Talk:Ron Paul/Archive 6

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LOL WUT

Why are there so many links on this page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.210.120.214 (talk) 03:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

What exactly are you referring to?--Gloriamarie 05:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

probably the intro which is almost half blue (now i'm waiting for some idiot to do the math and tell me it's less than 50%) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.54.181.220 (talk) 23:12, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

NPOV issues in the lead section

To me it seems that the first sentence of the third paragraph is quite biased: "During his 2008 presidential campaign, Paul has placed in the top tier in Republican straw polls and fundraising receipts,[5] but commands significantly lower support in phone polls of Republican voters."

Firstly, there is no reference on how he placed in straw polls. An examination of the linked article about 2008 straw polls seems to indicate that the statement "Paul has placed in the top tier in Republican straw polls" is a little bit much. The only ones he has placed in what could be called the top tier are straw polls of only a couple hundred people or fewer. In any case, considering that this sentence is the first sentence in the article about his Presidential campaign, it seems wrong to highlight straw polls, which are generally recognized as not an accurate indicator of much of anything, especially when they're small.

Now, about the fundraising receipts, the only time you can say that he has placed in the top tier is the latest 3rd quarter results, and even then he was behind Guiliani, Romney, Thompson, and McCain. He certainly hasn't consistently placed in the top tier, as the preceding "During his 2008 presidential campaign" leads one to believe.

I would suggest something like "During his 2008 presidential campaign, Paul has usually placed in the second tier in Republican straw polls, fundraising receipts, and telephone polls; he currently averages about three percent support in national polls. Supporters argue, however, that increasing fundraising returns indicate increasing support and that he should be classified as a top-tier candidate, counter to the conventional wisdom of most political analysts."--Michael White^T·C 01:47, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

You are actually raising a factual accuracy problem and I have tagged "top tier" as such. The problem is that the sources don't support "second tier" either (because there is no reliably-sourced definition of a tier, for one thing) so the statement will need more work. 1of3 12:46, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

1of3 is a suspected sock, so I will not be speaking directly to him again and I feel free to revert his edits. I am removing the dubious tag because "top tier" is a purely mathematical conclusion made by reliable sources from the data available-- just as "not top tier" has been derived from the phone poll data; I will support this later. John J. Bulten 16:12, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

What a convenient excuse for you to avoid answering the question of which supposed "reliable sources" use the term "top tier." Convenient because the answer is none, at least that are cited by the references given in that statement. 1of3 19:46, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I always assumed John J. Bulten and user 1of3 are both sockpuppets. I'll still talk to them though. Turtlescrubber 22:43, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

User Michael A. White: actually, Ron Paul has more cash on hand (once debts are factored in) than all Republican candidates except Giuliani and Romney and $1 million less than Thompson, and in the case of Romney, most of that is a loan from his personal fortune to his campaign.[2] This should obviously be mentioned. He has done well with fundraising receipts-- coverage of his 3rd quarter numbers by the media was typically along the lines of "jaw-dropping." Rather than going on and on about two little words on the talk page, why not just take top-tier out and say "While Paul has done very well in Republican straw polls and fundraising receipts...."66.56.206.68 00:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

POV tag

I have at least these two issues causing me to believe this article is biased:

1. Paul's national polling number has been removed from the lead, where it has been for months. The person who removed it said the number was his "most emotionally charged item" but instead of recognizing that emotional involvement leads to bias, my attempt to replace the number was repeatedly reverted.
2. The newsletter controversy is now under a section with a heading giving no hint of it, and suggesting that it was only an issue in 1996. At least one source which supports important parts of it and shows that the issue was raised times since 1996 has been removed. The offensive quotes have been placed in a "ref" next to two other references. Footnotes are for references; that is why the tag that creates them is called "ref". Footnotes are not for uncomfortable text which supporters wish to hide. 1of3 18:14, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I have replaced the polling number, but unburying the newsletter controversy is a much more difficult undertaking. 1of3 18:42, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

its fine.....--68.126.62.96 20:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Issues addressed and tag removed. 1of3 12:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

myriads

Yes, John, you seem to be technically correct that a myriad is 10,000, so if you are talking about many 10,000s, "myriads" may be technically correct. And also completely not understandable by readers, since the common usage of the word is to mean "a whole lot" and it is always used as "a myriad of". Why would you choose to use an obscure usage to make your point? This is an encyclopedia, and I'd recommend using terms that are accessible to our readers. Not doing so is self-defeating, and, forgive me, strikes me as just a bit arrogant. Do what you want with it. Tvoz |talk 23:02, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the usual definition of "myriad" is how you used it, Tvoz. It seems silly to take it out because it may have an obscure double meaning.66.56.206.68 01:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to give Ron a better photo, but somebody keeps reverting...

What's the deal? --Starks 10:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing to indicate that this photo is permissible for us to use; that's the deal! Have you read our information on copyright permissions?--Orange Mike 19:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

It is a better photo, but Miguel anaranjado is right about the copyright infringement issues. Turtlescrubber 19:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Urgent: Change the photograph of Ron Paul

Change the current photograph to this: http://a534.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/30/l_342e67365b4535684ff9940b19fcf04d.jpg —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nihilist23 (talk • contribs) 11:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Have you read our information on copyright permissions? --Orange Mike 19:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Aren't all photographs published by the govenment considered public domain?

If so, why aren't we allowed to apply this principle to Ron Paul's photograph? --129.2.131.127 23:12, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

That is a picture from the campaign, not Congress. All someone has to do is call his campaign office and get an email saying they are releasing it under the GFDL, a commercial Creative Commons license, or into the public domain. Then copy that email into the image text and it will stick. 1of3 23:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Archive fix?

I've noticed the first 3 or 4 are used very little do we want to consider joining them? Gang14 05:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixing the archive so it looks like we have less archives but its still the same amount just condensed Gang14 18:14, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

March 1994 Survival Report on Bill Clinton

The newsletter comments about Clinton are gone. Need a reference? Try pages 78-80 of this PDF file where a lot more is said about Clinton than the article used to say, in a completely sympathetic publication. Errinnoc 19:54, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

NPOV dispute

I dispute the removal of the mention in the lede of Paul's attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade with HR 300. The current sentence reads:

"Paul calls himself "strongly pro-life", advocating states' rights regarding this issue.

I find this misleading, because he does not merely "advocate" states' rights, he sought to overturn Roe v. Wade entirely by introducing HR 300 (which would render Roe void and allow states to determine whether abortion should be legal). I propose adding something to the effect of the following, which would clarify his actions on the issue of abortion:

Specifically, Paul introduced HR 300, which would negate the effect of Roe v Wade by removing the ability of federal courts to interfere with state legislation in regards to abortion. Paul states this was done, in part, to overturn Roe v. Wade.

At the very least, the current sentence should be changed because does not even make sense. The meaning of the current sentence is:

"Paul advocates states rights in regards to the issue of his description of himself as being pro-life."

Abortion is a top-tier ethical issue, it registers high in terms of national attention, and the position of this man should be made very clear on the issue. The current sentence is vague and misleading, and it must be rewritten. Photouploaded 17:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Photo, would you mind if we used your version here and no POV tag until we get this settled? And would you mind interacting with Talk:Ron_Paul#My_pro-life_summary? John J. Bulten 18:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I will. Note: I am very busy now, and only have time right now for a few fluffy edits (which I do to relax). I will have time to give this issue the time it deserves within a day or so. Photouploaded 11:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The basic question is apparently whether some version of "pro-life, states' rights, linked" is sufficient, or whether some version of "legislation (SOLA, WTPA, PBABA, Amendment), description, and intent" is necessary. In favor of the former I observe:

1. The latter has not been in the lead since Tvoz moved it to Legislation 09/13; it only recently popped in twice by Zeke and Photo, and out twice by me (due to Photo's previous demurral).
2. The second lead paragraph is a summary's summary so should not be overly specific.
3. Only Iraq and Patriot legislation are mentioned otherwise, which are very notable acts; Military Commissions, which was previously mentioned, didn't survive the cut because less notable. (Same for my insert of capital punishment, which I won't press.)
4. Reviewing talk, my perception is that JLMadrigal, Gloriamarie, Tvoz, Wrad, Rinkuhero, Operation Spooner, Proper tea is theft, Turtlescrubber, 221.145.53.186, 80.74.247.74, and I would not necessarily include the latter, but would stick with some form of linkage. Gloria really carried the banner on why more than a couple clauses on abortion in the lead would be undue weight; 80.74.247.74 also affirms her.
5. BenB4 (209.77.205.2 looks like the same person) "would be happy" with brevity in this section re states' rights nuances; he also favored including the legislation, but that's (presumably) because he says he wants something that does not conflict with the legislation.

Hmm, couldn't really find much in favor of including this specific legislation in the lead, except Photouploaded, hints of BenB4, and the gentleman "Zeke pbuh" who instigated Photo by recopying the Legislation section back into the lead yesterday. Seems to me that the compromise between the two positions above, and which the consensus of editors has been trying to word rightly, is the concept of "strongly pro-life, states' rights", and leave the user to determine linkage. Seems like a very short sentence, plus repeating the link to the fine footnote which appears now near the end of the Positions summary, would do the trick. I of course would go back to something like "Paul is strongly pro-life, while also advocating states' rights." The "strongly" gets enough thrust through for the lead; the footnote gets the "life at conception", SOLA, negating RvW, and states' rights all well-linked to the lead; and the use of "while also" neither forces nor prohibits the user's linking them. Note I remove "calls himself" and quotes because we can unbiasedly call people what they call themselves. I would repeat, however, that reopening a POV tag is unnecessary when this exact issue was relatively resolved a month ago and lay dormant until yesterday. John J. Bulten 19:35, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

What is wrong with saying this:

Paul is strongly pro-life. He advocates states' rights to determine the legality of abortion, and the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

There is no reason to avoid clarifying that his views on "states' rights" on the legality of abortion means overturning Roe v. Wade. Paul is unabashedly pro-life. It strikes me as ridiculous to insist that his personal spin on it (... "he links these positions") is vital for inclusion. Anyone can see that his personal pro-life views inform his political actions, that even being a diehard advocate for states' rights doesn't cover an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade. Is there a problem with the above sentence? Please be specific. Is this all right? Photouploaded 11:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes! Affirming "states' rights to determine the legality of abortion" is exactly what he does! (I merely rearranged clauses, adjusted footnotes, and preferred "affirming rights" to "advocating rights".) This is excellent IMHO. It may even pass other editors' muster as well. I will back out on this argument and see if anyone else wants to chime in.

If you happen to live in a pro-death state :D, I understand he would permit that state to be free to abort itself, though he would encourage state legislative battles against such an idea, and I think he would permit Congress to pass laws about minors crossing state lines, off the top of my head. John J. Bulten 17:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

"NPOV" claims should not be used to censor wikipedia and whitewash articles. Ron Paul has publicly stated that he wants to overturn Roe v Wade. He has publicly stated that he introduced this legislation in order to help overturn Roe v. Wade. Personally, I am against abortion (but think it should be legal), and I agree with many of Mr. Paul's views. However, his very strong stance on overturning Roe v. Wade and his strong actions to modify the laws to overturn a Supreme Court decision are important, notable, and factual, not POV. Remember: relevant and sourced negative or positive factual information is not POV just because you don't want anyone else to hear about it. --Zeke pbuh 18:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

NPOV isn't simply about facts, but the management of said facts. Just stating a fact on a complex issue without explaining it can cause misunderstandings about it's consequences. Paul may want to overturn Roe V. Wade, but mention of this should include the rest of his stance on the issue as not to confuse. Misrepresentation of facts, whether meant or not, causes bias to the article Tapotski 23:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Reduce congressional salary?

"He proposed legislation to decrease Congressional pay by the rate of inflation." - that sentence doesn't make any sense. Somebody feel like researching what he actually did? Did he perhaps stop raising Congressional pay to match the rate of inflation? Or did he actually propose pay cuts? --75.68.148.143 11:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Good questions, here's another: Did he think Congress should suffer pay cuts as the public suffers from inflation? I honestly don't know, does anybody else? All of these sound like him... Wrad 18:18, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Can't source or verify this, but IIRC, the idea was: If the Consumer Price Index goes up 5% one year, then Congress's salaries go down 5%. Hope someone can verify -- and does anyone think that the Federal budget, deficit, etc., might be different if this were in place? Unimaginative Username 04:06, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I hardly think members of Congress would be "suffering"-- remember the debacle from earlier this year when Pelosi asked them to actually work on Mondays? Wow, going from a three-day work week to a four day work week (for the same executive salary) and actually working must have been really arduous for those suffering members of Congress. This sounds like a great idea, and I wish it had passed. If Congressional pay decreased at the rate of inflation, maybe Congress would be motivated to actually work on stopping inflation for once.66.56.206.68 01:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems he proposed a decrease in congressional pay in proportion to the rate of inflation. It could really use a reference though, google finds nothing solid. Tapotski 23:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It does have a reference, which I put in when I put that in the article-- The Wall Street Journal. Articles do not have to be online to be cited on Wikipedia.--Gloriamarie 07:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Polled against Hillary

A Rasmussen Poll comparing Paul to Hillary seems pretty notable. It shows Paul leading over Hillary for 40-49 year olds. Here's some information, for anyone that has time to add it in. [3] Operation Spooner 21:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning up post

Removed worshipful praise from post. hope it cleans it up enough to stay up. Micheal Sean 03:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Powwow

I would like for those of us deeply interested in the FAC (NOT accounts who have not previously contributed to it the article) to agree on what the consensus is for future FA status on a few disputed points. I believe the dispute was largely complicated by the presence of several sockpuppets, which are now mostly gone, and that we can proceed civilly now. I would like to see votes from those who have already contributed to this article positively-- if your account has not contributed here before, since we have a history of vandalism, I appreciate your comments, but I would prefer that you not frame them as votes on the questions below (thanks for your understanding).

• Protecting lead stability: I propose (1) expand the in-line comments throughout to steer new edits away to other sections; (2) remove all fluctuating statistics from the lead, replacing them with generic comments likely to hold up for the long term; (3) convert the campaign section to a 4-paragraph summary of the campaign article, synchronizing it there (as I did for positions); and (4) set up both the positions and campaign summary sections as templates. This last means that the main article automatically pulls whatever appears as the lead (summary) of the two corresponding subarticles; it will force readers who wish to edit those sections to edit the summary (lead) of the corresponding subarticle instead, which will also cause them to consider editing the subarticle as another option. Since the main article will automatically pull whatever text leads the subarticle, it will NOT have to be edited whenever someone tweaks a position or campaign event. Please vote yes or no on each or all.

Yes on all. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Good ideas for all on these points.--Gloriamarie 08:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Have implemented the political positions template. John J. Bulten 21:14, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

This severely violates the template namespace guidelines: "Templates should usually not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace; instead, place the text directly into the article.". Templates should only be used for article text in exceptional cases. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:17, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:Ron_Paul#Template. John J. Bulten 14:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• How should the newsletter controversy appear? Its own main section; its own subsection of Later Congressional; a "1996 campaign controversy" combined section; the present "1996 campaign" section with title unchanged; other.

1996 campaign controversy. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed.--Gloriamarie 08:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

• How should the controversial quotes appear? (1) Location: All in text; split between text and footnotes; all in footnotes; other. (2) Breadth: Several sentences; several clauses; other. (I don't think it's necessary to poll on whether the cited comments should be limited to those against blacks only, or should include those against blacks, whites, Asians, and Israelis; but if anyone wishes to argue for the former please feel free.)

Split, clauses only. This seemed a useful compromise; also, it's too short for its own section. No need to give more than 3-5 short examples in text, nor any need to quote full sentences when clauses suffice; both give too much press to the racist. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

All in footnotes appears to be Gloria's opinion below, without direct comment on full sentences or clauses only. All the current quoted clauses were controversial in 1996, I note below. John J. Bulten 14:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• Just for me, because I don't like the word "ghostwriter": Is "guest writer" acceptable as I've cited it, given that it's already stated flatly that the comments were written in Paul's name?

Yes. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but this is just wrong. A "guest" writer would have his or her name on the piece, not Ron Paul's name. This was clearly a ghost writer, as the material went out with Ron Paul's byline - it's not just a newsletter he sponsored, it's a newsletter that purports to be written by him. He has acknowledged this, and we can't try to obfuscate with "guest". Tvoz |talk 16:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

On #1, I think they are best appearing all in the footnotes, as the consensus was for a long time until BenB4 demanded changes (this is similar to the Tony Rezko situation at the Barack Obama article). Only the main ones that have been reported and seemed to be controversial in 1996 (Jordan, 13-year-olds, etc.) should be included-- only the Atlanta Progressive News has mentioned anything about Clinton, and I'm not convinced it's a reliable source or that those are worth mentioning over other quotes, since no other coverage has mentioned those particular quotes. The footnote that TVoz had put in a few months ago was good and I would go for that version. I also prefer ghostwriter to guest writer.--Gloriamarie 08:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the Chronicle also mentioned the Clinton, white/Asian, and Israeli quotes, and I trust the web archive here. Seems to me the original Morris mudslingers would have published all the worst quotes they could find in one go, and later researchers apparently relied solely on their work, because no one with an independent stash of RP newsletters has published more quotes. One web exception: the link Errinnoc provided to a sympathetic transcription of the full article on Clinton is also helpful for background, though not suitable for footnoting. John J. Bulten 14:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• Abortion: Either vote "yes" on current text, or write in your own. The current version (with thanks to Photouploaded et al.) says, Paul is strongly pro-life, advocating the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and affirms states' rights to determine the legality of abortion.

Yes on current version. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes with minor copyedit. Remove the subjective term strongly and substitute and affirms with affirming as the states' rights issue ties in to his position on Roe v Wade. Terjen 04:05, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I believe this goes into too many specifics and gives the position undue weight over other important ones in the lead.--Gloriamarie 08:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Gloria, this appears to be between you and Photouploaded now, because I could also go for "Paul is strongly pro-life, affirming states' rights to determine the legality of abortion", which is similar to JLMadrigal's earlier compromise. If you'd like to press this further, could you please see what Photouploaded will settle for? However I'd ask Terjen to consider that "strongly pro-life" is not subjective because it's his own self-designation; we just dropped the quotes because others found it confusing. John J. Bulten 14:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• Should we use en dashes in from-to dates to conserve words (WP:DASH)?

Yes, either version can be defended, and the longer form is only required when "nearby wording demands it". John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

No, it's just not proper (English major here).--Gloriamarie 08:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I respect that, but I think you're saying that (as we know) "he served from 1963-1965 in ..." is improper. Would you settle for (as I intended) "he served (1963-1965) in ..."? That is a frequent biographic style. John J. Bulten 21:28, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

No, not for all the dates - maybe once in a while it would work but by and large it doesn;t read well, and is not proper form. You're not saving enough to make a difference anyway - we're talking about two words, "from" and "to". Tvoz |talk 08:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

• One other thing I haven't gotten involved in: Should we change the lead photo? (If you vote yes, please give a link and a fair-use rationale.)

Abstain. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

As he is a living person and is very much in the public spotlight (and we have 2 free images), no copyrighted image would meet Wikipedia's non-free criteria just to provide a picture of Paul. Mr.Z-man 22:42, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

My purpose is that when the new editors (and any future socks) future suspected socks arrive, we can tell them "see archives for consensus" and revert with impunity. This will kill all extant edit wars cold IMHO. Thank you all, it's a pleasure to work with each of you. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

This seems awfully militant: Revert new editors with impunity? WP:BITE. This assumes that new editors won't bring new sources or new ideas that could lead to a new consensus and are only here to POV push. An especially poor attitude to take on an article about a person involved in a major current event where some info can change/be discovered rapidly. Mr.Z-man 22:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Proper tea just reverted a new editor with impunity (I tried to do the same, but server timed out). I didn't say we'd revert everything; I'm only thinking of those topics we've hashed out over long periods and which it is wiser not to tamper with. Please don't assume you can state what my statement assumes, thanks. John J. Bulten 23:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Remember, consensus can and does change. This may be useful for the article right now, but as some kind of long term stop block it's absolutely useless. Turtlescrubber 23:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

While I'm in utter sympathy with what these editors have been through, I have to agree with Mr.Z-man and Turtlescrubber. Consensus can change and moreover, it is almost impossible to refer new editors back into the archives of any article when WP:RS and WP:V (along with WP:WEIGHT) hold sway over anything else. High traffic, high profile articles like this one, on this public wiki, can only be held NPoV and reasonably stable by continuous effort and a keen following of WP policy. That said, I've read the article and I think it is NPoV, written with a helpful flow and wonderfully sourced. I like it a lot. Way to go! Gwen Gale 23:45, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

(e/c)Impunity: (n) 1. Being outside of the rule of law. 2. Exemption from punishment. Just because a consensus was formed does not mean you can revert anyone you want or are exempt from rules like 3RR. Please avoid reverting good faith edits, especially by new editors, and even more especially when those edits are accompanied by sources. New editors have just as much right to edit this page as you and I do. Mr.Z-man 23:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Just as much right, unless they're sock puppets of banned users, which was my context. WP:BAN also seems to trump 3RR. John J. Bulten 15:25, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

John, that wasn't your context - you put socks in parenthetically. I understand your frustration, but your comment reads: My purpose is that when the new editors (and any future socks) arrive, we can tell them "see archives for consensus" and revert with impunity. This will kill all extant edit wars cold IMHO. . So let's try to be clear that new editors, like you were very recently, will absolutely land here and make changes, some of which will upset the applecart you've created - just like you did - and some of them will stand while others won't. Consensus can, and will, change. Socks are a different matter, and they aren't neutralized by pointing to consensus, I've found. Tvoz |talk 16:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe suspected socks making the same edits as proven socks would be neutralized as I described, although suspected socks making different edits would not be and would need to be resolved by the normal process. And Tvoz, it would be instructive to me to know how I upset any applecarts on this article, as I am not aware of having done so. If you were referring to an applecart on a different article, I can accept the charge but am unclear on why you might think that particular one should not have been upset. John J. Bulten 20:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok. That may not have been a great choice of words on my part as I didn't mean it as a charge. I was talking only about this article, and what I meant by upsetting the applecart was that you arrived here recently and made some major changes to the shape of the article. I'm not commenting now on whether I agree with all of those changes - and I am not questioning your good faith in making those changes - I'm just saying that as a new editor you made major changes to sections of the article that numerous editors had worked and reworked and reworked again, reaching consensus along the way more than once. Your changes may indeed have improved the article - that's not my point one way or the other - my point is that regardless of consensus, a new editor came along and changed it. And in some cases, new consensuses (consensi?) were reached. So I disagree with your conclusion and agree with others here who have pointed out that consensus changes all the time, and that new editors are to be encouraged, not discouraged, to add and refine and look at an article with fresh eyes. Whether it is a GA, FA, or any other classification. As for socks - I don't agree with your point - just because a new editor makes a change that agrees with the change that a sock previously made does not automatically prove that the new editor is a sock. It's a lot more complicated than that. Socks sometimes actually make good edits (and please don't take that as an apologia for sockpuppets - my creds on opposing socks are well-established) - they aren't always here to disrupt - and it's not unusual for an unrelated new editor to see a sock's reverted edit and re-instate it. Anyway - I didn't mean to offend you with the "applecart" comment, but I do think it's important to note that pointing to consensus is not going to stop socks or edit wars, at best it will give justification for reverts, but even then we have to remain open to continuing discussion (sometimes ad nauseam) on points on which consensus was already reached. That's wikipedia. Tvoz |talk 06:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I reverted because I found the tone of the additions inappropriate and the information unnecessary for this article, but definitely not because the editor was new, and I made this revert knowing that anyone who disagreed could revert me right back. I was pretty much figuring that removing that edit would be cool with most of the people who watch this page.

That said, it's perfectly fine to revert a new editor if their addition is inappropriate in light of talk page consensus. --Proper tea is theft 23:54, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

John, just because a person has commented on the FAC doesn't mean that they don't also have an interest in how this page goes forward - I, for one, was editing this page long before you arrived on the scene (and have many more edits on these pages), so I'm not about to abandon my opinions about its shape just because you constructed this section in that way. Also - "vote" is not the way it's done - this all should be commenting. Consensus doesn't mean majority rule, nor should no comments indicate agreement with your stated position. Tvoz |talk 15:48, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Fully recognized, Tvoz, and I think I've been consistent in thanking you for your edits, which are a cut above. But since consensus doesn't mean "whatever was said last" either, I'm just looking for some way to generate a demonstrable, measurable consensus beyond just "nobody has complained". If you have a better one, go ahead. John J. Bulten 20:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate that - and wasn't looking for a compliment. My objection was to your saying that this "consensus powwow" should be confined to people who haven't commented on the FAC. I don't see where that was coming from. Tvoz |talk 06:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say that; but I have clarified my meaning above. John J. Bulten 23:56, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Stormfront endorsing Ron Paul on main page

I was just looking at stormfront.org, and i came across at the bottom they have a banner that is sponsoring Ron Paul as their elected choice for president. [www.stormfront.org/forum/] Can we add this note under the Internet popularity or do you feel it's too controversial? I am not up to date with ron paul but I have only heard of him because of his stance on Israel.

--Eternalsleeper 07:43, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think individual websites supporting candidates are big enough to add to the pages. If there was a trend for white supremacists in general, then that could be worked in somewhere, but stormfront is all I've seen so far Tapotski 23:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Stormfront is the leading white supremacist website out there, and probably second-most well known hate group after the Aryan Nations. The federal government monitors many of its top posters. Its endorsement of Ron Paul should probably be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.140.49.61 (talk) 01:30, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Individual and corporate endorsements should appear in the appropriate section of the campaign article, not this article. However, even if this meets the notability test, it should be verified that it is a true corporate endorsement from some known entity, and not just a link to a forum discussion in an unaccountable site. John J. Bulten 14:14, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Being endorsed by an unsavory entity is not grounds for inclusion in a main bio of a Wikipedia article. There were many news reports not too long ago saying that Fidel Castro had endorsed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for US president. A quick check of their bios finds no mention of Castro, although he is certainly closely monitored by our federal government (and these days, that's not too rare, either, since the fed. gov. monitors more people than it ever did before). I'm not sure what either of you are implying, but the only reason it would be notable enough to include in the bio would be if Ron Paul actually had some sort of association with this group or had endorsed it in the past (not them endorsing him, him endorsing or talking about them). That has not happened. Why give them free publicity by mentioning them in articles in which the subject has nothing to do with their organization, and why bring down the quality of this article by doing so?--Gloriamarie 02:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

You raise a good point about Stormfront receiving good advertising if it were noted on this page, but in the meantime Stormfront is the worlds Internet haven of white supremacists and neo-Nazis from all corners of this earth; with an incredibly large extensive base in the United States. I thought it would be notable that Stormfront be endorsing him on their main page, I'd imagine for free as I can't imagine a Presidential candidate paying to be on Stormfront. The reason he is on their is because Stormfront sees Ron Pauls political agenda suiting to their needs. I am NOT saying Ron Paul is what the people in Stormfront are, but I've read a lot of controversy by Jewish groups who accuse him of being anti-Israel, and in more extreme cases, anti-Semitic. I don't follow Ron Paul so I don't know anything except what I read on this page and a few google searches.

--Eternalsleeper 07:34, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I would never go on that site, but it seems from a discussion on this elsewhere that while the founder likes him (that's why he's on the site) most other members don't support him because they say he doesn't support their views and he is friends with black economists such as Walter Williams and friends with Jewish economists, so it's not like the whole group supports him. Here are the facts 1) Ron Paul's name is on a website, one of thousands of websites of people who happen to support him, 2) many people don't like that website, 3) Ron Paul himself has no association with that website, has never supported that group, certainly hasn't supported their views, and a lot of the group doesn't like him due to his associations with those of other races and ethnicities, 4) We've already given them too much publicity on this page, and 5) the only reason they probably like him is because he's for free speech. He's certainly not anti-Israel, and some Israelis have said his policies would help Israel more than current policies.[4] Castro is a much worse endorsement to get, but that's not mentioned on the pages linked above! This seems like people are trying to imply that the endorsement is the other way around.. no politician can help who supports them. This seems like a smear campaign without sources to back it up. I'm sure if someone did some digging, they could find neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, murderers, sex offenders, and such donating to, say, John Edwards' campaign, but that doesn't mean Edwards is a supporter of Holocaust deniers or "the candidate for sex offenders." It doesn't mean anything. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.88.254 (talk) 20:53, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Spoof?

Is this article a joke? I'm confused - even the top paragraphs seem like a joke, or are they describing his actual views? Maybe he is just the real-life stereotypical texan. Kitkatcrazy 09:51, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

This article can be characterized in many ways, but I would not say that "spoof" is one of them. These are his views - and I'm not so sure that they are stereotypically Texan, more stereotypically libertarian/old Conservative, I'd say. Tvoz |talk 08:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that was quite rude of me but I really wasn't sure! Kitkatcrazy 15:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

newsletter?

• Did Ron Paul write this? Answer: No. That's why we can't say he wrote this, list all these terrible things, then at the end admit "he didn't write this." We agree that Ron Paul said it was his newsletter with his name on it, but no one disputes it was written by someone else. ergo, we can't say Paul wrote it.
• OK, so these excerpts from Charles "Lefty" Morris, during the campaign his political opponent. OK, then it was repeated by the spokesman for a democratic congresswoman, in a newsletter to democrats regarding the current election this year. No disrespect to "lefty morris," but are these "objective sources?"

We agree they can be mentioned, and maybe should be. But why cut out the part about "lefty" morris? And there's a disclosure on that Atlanta progressive article. That's why that notice is there, they are telling you this isn't an objective source. (What I mean is, notice at the bottom it says the author is a partisan democrat etc etc) (Dont' interpret my comments as anything against partisans or democrats -- I'm just saying we can't say "objective sources say this newsletter said all kinds of racist things" and leave out the part about "written by his democratic opponent")

• The difference between the two sources is the reason for the "questionable information about a living person" ... First, "lefty" says Paul said 80% of blacks were criminals. Next, the 2007 guy says paul said "95% of blacks are criminals" ... and so on, if you compare them side by side, you start wondering "I wish I had an actual copy of this newsletter." For that reason, we should not be publishing these wild claims. Simply saying at the end, "oh by the way, Ron Paul didn't really write those things" isn't good enough, it casts "false light."
• Obviously, there was some "crap" printed in this newsletter in '92, we agree on that, we know that, but we just don't know what. Next, we agree and we know that Paul didn't write it. (that's point two) and that Paul admitted it was stupid to let some idiot write in a newsletter with his name on it. And that his colleagues dismiss any hint of racism in anything Paul has said or written.(if needed) All that is fine to include.

That's why we have to trim down that section, don't make false or unverifiable claims, stick to the facts, and present what we know to be true. Thanks and good luck.SecretaryNotSure 21:27, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The reliable secondary sources cited confirm that the newsletter included the excerpts quoted. Which portions of the sources are you saying disagree? The quoted excerpts and Morris's statement? 1of3 22:12, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Is The Atlanta Progressive News really a reliable source? The particular column cited is filled with criticism of Ron Paul for somehow not being as antiwar as Cynthia McKinney, and the article was added to this entry by BenB4, who has been banned indefinitely as a sockpuppet (and, for full disclosure, you have been accused of also being a sockpuppet of). This particular paper does not seem to me to be as reliable as other sources which could be used (such as the New York Times, etc.).--Gloriamarie 03:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I see the difference in the "85%" and the "5%" maybe I misread something. I thought one said 95%, well actually it does, but that's not the major problem.

The main problem is, where are the sources? One is listed at the "houston chronicle." Did you notice the URL isn't going to the Houston Chronicle? That could be from anywhere, anyone could have written that.

The other source says: Richard Searcy is a Staff Writer and Columnist with Atlanta Progressive News. Searcy was previously a press spokesperson for US Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA).

That's a disclosure, meaning "This is a partisan thing, don't quote me."

OK, so now our two sources are no good, that leaves... nothing. So why is this libelous material still there?SecretaryNotSure 00:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

p.s. We all agree there was such a newsletter, and there was 'something' in it. We think it was called the Ron Paul Survival Guide but no one knows for sure, no one actually seems to have one of these things, all we know is that the name Ron Paul was on it there somewhere.

Next, everyone pretty much agrees (am I wrong?) that some guy wrote that. Some guy meaning "someone other than Ron Paul." So... why are we saying that Ron Paul said this or Ron Paul said that?SecretaryNotSure 00:38, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

p.p.s. By the way, I put in a few suggested and suggested rewordings. Each one of them was simply set back to the same text as when we started. I'm putting in the effort here, coming up with better phrases and wording, giving everyone some suggested wording. It's easy to just press the "revert" button, that's not getting anything fixed. This isn't a one man effort, this is a team effort, get in there and come up with some better wording, at least attempt to address some of the issues.SecretaryNotSure 00:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The Houston Chronicle URL is an Internet Archive link because apparently they take their stories down after ten years. I added another good source: "The Congressman Who Voted Against a Congressional Medal for Rosa Parks," in Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. (Summer, 1999) No. 24, pp. 38-9, but that's not on the web unless you have JSTOR access to it. Sources don't need to be on the web to meet the criteria for reliability. Here is a very interesting 1996 New York Times column which quotes the comments about Barbara Jordan at length, and remarkably, Paul does not claim that someone else made them(!) -- "As for his remarks about Ms. Jordan, who was black, Mr. Paul said he was laying out a philosophical difference." WTF? 1of3 02:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I looked up those articles, and they also contradict the Houston Chronicle and do not back up some claims made in the Atlanta Progressive News. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education says it was called the Ron Paul Political Report, mentions only the Barbara Jordan remarks and the criminals in DC remarks, not anything about Bill Clinton, and it also fails to mention the very pertinent fact that Paul denied writing the comments and his denial had been concluded to be accurate and accepted by journalists at Texas Monthly a full four years before publication of that article. Therefore, it also may not be the best source to use. The New York Times article you mention above also calls it the "Ron Paul Political Report" and says nothing about any comments besides ones on Barbara Jordan. Finally, this was formerly in this article and was taken out at one point, but the reason Paul did not deny making the allegations when they first came up is because his campaign aides convinced him not to, and he also felt he had a "moral responsibility" because they appeared under his name. Since, as evidenced by your comments above, you and other readers may have missed this point, I may restore the full quote to the section to clear that confusion up.--Gloriamarie 03:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The Ron Paul Politcal Report was renamed The Ron Paul Survival Report in 1993. By the time that the Chronicle and Journal articles were written, Paul had given no indication that he was not the author. 1of3 05:10, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Where did you get your information on when it was supposedly renamed? Were you a regular reader? No, in fact, James Salsman/BenB4/1of3/your next sockpuppet account, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education article appeared in January 2006. As I said in my previous commment, this was a full four years after the publication of Ron Paul's explanation of the comments in October 2001 in Texas Monthly, which means that whoever wrote the article either does not know how to research subjects or does not care to make sure his/her information is up-to-date and accurate.--Gloriamarie 19:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I have issues of the newsletter, and it was renamed, not sure of the date tho. I think he's referring the the 1999 JoBiHE article. 75.73.66.246 20:08, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I've looked at that article, and it only calls the newsletter The Ron Paul Political Report, as the NYTimes did earlier.--Gloriamarie 22:23, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I know, the "internet archive" is not a source. It could have originally been from anywhere. It could have been edited, or the Houston Chronicle could have retracted the story. All we know is we dug it out of some archive. For all we know, this is the archive of some story that was on "Lefty's" website. "Lefty" might have cut out some parts of the story, so even though it "says" it's from the Houston Chronicle at the top, it could be from anywhere, written by anyone.

Is there any way we can take a look at the other reference, can you print it here or somewhere? Does this reference say that Ron Paul wrote these things? Or are we just repeating some rumor that was a repeated rumor from some other rumor?

One of the easiest mistakes that "infests" wikipedia, with all due respect, is simply assuming anything said by someone they never heard of before is "a source" without any regard to who that source might be, how reliable it might be.

I see what you mean about normally, "secondary sources" are better than primary sources, however, here the secondary source is telling us what the primary source said, not simply telling us how to interpret it.

At the very least the comments about this "controversy" should be put in the context that they occured-- partisan politics. Why not mention "lefty" Morris. Or, do some people not want to mention that all this comes from "Lefty?" Why not?SecretaryNotSure 02:32, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The Houston Chronicle did run that article as it appears on archive.org, and although both Texas Monthly and the New York Times agreed that Ron Paul did not write the articles in question, the Chronicle has never returned to the subject, as far as I know. A big aspect of that article is that Lefty Morris was trying to paint Paul as a racist, and the Texas Monthly follow-up mentions that this just didn't work because voters in the district trusted Paul-- this would also be important information to include. I agree with John J. Bulten's earlier consolidating of this into the Campaigns section concerning Lefty Morris, calling it "1996 Campaign and Controversy".--Gloriamarie 03:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

That NY times link is interesting. From 1996. I thought all the stuff on the internet "was archived" from then. I presume if the publication hasn't retracted the story, maybe it will still be there. This is more evidence that the "webarchive.org" link is not that reliable -- I'm sure someone wrote that and I'm sure it's not 100% lies, because it's not... but exactly how much, that's that the question.

OK, from the NY Times article, we find out Ron Paul was critical of Barbara Jordan, the polititian from where he later ran for congress. So?

There's also a dangerous mixing of comments, some written by him, some by some crazy person or persons, who knows. So you string together all these racist sounding things, then say "and he criticized Barbara Jordan, who is black..." it's a complete mixing of god knows what. There's a reason why this only appears in obscure journals.

I want to clarify my comment about how wikipedians make a mistake about "sources." Normally, multiple sources about something are multiple people reporting on something. Like, some car accident or a trial or plane crash or some debate, they each ask the witnesses or they each independently look at the event, and then write about it, those are multiple sources. In this case, what we seem to have is "one guy" who picked out a few lines from maybe 7000 articles published over 20 years in this newsletter? No one seems to have checked if this is true, no one seems to have any copies of any of these newsletters?

No, these are not "multiple sources." Even if some blog or some website or newsmax.com or someone were to publish a thing tomorrow, it would be no more current than simply repeating what they heard, the same half urban legend. That is, unless they actually did do some investigating and find the newsletters, find out who wrote what, then ask Paul about if he wrote this, and if he has any comment, etc. But other that that it's just repeating the same thing they heard from the same place. That's what the Atlanta progressive newsletter is, just repeating what they heard and telling the faithful "see how racist this guy is" i.e. what we would call "pushing a POV."

By the way, did you notice the name of the newsletter keeps changing? Is it "Ron Paul Survival Report?" or "The Ron Paul Political Report?" or "Terrorist Update" Each source we have, so far, calls it something different.

How do you answer the false light and the undue weight argument? (i.e. paul said this, paul said that, and in the last sentence it says actually paul didn't say these things)

Sorry so wordy, take some time to ponder, but remember, stuff that is questionable and negative shouldn't be permitted to sit there.SecretaryNotSure 03:40, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

p.s. I found the current issue of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education at http://www.jbhe.com/ . The front page article is Barack Obama is the Superior Choice for African-American Voters. Which is fine, except, the point being this publication is endorsing the Democratic Party's candidate! This is not some neutral observer.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Ron Paul, need I mention, is a member of the Republican Party. And here are the sources:

1. The campaign of the Democratic candidate in '96, Charles "Lefty" Morris
2. A story in an unknown archive about the claims of the Democratic candidate,
3. A story in the Democratic newsletter written by the Democratic congresswoman's press agent
4. (I'm presuming) the same claims repeated in the JBHE, a publication promoting the Democratic candidate.

(I am not saying anything bad about the Democratic party or anything like that... I'm speaking of simple neutrality and POV)

Do you see a pattern here? This article is the bio of a living person who is a Republican candidate. All the stuff in question here comes from the Democratic Party. What more do I need to say?SecretaryNotSure 04:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, you are ignoring the 1996 NYT article and the fact that when asked, Paul never denied the comments. Paul acknowledged the comments, originally saying that "he was laying out a philosophical difference" and then later saying he didn't write them, but one of his employees did. The excuse he gave for why he didn't originally say he wasn't the author was that his campaign aides "said that's too confusing." Given ample opportunity, he never denied the comments were published in his name. Just the opposite: he openly admitted they were, so the facts are not even in question, let alone possibly defamatory or libelous. 1of3 05:10, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

You're much better at sockpuppeting than in arguing this point. Why did the New York Times so easily accept his explanation, then, and say that it makes sense because the comments were not like the style of any of his other 30 years of writings?--Gloriamarie 19:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments GloriamarieSecretaryNotSure 15:48, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome.--Gloriamarie 19:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I am deleting or reverting all changes by confirmed banned user 1of3 (James Salsman) which I find objectionable. I do not intend to step on anyone else's changes, but due to the mass canker introduced by 1of3 I may have missed someone else, to whom I apologize. For the newsletter controversy, I am going with my best judgment for a temporary compromise, which is to move it to a section of Congressional career but not to combine it into 1996 campaign yet; and to restore the better-balanced footnote. I believe the best final solution is to combine it into the campaign and title that "1996 campaign controversy" (the word "controversy" was deleted last time I did that), and to move the footnote and the other couple explanatory notes to a "Footnotes" rather than "References" section (as other articles do).

To Secretary NS, I want to thank you for attempting to change this, but as you can see dealing with an avowed disruptor is not easy. However I would back away a bit, based on what I perceive the prior consensus to be: (1) It's not necessary to quote how Morris characterized the comments; simply state that the comments were in the newsletter, and that Morris distributed them. (2) There are different specifics quoted here and there, but that does not indicate misquoting; there is no conflict in the quotes cited; e.g., you can see both the 85% and 95% numbers in the Chronicle article. (3) It's not necessary to lay out the affiliations of all the quoters; to the degree they are material, they are obvious. (4) Even though the issue has shifted from "did he say them" to "did he permit their being attributed to him", I think it's sound writing to permit the issue to hang with a bit of suspense for the one paragraph. That is, without saying he said them, don't offer the explanation immediately. My primary reason is that he didn't explain, for 5 years. When the explanation comes, it gives him that much more credibility.

Anyway, please respond at "Powwow" below, where we can now have a civil discussion. John J. Bulten 16:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I like the current version, although I would prefer "ghostwriter" to "guest writer."--Gloriamarie 19:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Assuming for a moment that it's true that (i) there was objectionable content in the newsletter (whatever its name) and (ii) Paul didn't write it... is there any explanation anywhere of why he would allow this to be printed in his name? That seems like the real issue here, no? Responsibility for material printed in his name? 198.96.36.131 22:57, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I have tried a few times lately to put the full quotes from Texas Monthly in that section that were there until July of this year, only to have it reverted. In the full quotes, he says that he had someone publish the newsletter while he traveled around (as one example, he was on the road for a year running for Libertarian candidate for president). I believe the exact words were he had someone "take care of" the newsletter. So, that quote adds a bit of context-- he was traveling and apparently didn't notice what was being put into the newsletter until after the fact. There have been numerous questions on these talk pages about things that would be answered by re-inserting the full quotes into the text- I would not be against that (or perhaps inserting them into the footnotes).--Gloriamarie 01:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Rothbard

The article mentions that Ron Paul has a picture of Murray Rothbard in his office, but the source doesn't mention it. Could someone either cite this or change it. 74.236.229.142 10:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I removed the text. If someone finds a source then it can be added back in. Turtlescrubber 17:48, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

There sed to be a source there with a screenshot from a documentary showing a picture of Rothbard on the wall of his office. Most people do not know what Rothbard looks like, though, so it's not a very helpful source.--Gloriamarie 01:46, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Standard bearer?

This seems oddly put: "During his candidacy, Paul was viewed as the Libertarian Party 'standard bearer'..."

Why "viewed?" He was in actual fact, the standard-bearer of the party. It's not a matter of your view. 72.145.83.235 18:05, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, the Libertarian Party has no party office called "standard-bearer". --Trovatore 21:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

It's an old metaphor, referring to the head of the electoral ticket as the visible representative of the party, and thus metaphorically carrying its standard. Since Paul was the Party's presidential nominee, it fits here. --Orange Mike 14:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Orangemike is correct regarding the Dems and the GOP, but the LP may behave differently, I don't know. The LP has always seemed somewhat different (i.e. dysfunctional) to me. Wasted Time R 16:48, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

If you'll look carefully, the editor even provided a cite for the use of the term with regard to Paul's candidacy. And as far as differentness: all parties which are forced to compete under the bizarre advantages the Dems and Reps have conspired to give themselves as a duopoly are bound to behave eccentricly because of the distortions created in their behavior by the system. I don't think any other nominally republican country forces most political parties to expend the overwhelming majority of their resources every election cycle just getting onto the ballot or maintaining their place thereon. --Orange Mike 16:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I put that in the article, and yes, there are two citations for it from 1988, which I believe are a New York Times article and The Economist. He was referred to at that time as the "standard bearer" of the party.--Gloriamarie 01:32, 31 October 2007 (UTC) (Correction: it was The Economist and The Dallas Morning News.--Gloriamarie 02:07, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

My remark was obviously a bit sarcastic, though seriously intended. Yes, I understand the metaphor, I just don't agree with it. When a party nominates someone for president of the United States, they are saying "this is the person we want to be president of the United States", not "this is the person who defines what the party stands for". Doubly true in this particular instance, because frankly I don't think Paul is all that libertarian. I think he's a convinced social conservative, different from other social conservatives primarily in that he makes up his own mind rather than hewing to the party line (or his faction's line). --Trovatore 17:01, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, when a party chooses to nominate somebody, for better or worse they are putting their party's standard into his hands for him to carry forward. If he wanders into forbidden territory, or fails to preserve the banner from soiling, then it reflects on the party. I'm not a libby, but I have many friends who are current or recovering libertarians; I understand both the arguments for and against giving him the nomination that year. They don't change the fact that the L.P., by giving him the nomination, put their sacred guidon into his keeping for the time. All the article says is that he had the custody of that sigil; and while carrying it he built up a fanbase.--Orange Mike 17:22, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I just flat disagree with you. A nomination for president is a nomination for president. Any meaning read into it beyond "this is the person we want you to vote for for president" is speculation. --Trovatore 17:24, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Whether you think it is speculation or not is irrelevant. The citations given from reliable sources-- in this case, The New York Times and The Economist, I believe, declare him to be, in those authors' and publications' opinions, the Libertarian Party standard bearer of the time. That is a fact that those sources published this and as such, it is worthy of inclusion in the article, especially since there is not that much information on that 1988 campaign in the article and I have worked hard just to get what is there from various sources over the last few months. Any further discussion on the merits of whether the statement is true or not belong on individual talk pages or forums, unless they directly relate to whether something should be included in the article, such as if you can find sources saying he was not like the Libertarian Party.--Gloriamarie 01:32, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

(Correction: it was The Economist and The Dallas Morning News, not the NYTimes.--Gloriamarie 02:07, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

"Don't ask, Don't Tell..."

In the sentence:

"He supports revising enforcement of the military "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which he calls "decent", to focus on disruptive behavior and include members with heterosexual as well as homosexual behavior issues."

I think that the bit "... which he calls 'decent' ..." is confusing and potentially misleading. The context behind the "decent" comment is explained very well in the video. He doesn't think any employer anywhere should be 'asking' nor any employee anywhere should be 'telling,' because in the context of individual rights, there is no reason for either of these things to happen. Someone could read this and think that Ron Paul supports the "don't ask, don't tell" policy to some degree as it is commonly understood to be: a veiled anti-gay policy. At the very least, I think it can be removed altogether because it doesn't actually serve to clarify the sentence at all.

Fonesurj 00:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. That phrase was actually put into the article by BenB4, who insisted on that phrasing and turned out to be a sockpuppet. I never agreed with that wording, and it is misleading. Hopefully soon I can look over other aspects of the article to see if they have the same POV problems.--Gloriamarie 01:25, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Just be sure that there weren't other editors in agreement with the edits - even though they were initiated by a sock, if there was consensus to his edits you might want to discuss removals. Tvoz |talk 15:42, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I deleted "which he calls decent" for F's and Gloria's reasons, and because I don't recall any consensus to that insistence of James's (Ben's). John J. Bulten 20:52, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

This article takes a long time to load

It's bizarre. I have a high-speed Internet connection, and pages on Wikipedia take less than a second to load. In contrast, invariably, Ron Paul and Talk:Ron Paul take f o r e v e r to load! I have not had this problem with any other pages on Wikipedia. Is this happening to anyone else? Any ideas as to why this is happening? Thanks! - Photouploaded 16:01, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any slowness in opening either of the pages. I did have a similar problem with Michael Schumacher for awhile though. sdgjake 16:10, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I get "Error" when saving some edits due to hang time (they save well, but do not reload the page). This might relate to size, for which fixes are being discussed above. John J. Bulten 21:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I and some others think it is more a function of the heavy use of the {{cite}} template in articles with on the order of 200 references, but this has not been proven by experiment yet. See discussion in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#any_work_on_the_incredible_sluggishness_of_deeply_edited_articles.3F. Wasted Time R 21:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Template

Note: Squee23 has been blocked indefinitely as a sock puppet of banned user Nrcprm2026. John J. Bulten 15:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

So far GloriaMarie and I, and presumably some others who have read my powwow comments (and my previous synchronization comments) and remained silent, are in favor of use of the template. Now that I've implemented the template (although it's NOT a content change, and no one has objected to the slight content changes that accompanied it), Cyrius objected to its use generally. I think the following observations address objections.

• WP:TMP says in full: "Templates should usually not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace; instead, place the text directly into the article. This does not apply to templates which are transcluded onto multiple articles [example deleted], because it would be extremely tedious to edit the same text in many different articles every time a change is made." — John J. Bulten — continues after insertion below

Two isn't exactly "many." How often do you expect this text to change, anyway? I predict in a few months you are going to regret this. Newbies will add text next to the template instead of in it, to one of the articles. Squee23 04:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

The section is changed regularly: 5 times in last two days since I made it a template, and at least 60 times in the 10 days before that. Newbies already put text in the wrong place all the time. If text actually would be best in the template (i.e. both articles) and they decide to put it in one article only, that is no different from before, when text might have been added to one article that would be best in both. However, previously, we would have to spot this by hand, and now, we proactively and automatically encourage newbies to consider whether placement in both articles would be better. When they do not take advantage of our encouragement, we are notified via watchlist-- which is exactly as before. John J. Bulten 19:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

• AGF, I presume these two folks did not notice that the template was transcluded onto two articles (Ron Paul and Political positions of Ron Paul), which is an "exceptional case" excepted specifically; or else they did not note the whole guideline paragraph. The extreme tedium rule is directly applicable here, especially because:
• I have been maintaining the synchronization of these four paragraphs of the Paul and Positions articles for about a month, with accompanying "tedium", and no one has objected to them being synchronized. A template merely auto-protects the synchronization. The benefits of synchronization, as already stated, include new editors being properly directed to work on the subarticle prior to working on its lead or its identical summary in this article, which assists in preventing careless edits.
• I considered new editors by adding instructions to the section in a comment, which they can reach by the ordinary editing function. (Second draft:) "This section is a brief overview of Ron Paul's major political positions, which are fully described in a separate article. To edit the full political positions article, browse to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul and click "edit this page". To edit this summary of the political positions article, browse to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Ron_Paul_political_positions and click "edit this page"." (Also, added to head of article:) "Please see separate instructions below under "==Political positions==" for editing that section." If this instruction should be expanded, please advise.
• Southern Texas and I have already tested this template procedure to great and useful effect in the following set of articles:
  • Straw polling for the 2008 United States presidential election
  • Straw polls for the Republican Party (United States) presidential nomination, 2008
  • Straw polls for the Democratic Party (United States) presidential nomination, 2008

Please comment if there is any remaining concern. John J. Bulten 14:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I support the use of templates in this case. Anyone who's familiar with software engineering knows that a good design keeps data in just one place and references it multiple times; keeping the same information in multiple places is always a recipe for the data becoming inconsistent. This concern is a major vulnerability of the WP:SUMMARY approach, and using templates is one good way to combat it. Wasted Time R 14:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I removed the template section as it is nearly impossible for new editors to edit the section. The "instructions" added in the edit text of the section are completely insufficient and will not allow new editors to find the template page. Other than the restrictive editing that comes along with this template, I think it is a great idea. I need to be assured that new editors will have access to this info and will be able to edit. Turtlescrubber 15:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

For long, complex, GA/FA-level-aspiring articles such as this, there are many barriers to new editors. Just finding the real text in amongst all the cite templates is hard, knowing how to use the cite templates is hard, knowing how not to break the base cites is hard, knowing to use non-breaking spaces and en dashes and whatnot is hard, and so forth. Even knowing what article or subarticle a change should go into is hard. I don't see the use of these section templates as turning the article from "easy to edit" to a "hard to edit"; it's already "hard to edit". Wasted Time R 16:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Wasted! Um, Turtle, since the only objection you raise is ease of newbies editing, it is much better to add a couple sentences of instruction (as I just did) than to revert several helpful changes unrelated to the change you intend, namely, unrelated helpful changes made by Jeremy221, Eieoeoo, and myself. The current version now retains those changes and addresses your objection as stated. If anything, newbies might find the political positions easier to edit than the rest of the article now! John J. Bulten 18:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Um, John J. It might be better if you add them yourself. Oh, you just did. My job is done here. Anyway, I just want the section as open and accessible as possible and want to limit the closing off of this section to new editors, as is obviously your intent. Cheers. Turtlescrubber 19:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Since you alluded, my intent is that, when a new editors think the best insertion point for a new item is the article lead, or the campaign or position summary, the editor should be presented with the indication that entering it in the main article rather than the lead or summary might be preferable. You can see that a lot is now starting to fill up the campaign summary (which per WP:LEAD should be trimmed to 4 paragraphs if synchronization occurs as I intend), and much is obviously better in the campaign article instead. When I first started here I also had the wrong impression and added to these summary sections haphazardly. I think the present instructions will do the job. John J. Bulten 21:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's a fly in the ointment: WP:SUMMARY#Levels_of_desired_details says that "The summary in a section at the survey article will necessarily be at least twice as long as the lead section in the daughter article." This would break the equivalence that's been proposed here. Where this 'necessarily' derives from, I don't know, and I don't think this rule is always reasonable. Hell, I would violate it ... there's lots about WP:SUMMARY I don't like ... Wasted Time R 22:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

How do we check references on the template page? What happens when new references are added? Turtlescrubber 03:05, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I fixed that with <noinclude>...<references /></noinclude> but I think this is bad idea. Squee23 04:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I also think this a bad idea and that it's not implemented on more articles for a very good reason. The more I interact with the template the more I realize how unworkable it is going to be. Turtlescrubber 04:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Editing a template is similar to editing a section of a regular page - you can't see the references generated until you view the full document (containing that section or template). Wasted Time R 11:34, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Wasted! Yes, this is in fact exactly like editing sectionally (for both current and new references), and exactly the right programming response. One of the guidelines says, just temporarily include the references so you can see them while editing. IMHO, to the degree it's not implemented in more articles, it's because people don't know that they can take advantage of it. I was looking around for this functionality, but Southern Texas actually knew of it and got it started in the polling articles, and it's really very easy to run with. Turtle, please describe why you think it's unworkable. John J. Bulten 19:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

In section editing when I want to check references I add <references /> on the bottom of the section, check it at preview, and then erase the references line, which I picked up from some guideline page or other. That shows you the refs are correct but won't be there to confuse the next person who comes along to edit the section which <noinclude> might. But I don't know if that's what Turtlescrubber was getting at. You do have to remember to erase the references/ line before posting. Tvoz |talk 04:00, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it's 4 in the morning so maybe I'm not fully focused, but I didn't find this particularly easy to use or clear about its purpose. It's not just about newbies, it's about anyone who comes here and wants to make an edit - seems to me like you're throwing up a barrier to that. Believe me, I've spent a great deal of time reverting edits that are made to articles that I maintain, and it's frustrating and annoying, and I often would like them all to go away and leave alone the article that I and others have worked so hard to make right. But that's not how it works here, as everyone knows. I also don't quite get what's going on here exactly - you're using identical language here in political positions as part of the beginning of Political positions of Ron Paul? But when you go to edit that page, an editor wouldn't understand how to do that - the text is transcluded in as a template at the end of the first paragraph but I don't see instructions. Nor is it clear here - you give instructions, but since templates are not used much around the encyclopedia in this way, even experienced editors might be unclear about how the page is constructed. I think that all of this will have the effect of chasing off editors - not vandals, but good faith, reliable editors who find this to be more work than they want to give it - and that is not what we're supposed to be doing here, tempting as it is. Again, it's late, so I may be misunderstanding this, but on a first look I would be opposed to this, even though I certainly understand the benefit of reducing the volume of garbage that has to be cleaned up. Something about the baby and the bathwater - and not just newbies. Also - if I may... I have to think this one through a bit more, but I'm not completely convinced that having identical wording in more than one article is a plus. Yes, the main article should reflect some of what the sub article says from a content point of view, but I am not so sure it should be in the identical words. That's boring - forces people to read the same thing twice - and why is that degere of uniformity a good thing? Seems almost lazy to me as a reader (though not as an editor) - as a reader I want to read fuller and more detailed information in the daughter article, including its lead. As I said, I have to think more about that, but I am not happy with this approach overall as it seems to me to fly in the face of equal editing access. Maybe it will look different to me in the morning. Tvoz |talk 08:24, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Everything looks hard at 4 in the morning! I agree that it won't always be the case with WP:SUMMARY that the summary in the main article should be the same as the lead in the daughter article ... but in cases where it makes sense, using templates is a good way to make sure they stay consistent with each other. I'm considering doing this for the presidential campaign section/article in the Hillary Rodham Clinton pages, for instance; I've already been annoyed by how the summary and the lead share much of the same material but are duplications of text and references. In cases where you don't want the summary and the lead to read exactly the same, you can parameterize the template and have it generate different text depending upon where it's included from ... although I guess this would really freak y'all out on "chasing away editors" grounds. And again, "equal editing access" is a myth ... the Edit view of many of these articles is already close to impenetrable for inexperienced editors. "Newbies will add text next to the template instead of in it" is what I already see happening - people can't figure out the text-ref-cite maze and just find some whitespace in the edit view somewhere and stick their contribution in there. Wasted Time R 11:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Tvoz, the purpose is to simplify editing. (1) The summary of a subarticle for its main article, and the summary of a subarticle for its lead, are functionally identical; there is no reason (other than a ramp-up sentence or two for the lead which might not be present in the main summary) why the two should not be linked. (2) Every improvement to the template immediately improves both articles, instead of editors improving one article and never thinking to make the same improvement to the other article, where it is thoroughly appropriate. This is the basic reason (as fellow software engineering buff Wasted recognizes) for templates in the first place: the same reason we have email signatures, prefilled login forms, website favorites lists, cut-and-paste, and all the rest of the storage receptacles we use to refer to anything more than once.

Throwing up a barrier to editing? No more so than any other WP-specific procedure. For instance, I noticed Dal LaMagna had dropped out of the presidential race about a week before 10/21 when he was moved to "withdrawn" in the election template that appears in this article (Dal has now been dropped entirely from that template). I would have eventually gotten around to figuring out how to make that change myself, but I didn't because of its lesser importance, not knowing exactly how to do it yet, and (once I learned exactly how) someone else having fixed it by then. This template does not throw up a barrier to editing, it actually encouraged me (in time) to learn more about WP to figure out how to edit it. Even if a template is only used for 2 articles, it still brings enough benefit (as just stated) that users should learn how to take advantage of it.

Liking edits all to go away? No, but I do believe that tools which can teach users to redirect their own mistaken edits are better than us having to teach them personally by reversion or performing the change ourselves. If the tool's comment is insufficient for teaching, we just reword it to make it consensus-sufficient, as already done twice now.

I did neglect to put instructions in the second article, now fixed. I apologize for this inconsequential mistake.

Since templates are not much used this way, construction is unclear to experienced editors? No more so than trying to edit LaMagna in the election template. The newness to you of this application of templates is the only obstacle.

Will this chase off editors? No more so than any other WP convention. You could say I was "chased off" from editing footnotes and links for a couple weeks until I felt confident. Footnote code is crazy-making strange, and I made several errors in attempting to edit them at first, which I either didn't save or kept trying until the results were presentable. But if someone (as frequently here) turns a footnote into a giant scroll of gibberish or a big bad red note, um, that's what WP permits and encourages, and the fixer will arrive in moments. Same for template errors.

Digression: some months ago, I had my first experience with Talk by inadvisedly clicking on what I now know to be an NPOV box. Yes, nothing more than the page Talk:Free Republic. And I'm a forum moderator, too. But would you believe, the talk page was so convoluted and the discussion so in-group that that did chase me off as an editor for many moons. Specific problems I had as a newbie: an NPOV box does not tell you which Talk section is the actual dispute, so you have no idea where on the often-long page to find it (had the same problem originally with this article); missing signatures and other cues drained the discussions of meaningful context; the discussion was abstruse and often (in this case) prone to confusion between FR usernames and WP usernames; and frequent mention, without citation, was made of all sorts of WP secrets, WP:AC being an easy one to recall. Now, which is more dissuasive: a newbie who just wants to know why the FR article wasn't neutral and being faced with all that; or a newbie who wants to edit a section, figured out how to click "edit this page", figured out how to find the section in the scroll by its heading, and sees a clear, unambiguous instruction in the text for how to do that?

And look, newbies can edit one of the two main articles and we can (as usual) move the text to its proper place. If any edit is "chased off" because (1) they can't figure out how to edit the template and (2) they refuse to place the text anywhere they can figure out how to edit, I would submit that the summary sections of a highly-viewed GA/FA properly deserve to be a bit more protected than any old stub. Look, the article is protected against IP and new-user edits already; I came on gung ho and found I couldn't edit the article for 4 days; did that stop me? Was I chased off by the 4-day requirement? I was disappointed and perturbed, yes, but I was patient and got past it. WP is supposed to combine ease of use for new members and difficulty of change for things that are higher on the spectrum of not needing as much change. If we decide some sections properly warrant a bit of extra work, and new editors find that work more than they want to give in good faith, then they have properly decided in good faith that the edit is not important enough to overcome the consensus that made that edit a slight bit harder to make! I think what you're really arguing here, Tvoz, is that you don't believe the political positions summary warrants a slight bit more protection than the remainder of the article (which is already protected). Because it's a summary, and because it has often been abused by additions which are more proper to the subarticle, I submit that it does deserve that extra step of finding the template.

Repeating text? Repeating text is not a problem! Repeating text is called "boilerplate"! (Note that I produced that comment with the following shorter pseudocode I just invented: [X="Repeating text"|X? X is not a problem! X is called "boilerplate"!]) Repetition is only even a potential issue if I happen to read both identical sections in close proximity. Now, I might recognize the repetition: in which case I just skim and skip to section 1. I might recognize it partway and feel duty-bound to finish reading, or I might not recognize it at all: in which case I really did need to read it twice. But far worse is if I see that two texts are similar, but (because of different edit histories) they use the same thoughts in roughly identical words, use different footnotes, and are disorderly in comparison with each other. That is the situation I encountered, and is much worse than straight repetition, which is professional. When I get two copies of boilerplate, that's just repetition, but when those copies differ, that's textual corruption. All sorts of publications repeat boilerplate text all the time, and these feelings you describe of being bored or forced or spotting laziness do not warrant every article being original all the way through. Have you noticed that About Ron Paul and about 11 Issues pages all start with the same boilerplate about Ron Paul? How many times have I seen the "Brief Overview" in different places, often enough that I can pretty well quote it from memory? Do you object to the campaign doing this?

I really think that everyone will realize that their objections mostly resolve to the fact that this is a new proposed phase for this article and takes a bit of learning. Overall it's an improvement; it would be silly to say that the two sections should be delinked, and improvements to one will not automatically propagate to the other because we can't be sure they will improve the other. More in line with WP style would be to permit the tool, and in case a change does not improve both articles, well, we fix it. Thank you for listening. John J. Bulten 19:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Templates are great for actual boilerplate - the stuff on the bottom of dozens of articles that lists all of the candidates, for example, is a perfect and correct use of templates. Those should be identical across articles, and it would be pointless and prone to error and extremely tedious if they were not handled that way. But templates were not designed here to be used for article text- it is specifically ruled out in fact - and saying that this is a legitimate exception because you're putting it in a parent and daughter article, I think is wrong. Having to update the daughter article to match the parent article is not what they mean by "extremely tedious". You said that no one objected to the language being identical this last month as you were doing this - well, I for one wasn't even aware that you were doing that, so my not commenting on it doesn't tell you that I thought it was the right approach. I do not think this kind of text in an article should be treated as boilerplate. [Tvoz continues below]

From a data management point of view, the difference between the "two" case and the "dozens" case is not much ... any duplication of data is a bad thing. Wasted Time R 02:42, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

But the template instructions, I think, were written that way to make the point that templates should be used as boilerplate across multiple articles, not as substitutes for text. Tvoz |talk 04:00, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the reference templates are tricky to use at first, but any editor can add text to any article with an incorrectly formatted reference, and someone else will come along and fit it into the correct cite web or whatever form is being used in that article. I do it all the time - change refs to the correct form, on many articles, including those I'm not any kind of primary editor of. But the initial edit was placed easily enough, and that's what I'm talking about. And it's not just newbies. If I landed at an article where I saw something that I felt needed changing, I would be put off by seeing a template in the text. I'm plenty experienced, but I probably would not think it worth the effort. So if your goal is to limit editing, which I think it is, use of a template would work. But I don't agree that this is what we're supposed to be doing here. [Tvoz continues below]

JJB may or may not want to limit editing (at one time or another the Holy Grail of every serious WP editor is The Article That Can Defend Itself), but I don't think you can pin this goal on templates. They aren't that hard to find or edit! Look at Template:United States presidential election, 2008, for example, which has been mentioned here before ... it's been a subject of content battles all year long — and only getting worse now with Colbert semi-jokingly/semi-seriously announcing — all sorts of people have managed how to find and edit that. Wasted Time R 02:49, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

JJB- I shouldn't have personalized the "limit editing" to you that way - sorry. The desire to limit editing is one I often share, as I said, but it's not supposed to be that way. Wasted - right - I have no problem at all with templates like Template:United States presidential election, 2008. They are set off in a box, they should be identical across as many articles as they appear in - from 1 to 10000. And they usually are easy enough to edit (some of the ones that are charts are a little trickier) - but that wasn't my point. They are obviously templates - you can see that when you look at the article. They are not the text of an article. To clarify my muddy explanation: if it's in a box, set off as obviously something that is being superimposed on an article for consistency across a group or articles, yes, yes, yes, they should be templates - and I'll even go one further, but don't quote me (ha) - it's not the end of the world if they are a little harder to edit because in fact we want them stable, subject to change only to reflect what's going on in the real world while we try to communicate it. But I think that is inappropriate for text, including summaries that appear in parent/daughter articles. I do think the instructions are a little clearer now on the daughter article than they were last night, but I am still not comfortable with it for the reasons I've said too many times already.Tvoz |talk 04:00, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

John, as for reading the same thing twice - this was not my primary reason for not liking this approach, but we're talking about a section in the main article that someone reads and then clicks on the link in that section to the daughter article, right? By definition, those people are likely to read the same thing twice in rapid succession - that is what I'm talking about. (And it's irrelevant to me how the campaign does anything - has nothing to do with our building an encyclopedia, but if they repeat sections of text I would find it boring as a reader - that's not my main point however.) [Tvoz continues below]

I'm all for not having to repeat the same stuff twice. That's one of the many weakness of WP:SUMMARY. I'd rather approach the summary section with a different angle than the daughter article takes — for instance, the HRC main article 'Political positions' summary section uses general metrics of her positions taken from polls, interest group ratings, etc., while the daughter article goes into all the detail of enumerating her positions on all the issues. But I've been criticized for this; people seem to want to see the same stuff twice. Wasted Time R 02:39, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly my point - I think the summary in the parent article should not be the same as the daughter article text. That is why I oppose using a template for any section of article text. I never criticized you for that, Wasted - I agree with your approach on this. Tvoz |talk 04:00, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

As for protection - this is not protection. I am well established in my support for semiprotection all over the place, sometimes long-term - ask User:HailFire about my position vis-à-vis Obama on sprot. In fact I am close to advocating that no IP edits be allowed in the project - that's a conversation for elsewhere but I am not a "let everyone play" flower child on this - I spend way too much of my time on wikipedia undoing the damage that is done by everyone-can-edit. But you're not talking about protection - you're talking about distancing editors from the text they want to edit. All editors. I think that when an editor opens an edit page of an article they should see the same structure they see everywhere else - if they were reading the "political positions" section and had a better way of phrasing something, they should not have to jump through hoops to do so. Making text boilerplate, I think, is not the way WIkipedia works, and I think this should be discussed on the community level, not just decided here and carried over to other places - this is more fundamental than that.

Again - let me be clear: I am in favor of templates for information that is repeated multiple times across many articles, which is what the template guidelines say. This is not that - and one only has to open the edit screen to see that. I don't think editors should easily be able to edit the "future election" tag, for example - that is appropriately a template, it is standard langaugae that will appear in any article about any candidate for any election. Is boilerplate and should be. But the political positions of Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton intro, in my opinion, should not be. The ideas should be consistent in the parent and daughter - the language doesn't have to be.

And one last thought: while I totally understand the value of this from a software engineering perspective, I think it is inappropriate from a collaborative-project perspective. I agree with points made above by Squee and Turtlescrubber, and think this approach needs to go to a wider audience for discussion. Tvoz |talk 02:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

First a complete digression related only tangentially to NPOV: I love pointing out the fact that most advocates of "nonsexist" language often do not recognize that "sexist" language can be, and often is, biased in both directions, not just the male-favoring direction. Your happy reference to "parent and daughter" articles, instead of "parent-child", "mother-daughter", "father-son", illustrates that point. No personal observation meant, of course, other than that language itself is much more full of felicitous inconsistencies than either "herstory" or "he-only" advocates would oft admit.

The "daughter" usage comes from WP:SUMMARY, and it seems to be in somewhat common use. One approach to gender-neutral language, and the one that I use in business writing, is to sprinkle both genders into documents, on a somewhat haphazard but ultimately equal basis, and avoid clumsy constructs like "he or she". "Parent/daughter" may flunk a parallelism test, but I'll worry about that when language use is much more evenly balanced in this respect. And your positing "herstory" as the opposite of the "he-only" approach is a strawman ... I don't know of any sane person who uses it in normal writing. (Note that in academic use, "herstory" means something else, roughly analogous to "queer theory" and the like.) Wasted Time R 19:32, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a strawwoman in this case. OK, change "he-only" to the insaner, more parallel "Madam Chairman". John J. Bulten 19:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Cute, John, but I think it's "Chair" not "Chairman" or even "Chairperson".Tvoz |talk 08:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

People do actually use "Madam Chairman", even though it sounds oxymoronic. If you assume that "Chairman" is gender-insignificant under the "he-only" approach, then "Madam Chairman" is no different than "Madam Secretary" or "Madam President". Wasted Time R 11:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, rather than respond directly to your concerns again, and continue getting into a talk mode which I call cut-and-paste stimulus-and-response, where we each keep trying to rebut each other's viewpoints and which I have already lapsed into as you can see, let me redirect the conversation. First recall that my definition of boilerplate, taken from advertising, DTP, and programming, is any textual unit which is repeated, which should retain its identity, and which may thereby be named or considered a separate unit. (You appear to be limiting its meaning to nonprose, which is fine semantically, but I will use my definition herein.) (1) Our debate is significant: when is automatic boilerplate preferable, and when is it disadvantageous? (2) Our debate has been had before, without consensus conclusion. These three sections seem to have the strongest statements of both sides, based on 2005 WP technology: [5], [6], [7]. For this reason the WP:TMP policy is ambiguous, ambiguous enough that we reinvoked the same two views of the situation from that one policy. (3) The debate is widespread, because in virtually any case where main articles and subarticles occur, the summary of the sub in the main, and the lead in the sub, will be identical in idea, if not desirably identical in text; prior examples appear below. (4) This ongoing dilemma may be resolved by other means than templates, where the advantages of boilerplate do not conflict with the disadvantages you find in the present template technology. I have found one potential means below, which might do the trick sufficiently for a compromise in such cases. (5) However, if we agree on the value of text linking but cannot agree on a means, then that is a technological debate and deserves wider audience both among editors and WP programmers, who can create a solution. WP consensus has found templates themselves essential and useful, but similar programming to permit wide use of boilerplate (i.e. synchronized repetition of prose which does not appear different from ordinary article prose) has not bubbled up. (6) If we don't agree on the value of text linking itself, that is a philosophical debate, which I will answer separately below, but which I really don't think will be a serious disagreement.

If we take the following steps, we might achieve the compromise. (1) Delete the template, and restore the summary prose from the template to the subarticle lead. (2) Place the <noinclude></noinclude> tags around the first sentence of the subarticle lead (which is not part of the template), and around the remainder of the subarticle after the lead. (3) This will mean wherever the subarticle is transcluded, only its summary will appear. Transclude it in the main article. (I have tested this by transcluding template X6 into my user sandbox page; it appears it will be no different for transcluding from article to article.) (4) Add explanatory notes: in the main article comments, "To edit this summary section and its separate article, go to the article 'Political positions of Ron Paul' itself". In the subarticle comments, "This is a subarticle of the main 'Ron Paul' article and its lead section is transcluded into the main article. Edits to the lead section of this article should be suitable for the main article as well. Please do NOT move the 'noinclude' tags which permit the transclusion." It might even be advisable to change the link between the 2 articles (both directions currently use the template "main"). The link from main to sub might say, "This summary section may be edited from its main article, Political positions of Ron Paul"; or, since templates just say "e", it might say right-aligned, "[edit this summary]".

Now the concerns one might raise are greatly alleviated. A user who starts with the subarticle faces no change from the old version other than one more admonition not to break existing code one doesn't understand (the "noinclude" tags). A user who starts from the main article will have a more natural edit method than before, one even potentially adverted in the tag visible in the main article. Obviously the section edit link would not be an immediate link to the text to edit itself, without a programming workaround; but, remember, sprot means that "edit this page" doesn't appear for unlogged users (and leads to a 4-day warning for new users, IIRC), which are, of course, editing hurdles. Since we both agree on these particular editing hurdles, the hurdle of a couple more clicks or a bit more ramp-up for a summary section seems generally acceptable.

There is one concern that remains which is nontechnological. You might argue that for this particular article, the two summary sections should not be synchronized-- which argument you come close to above, but I don't want to presume on your words. To this I would observe: (1) Many WP users, and many reference works, do find the automatic repetition of prose (boilerplate) to be useful in occasional circumstances, such as (here) cricket, sustainable energy, astrology, verb conjugations, and even: "Elections might be a similar case, but I don't believe any of our current elections articles use transclusion (as opposed to having a lot of transcluded templates, mind), so it's moot. Shimgray 16:36, 20 August 2005 (UTC)"; since there is a consensus that some mechanism for prose boilerplate is a WP improvement (at minimum, for intros to multiarticle lists), we do not reject boilerplate outright, and whether it should be used in the 2 RP articles is an open question. You say "the language doesn't have to be" consistent; nor does it have to be inconsistent. (2) Before I synchronized, there was a consensus that the two summaries contained about 20-30 thoughts in common, perhaps more than half their mutual size. My edits were in response to this observation. So the consensus indicated that these sections were virtually identical in their ideas. (3) When two related texts say the same thing in different words, as if two different people were trying to recall the same speech of a third party, sometimes variety is useful: if two court witnesses' stories match verbatim, they are discredited. However, when one project (WP) contains both related texts, it is not the situation of two witnesses but of one corporeal identity. Whenever the same company distributes multiple versions of its logo, drawn by different hands, it reflects poorly and sometimes significantly, especially when the company has the tools to maintain a standard image system, such as via template logos. (If, however, the Clinton positions main summary lists what people rate her on her positions, and the subarticle lead lists the important positions themselves (or is a single sentence, as at present-- perhaps against WP:LEAD), then there is no duplication of idea and no conflict of image.) (4) Given that consensus indicates this is a situation where the two sections are not just "similar" ideas but harmonizable ideas, I believe this situation does call for synchronization. However, it appears that when two texts are closely identical (as these two were), they should either be synchronized or another tack taken entirely (such as different angle, reduction of one to a single sentence and link to the other, etc.). The idea of consciously retaining closely identical sections where there is no significant difference in angle, and permitting them to fork and evolve separately, seems clearly antithetical to WP improvement.

Regarding the aside about the HRC Political positions article's lead being only a single sentence, that's true of pretty much all the current candidates' political positions articles. That's because you can't accurately summarize these candidates' views very well; they are a mishmash of this and that, a set of beliefs and compromises and stark calculations evolved over time and hedged this way and that way, and trying to summarize a given aspect in a single sentence or clause loses nuance and meaning and gets into the territory of campaign slogans and negative ads. A full summary is much more workable for Political positions of Ron Paul, however, because as a libertarian his views are much more consistent and can be fit into a coherent philosophical framework. You just can't do that with Rudy, Mitt, Hillary, or McCain, to name a few. Wasted Time R 19:42, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Presuming that this is close to workable general solution, I would suggest that after we hit the open road with this idea, I would make bold but reasonable edits to WP:TMP, WP:TRANS, and WP:SUMMARY, to describe it as a potential workaround for other users with this issue. John J. Bulten 18:53, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

What is this template? How hard does it make the article to edit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.88.254 (talk) 20:58, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Quick and necessarily incomplete responses to John's long post: 1) in normal writing I would probably not use parent/daughter, but this is wikipedia and nothing is done normally here - as witness this intricate and elaborate proposal (meant as a joke, but you can't be too careful); 1a) "child" has connotations and sons get plenty of exposure in this world, so I'll go with daughter when I have the choice - my feminist prerogative, hear me roar; 2) I am not comfortable with this article being singled out to be handled differently from just about all others - "anyone can edit" if they have a degree in software engineering?; but 3) I'll read your proposal more carefully as on one quick read I don't think I completely got it; I don't have time right this minute, and I think you're suggesting something different from what we were talking about yesterday; 4) I renew my call for wider input on this, if you're still proposing using a template for text (but I'm not sure you are), as per my "2" above; and 5) you might talk about this on the talk pages of those policy/guidelines before being too bold. (FWIW, by the way, I never liked the laundry list approach in political positions in this article and still don't.) Tvoz |talk 04:09, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

My primary question, then, is how you think the two related sections should read. If the main article summary and the subarticle lead should be identical, I believe that should be maintained programmatically, and if they should not be identical, I believe they should be clearly delinked from each other and should not contain twenty or more concepts in common. How would you implement my concerns? Thanks. John J. Bulten 18:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I think I've already answered this, but I'll do it again: I think there is no need, and it is not desirable, for the section in the main article to be identical, word-for-word, to any section in the daughter article, just like for comparable political articles. A short summary of his position on some major issues would suffice for the main article, perhaps with some general descriptive material about libertarian/conservative (and while we're at it I'd take most of the positions out of the lede of the main article as well). See McCain, Hillary, Giuliani, etc etc - they don't go into the detail that this one does in the main article, and certainly not in the lede. I don't know what you mean about "delinking" the articles though - of course there should be a link from one to the other - that's the whole point. But maybe I misunderstood you there. All the more reason for the link if the wording is different, no?

And what I'm saying about using a template here is that I do not believe that we should be re-inventing the wheel to write/maintain this article - there is nothing so special or different about it that calls for a restructuring of how articles are done, and I think that is what this text template does. It does distance editors from editing the page, and while I completely understand the appeal of that, I have to object to it in practice in a situation like this. I don't think the template guidelines are unclear or ambiguous - I think it is very clear that they are not intended for sections of text other than true boilerplate, such as repetitive intro sections to lists or certainly the boxes on the bottom of the pages that list the other candidates, etc. Those are not text and should be relatively uncontroversial, and absolutely should be identical across all of the relevant articles. That, I think, is what is meant here by "boilerplate", and that is what's appropriate for a template, and as I said earlier, I see value in that being a little harder for random editing when someone lands on a page that it's used in. Just like it should be a little harder to edit the text of the template tags people find on articles. In principle everything is editable, but true boilerplate should be a little less accessible, so that it has a shot of remaining boilerplate. But the political positions of a candidate aren't that, in my opinion. Tvoz |talk 07:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

another suggestion

Looking closer at this, another way to go would be to have the so-called "overview" as the section on the main page, as it is right now, and remove that overview from the daughter page completely. That would shorten the daughter page which has been requested, without further forking that page off which I would oppose. I think it's more detail than is needed here, but it would be a possible compromise position. Repeating the section here and there does not make any sense to me, and I don't see the need on the daughter page for the very detailed summary which is then expanded - most other daughter pages treat the daughter as the details that the parent page didn't go into, with just a on-line intro, and there's no reason this one should be any different. Tvoz |talk 07:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:SUMMARY#Levels of desired details says that "The summary in a section at the survey article will necessarily be at least twice as long as the lead section in the daughter article." Where does this formula come from? It seems kind of pulled out of thin air. But to me it implies a more substantive lead in the daughter article than what you are suggesting. But I'm happy with ignoring parts of WP:SUMMARY when they don't make much sense in practice. Wasted Time R 12:35, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

That certainly isn't the way it's done in many articles - I don' know where that comes from either. Tvoz |talk 16:04, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I wanted to delete "twice", as it really only applies to articles entirely written in summary style, not articles like this with one or two offshoot articles.

Must agree that the edits seem headed in the direction of this suggestion. That would mean new editors would edit the positions summary here, and the full subarticle there, and only a one-sentence lead would appear there. (Photouploaded tried this earlier, and somebody has tried it again, to my disappointment.) My concerns with that approach are more minor though: the contents are so long they hide the text (preventing users from being eased-in as typically, with the same objection usable against the HRC positions article); and the TOC should -not- be on the left side, unless it expands from the neutral to the specific ("Iraq" to "Withdrawal from Iraq"). As it stands the reader has -no- incentive to page down at all. But that is easily remedied.

Considering all the infoboxes and requests that have been thrown up recently I'm presently leaning toward: (1) move the template to this article; (2) use a 2-sentence intro and transition in the positions sub, with a tocright, so that the reader will be immediately ushered into Section 1 Iraq; (3) recommend template for speedy deletion; (4) dramatically condense positions sub and cull footnotes; (5) move much of the campaign stuff from the main article to the campaign sub, to shrink the main article and make its summary better. This appears to address everyone's concerns (unless someone is holding out for the text appearing twice), so I'll put it through if no one else does. John J. Bulten 20:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

(6) I would be amenable to moving the Congressional history into a third spinoff article. (7) Much of the legislation can be combined with the positions. Content may direct a wise proportion among spinoffs. The proposal to break the positions article into six is not best. John J. Bulten 20:49, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Responding to the part about Political positions: this sounds right to me. I'm not sure what I think about tocright, but I can see why it might be a good idea - I'll hold off comment until I see how that works. Part of the problem with the TOC is that there are so many subheads - and some of them for sections that are only 2 or 3 short sentences long - is that what you meant by condensing? If so, I agree. Tvoz |talk 20:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Net scamming?

The Wired Magazine exposes faked support mails all over the net:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/paul_bot —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.131.210.162 (talk) 16:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

In accord with WP:BLP and WP:TALK, libel deleted and heading adjusted by John J. Bulten 21:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Is that what the article REALLY says? Fonesurj 16:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It just says someone used some spam techniques to advertise Paul for president in order to email as many people as possible. I don't see anything unusual or fraudulent about that. That's how people advertise through email. I don't understand why it's news even. Operation Spooner 16:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Spooner, spamming is widely despised as abuse of the entire Internet; it consumes an unknown but clearly enormous amount of human energy and time. Spammers are scum; people who forge headers are by law as well as custom fraudulent criminals. Do you really not understand the difference between legitimate e-mail between persons, and spam; or am I talking to a troll? Honest people do not advertise by spam of any kind, least of all by spam with forged headings, as Paul's supporters are reported to have done. --Orange Mike 18:36, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll second that. Spammers are scum. They are fraudsters, and they show total disregard for the people who's time and resources they're wasting, and I find such attitudes totally infantile and inexcusable in everyday life- why should people suddenly receive special consideration when they are inconsiderate online? That's like saying he would never hurt a child, he's a considerate guy when a "considerate guy" races at 70mph through a school zone. Online behaviour, like one's behaviour behind the wheel, does not deserve any special exceptions. I got a spam today that falsified a news story, saying that Britney Spears was dead, just to get me to click on a link. Disgusting. Those bastards will be the first ones with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes. - Eric 17:51, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd argue that, morally-speaking, spam techniques = fraudulent behaviour. (Wiktionary defines fraud as an act of deception carried out for the purpose of unfair, undeserved, and/or unlawful gain) I'd also point out that, legally-speaking, faking headers in e-mail messages is considered spam and is a federal offense under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Since I've received several pro-Ron-Paul spam messages (I study spam patterns for fun) but as-yet no spam promoting other candidates, I'd argue that using spam, a widely-reviled form of advertising, in a political campaign is, indeed unusual. Therefore, I suggest that using "spam techniques to advertise Paul for president" is indeed both fraudulent AND unusual. (Well, there's my MXN$0.20 centavos.) Cheerio. - Eric 18:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that spam is illegal and using such techniques for your own personal gain is fraudulent. I think everyone agrees with that. What the article does not indicate, as there is no evidence, is that Ron Paul or his campaign staff are responsible for the spam that is occuring. There have been numerous well known spam campaigns for all kinds of reasons that are known to not be perpetrated by the persons that they have affected. For instance, American Idol text-message storms that voted for Sanjaya. There were third-party websites DEDICATED to this. Knowing that third-parties very easily organize and engage in these activities, it is not hard to believe that a technology savvy group of Pro-Ron Paul supporters are engaging in exactly this behavior. I would think that it might even be likely. What I do not believe, at this point, is that Ron Paul or his staff are responsible for it or have a hand in it. As far as I know, they are not officially suspected of doing this. If they are, a link would be great please! 67.53.228.87 19:03, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that spam is "fraudulent." It's no different that mailing a paper advertisement from the U.S. to several different countries so that can be remailed out from those various locations in order to prevent the mail from being censored or restricted by government before they get to their intended end location. I think most libertarians would agree that there's nothing immoral about that and that should not be illegal, whether it's paper mail or electronic mail. More power to anyone who wants to do this. Operation Spooner 21:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if I agree with that. Nevertheless, I don't think Ron Paul was responsible for the "spam" in question, and so therefore the original comment above has no place on his wikipedia page.Fonesurj 23:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't belong in the Paul article unless it can be tied to Paul directly. Celebrity articles don't mention every stupid thing their fans do.--Daveswagon 15:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Daveswagon on this; it's not relevant unless Paul or his campaign is doing it. I must say, though, that Spooner is the first libertarian I've ever heard defend fraud as a legitimate business practice. Even SEK3 didn't go that far: he didn't consider tax fraud real fraud, since it was gummint (I sure miss arguing with him). --Orange Mike 16:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying fraud is a legitimate business practice. It's not. I'm saying spam is not fraud. Nor is sending emails to people to inform them about a presidential candidate a business. Operation Spooner 20:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Believe Spooner omitted a "not", which I supplied. John J. Bulten 21:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Operation Spooner 21:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

It becomes relevant when someone posts mention of Ron Paul's high internet popularity in the article lead, when that's just an illusion produced by a carefully-crafted spam-campaign, regardless of who's responsible for the spam. - Eric 17:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Has anybody looked into the origin of the meme that Paul's popularity is just an illusion created by a spam campaign? I recall Fox News early on (without apparent evidence) dismissing viewer feedback favoring Paul as just a result of Internet activism by a few. It has been in the echo chamber ever since. Terjen 19:05, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know that I'd dignify it with the title of "meme"; such a hypothesis of astroturfing is bound to arise whenever somebody shows up as more popular in the netroots than conventional wisdom would predict. --Orange Mike 21:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The CAN-SPAM Act only applies to commercial email. Individual sending out emails to inform people about a presidential candidate is not commercial email. Anyway, guess who voted against the CAN-SPAM act? Ron Paul. I do not see how any libertarian could support making spam illegal. The equivalent of spam in paper mail is not illegal. Operation Spooner 02:05, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I can see very easily how one might vote to make certain kinds of spam illegal, as it amounts to pollution and a disrespect for private property. Fonesurj 14:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Why bring up the legitimacy of spam? Most everyone agrees that spam is bad, but that's not relevant to the article. There's no evidence that the Ron Paul campaign had anything to do with the spam. There's not even any evidence that Ron Paul supporters had anything to do with it. It's equally possible that the spam was sent by others to cast Ron Paul in a negative light. Not that it's relevant either way, because there's no evidence, and it's not tied to the campaign. One thing that is for sure, though, is that Ron Paul's internet support is not simply an illusion caused by spam. The email spam originated long after Ron Paul gained internet support and started receiving fund raising attention. Saying that the support was faked by spam would be both demonstrably incorrect and lacking in any common sense. 68.181.240.94 21:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Presidential candidate notice?

Do we add presidential campaign notices to articles dealing with people who are running for president? Or, do we only add that notice to the presidential campaign article?

I put it up, feel free to delete it if you wish. Ultimablah 19:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Unexplained deletion of references

I'm new to this article, so I would be unaware of any ongoing or previous conflicts regarding content or references. However, recently a user Photouploaded removed two references that supported the statement that Paul is strongly pro-life (his own words). His only edit summary was "OK?". To me, this is not a valid reason to delete what appear to be reliable and valid references to a statement that is likely to challenged or questioned, and should therefore be referenced, per WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:ATT. I reverted this edit, but now user John J. Bulten has reverted me, stating, "using Photo's compromise version (please Talk about alternatives)."[8] Again, to me this is not a valid reason to delete valid references. The two references that were deleted from the lead appear at the very bottom of the page, which are used to support the claim that Paul believes life begins at conception. However, the statement in the lead differs greatly from the one near the end of the article, so it should therefore be supported by reliable references. There should be a valid reason to delete good references, or the references shall be reinserted per the aforementioned policies and guidelines. ~ UBeR 02:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

UBeR, (1) Photo was the one who had added the refs in the first place, and he was moving from 3 footnotes to 1 as a compromise, for which I applauded him; (2) since those refs were already given in the text near the end, they were -not- deleted. This is not a random deletion, but the latest adjustment in a cautious balancing act to build consensus on an ongoing heated topic that has involved many editors. What is the "great difference" you see between "life begins at conception" and "strongly pro-life"? Even if there is one, I suppose we could repeat "strongly pro-life" at the end with no harm done. I don't understand why you feel the lead needs to be weighted with so many footnotes that all say the same thing (Was the Rhodes quote not enough? Is overturning RvW not a direct synonym of pro-life?). Or why do you imply "strongly pro-life" is -not- supported by the refs in either section? John J. Bulten 03:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, when I say "deleted a reference," I do not necessarily mean the actual source has been deleted, I simply mean any references to that source have been removed at the particular location they have been deleted from. IN this case, two references have been deleted from the lead. On that note, I can't see how deleting two references from the lead is considered "moving from 3 footnotes to 1." You'll have to explain that one to me. If the problem is quantity of references, which it shouldn't be, this source should suffice.

To clarify the difference between the start of life and being against abortions (i.e. being pro-life), one simply has to look at their inequality. If an example is needed, one can easily believe life begins at conception but still be OK with abortions. This one counter example completely negates any argument that suggest the two beliefs are identical. Also, the opposition of Roe v. Wade is not a sole indicator of one supports abortions or not. Roe v. Wade is a case about the scope of the government in the legality of abortions. Paul is a libertarian, so it should be expected there is a want to limit the federal government's role in personal decisions. This much should be clear. But one cannot deduce, at least not without violating WP:OR, that because of this he oppose abortions. Saying Paul is strongly pro-life is a statement on its own, separate from the ones made later in the article, and needs to be sourced. Period. ~ UBeR 04:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

U, I should also point out that we've had the same banned user come back here time and again with sockpuppets and seemingly argue every nitpick of this to death, so we're a little strained on this issue, and this may explain why your statements don't seem to me to support your arguments. Like I said, I'll add "pro-life" to the end matter, and your statement will then be sourced. Now, after reading point 1 of Talk:Ron_Paul/archive5#Culling of footnotes, please let me know if you have any other protest, and try to connect the dots for me a little more as to why it's such an issue for you of a sudden. John J. Bulten 05:00, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

My statements don't support my arguments? Could you clarify? I'm not sure if you're trying to accuse me of sockpuppetry, but that's best left in the appropriate places.

Obviously, sourced information in the body doesn't need to be sourced in the lead. But the matter was that the information wasn't in the body (it is now, which is great). But you can't go around making baseless claims that two separate beliefs are in fact one in the same, when they may very well have nothing to do with each other, and pretend referencing one will suffice for the other. That's an obvious violation of original research policies. This isn't a problem for me "all of a sudden." It's not like I've been OK with you deleting these references before and now "all of a sudden" it's an issue for me. This just occurred and it needed to be remedied appropriately. It's not as if it's been OK to arbitrarily delete references from material that needs to be sourced, and now it's "all of a sudden" a problem. It's counter Wikipedia policy, and if you're interested in achieving FA status, you ought to be just as concerned. ~ UBeR 05:27, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather not enlarge, because if the present version is acceptable, we can drop it. I think if we were to argue whether it is OR or "baseless" to draw connections between "life begins at conception" and "strongly pro-life" and the rest, we would be dangerously close to debating the pro-life issue itself. If and when I decide to edit the pro-life pages, we can engage that. For now let's agree to disagree. I'm not convinced that your arguments would win consensus, but I'm not wasting time on presenting my own, because I don't need to, so long as we agree on the text. As for puppets, if Mr. Salsman returns to abuse this page or our time again, the damage is remediable. John J. Bulten 14:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I am familiar with Mr. Salsman. I edited global warming with him--before he got banned from the article for 6 months that is. ~ UBeR 23:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Bulten, favoring overturning RvW is NOT synonymous of pro-life - see Roe_v._Wade#Liberal_legal_criticisms. A consistent States' rights position may lead even a pro-choice individual against RvW. Terjen 17:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Pro-life reference

In this edit, John J. Bulten replaced three actual references for the statements about Paul's position on abortion, with a mishmash reference labeled "prolifen". The contents of this use of the reference template read as follows:

Paul says his years as an obstetrician lead him to believe life begins at conception.[9][10] Paul's pro-life legislation, like the Sanctity of Life Act, is intended to negate Roe v. Wade for ethical reasons and to get "the federal government completely out of the business of regulating state matters."[11][12]

My understanding is that the reference template is to be used to cite specific sources for specific statements. The above is, what, exactly? Why are we explaining his pro-life position in the references section? If the above statements need to be mentioned, they should be mentioned in the article, not be jammed into the references section. I'm not sure whether or where the above should be included, so in the meantime, I have replaced this reference with specific references for each statement that was already in the body of the article. Photouploaded 14:10, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm a bit disappointed that you and Gloriamarie did not get together as I hinted: see the appropriate paragraphs at "Powwow". And I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't indicate noticing that all the references you added to the lead were already elsewhere in the article. You act as if the references "replace" each other when, in fact, they are pretty much the same references except that the "mishmash" includes extra (Rhodes appears elsewhere). And I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't look more carefully while changing the FNs; for instance the Rhodes reference now appears three times, and you also removed the other helpful link to "prolifefn" from the last sentence of Political Positions. But these are all easily remedied.

This issue should be resolved by consensus on Talk rather than by seesawing indefinitely in the article, but I don't believe everyone has come to the table on Talk to hammer it out (at least not recently).

1. I believe that footnotes from the lead are generally unnecessary if they appear in the expanded section of the same topic. I only retained the prolifefn because I thought we had consensus that explaining that detail was best in a footnote. However, giving 4 pro-life footnotes in lead and no other footnotes may be undue weight. (It's possible that prolifefn itself in lead may be undue weight, but I thought we decided it wasn't.)
2. I believe that the two sentences of prolifefn, which have been carefully nuanced, should appear in the article somewhere. I'm not averse to moving them to Political Positions as text rather than footnote; but I don't want them axed in a later purge.
3. I am open to several ways of resolving exactly what of pro-life should appear in lead, but I am -not- open to the idea that it should keep seesawing. Remember that this latest version was essentially your words, and now you remove helpful text (also vetted by Gloriamarie and Tvoz) because (what amounts to) the footnotes were in the wrong place? I guess I will need to give you both a friendly reminder on user talk.
4. Just as in print media, footnotes are often used not only for refs but also for explanatory material which the writer believes is best served by a subsidiary status. That is what consensus agreed was the proper status for this explanatory note. I wouldn't mind seeing two separate sections, "Notes" and "References", where Notes would only be 2 items, prolifefn and the newsletter quotes, for now. But I haven't figured out the code for that yet.

So if you and Gloriamarie can agree on a version that does not overweight the lead, does not remove the nuance, and is stable, I believe I will not need to object further. I am going to try another version that is acceptable to me and does not tread too heavily on your concerns. But I think that the burden of building consensus has shifted to you and Gloria. John J. Bulten 15:14, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Consensus-building is commendable and I would be happy to engage (sometime within a day or two, I'm busy.) I am completely confused as to why you removed the refs from the lede; I have restored them. As far as I can tell, the text is EXACTLY the same, the only difference is that now the statements in the lede are properly sourced. If you are going to remove perfectly good references from the lede again, please explain WHY. I am not going to touch the pro-life-related statements which come later in the article, until I have more time available. Thanks for checking in. Photouploaded 17:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

See bolding above. John J. Bulten 17:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Wait a second, you're arguing that a certain number of footnotes constitutes undue weight?! That is very surprising, I disagree completely. WP:FOOT does not state anything about a number of footnotes being considered as undue weight. WP:UNDUE only states that an arrangement of footnotes that appears to "unduly favor a particular 'side' of an issue" may warrant attention. These footnotes are from major news sources and from Paul himself; no one could say that they favor any particular side. They're factual, not editorial. I think that if we don't source each of the statements, someone will come along and say, "overturn Roe v. Wade? Paul would never say that," and delete it. WP:V makes it crystal-clear that sources are necessary for EVERY statement in Wikipedia. Photouploaded 12:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. The arrangement of footnotes favors the side that Paul's abortion stance is complex enough to require massive nuance, against the side that Paul's stance is relatively simple (several have espoused that "pro-life and states' rights" is all that needs saying). A single footnote with several sources, as previously, had been a compromise between these two positions. See also Talk:Ron Paul/archive6#LOL WUT for complaints that the number of lead footnotes is in fact undue (if not UW itself). Sources are simply NOT necessary in the lead for a summary statement which is repeated, amplified, and properly sourced in the appropriate section of the article. If, however, you prefer the lead to have several footnotes, please pick the six or seven topics most important to footnote because most complex or debatable, and we can restore the footnotes to those topics, one each. Really, since the Rhodes link covers two of your three clauses, and the other clause is self-evident and immediate (that Paul is pro-life), we could trim your three notes to the one Rhodes note, in the lead. (The fetal pain relief bill is far from the only time Paul admits being pro-life.) If someone deletes your favored clause, like any other unthinking edit, we simply restore it and refer them to the Positions summary and its footnote, where the claim is sourced. WP editors who are ready enough to delete a lead clause are also ready enough to learn how to find the expansion and source in the article, and to be taught how. WP is NOT a sea of blue. Besides, in trimming this article (as per consensus), removing 5%-10% of the least helpful footnotes (such as removing the pain relief bill entirely, along with, say, several of the campaign finance links) is necessary and appropriate. I am not able to see in your comments a justification for the idea that pro-life requires 3-4 footnotes in lead while nothing else is footnoted. John J. Bulten 16:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The relevant guideline is WP:LEAD#Citations in the lead section: "The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus." John J. Bulten 16:48, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Photo's latest change is a good compromise, using only the Rhodes footnote and not harming the other references, so I will drop out of this discussion again and leave it to anyone else interested. John J. Bulten 19:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I've been really busy lately, but I will examine the statements and get back with my thoughts on whether they are appropriate or not.--Gloriamarie 20:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Piped link changes

There was massive change in the piped links by John J. Bulten, who changed all or most of the links so they directed the readers to redirect pages. I find this rather... pointless. Will someone explain please. ~ UBeR 23:03, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Pretty simple. The links I put in are shorter or much shorter, which both saves a couple K (consensus goal for this page) and makes it easier to read the code (WP guideline). Per WP:REDIRECT#Do not change links to redirects that are not broken, "Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to remove the redirect and point the link directly at the target page. While there are a limited number of cases where this is beneficial, it is, in general, an unhelpful exercise .... There should almost never be a reason to replace [[redirect]] with [[target|redirect]]." The best link for readability is one that goes to a redirect named identically or similarly to the anchor text. It's rather silly to use the code [[Straw polls for the Republican Party (United States) presidential nomination, 2008|Republican straw polls]] when a redirect [[Republican straw polls]] will do the trick, if it is justified only by the proposed benefit is that you avoid redirects-- that is not recognized by the guideline as a benefit. If the software on your box is not getting past the redirect to the linked article, that's a problem, but I doubt that. Near as I can see the only "problem" is that after clicking the link the user sees the fine print "Redirected from", which is in no way a hindrance that I can see. John J. Bulten 00:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

What is [[Republican straw polls]] going to redirect to in 2012? Sometimes using redirects is an early binding vs. late binding decision, and in this particular instance I think the safe course is early binding. Or you could establish a [[2008 Republican straw polls]] redirect and use that. Wasted Time R 03:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Good point. In cases of ambiguity, precision is key. ~ UBeR 23:22, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

That's true, but that's the great thing about Wikipedia: people can recognize any outdated or erroneous info and quickly correct it.--Gloriamarie 20:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Ron Paul spam

Alright, I would like to defend my edits[13][14] in which I mention the Ron Paul spam compaign in the article-lead. This is not trivial nor imaginary. This man will no doubt be remembered best as a one-time presidential candidate whose supporters spammed a multitude of political blogs, thus tarnishing Paul's image. Since someone thought that Paul's success on Internet search engines deserved mention in the article-lead, I would argue that it's certainly likely to lead to a deceptive presentation if it is not mentioned that most of those Google hits are links to this political-blog spam campaign, and due to the e-mail spam, which is most certainly a federal offense, as the CAN-SPAM Act specifies that falsification of e-mail headers qualifies as SPAM under the act. — Eric Shalov — continues after insertion below

The Google hits long predate the email spam campaign. They may be related to blog comments, which you call "spam", but wholly transcend the email spam. Any attempt to paint the entire Internet movement as illegal liars, which may be seen in some media coverage, is demonstrably biased on this consideration alone. John J. Bulten 20:41, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

For those doubters or Ron Paul spam apologists, here is the e-mail I received- note that it's identical to the spam that others[15] have received:

	De: 	  patty@mccabe.com
	Asunto: 	Who Is Ron Paul?  dtntTZi
	Fecha: 	29 de octubre de 2007 07:28:31 AM GMT-06:00
	Para: 	  xxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.com
Hello Scott, Ron Paul is for the people, unless you want your
children to have human implant RFID chips, a National ID card and 
create a North American Union and see an economic collapse far worse  
than the great depression. Vote for Ron Paul he speaks the  truth and 
the media and government is afraid of him. This is the last honest 
politican left to bring this country out of this rut from the War 
Profiteers and bush Administration has created. Get motivated 
America, don't believe the lies of the media he has also WON the GOP 
Debate On Sunday! Value Freedom and Liberty instead of corporate lies 
and corruption. Bypass  this media blackout they are doing to Ron 
Paul, tell your family  and friends and get involved in a local group 
at meetup.com make  your voice heard! He will end the War In Iraq 
immediately,  He will eliminate the IRS and wasteful government 
spending, and  eliminate the Federal Reserve and restore power to the 
people  and the only person not a member on the CFR. Can any other 
runner  make these claims or give Americans the true freedom we were 
all raised to believe? We are all economic slaves to the banks and 
the illegal federal Reserve. This is why our currency is worth 
nothing because of Hidden Inflation Tax and the IRS taking everything 
you make! ** RON PAUL WILL STOP THE IRAQ WAR IMMEDIATELY! ** He has 
NEVER voted: * to raise taxes * for an unbalanced budget * to raise 
congressional pay * for a federal restriction on gun ownership * to 
increase the power of the executive branch He HAS voted: * against 
the Iraq war * against the inappropriately named USA PATRIOT act * 
against regulating the internet * against the Military Commissions 
Act He will eliminate the IRS, Wasteful Government Spending &  Stop 
The Iraq War Immediately! Most importantly, he voted NO on anything 
in Congress that  is not allowed by the Constitution. And he Despises 
any politican that does not do their job for the people and lives up 
to the constitution!  Google.com & Youtube.com Search: "Ron Paul" 
Join The Revolution! *************************************** We Need 
A Real President That Will Restore And Protect Americans! Stop The 
War! Protect Our Borders! *********VOTE RON PAUL 2008************
uGZVWt

Oh, and perhaps members of Ron Paul's campaign, such as campaign-supporter[16][17][18] John J. Bulten, would be best off to recuse themselves from the editing of this article, especially if their edits are going to be limited to erasing Ron Paul criticism. From Bulten's Meetup.com profile:

"RON CAN WIN if God is pleased to grace his people with another Joseph in time of spiritual famine. As forum moderator at Lost Horizons dotcom and a Communications coordinator for We the People of FL, I'm looking forward to the campaign of a lifetime."

Gracias. - Eric 18:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Eric Shalov's edits were poor and deserved to be removed. They were at inappropriate depth and style for the lead section, and the references on the second edit were in inappropriate format as well. The somewhat tangential subject matter was also inappropriately presented as well. Some of the sources cited also wouldn't pass WP:RS. No experienced WP editor would expect that those changes would stay in, regardless of the merits of the position that some of Paul's popularity metrics have been influenced by e-mail campaigns. Wasted Time R 19:37, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Whether someone is a supporter or not, they are free to edit this article if their edits are well-sourced and neutral. Your edits were not. John J. Bulten is a helpful editor who has undone a lot of the damage done by our favorite sockpuppet BenB4.--Gloriamarie 01:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Eric, these are serious issues; but for that very reason, the cites provided have got to be a lot more substantial than a blog with links to a bunch of bulletin boards being snowballed by Paulistas. We have to be especially chary of assuming that Paul's campaign is behind it. After all, Niven's Law #16 applies here as everywhere. --Orange Mike 20:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. It is imperative that we refrain from including any potentially harmful material about any living person without serious, reliable independent sources to back that sort of claim up. WP:BLP is a fundamental policy on Wikipedia. When the New York Times runs an article about these alleged "spam campaigns", I'm sure it will warrant a mention here. ➪HiDrNick! 20:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Not all the news of significance makes it into the good grey Times. --Orange Mike 20:29, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was exaggerating, for sure. Just no blogs allowed. :) ➪HiDrNick! 20:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Eric, please refrain from personal attacks against other editors and remain civil. Life, Liberty, Property 20:24, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything in his post above that could be construed as uncivil or a personal attack. Would you care to clarify? ➪HiDrNick! 20:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, you know, perhaps a bit of incivility in calling me a spam apologist, assuming I'm a campaign member (I'm grassroots), pretending my contributions are limited to erasing criticism, not to mention his original title for this talk section, "Ron Paul, The Spam King". John J. Bulten 20:40, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Hackel (starting life today as an apparent single-purpose account) made a similar edit which was reverted. Aside from the issue of two users making similar contributions to the same article at the same time (see WP:SOCK), we also have the issue of: Why did Eric initially charge the campaign with spam, then shift the charge to the supporters? Where is the credible IP evidence that the spam comes from supporters? Why did Eric use so many bloggy links (6-7) that I don't have the time to read them? Why did Eric use the phrase "web forum spamming", as if many people making similar comments on web forums is immoral or criminal? Why did Hackel say anyone can launch a spam campaign without pointing out that anyone can launch a smear campaign (e.g. sending ostensibly pro-Paul spam in an attempt to hurt him, or convincing white supremacists to advertise him in order to discredit him, or the like)?

BTW, Eric, I don't want those questions answered, I am asking them rhetorically to demonstrate that your and Hackel's additions were not improvements under WP POV guidelines. Nor do I want to know why you're googling and republishing details about other website accounts named "John J. Bulten". If you have reliable sources (WP:RS) that demonstrate your claims (you only need 1 reliable source, not 7 unreliable ones), I might be interested; that might be worth a sentence under Internet popularity summary section (although that may soon move to the campaign article, where you might have more leeway). However, since anyone can send spam on behalf of (or to discredit) anyone, it's not very notable. For instance, I get spam about Viagra most every day, but there is no mention of spam in the Viagra article, where it might actually be notable. Unfortunately, your actions so far are very hard to accept in good faith, and they may be sanctionable by admins who can determine if in fact there was no good faith. I see that LLP has already flagged you as a troll in edit summary on my talk page. But there is still Hope for America and yourself. :D John J. Bulten 20:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I accept that blogs are generally not good citable sources, unless, of course you're citing a widespread phenomena of political blog spamming. In my second edit, I refined my words to specifically blame Paul supporters, because I felt my earlier edit may have blamed Paul, which, unless proven, would be unfair. Also, I hope my comments weren't taken to be an attack on a fellow Wiki editor, as I firmly believe that we're all in this $%$#% together, and that consensus-building is key, which is why I hope that we can all come up with a consensus (here, in Talk, not in article edit summaries) on what best mention, and where, would be appropriate to mention the spamming. (Does the Viagra article really not mention SPAM?). Oh, and the "Spam King" bit was meant in jest. Best wishes - Eric 21:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, citing the blogs in which spamming allegedly occurred as evidence is specifically against one of the most important Wikipedia policies, No Original Research, unless you have a reliable source saying that spamming has occurred (because you yourself are making the leap to saying that the comments are spamming). Sometimes it can be a fine line, but it's worth reading up on the policy if you're going to be editing Wikipedia.--Gloriamarie 01:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Eric's initial comment here is rather inflammatory to my tastes, and I don't think his edits were the right ones. But I think he has a point that this article shouldn't play up Ron Paul's internet popularity in the lead section without also addressing the well-known controversy over his followers doing disproportionate SEO. The two things should be mentioned together somehow and this article would be more effective if the big picture were painted by the lead. I'm sure someone can do a better job on that third paragraph where I'd feel I got a greater feel for his popularity and the surrounding issues without it being too long. And if I may go slightly off topic, it really does seem like a pretty big omission to not talk about spam in the Viagra article, especially considering that Pfizer has acknowledged that 1 in 4 spams are regarding their product and have started a campaign to fight that. Metaeducation 00:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "disproportionate SEO"? Yes, excellent point about the Viagra article.--Gloriamarie 01:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Search engine optimization: gaming the search engines' algorithms, by various methods, to boost your favorite's prominence in searches. --Orange Mike 16:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Gloria! SEO is an inaccurate or slangy description of what the followers do openly and legally, i.e., overwhelm comments sections on articles which permit them. And it has nothing to do with the spam issue, which I recognize is now making the news cycle (along with every other campaign development). However, please note the warnings in these two links: [19], [20]. The only NPOV on this is that we don't -know- who did it and can't assume. Interestingly, Benton has made -exactly- this NPOV observation: "If it is true, it could be done by a well-intentioned yet misguided supporter or someone with bad intentions trying to embarrass the campaign .... Either way, this is independent work, and we have no connection." Note also that Wired refactored their original piece-- they're afraid of libel too: "This article has been modified to clarify that Warner has seen no evidence suggesting that the Paul campaign is responsible for the spam." Finally, keep in mind that the topic is only appropriate to the campaign article; the summary here needs great trimming. John J. Bulten 20:41, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, SEO is an inaccurate description in this case, because comments on news stories or blogs have nothing to do with search engine placement-- most sites like that disable search engine robots from following outbound links in comments. Incidentally, ronpaul2008.com now has an official Google PageRank of 7, while other candidates' webpages (such as Hillary's) have a 6 or less. Obama's also has a 7. PageRank is calculated using only reliable pages. It seems that he doesn't need help with SEO.--Gloriamarie 20:13, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Believe the news cycle is recalibrating. See blog and comments at ComputerWorld. This is a respected blogger for a known print medium who affirms another blog post (putting him just within the fringy border of WP:RS), saying, "This is either a toxic attack from another campaign -- similar things have happened already -- or it’s a complete imbecile". Later commenters pretty much rule out the imbecile option. John J. Bulten 18:23, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Cycle complete. Microsoft tech Mark Edwards sees no alternative to the spammer being a malicious "smear campaign": [21]. John J. Bulten 21:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

That's simply incorrect, John. The article says the smear campaign theory is "more logical"; Edwards does not say that he "sees no alternative"! (Besides, he works for Microsoft, and thus is prima facie not a reliable source.) --Orange Mike 21:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC) (had to tweak the tail of The Beast That Lies In Redmond)

"Recent spammers have been smearing a candidate for president, and some people can't see the forest for the trees." "More logical" was just being kind to the "clouded" thinkers. I said he sees no alternative. But let's not argue, Mike! John J. Bulten 22:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Even though I completely understand and agree with the frustration of political spam I do believe the politicians have, much as they did with the do-not-call list, exempted themselves from the CAN SPAM laws. To wit: [Response starting at Dear Deep:] BingoDingo 19:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It's too big!

99k! Okay, it's just unwieldy as such - I suggest moving his Congressional history sections to a separate article, perhaps Congressional career of Ron Paul (mirroring Hillary's sub-article), and replacing it in this article with a much shorter summary. Any opinions? - Eric 18:34, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

In accordance with WP:TALK "Keep headings neutral", deleted profanity from heading. BTW Eric, I think that your idea might be the most logical next step. Will analyze. John J. Bulten 21:02, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The presidential campaign section could use some trimming, especially since it already has its own article.--Daveswagon 01:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the article should stand for now. Considering his candidacy and the "overnight success" he has experienced in the last few days requires there be as much information as possible on Dr. Paul. If he falls out of the running or drops his bid the article should be reviewed for it's size. My two cents. BingoDingo 19:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect date for Boston Tea Party

In the penultimate paragraph of the "Campaign finances" subsection (of the "2008 presidential campaign" section), the date of the Boston Tea Party anniversary is incorrect:

"November the 5th being Guy Fawkes night, November 11th being veterans day, and November 16th being the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party."

I'm relatively new to Wikipedia and thus can't edit this page. Could an established editor please change this sentence to the following:

"November the 5th being Guy Fawkes night, November 11th being veterans day, and December 16th being the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party."

Thanks very much! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.131.103.182 (talk) 21:23, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

"Powwow" summary

Construing my call for powwow as seeking consensus rather than vote, and including editorial silence in Talk for 10 days and the contemporaneous edits, I now venture to speak for consensus as supporting the following:

• Protecting lead stability: Yes on (1) expand the in-line comments throughout to steer new careless edits away from summaries to other sections; (2) remove all fluctuating statistics from the lead, replacing them with generic comments likely to hold up for the long term; (3a) convert the campaign section to a shorter summary of the campaign article; (3b) do not synchronize it there, but retain a short lead as for the positions subarticle; and (4) do not set up either of the positions and campaign summary sections as templates (rather, the positions template can now be speedied).
• Combine two sections of Later Congressional into "1996 campaign controversy".
• The current version, retaining a few newsletter quotes in text and setting most in footnote, has not been seriously challenged, but there is also support for relegating all newsletter quotes to the footnote.
• Consensus prefers "ghostwriter", to which I contrarily say "boo".
• Abortion remains undecided per the latest discussion. Gloriamarie believes the present 3 clauses in lead, with or without FNs, are "too many specifics"; Photouploaded believes all 3 clauses and 3 FNs are necessary. I am temporarily accepting Photo's version (though I disagree with it) until consensus arises on this open question.
• En dashes in from-to dates are OK "once in a while" but not "by and large".
• Photo use: anyone interested in expanding on the current verified images has the burden of proof of freeness.

Accordingly, I will proceed to: add steering inline commments; police the lead against in-flux statistics; shorten the campaign section significantly, moving most deletions to the subarticle; and combine the 1996 sections. The remainder seem to be accepted by the editors' relative silence. If you disagree with my statement of consensus, please help establish greater consensus. John J. Bulten 17:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I edited Vidor's insertion of more quotes and sources to agree with the above. However, the footnote may now be too overtasked, and I'd like others to review it to be certain. Vidor's duplicated cites were excised.

It is also interesting that Vidor, in uncovering the weblink to the entire article (which is now available from the footnote), may have also unmasked the ghostwriter. The article's third paragraph is: "In San Francisco and perhaps other cities, says expert Burt Blumert, the rioting was led by red-flag carrying members of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Workers World Party, both Trotskyite-Maoist. The police were allowed to intervene only when the rioters assaulted the famous Fairmont and Mark Hopkins hotels atop Nob Hill. A friend of Burt's, a jewelry store owner, had his store on Union Square looted by blacks, and when the police arrived in response to his frantic calls, their orders were to protect his life, but not to interfere with the rioting."

See Burton Blumert. Please note that (1) No other inside source besides Blumert and his friend is mentioned in the entire article, although the King arrest and riots are described in great detail. (2) Blumert's "expert"ise is unclassified; in context, the only real meaning that can be taken from this is "L.A. riot autodidact". (3) Blumert pegs the rioters as "Trotskyite-Maoist" party members without citing any evidence. (4) Blumert's friend's anecdote is unquestioned, even though the author is clearly relying on Blumert's hearsay description of it, and even though it alleges criminal complicity upon the cops; the friend is unnamed, unlike Blumert. (5) The article style compares favorably with articles like [22] and [23]. (6) Paul's contemporaneous excuse, "voters may not understand his 'tongue-in-cheek, academic' writings", applies perfectly to Blumert's admitted style but not so well to Paul's own "straight-talk" style. (7) Ghostwriters often tacitly identify themselves as the true author by stating their close friendship with the alleged author, and by citing themselves. (8) Paul's desire not to publicize remaining newsletters is also much clarified if he wishes to protect someone named once or more in the articles; whoever Paul is protecting, it is clear that Paul has chosen to take the rap for the other writer indefinitely. (9) Since Blumert was already an established inner-circle Ronpaulican in 1992-1994, he is perfectly poised to be the author. (10) If Blumert is not the author, because he is the source for the party IDs and the jewelry-store anecdote, he knows who is the author (or has it down to a short list if his anecdote was promiscuous). I will be sending an email to burtblumert@comcast.net. John J. Bulten 16:16, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think I've "unmasked" anyone, as I think Paul's claim of a ghostwriter is an obvious lie. Also, the heading "1996 campaign controversy" is a fairly blatant attempt to hide Paul's alleged racist statements. Vidor 04:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, sending an e-mail to this Blumert fellow would be original research. Vidor 06:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Vidor, thank you for admitting your bias; per WP:BLP, I have added the word "alleged" to your statement. In controversies, WP:NPOV requires that each point of view be handled appropriately. The "obvious lie" POV is the minority view; Secretary Not Sure pointed out that it was chiefly held only by Democrats, while the majority of analysts have accepted Paul's description at face value. The proper WP approach is to state your concerns in Talk and reach agreement. Here are my concerns.

1. Since you feel your bias very strongly (I have bias too of course), you should be extra careful not to insert it into the article. Rather than insert the same material at the same length the third time, you should come to Talk and say something like "I think these two sentences need quoting at full length inline because"; this would also be appropriate under WP:BRD. You would also want to review the existing dialogue (see "Powwow" in archives, et al.). In fact, I initiated this dialogue for the exact reason that edits like yours would arise and it would be appropriate if we had other editors on the record to establish a clear agreement. But even as it stands, I still have no idea why you think your edits are not undue weight.
2. The section title was agreed upon by consensus. An episode of racist statements would traditionally be labeled "controversy" in any political article, unless the person is notable chiefly for taking race positions. Your proposed title was inappropriate, to be very mild. There were, of course, many nonrace accusations floating around during the campaign, as your sources reveal and as are mentioned in the See also link in this section, so limiting the section title to race would be inappropriate.
3. You deleted the quotes about nonblack races, which is undue weight, as if all the racist comments were against blacks. The nonblack quotes have been agreed upon since they were introduced.
4. You deleted the closeness of the Austin Chronicle report to the election; this removes the significant fact that it was a November surprise and gives greater credence to Morris than appropriate.
5. The consensus agreed that the quotes should be split between inline and footnote, and that they should be clauses instead of the full (vacuous) sentences. Everyone who has tried to extend the quotes at length has either been a sock or has accepted their reduction to clauses. Therefore promoting the quotes to both inline and full-sentence status as you did is undue weight according to consensus.
6. The consensus version I restored alludes to, by my count, 5 quotes inline and 9 in footnote (though that still seems excessive to me). Your version replaces the 9 in footnote with 2 at length inline. Given the other objections above, the only benefit that I could advocate for your version is that some of the old quotes may be subsumed by the 2 new quotes. To obtain that benefit without stepping on the concerns above, you could simply delete the quotes you think subsumed-- though not the nonblack quotes-- rather than promote your favored quotes as I described.
7. Finally, I don't believe you have reviewed WP:OR recently, because emailing someone is not OR. Using any reply as a source is OR. However, I have emailed him not for using his reply as content, but for the purpose of soliciting his help in outing the true author, because he can be expected to know who it is. If it is Paul as you say, then Blumert should encourage him to retract what would be a lie in 2001. If it is not Paul, then Blumert should encourage the true author to come forward, because Blumert clearly has an interest in Paul's success. Either way, the longer the author hides, the worse it may be potentially for Paul. But that is beside the point.

Now please respond with your concerns and without making libelous accusations, so that we can continue improving WP. John J. Bulten 15:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

(unindenting) First of all, I hope we both understand you cannot tell me what to do, so there is no need for statements like "please respond with your concerns and without making libelous accusations". We can dispense with that. That being understood, I will address your statements in turn. 1) The heading "1996 campaign controversy" is inaccurate. First, the racist statements in Paul's newsletter were printed long before 1996. Secondly, it seems an obvious attempt to hide the true nature of the controversy. "1996 campaign controversy" looks to me to be a deliberate attempt to conceal the nature. However, I don't feel like picking a fight over that. 2) I had no intention of deleting comments about non-black people. Feel free to put them back in if you like. 3) The timing of the Austin Chronicle article is completely irrelevant. These quotes were printed in Paul's newsletter many years before the 1996 election campaign. This is admitted by everyone and not in dispute. Since the article states specifically that this news story broke during the 1996 campaign, I fail to see what difference it makes if the story was published a day or a week or a month before the election. 4) You are making statments about "undue weight" and "consensus" as if they are decided canon law. It is my opinion that the article as I found it did not assign nearly enough weight. The article as I found it had no quotes at all. I put a few quotes in. You took those quotes out, then buried them in the footnotes. This looks to me to be an effort to hide 1992. It is bad enough that the subject heading gives no hint as to what the controversy is about. The quotes must be included in the body of the article to give the reader an idea of what the controversy actually is. The reader can then decide for himself what conclusion to draw, but he must have that information. 6) Similarly to #5, I think that the article as I left it contains the proper amount of quotes and information in the main text to give the reader a good idea of the issue at hand. 7) Your idea of e-mailing this person and asking him directly is most certainly original research, your assertion otherwise notwithstanding.

In closing I would like to say a couple of things. I could, if I'd chosen, included several more racist quotes from Paul's newsletter. There are certainly more to be had. The few I did put in gives the reader a good amount of info. Second, saying Paul is a liar is hardly "libel", at least under American law. I think Paul is a liar. I think his claim of a ghostwriter is an obvious lie, given that the Ron Paul Report was an eight-page newsletter printed under his name. It strains credulity well past the snapping point to believe that not only did Paul not write his own newsletter but, according to him, did not even read it. Additionally the fact that he has never in 11 years since named the person who did write the newsletter further strains his credibility. HOWEVER, I cannot prove that Paul is a liar. Nor is there any independent evidence that Paul is lying. Therefore I am willing to leave the article basically as it is, giving Paul's explanation without taking a definitive stance as to whether or not it is true. Vidor 22:08, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Vidor, I will respond after I can invent some rationale for assuming good faith with your edits, which I haven't succeeded in yet. John J. Bulten 16:46, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I find that after your third insertion of the same contentious, unsourced material about a living person (including talk pages), I am pretty well allowed to assume bad faith (see WP:WARN and your talk page). However, considering your actions under WP:BRD instead, I find that I can avoid having to argue anything but 4-6 above, which are really the one question of what is proper weight or placement of this issue. As I've indicated, at Talk:Ron Paul/archive6#Powwow, the current editors were asked for consensus on exactly this question, and GloriaMarie was the only one who felt strongly enough to respond, though several others read the section. That indicates prior consensus that the proper weight was to quote clauses rather than full sentences, and to place the majority of the clauses in a footnote. Your complete argument for flouting that consensus consisted of your subjective feelings about proper weight (such as "looks to me to be an effort to hide"). Therefore, while I perform the cleanup this section desperately needs (much of it unrelated to our dispute), it would be helpful if you gave your objective reasons why we need to quote a self-admitted racist (whomever that racist may be) eight times in the main article (giving full sentences three times), and selecting two nonracist statements (re Clinton) and six statements that relate only to blacks, when the full body of quotes indicted other races as well. Since you do not like my saying "please do this", I will need to settle for what glimpses at consensus I can snatch from your comments. John J. Bulten 02:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

BTW, besides the color-blindness issue, it might also be argued that one should not concentrate on the "racial terrorism" article so far as to overweight the other articles (some nonracial) written by the same author-- especially so if one thinks the author is Paul, because then one has the full newsletter history to choose from; and that one should not overweight the non-1996 sources to obscure the fact that the controversy was largely limited to 1996 (meaning that IIRC no non-1996 source has ever taken your minority POV that Paul is obviously guilty of racism; a counterexample would be nice); and that one should not concentrate on the racism quotes controversy so far as to overweight the many other Paul-Morris controversies of that cycle, which related to many other issues and were mentioned by the Austin Chronicle. But those undue weight issues can be handled if they should arise. John J. Bulten 02:24, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, your assertion that the material is "unsourced" is false. It is sourced to the Austin Chronicle, to the Nizkor Project, and many other sources. Further, PAUL HIMSELF ADMITS that the quotations in question were in his newsletter. That is a fact. So your assertion that the quotes are "unsourced" is false. Secondly, I do not know who "the current editors" are. The "current editors" include every person who comes to this article and makes a change on it. Your statement implies that there are certain individuals, including yourself, whom you believe own this article. That is false. The "consensus" you refer to seems presently to be confined to just you, since you and I are the only people commenting on this page.

As for your further points, as I have written previously and in great detail, the racist quotes from the Ron Paul newsletter need to be quoted in the main text so that a reader may actually know what the controversy was about. The article as I found it, with the hopelessly vague formulation of "comments about race", left the reader with no detail and no information. Your version of the article not only hid Paul's comments from the reader, but it took as the gospel truth Paul's assertion that he was not the author of the quotes, despite Paul's failure to dissasociate himself from the comments for four years, despite the simple plain fact that they were published under his name, and despite the fact that 11 years later and counting he has failed to name the person who did write the story quoted in this newsletter.

In short, your version of the article not only omitted the heart of the controversy at hand, and buried it under a vague and misleading heading ("1996 campaign controversy" is hardly a good description), but took without question a pro-Paul POV. Again contrary to your assertions, I did not insert a POV into the article. I am content with the article as I last left it, as it did not say definitely either way whether Paul did or did not write the essay at hand. My version was more informative and better written. As such I will change it back again. You are free to take this to whatever higher authority you like. I'm confident that the better article will prevail. Vidor 04:01, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Though I decline to answer your personal attacks, I do not wish you to suppose they have no answer. The fact is, since Paul made his 2001 statement, your assertion that Paul wrote the 1992 quotes is unsourced and contentious, yet you inserted that assertion into the article and talk three times, and were warned each time. Now, as for the article, you like your version, but have given no quarter toward moving any of your choice quotes to the footnote, nor stripping any of them to clauses. I don't see you seeking to compromise on this issue. Since I don't see your answers to my questions seeking compromise, my only option which does not involve other editors appears to be to attempt various compromise versions to see what you may permit. If it should develop that you do not permit any edits that address my concerns, I would be disappointed. John J. Bulten 15:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I do assert that Paul wrote those quotes. However, that is irrelevant, since the article as I edited it last does not say definitively that Paul wrote those quotes, and I have no desire at this time to make it say so. So that objection can be dismissed. Your assertion that I have given no quarter is false, again. I have given quarter on the article heading, which has been changed from the heading I initially edited to, "Controversy over racist quotes", to your heading, which I believe is misleading and deceptive, but which, out of compromise, I am content to leave alone. I have also compromised on using the word 'wrote'. So that would be two important points I am willing to compromise on. What I am not willing to do is take the quotes out of the article as you apparently want very much to do. Taking the quotes out of the article leaves the reader uninformed and unaware of the nature of the "controversy". I believe the reader can read that paragraph, as I left it, and decide for himself if 1) the excerpts meet the definition of racism (I'd say certainly) and 2) whether or not Paul's explanation of a ghostwriter is credible. Vidor 21:26, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

In the past (months ago), I have argued for coverage of this controversy in the footnotes rather than in the body of the text. My point then was that using a paragraph (and sometimes as many as three) places undue weight on what is a somewhat notable controversy. I pointed to the example of Sen. Obama's financial dealings with Antonin Rezko and how those are covered entirely within the footnotes of the Obama article. Gloriamarie and others have worked on compromise text that I believe is now included in the body of the article, and I am comfortable with their work. That said, I think expansion of the comments in the article is a mistake and against consensus that has been built over the past several months. Jogurney 20:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

THANK YOU!! John J. Bulten 20:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I cannot begin to fathom how taking all context and information out of that paragraph is "due weight", and letting the reader know what the controversy is about is "undue weight". I would further note that the information that John J. Bulten is fighting so hard to keep out of this article is one single sentence. Vidor 04:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Excessive trivia

Skimming this article there's a lot of incidental information that's not encyclopedic - what he wore at his wedding, the books that he read? Details of his campaign and legislation specifics? For an article of 99KB this is stuff that should be stripped out - the first left in the biographical books it came from, the second either in the information about those events or removed completely if those articles wouldn't survive AFD. WP:SIZE recommends breaking things up at around 60KB, and a page where you go to read about who someone is and what their achievements are shouldn't be littered with minutiae, especially when it gets in the way of highlighting the achievements. This page is huge. The commented out note at the top of the article itself says there's a lot of people with this on their watchlist - while I'm wary of overhauling articles others here will know much more about, I really recommend that someone gives at least a good attempt at stripping out the trivia. --Firien ^{need help?} 15:41, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

We're working on it. However, your first group is appropriate as being thoroughly biographical, especially the books that influenced his unique place in political philosophy, and it provides much human interest which this article was previously criticized for lacking. The second group is overdue for movement to other articles, particularly the campaign article and a new legislation article. If we simply cut every legislation reference to a single clause or sentence, and linked to a full section of the legislation article which described the bill as much as anyone wanted, it would do wonders for byte count. Should that article be called "Legislation of Ron Paul" or "Bills sponsored by Ron Paul", or "Legislative history of Ron Paul"? John J. Bulten 16:38, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll stand aside on human interest, because it sounds like I've come in late on that one; it seems a bit odd, but if it makes a Good Article it makes a Good Article. On the article separation - it looks like from other pages the general format is "{topic} policy of (person or group)", such as Foreign policy of the Clinton Administration or Domestic policy of the George W. Bush administration; others separate out the topic completely, such as Mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani or Premiership of Tony Blair, though I'll admit it took me a while to find pages where things were separated out. Those would suggest an article name of "Congressmanship of Ron Paul", (though I'm not sure whether that's a word... Congressional career perhaps?), and there's probably counterexamples. Setting precedents is nice though. I don't usually venture into political articles, especially those for different countries; my apologies if I'm bringing up the same old things over again. --Firien ^{need help?} 18:20, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Senate career of Hillary Rodham Clinton would indicate "Congressional career of ..." as the best form. (I don't think there is word form for this equivalent to premiership/mayoralty/presidency/etc.) But I'd worry about its fate after the election. Paul will likely still be a representative in 2009, but with the presidential race over will anyone still care about what he does in Congress? Look at the history of Sponsorship of legislation by John Kerry: lots of edits up through the 2004 election, very few edits and no content updates since then, even though Kerry has stayed in the Senate. Wasted Time R 01:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Ron Paul cite question

In this video [24], does anyone have an idea, minute-wise, where he talks about using an excise tax and tariffs to fund the government? Brian Pearson 02:44, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why you're asking for someone else to listen through it find out, but I just did for you and it comes up around 17 minutes into the video. Operation Spooner 03:15, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I actually wasn't asking for anybody to listen for me, I was hoping someone already had a good idea where it was. I figured it could've been at the 60 minute point, or something. Thanks for the information, though, I do appreciate it. Brian Pearson 04:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

In reference 41, I believe that it is talking about an article dated 1997-2-10 and here is the link to it (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n5_v13/ai_19092301 ), I am unsure of correct formating. So I am posting it to the discussion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.74.213.26 (talk) 05:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect "trial lawyer" reference

The reference to one of his opponents as a "trial lawyer" should be edited. The author/editor made the article link to "trial lawyer", which is only a redirect to "lawyer". This should be corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.225.125.70 (talk) 03:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Why? --Trovatore 03:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Link farm

I've just trimmed back the link farm under "External links". There were a number of blatant violations of WP:EL there, but I left a couple of dubious ones in deference to the judgment of the rest of you who edit this article. Please examine my edits, but don't put anything back lightly. C'mon: SEVEN "official pages" including his MySpace? An openly labelled link to a fundraising site? MULTIPLE collections of his speeches, tapes, etc., collected, maintained and updated by his supporters? WP, as they say, is not a directory; and this had clearly gotten out of hand. I don't monitor every candidate's article; but if this kind of thing is going on with any other candidate, we need to do the same, in the interest of NPOV and balance. --Orange Mike 14:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Brian Pearson 00:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)