a violation of WP:VAIN, and if they were being paid when they did so, it'd also run up agianst the same issues that got User:MyWikiBiz blocked. Plus the WP:NPOV concerns. I mostly posted this here to encourage other editors to be vigilant, though. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 01:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I think WP:VAIN is being applied incorrectly in the above argument. If a Kean volunteer saw that Kean's name was misspelled, or an important biographical date was incorrect, what is wrong with them editing the article to fix it? Obviously, a Kean volunteer cannot POV the article. But as I said before, that is already against Wikipedia rules and guidelines. Once upon a time, Wikipedia did block ip ranges emanating from Congress, but that was to address chronic edit wars coming from congressional staff. Abe Froman 02:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Short of vandalism or simple and obvious factual inaccuracies ("Mr. Kean was born in 1847"), people directly connected to the situation should leave proposed changes on the talk page, rather than adding them to the article, per WP:AUTO#If_Wikipedia_already_has_an_article_about_you. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 13:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polls cited should include margins of error

A key aspect of statistics is to include all pertinent information, not just the bite-size but otherwise incomplete information. There is a big difference between, say, a 1% margin and a 5% margin when considering that Candidate X polled at 45% and Candidate Y polled at 48%. With a 1% margin, Candidate Y is leading. With a 5% margin, the lead candidate is effectively a toss-up because the difference between 45% and 48% (which is less than the 5% margin) is not statistically significant. To omit margin of error data when there are two possible conclusions serves only to misrepresent the results, undermining the purpose of polling in the first place.

RobbyKyer is lying -- he is definitely from the Kean Jr. campaign. His IP address (see the page history for his IP address) is the same as the one used by Kean Jr. campaign headquarters to send out emails. This has been shown in the NY Times and NJ Star-Ledger. See here: http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2542


I think it's disgusting that the Kean campaign is trying to paint this article a certain way. Unethical! I wish there were some way to ban the IP address! Agrippina Minor