Talk:Alcée Louis la Branche

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removing referenced material[edit]

@AuH2ORepublican: You just reverted a sourced edit with the edit summary "(WP:UNDUE La Branche was a slaveholder, as was just about every plantation owner in Louisiana during his lifetime, so the fact that he owned slaves is not particular notable (and certainly should not be one of three sentences in the introductory section of his article)".

Please do not revert a well-documented fact, from a very reliable source, just because you think the documented fact is obvious. If you read the source, you'll see that not every Louisiana congressman in antebellum Louisiana was a slaveholder. It's not a case of 1 + 1 = 2. Facts need to be documented on Wikipedia. The reference also documents that he was a congressman and when he served. If you are saying just that the fact is not interesting to you, that's not a justification for removal. Lot's of people are interested in who were the slaveholders in government. Feel free to add material to the article. The only other reference in the article has lots more information that could be added. But please do not revert well documented material again. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:54, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallbones: It simply is not the case that well documented facts may not be excluded from an article when including such information violates WP:UNDUE. Please note that "[a]n article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially concerning recent events that may be in the news." So to your "please do not revert well documented material again," I will respond with "please do not add information that violates WP:UNDUE again."

Taking an article about a member of Congress, Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Chargé d'Affaires to the Republic of Texas and adding, as a third and final sentence to the introductory paragraph, "He was a slaveholder" does not present information in a balanced and proportional (and thus neutral) way. It would be the equivalent of placing, at the end of the first paragraph of the article on Martin Luther King, Jr., "He was an adulterer." While Dr. King's well documented adultery is discussed in his article, it is done not in the introduction (much less in a sentence that is 1/3 of the introductory section), but in a separate section so as not to give undue prominence to an aspect of his life that, while it should not be ignored, is not the reason why Dr. King is remembered today.

You're correct that not every Antebellum congressman from Louisiana was a slaveholder, but what I said was that pretty much every plantation owner in Louisiana owned slaves, and it is not particularly noteworthy that a congressman from Louisiana was a slaveholder. Of course, the fact that slavery in Antebellum Louisiana was commonplace (and, among a certain social class, ubiquitous) does not mean that we should not remember it, and the authors of that Washington Post article deserve all of the accolades that they have received for not letting us forget our history. But I do not believe that every person who ever owned slaves should have such fact mentioned in his or her Wikipedia article, and I assume that you would agree that it would not be proportional to add the unsurprising fact that "he owned slaves" to every article about a mansa of the Mali Empire or a Roman emperor.

So, what to do? You have made it your goal in life to add "He was a slaveholder" to every Wikipedia article on a member of Congress listed as a slaveholder in that WaPo article, and I don't want Wikipedia to turn into Wokeapedia, with slave ownership becoming the most prominent thing in the articles for the lion's share of prominent persons since the beginnings of civilization until the mid-to-late 19th century. I propose that your sentence be included in the article, but not in its introduction; as in the case of Dr. King's adultery, it should be included in a separate section so as not to unduly deemphasize the information presented. I will move the sentence to its own section, and recommend that you do the same (or, if there already is a section that discussed slavery, to move it there) in the dozens of other articles to which you have been adding the sentence. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 20:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]