Talk:Frank Gaffney - Misplaced Pages

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He's a Jew; someone put in the appropriate category please.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.163.100.74 (talk • contribs)

Do you have a link or source? Derktar 22:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC).

POV

At the bottom of the article:

To this day, Gaffney is despised by many clear thinking people in the United States, as he continues his tirade against progressive, logical and moral values. His pitting of citizen against citizen, to many, is the cornerstone of his diatribe against modernity.

I need not explain how grossly POV this is, and am removing it. (I think Norquist's "sick, little bigot" comment handles it gracefully :) ) Caidence 04:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The article kind of reads like a hatchet job in general. It comes off like his biggest accomplishment is angering political folks, include the authors of the article! It's full of unsourced statements and unimportant facts (He once misquoted a famous figure, not a very notable feat). It violates many Misplaced Pages guidelines and policies as it is now; I'll snip it a bit. Calbaer 01:12, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the article with the misquote seems not to exist on washingtontimes.com or archive.org, and the only evidence I can find for it existing is Greenwald's article. Greenwald is known in right-wing circles for engaging in online trickery, so if he's the only source for it, it should probably be removed. I'll put a summary here for anyone who's interested in reviving it; a paragraph is a bit much for an article that seems to have been ignored by everyone except Greenwald (unless Greenwald's misquoting):

He has been criticized for using a statement misattributed to Abraham Lincoln regarding "congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military" being "hanged," echoing that "If there's one thing that really should be a hanging offense," it is such behavior.

It looks like Greenwald may have his dates wrong (talking about a "column in today's ... Times" on a Wednesday, when Gaffney's articles seem to run Tuesdays). Perhaps Greenwald's date stamp isn't what he intended, which makes it even harder to find the article in question. Anyway, the "controversial" statement should be left out until we can find the article itself and some evidence that others aside from Greenwald cared about it. Otherwise, it's nonnotable. Calbaer 02:05, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it not inappropriate to add that FG was involved a documentary for PBS's America at a Crossroads series, Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center. Asteriks 11:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ambiguous wording

About 2/3 of the way down:

In a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove dismissed Gaffney's assertions regarding President Bush stating "there's no there there".

Did Rove say that "there's no there there" about Gaffney, or did Gaffney say that about Bush? If the former, then it's unclear what "assertions" are under discussion. Lincmad 23:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Categorisation

Why is he categorised as a Jewish Politician when our article does not state that he is either Jewish by ethnicity or religion and neither does it mention that he ever stood for elected office?

I understood that we had to be very cautious and insist on impeccable citations where biographies of living persons were concerned - or does this not apply to categories? Alice.S 05:02, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

You are in direct violation of WP:STALK. I'd also note this is not 'your' article. You do not 'own' articles. WP:BLP requires editors to source alll criticism of living individuals. BLP does not apply unless you are trying to imply that being a Jewish politician is a bad thing. That would be... antisemitic. I'm assuming you were unaware of the finer points of BLP. For future reference, BLP does indeed apply to all aspects of articles from start to finish. Perspicacite 05:45, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

So will you be removing the (unsupported by citation or our article) categorisation of Frank Gaffney as a "Jewish American politician", Perspicacite? Alice.S 06:47, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you implying being Jewish is a bad thing? Are you going to provide any links suggesting his ethnicity/religion are otherwise? Perspicacite 07:06, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

No, I am not implying that being Jewish by religion or ethnicity is bad.
No, it is not for me to establish a negative. The way I understand WP to work is that you need citations to add (and maintain) the category - not for me to question the categorisation.

Finally - I'm not a combative sort of person so I will leave it to your own good conscience (or that of others) to make the appropriate deletion or add appropriate cited text to the article.

PS: As for stalking you, it is you that have drawn attention to yourself by personalizing this discussion sub-section and you that has exhibited careless behaviour with reverting good faith edits and inaccurate/misleading edit summaries and I wished to correct inaccuracies in the text and categorisation of our encyclopedia. That is sanctioned behaviour. However, I have no wish to cause you stress so I am happy to propose this modus vivendi: I will happily not edit articles where you have already edited (once this is pointed out to me) if you will extend the same courtesy? Alice.S 07:24, 4 November 2007 (UTC) Please bear in mind that your definition of stalking (I am not aware of editing either this article or any other article (with the exception of Tokelau) you have edited, Perspicacite) is different from that at WP:STALK#Wikistalking:"Wikistalking refers to the act of following an editor to another article to continue disruption.

The term "wiki-stalking" has been coined to describe following a contributor around the wiki, editing the same articles as the target, with the intent of causing annoyance or distress to another contributor.

This does not include checking up on an editor to fix errors or violations of Misplaced Pages policy, nor does it mean reading a user's contribution log; those logs are public for good reason. Using the edit history of users to correct related problems on multiple articles is part of the recommended practices both for Recent changes patrol (RCP) and WikiProject Spam. The important part is the disruption - disruption is considered harmful. Wikistalking is the act of following another user around in order to harass them."Alice.S 08:16, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

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