Talk:John Morrison (Montana politician)

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Untitled[edit]

Changed "unpopular" to "entrenched" as it is a POV. (Even if he is unpopular..)

Suzanne Harding scandal[edit]

I restored the material that has twice been deleted in the past day or two. The assertion is that the material is false. Most of the material is of the form, "the newspaper said that xyz", and, in fact, the newspaper did say those things, and citations are provided. So, can the deleters explain: (a) why the material is false; and (b) support the assertion of falsity with reliable sources? -- Sholom 16:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those are valid things to request; simply deleting the text without (counter)citations is not appropriate. If there is incorrect information in there, provide references and rewrite the paragraph to either reflect a controversy, or remove incorrect entries with documentation here of why they're incorrect even though reported. If the paragraph doesn't adequately reflect the articles cited, rewrite the paragraph for that. jesup 20:24, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In case it's not obvious, this is directed to the new editors who have been deleting the paragraph. Also, new editors, please read Wikipedia:No legal threats. jesup 20:27, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
John, your edits look good. Hopefully this will resolve things. jesup 22:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: it appears Correctfacts put a link to a legal code in (I assume). Please indicate what the code is, link to a page containing or describing it, or remove it. jesup 20:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It appears Correctfacts has tried to make his edit more neutral than the initial pure deletion and quasi-threat. I've asked him to explain his reasoning here on his talk page. Lets give him a little time to justify here, since he did try to adapt his edit. Remember - Assume Good Faith and Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers. jesup 21:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm primarily concerned about - and hopefully others are too - are (a) avoiding any violation of WP:BLP, which means having a source for every single fact and statement in the section, and making sure the source is being accurately used; (b) not losing any external links, and (c) not violating WP:NPOV by giving this controversy undue weight. The last point means that I don't think the section should be much larger than it is now, and (arguably) no larger at all, and that the $1,000 gift/loan/whatever to Harding should be left out because, quite frankly, it's trivial.
If the current version is reasonably acceptable to everyone, and there is agreement on (a) through (c), perhaps we can all take a break and think about this. If nothing else, an interested reader has a sense of the controversy, and can follow the links and get a lot more information, which is, I think, much of what the value of wikipedia is.
What would be nice - I don't have time at the moment, but hope to do this in the next two weeks if no one else does first, is to convert the external links to footnotes in accordance with WP:CITE, so as to minimize problems of link rot. The next time this article is likely to be of intense interest is five years from now, after all - when, hopefully, the Senator-elect will have done lots of things that can be added to the article, reducing the proportion of the article now devoted to the controversy, and when, if wikipedia continues to grow in stature, articles like these will be treated as de facto authority. John Broughton | Talk 22:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, a through c. jesup 00:07, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am unfamiliar with your procedure as to explanations of edits. I think the article as it now stands much more accurately reflects the facts, though another edit will occur as more information emerges and is reported. Because no source characterized the controversy as an "accusation," I took the liberty of deleting that word from the heading. The Lee papers didn't label the issue at all, and the tabloid "Independent," merely asked rhetorical questions. Secondly, you left out facts that are necessary. I added those and linked to the Lee newspaper story. I know this has been tedious, but this was a bogus story from the beginning, and I don't disagree that, if Wikipedia editors are precise with facts, it may be treated as a de facto authority someday. Thus, in anticipation of that point in the future, one wouldn't want to let erroneous material go uncontroverted. Regards, Correctfacts. P.S. Sorry about the formatting. I hope someone can clean it up.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Correctfacts (talk • contribs) .

I cleaned up your formatting; I also used "question" - "Conflict of interest" alone implies a finding of impropriety.
I'll let another editor look at the content of your edit. One thing to remember is that a Wikipedia bio entry is not necessarily for listing or refuting every possible point or re-iteration of a point; it's a bio for an encyclopedia; we're not trying to be a search engine. Summarizations with a single link to a Reliable Source are ok, and in many cases preferred for issues that aren't primary.
A couple things you may want to note and read about which may help you if you feel like editing some more pages, which we welcome you to do: a page like this one is covered under the guidelines of Biographies of living persons. Among other things, negative information in particular needs to be well-sourced and dealt with as neutrally as possible. Another thing that should be helpful to you is that edits never disappear - they're always available in the history. In the same way, you might summarize with a single Reliable Source in the article, and explain or give additional justification or links here on the Talk page so that other editors will understand the reasons for your edit.
Lastly, on Talk pages it's customary to sign your name to your comments with ~~~~ (look down and you'll see "Sign your name"). And thanks for helping make the article better and better-sourced. jesup 04:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for cleaning up the formatting and for adding "question" to the heading. I will try to learn Wikipedia's style and system. ~~correctfacts~~ 17:29, 19 November 2006 {{unsigned|Correctfacts}

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 17:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

edits[edit]

Changed:

"During the Democratic Primary, it was revealed that Morrison had an extramarital affair in 1998.[26] Morrison and his wife remained together despite the affair.[27] According to the Missoula Independent, the woman with whom he had an affair later married a man whom Morrison's office investigated. Unnamed former staffers reported to the Independent that they repeatedly advised Morrison to stay out of the case entirely to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, but they felt that he had not.[28] The daily newspapers in Montana reported that Morrison's affair did not affect the outcome of the probe, and the individual investigated was convicted of fraud, sentenced to Federal prison, and ordered to repay defrauded investors $1 million. Morrison was not investigated for his conduct, and the case in question was handled by independent counsel hired by the department, Beth Baker, now an associate justice on the Montana Supreme Court. Baker stated that she was given broad leeway in how to proceed with the case.[26]"

to

"During the Democratic Primary, it was revealed that Morrison had an extramarital affair in 1998.[26] Morrison and his wife remained together despite the affair.[27] According to the Missoula Independent, the woman involved later married the principal of companies investigated by the state auditors office while Morrison was there. Former staffers reported to the Independent that they repeatedly advised Morrison to stay out of the case entirely to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, but they felt that he had not.[28] Morrison's affair reportedly did not affect the outcome of the probe, and the individual investigated was convicted of fraud. The case in question was handled by outside attorney Beth Baker because of Morrison's relationship with the woman and others associated with companies. Baker said she was given significant discretion in handling the case.[26]"

for the following reasons:

  • the penalties of the guy convicted of fraud aren't relevant to Morrison
  • source indicates woman was not the only reason Morrison recused
  • copying phrasing verbatim from source is copyright violation
  • Baker's current position isn't particularly relevant -- readers can follow wikilink to get more information about her
  • Existing phrasing longer than it needs to be

NE Ent 12:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me, I had only done a quick copyedit of what was there without doing a close check of sources, this looks closer to the sources without the copyvio issues. I may chop a bit more there. Montanabw(talk) 17:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Altering the lead[edit]

I am going to change the lead based on the following Wikipedia norm. If you look at the pages of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and other top American politicians, and Montana politicians like Roy Brown (Montana politician), the lead generally refers to them as "an American politician", and not as "Democrat" or "Republican". So I am going to alter the lead to better reflect this. Jeremy112233 (talk) 20:06, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It also dawned on me that he is not currently a politician, so labelling him as a current Democrat is a bit off the mark. I did include the 2006 election at the bottom of the lead paragraph though. Jeremy112233 (talk) 20:10, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:John Morrison (Montana politician)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

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Once again, there are inaccuracies, even from the sources you quote.

The Billings Gazette did not state that Morrison made payments to Harding or that someone claimed they should be reported. Please read the article you linked to the statement.

The quote from the Missoula Independent is "In contrast to the auditor’s lax prosecution of Tacke—and failure. . ." It doesn't say "Morrison's lax prosecution" as you quote and it doesn not include the parenthetical "husband of Morrison's mistress."

It should be explained that the Independent was uninformed, misinformed or intentionally mistated the authority of the auditor. Under Montana law, the auditor cannot prosecute criminal violations. The auditor refers violations of criminal law to state or federal prosecutors. To say that federal authorities did what the auditor did not do is misleading. MCA 30-10-306

Once again, I deleted improperly substituted material. A substituted word in a bracket is supposed to be interchangeable with the word substituted or an antecedent to a pronoun. "The auditor" means the office of the auditor, not just Morrison. In this case, even the Independent concedes that it was the office that managed the Tacke case, not Morrison. It is inaccurate on two fronts to say "Morrison was lax." Even the Independent didn't say that. It took care to use "The auditor. ." It is apparent from the tone of the piece that if there was even a scintilla of evidence that would have allowed them to use "Morrison" in the sentence, they would have.

The second "husband of former mistress" is not in the original piece & is unnecessary to the reader's understanding. Those words appear after the word "Tacke" immediately above the second insertion. Further, it is incorrect that Tacke was, at times material, the "husband" of Suzanne Harding. He was the fiance.

Finally, the piece continues to cite a Billings Gazette article for text that is not in the article. This is material, because the Gazette is a respected newspaper. To cite to it inappropriately gives credibility to inaccurate and false facts and maligns the Gazette. If you want to include such statements, at least find a citation to them. However, I suggest you not waste time. They don't exist.

You might consider whether the Missoula Independent screed wasn't a "Swift Boat" piece and the Lee papers piece a more accurate onee.

== New Talk Piece 11/17/06 ==

New talk piece 11/17/06

Once again, I deleted improperly substituted material. A substituted word in a bracket is supposed to be interchangeable with the word substituted or an antecedent to a pronoun. "The auditor" means the office of the auditor, not just Morrison. In this case, even the Independent concedes that it was the office that managed the Tacke case, not Morrison. It is inaccurate on two fronts to say "Morrison was lax." Even the Independent didn't say that. It took care to use "The auditor. ." It is apparent from the tone of the piece that if there was even a scintilla of evidence that would have allowed them to use "Morrison" in the sentence, they would have.

The second "husband of former mistress" is not in the original piece & is unnecessary to the reader's understanding. Those words appear after the word "Tacke" immediately above the second insertion. Further, it is incorrect that Tacke was, at times material, the "husband" of Suzanne Harding. He was the fiance.

Finally, the piece continues to cite a Billings Gazette article for text that is not in the article. This is material, because the Gazette is a respected newspaper. To cite to it inappropriately gives credibility to inaccurate and false facts and maligns the Gazette. If you want to include such statements, at least find a citation to them. However, I suggest you not waste time. They don't exist.

You might consider whether the Missoula Independent screed wasn't a "Swift Boat" piece and the Lee papers piece a more accurate one. ~correctfacts~

Last edited at 20:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 20:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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