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Scott Thomas

I'm convinced that the Scott Thomas coverage isn't appropriate in this article right now. In fact, I would say that it is actually a violation of BLP to include substantial coverage of it here right now instead of only in the TNR article. Why? First, no wrongdoing by Foer has been demonstrated, only alleged. Second, as time goes on and more details are released (such as the identity of the soldier who wrote the piece, which was released today), it seems more and more clear that this is a non-controversy and that Foer and TNR did nothing wrong. Third, and perhaps most importantly, this is a New Republic controversy, not a Franklin Foer controversy, at least right now. Unless someone can provide reliable sources verifying that Foer (not TNR, not Scott Thomas, but Foer) has actually done something wrong (and these sources don't exist right now), it should be discussed at the TNR article, but not in this one. Again, I am concerned with the biographies of living persons policy. · jersyko talk 13:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

To follow up on that, I would add WP:UNDUE to the list of policies I'm concerned with. Perhaps one sentence talking about the allegations would be appropriate in this article, so long as it is appropriately referenced and phrased. Something like, "In July of 2007, after TNR published an article by an American soldier in Iraq titled "Shock Troops", allegations of inadequate fact-checking were leveled against Foer by conservative critics who alleged that the author of the piece was not an American soldier, though later events confirmed his identity." As it was, however, the Thomas coverage was nearly dominating this article. · jersyko talk 14:00, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

The controversy centers of Foer because he was the journalist and editor who decided to publish the "Scott Thomas" diaries. If the stories are true Foer is vindicated. If not, then it is mostly about him. I agree that this is a story unfolding, but it should be left alone and written in a neutral format and then revised with time. Factcheckingfreak.

That doesn't address the WP:UNDUE concern, however. Nor is it a reason to include blog lings in the external links, and it really doesn't get around the BLP concern, either, since you're saying "well, this might be about Foer, and it might be nothing". BLP supports removing the information from this article (but not TNR) right now in that case. · jersyko talk 14:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Current events tend to get undue weight and, no matter what his other accomplishments, this event is (as far as I know) the only thing getting Foer's name into The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. That said, the two-sentence blurb there now adds some balance, and some of the links could be removed. The NYT link is only there to prove notability and the blog link could be obtained through Scott Thomas Beauchamp. However, the previous version of the two sentences was very POV: It called all critics "conservative." It claimed that the critics all claimed that "Thomas" wasn't a soldier (when one wrote and others concurred, that he might be a soldier, and, if he was, Thomas' defenders would claim that the critics' primary objection was that he wasn't a soldier, not that he fabricated stories). And, sure enough, this entry said — without evidence — that critics objected that he wasn't a soldier. It's the facts, not the author's identity, that are important in this case, and few if any critics ever said otherwise. Spinning it to be the reverse — now that's a violation of WP:BLP. Calbaer 17:56, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

The Weekly Standard published plenty of allegations that Thomas isn't a soldier (before his ID was revealed) here. That article is already linked in this Misplaced Pages article. So, with all due respect, do not claim that I inserted a "lie" into this article or otherwise violated BLP by claiming that conservative critics questioned Thomas' identity as a soldier. · jersyko talk 18:56, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

That's kind of silly. You link to dozens of letters to Weekly Standard and say that there are some that accuse him of not being a soldier (though I couldn't find any in a brief skim of your link), and that's your source that the primary objection to Thomas was that he "was not an American soldier"? That's a blatant misrepresentation of his critics, in a way that some of his critics accurately predicted would happen if it came out that he was, indeed, a soldier. One can parse it in such a way that you could argue against it being a "lie" — so perhaps that's not word I should have used — but it is highly misleading and misrepresentative. It would be like saying, "Critics of Clinton's perjury objected to the way he stuck a cigar into an orifice of someone other than his wife": Arguably true, but not exactly representative of the crux of the situation at hand. Calbaer 22:34, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

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