Talk:Barack Obama/Archive 1

law practice

I emailed the firm Miner, Barhill and Galland to ask them to verify our statement about his law work. Richard Jensen 00:32, 11 January 2008 (CST)

OK. I took it from Obama's online CV.I cannot imagine he would take any risks with an internet source for which he is responsible:-) Martin Baldwin-Edwards 02:58, 11 January 2008 (CST)

well there is an ambiguity. The firm does not list him on its webpage, which seems odd. Is he on the firm's payroll? I assume not, that his status is on hold.Richard Jensen 03:34, 11 January 2008 (CST)

I imagine so, too. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 04:10, 11 January 2008 (CST)

If there is any heat here, to my mind it is more personalized than content-driven (although there are content issues involved). I am trying to mediate these in an informal way. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 10:59, 11 January 2008 (CST)

I don't intend to get involved unless there's a fundamental sticking pointGareth Leng 11:41, 11 January 2008 (CST)

It seems to me there's a slight pro-Obama bias in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Note that Obama is my favorite front-runner. For example, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton discuss how Obama criticizes Clinton, but not the other way around. Warren Schudy 11:34, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Clearly, that should be remedied. I haven't looked at the Clinton article since she and hubby started attacking Obama :-)Martin Baldwin-Edwards 12:00, 11 January 2008 (CST)

very good point and I will fix it. Richard Jensen 14:46, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Reiterating my statement in a different section above, I think we should be careful to avoid trying to report on the ongoing campaign while it is occurring. Someone will always be offended. In my opinion, these articles should be restricted to a rather dry reporting of background facts for the time being, and they should be as neutral as the clear blue sky.Pat Palmer 13:44, 16 January 2008 (CST)

See my comment on the Forum thread, which basically supports this idea. My concern is not so much about offending people with facts, but about how ephemeral these facts really are. The day-to-day reporting of the Presidential Campaign should be on the article of that name, and not here. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 06:45, 17 January 2008 (CST)

I think we can purge the ephemeral stuff after the election is over (by which time we will have a better idea of what is epheemeral and what is of permanent importance. See the flare-up over race last week: permanent or transitory? I think it's too early tro say.). Meanwhile people interested in Obama will expect his relationship with Clinton to be treated here. (and vice versa, for people interested in Clinton going to her article.) yes there will be duplication, but a few hundred words of duplication is harmless, compared to the risk of going to the Obama article and not finding the info you weant on his relation with Clinton. Richard Jensen 06:56, 17 January 2008 (CST)

law firm will respond to CZ

10:23 PM 1/14/2008, Dear Dr. Jensen:

Thank you for contacting us. There are some inaccuracies in the proposed Obama entry listed below. We would like to get back to you in the next few days with corrections.

Jeff Cummings

Jeffrey I. Cummings Miner Barnhill & Galland

Richard Jensen 23:50, 14 January 2008 (CST)

Interesting.--Martin Baldwin-Edwards 01:27, 15 January 2008 (CST)

yeah, it was posted at 10:23 pm....they work their associates till midnight. Richard Jensen 01:42, 15 January 2008 (CST)

campaign reporting

I have consolidated the analysis of the presidential campaign tactics used so far in the section called "presidential campaign". I have also replaced what I considered to be "spin" words (i.e., implying either positive or negative traits) with less hot button words.Pat Palmer 19:58, 16 January 2008 (CST)

I notice that the "presidential campaign" section is almost an exact duplicate of the section by the same name on the Hillary Clinton article. Therefore, it makes sense, if this analysis must be in Citizendium at all, to move it all out to a separate article called something like "presidential primary (2008)". anybody want to tackle that?Pat Palmer 20:19, 16 January 2008 (CST)

Referee statement

The Citizendium Executive is discussing proposals for a Dispute Resolution process. These are not yet finalised but will involve a system of “referees” for disputes.

A referee will be an uninvolved member of the project who will play no significant active part in a disputed article, but will be empowered to make certain types of decisions about a disputed article that will be provisionally binding on contributors to that article. The purpose of such decisions will be to call a halt to disputes with a decision that enables article development to continue. The decisions will be on the basis, where appropriate, of Citizendium policy, and there will be an appeal mechanism if decisions are thought to be in breach of this. The referee will not make judgments on matters of expert knowledge that lie outside their expertise, but may make judgments on style, tone, balance, neutrality etc. The referee will attempt to make a swift decision that is fair and reasonable and in the best interests of the Citizendium project; swiftness means that decisions will be imperfect, but authors will be expected to abide by them rather than extend a dispute. The referee has no disciplinary powers, a flagrant breach of his or her guidance will be a matter for the Constabulary.

As this article is the subject of apparently heated dispute, Larry as Editor-in-Chief has asked me to act as referee here as part of a trial of the process.

At present I intend to stand well back here. If there is any specific issue that needs my attention, please state it in a message on my Talk page.Gareth Leng 08:31, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Referee intervention

I have been asked to help resolve the issue of whether "ephemeral stuff" should be kept off the candidates' webpages. I've read the thread in the forums, and on this and other Talk pages, and thank all contributors for stating their views clearly. There has been a related discussion also in the executive committee. There are good reasons for keeping articles hot and topical as they attract interest to Citizendium and lively interest amongst Citizendium participants. However there are also problems: 1) the imperative to keep all biographical articles of living people scrupulously fair while 2) balancing the overall coverage and 3) frequently updating

This poses a need for Citizendium editors to be continually alert both to the individual articles and also to the overall coverage, and that is a challenge. So let me propose now the following:

1)This article (and the other individual candidate articles) should each contain a section (as they do) on the Presidential Campaign, and all "ephemera" should be strictly confined to that section.

2)That section should be the identical copy of a section within a new article on "Candidates for the 2008 Presidential election" and all editing of that section should be confined there. This will confine discussion of balance etc. to a single article, and allow editors and authors to reflect directly on the comparative way in which other candidates are handled.

3) On this article, the relevant section should open with a statement expressing its ephemeral nature, referring the reader to the "Candidates for the 2008 Presidential election." article.

4) Anything that appears in the ephemeral section should not in itself be a reason to alter anything else in this article, precisely because it is ephemeral.

This is not something that I'm willing to impose without any discussion. I don't want prolonged or detailed discussion on this, just an indication of whether this seems reasonable and workable, bearing in mind that we must resolve this issue swiftly to allow work to proceed happily and efficiently.Gareth Leng 11:20, 17 January 2008 (CST)

Good idea. I suggest since we already have an overview article on the 2008 election therefore we don't need a separate one on "Candidates for the 2008 Presidential election." Richard Jensen 16:21, 17 January 2008 (CST)

My proposal (on the forums) suggests separate articles for the Democratic and Republican primaries (which I haven't actually started yet, pending some sort of decision). That avoids having a behemoth article for all 20 candidates (ok, we're down to 10ish now) --ZachPruckowski 16:47, 17 January 2008 (CST)

Bear in mind that if you want to ensure that the text of discussions is exactly the same in both cases, you can use templates to do that. It's not hard. For example, you could create Template:Barack Obama 2008 primary campaign (or whatever) and then include the template on the two different pages. --Larry Sanger 13:03, 18 January 2008 (CST)

template = useful idea. How does one create it? It is a new article titled Template:Barack Obama 2008 primary campaign and located somewhere?? Richard Jensen 13:06, 18 January 2008 (CST)

Yes. One could do it that way. Our you could write it as a sub-page of the primary's page ( 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary/ephemera or something) and then transclude it into each article (the code would be {{:2008 Democratic Presidential Primary/ephemera}} ). That would give us one section to edit which would then mirror itself in all the candidate articles. I would, however, suggest a better name than "ephemera". --ZachPruckowski 14:33, 18 January 2008 (CST)

The normal terminology would be "news update" or something. I started using the word "ephemeral" for purposes of argumentation, and it seemed to catch on! :-) Martin Baldwin-Edwards 15:17, 18 January 2008 (CST)

Provisional Decision

It seems that this is a decision that we can make; I've seen no dissent here or elsewhere and heard at least cautious welcome.

So, let us follow Richard's suggestion of using the overview article on the election as the sole way of introducing the dynamic, ephemeral elements of coverage, using a template as an automatic way of copying a section onto the candidates' pages. Let us try to do this within that single article (which will let us keep an eye on fairness between Republican and Democrat coverage), but if the article becomes too big and unwieldy we will follow Zach's suggestion and split the coverage later. Let's see how it goes; a split should be easy.

The intention is to restrict the recurrent issues of neutrality and bias to the Talk page of a single dynamic article. I hope therefore that the other candidate articles should become more stable, solid, "academic" biographies, and not subject to the type of controversy that the overview article will inevitably entail from time to time.

I think the general expectation is that while Citizendium should be a lively and readable follower of history "as it is being made", it should also know the difference between such coverage, which must involve momentary judgements, and sober retrospective analysis. I hope this proposed solution is effective in achieving both aims without confusing the two.

So, as soon as we can achieve it, we need candidate sections in the overview article to become the live foci of editing, then we kill off the corresponding sections in the candidate articles and replace them with templates.

Thanks to everyone here. I know there are some "policy" issues to be addressed on the overview article, but let's take things one step at a time.

"Ephemera" is not the right term to use Zach, I agree. We're talking about coverage of current events, events that may be more or less important in retrospect than they seem now, coverage that we expect to be politically charged, analysis that may prove to be hasty in retrospect. So long as we all know what we're talking about, we'll find the right words.Gareth Leng 15:30, 18 January 2008 (CST)

How do we set up multiple template (one for each major candidate) so that only the templates are edited and the system automatically copies it to the appropriate articles? Richard Jensen 17:53, 18 January 2008 (CST)

We needn't wait on that technical solution to shift to the overview article, but Zach, are you willing/able to set up the templates needed to make this work as envisaged?Gareth Leng 03:05, 19 January 2008 (CST)

I've manually shifted some of the articles. Richard Jensen 03:10, 19 January 2008 (CST)

I'll do it once I'm clear on what we want. Do we want the editing to occur on a subpage page off the candidate's page, or in a dozen subpages off the main election page? They're technically equally easy. -- ZachPruckowski 10:38, 19 January 2008 (CST)

I assume we want one template-page per major candidate. (Clinton-Obama-Edwards; McCain-Romney-Giuliani-Huckabee-Paul-Thompson) As I understand it, when the Obama template gets edited the edits immediately appear on both the Obama page and the Election 2008 Page--is that right? Richard Jensen 13:35, 19 January 2008 (CST).

At the risk of seeming grumpy here, why do we need this duplication at all? Why not just have the candidate articles link prominently to the campaign article (or perhaps the subsection of it for this candidate)? It seems to me that having the campaign aritlce duplicated here does not solve the problem at all, but rather duplicates the material most likely to be controversial over several pages. In all other cases I've ever heard of, we settle for a link. Why now duplicate?Pat Palmer 09:00, 20 January 2008 (CST)

Developing this idea a bit more, I notice that the "campaign" section of this article has been moved from the bottom to the middle. As the campaign article grows in length, it's copied contents may well swamp and dominate this article, and since it contains the material most likely to be objectionable (to me anyway), I feel we are actually taking a step in the wrong direction. The point for me is for a reader to be able to go and find out who a candidate is, what their voting record is, what their history is, without have a sales pitch made at them. So an we move the stuff off this page altogether? I'm willing to keep pretty much hands off the campaign page if so, because then, it would be clear to readers which kind of information they are accessing.Pat Palmer 09:04, 20 January 2008 (CST)

the editors do not allow any sales pitches, and there are none. Re duplication: CZ made a policy decision that we are trying to implement. Richard Jensen 16:22, 20 January 2008 (CST)

CZ did not make a policy decision at all. Gareth asked here if there are any objections, and apparently [somewhat late] Pat is objecting to the proposed arrangement, or at least to the 'duplication of material' element in it.Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:35, 20 January 2008 (CST)

My objection is only to the proposed duplication. I actually quite like the campaign page as it now stands (my compliments, Richard et al). Just don't think it should be mirrored directly into the articles, but rather, linked to prominently. I think readers are quite capable of clicking the link if that is where their interest lies. This is just my opinion; I am not the decider here and will bow to what a majority of people agree on.Pat Palmer 16:58, 20 January 2008 (CST)

Decision, clarity

I've thought carefully about Pat's points. I'm led by several things 1) the need to keep our efforts focussed 2) the need to keep a sense of balance and fairness between candidates and parties

These lead me to believe that at the moment a common forum for presenting current events is the best answer

3)the need to keep the candidate articles topical. We do not want surely a candidate article to be oblivious to current events; it will make those articles look dated, and I don't see how we would be able to keep all current information off them - which would lead us again to dispersing our efforts to maintain balance.

So the solution I am now deciding (for the moment, to let us get on) is the mirror link via a template. The "current events" relevant to each candidate will be edited on subpages of the Presidential campaign article, and mirrored as sections in the candidates' biography pages. Pat is concerned that this might come to dominate the candidate articles. If that happens, then an easy solution would be to use a show/hide bar to suppress the template on the candidate page.

So the editing should all be done on subpages off the main election page, all text will appear on the main page, and all Talk on the main article Talk page. Let's keep all the controversy there if we can, and let's get guidelines agreed there.

I'm sorry to be authoritarian here; I'm here just to try to facilitate progress, and that needs some decisions, or we'll be talking for ever. Let's move on from this and then address agreement on the kind of guidelines that may be needed for the Presidential campaign article. If that article is balanced and fair we can all smile and relax.Gareth Leng 04:06, 21 January 2008 (CST)

it's a good solution but how do the mechanics work out? When will the templates be ready? Richard Jensen 04:39, 21 January 2008 (CST)

I think we can start writing into the sections in the article and then move them into subpages; we needn't be held up by the need to get everything in place first.Gareth Leng 06:44, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Once we get set up, is there any reason not to re-direct the candidate talk pages to the 2008 talk page? D. Matt Innis 19:48, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Instructions here are easy. For example, edit {{Barack Obama candidacy}}. Suppose you produce three paragraphs on that topic. Then, to insert those three paragraphs in the campaign article or in the Obama article, or both, simply place this exact text where you want the paragraphs to appear: {{Barack Obama candidacy}} Then changes you make to the template (not a subpage) appear automatically in the two articles. --Larry Sanger 20:13, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Where is the Christianity?

The article makes two mentions of Obama's connections to Muslims, one being his father (who was not a practicing Muslim at the time of Obama's birth and upbringing) and the other being a school that he attended as a toddler. Yet the article makes no mention of the fact that Obama is a Christian, and has been a member of a Christian congregation for over twenty years. This kind of imbalance lends unfortunate support to the thoroughly discredited (but most certainly libelous) smear campaign that seeks to paint Obama as some kind of secret Muslim, by burying evidence of his Christianity. Brian Dean Abramson 03:54, 8 February 2008 (CST)

good point and I fixed it. Richard Jensen 04:27, 8 February 2008 (CST)

revisions

I rewrote some of the pre 2005 material to focus more on Obama himself (and less on minor GOP opponents), and add dates. Richard Jensen 15:04, 8 February 2008 (CST)

Decapitalizing Black

Ro had removed all caps from Black, with the explanation that it is "not a religion." In Canada, the official style guide explicitly calls for the capitalization of race or nationality, such as Black. Is it not the case in the U.S.? Before we start changing all the references to Black in CZ, I just wanted to check. Shawn Goldwater 12:01, 11 February 2008 (CST)

I have edited a lot of jazz articles in Wikipedia, and I don't recall seeing 'black' capitalised there. Ro Thorpe 12:08, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Charles Mingus, for example - Ro Thorpe 12:14, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Yes and I just checked the Smithsonian web site, for their new African American museum, and they don't capitalize black either. My bad. It's a Canadian thing, I guess. I'll undo my undo.Shawn Goldwater 12:16, 11 February 2008 (CST)

I had an earlier comment disappeared in an Edit Conflict, but that gave me time to take a quick look at the New York Times -- they use the small-letter black throughout except in cases such as names: the Black Students Association, for instance. But "Obama would be the first black president etc. etc." Hayford Peirce 12:21, 11 February 2008 (CST)

By the way, you say Canada has an "official style guide" -- the Canadian gov't?Hayford Peirce 12:22, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks to Shawn, hehehe to Hayford. Ro Thorpe 12:30, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Yes, it is indeed published by the Canadian government. You got a problem with that? ;-)See Cheers, Shawn Goldwater 12:43, 11 February 2008 (CST)

I suggest discovering how the person referred to uses the word and using it that way. Stephen Ewen 12:49, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Are you really suggesting that each time CZ has an article that refers to somone as black we have to research to find out how they use it? Sorry, I think that's an impossible idea. Shawn Goldwater 12:52, 11 February 2008 (CST)

I have never seen "black" capitalised, and I read a lot of race relations literature. To my mind, regardless of the Canadian position on it, there are two serious problems with that: the first is simply that it makes a really Big issue out of it, like being Muslim or Jewish or British or... The second big problem is that for equality reasons, all ethnic minority descriptions would then have to be capitalised: it brings us back to another debate about "oriental", except now it is even worse as "Oriental". If we need a policy on it, I would insist on no capitalisation as a norm: if someone writes about him/herself using the capital, I would accept that as self-identification and therefore valid. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 13:00, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Okay, well, I'm not going to even touch the implication that being black isn't as Big an issue as being British or Jewish. Other than that, I think we agree. We'll keep black a lowercase, per the US norm. Unless, as you say, there's a quote that has it otherwise. Shawn Goldwater 13:08, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Martin, here in the States there was definitely a period, oh, 20 years or so ago, in which *many* people capitalized Black -- I think it was more often capitalized than not. Probably because people didn't know how to deal with it. I can certainly find books in my library that use caps. Now, however, I think the use of the cap. has just about vanished. Hayford Peirce 13:14, 11 February 2008 (CST)

I suspect it may have something to do with the emergence of the capitalized "African American" as the preferred formal term (per the Smithsonian museum website, etc.). 13:19, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Shawn - I noticed that one of your edits involved a quotation. In general, the quotation should be exact - if the source text breaks our style rules, the quotation should, too. If a book talks about "being Black", we should not change it to "being black". The fact that we are quoting directly should be made obvious, so that people don't go back and edit out "mistakes". Anthony Argyriou 13:28, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Yes, that's what we have been saying, above. My only "edit" to the article was to undo all of Ro's edits, then undo my undo. 13:37, 11 February 2008 (CST)

1. Capitalizing "Black" in the U.S. has some roots in the Black Power movements that emerged in the late 50s/early 60s and the usage is still pretty common today within that meaning. For example, see http://www.blackcommentator.com/ - whose editor is a former Black Panther - where you will find it capitalized. Black and black have different meanings in that context.

2. From a summary of the APA manual of style:

Ethnic labels can be tricky, and the manual has a lot to say about them. 
For example, "American Indian" and "Native American" are both acceptable 
usages, but the manual notes that there are nearly 450 Native American 
groups, including Hawaiians and Samoans, so specific group names are far 
more informative, such as Hopi or Lakota.

* Capitalize Black and White when the words are used as proper nouns to 
refer to social groups. Do not use color words for other ethnic groups. 
In racial references, the manual simply recommends that we respect current 
usage. Currently both the terms "Black" and "African American" are widely 
accepted, while "Negro" and "Afro-American" are not. These things change, 
so use common sense.

* The terms Hispanic, Latino, and Chicano are preferred by different groups. 
The safest procedure is use geographical references. Just say "Cuban 
American" if referring to people from Cuba.

* The term Asian American is preferable to Oriental, and again the manual 
recommends being specific about country of origin, when this is known (for 
example, Chinese or Vietnamese). The manual specifies that hyphens should 
not be used in multiword names such as Asian American or African American.

* People from northern Canada, Alaska, eastern Siberia, and Greenland often 
(but not always!) prefer Inuk (singular) and Inuit (plural) to "Eskimo." 
But some Alaska natives are non-Inuit people who prefer to be called Eskimo. 
This type of difficulty is avoided by using geographical references. For 
example, in place of "Eskimo" or "Inuit" one could use "indigenous people 
from northern Canada, Alaska, eastern Siberia, and Greenland."

* In referring to age, be specific about age ranges; avoid open-ended 
definitions like "under 16" or "over 65." Avoid the term elderly. Older 
person is preferred. Boy and Girl are acceptable referring to high school and 
and younger. For persons 18 and older use men and women. 

In general, call people what they want to be called....

3. See http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.58/aid.51320/column.htm for how the Associated Press deals with the matter.

Stephen Ewen 15:37, 11 February 2008 (CST)

Talk:Barack Obama/Archive 1

Contents

law practice

law firm will respond to CZ

campaign reporting

Referee statement

Referee intervention

Provisional Decision

Decision, clarity

Where is the Christianity?

revisions

Decapitalizing Black

Navigation menu

Talk:Barack Obama/Archive 1

law practice

law firm will respond to CZ

campaign reporting

Referee statement

Referee intervention

Provisional Decision

Decision, clarity

Where is the Christianity?

revisions

Decapitalizing Black

Navigation menu

Search