Talk:Roger Kimball

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I have removed material from this article that does not comply with our policy on the biographies of living persons. Material in a biography must always be referenced from reliable sources, particularly negative material. Negative material that does not comply with that must be immediately removed. Note that the removal does not imply that the information is either true or false.

Untitled[edit]

Please do not reinsert this material unless you can provide reliable citations, and can ensure it is written in a neutral tone. Please review the relevant policies before editing in this regard. Editors should note that failure to follow this policy may result in the removal of editing privileges.


The re are also issues with the presentation of material here being not neutral. A list of quotes out of context is unacceptable. --Docg 20:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes and external links[edit]

User:‎Tkuvho reverted me wholesale on my removals. Why do we need that long a quote? Also, why did you revert the external links, as the use of them in this article clearly violates our guideline? Thargor Orlando (talk) 16:53, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, User:Thargor Orlando claims that I reverted him "wholesale", but does not mention his own wholesale deletion of material. If you think there are too many external links, let's discuss this. The quote in question presents a much clearer picture of Kimball's position than the truncated version you left in the article. I can see that someone who disagrees with Kimball will not want to keep the full quote, but wiki is not the place to impose personal opinions. Tkuvho (talk) 17:05, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I make no comments on Kimball's position on anything, a long quote like that is not really necessary and may carry copyright implications, but I'm not married to its removal. As for the links, however, how do you believe the links meet the guideline? Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:08, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These interviews attest to Kimball's notability. If you think it is more appropriate to include them as citations, please reformat the material, but it clearly belongs in the article. Tkuvho (talk) 17:10, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What part of the interviews will help the article? His notability isn't in question. Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:17, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Material establishing notability belongs in the article whether or not notability is currently "in question". Also, a reader interested in learning more about Kimball's position can follow the link to one of the interviews to find out more. I don't really understand the rationale for wanting to delete these links. Do you feel they violate a specific guideline? As I already mentioned, the links can be reformatted as footnotes. Tkuvho (talk) 10:30, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I noted in my original comment, they very clearly violate our external link guideline. What part of the interviews will help the article, and we can convert those into reflinks so we can get this article conformed to guideline. Thargor Orlando (talk) 12:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I noted in my earlier message, the constructive way of approaching this is to move the clearly useful material to footnotes if you feel they shouldn't be links, as per common sense and WP:IAR. Tkuvho (talk) 14:10, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Except that you're the one who wants them as inline cites. I personally don't know which are useful or not for that sort of thing, all I know is that they don't meet the guideline. Since you seem to be okay with their removal from external links, I'll do that and add the viable links that I'm removing below for easy access if you want to make them inline. Thargor Orlando (talk) 14:27, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your hard work! Tkuvho (talk) 17:24, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And I appreciate your cooperation and collaboration! Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:28, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Possible links for references[edit]

axe to grind[edit]

The page has undergone a massive revision by one user who was doubtless acting in response to an article published two days ago.[1]

I totally agree with the user Emjem1963 that page needs to be pared down, but suspect that methods less draconian would be preferable to the atom bomb just dropped on the page. I move to restore the page to what it was before, and then pare it down to something more appropriately-sized...afterwards this immediate furor dies down, as that is obviously what inspired our fair user to do this. Jim37hike (talk) 18:07, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Jim, and have just acted to undo Emjem1963's edits. Uhhhhhno (talk) 01:45, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I went to this page to try to learn about the person, but found instead what reads like a (very long) promotional press release. I believe my original edits left the page to be in line with similar pages - a complete listing of the author's activities and books, and a summary of the premise of each book. I broke my edits down into individual changes, so it was hardly an atom bomb.

When the book in question is highly political, I don't believe that uncritically quoting large chunks of text is appropriate. What is appropriate is a concise summary of the premise of the book. Long and controversial quotes, if included, should also include some balance. I'm taking another cut at it, making even smaller individual changes and attempting to introduce some balance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emjem1963 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/06/06/an_impending_coup_at_st_johns_college_130786.html

OR and non-independent sourcing[edit]

The career section contains a sentence talking about Kimball's reporting on the 2020 US presidential election results [[1]]. This section fails RS since the material is sourced to an article Kimball wrote. Additionally it contains OR because it makes claims about the election which Kimball doesn't make. Springee (talk) 01:46, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Springee: I disagree with both of your objections.
  • First, the sentence in question is sourced to Spectator Australia, which is a WP:RS. Our perennial sources page directs that The Spectator primarily consists of opinion pieces and these should be judged by WP:RSOPINION and WP:NEWSBLOG. Since the specific cited opinion piece is not a blog, we must look to WP:RSOPINION, which explains, Some sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements asserted as fact. For example, an inline qualifier might say "[Author XYZ] says....". A prime example of this is opinion pieces in sources recognized as reliable. When using them, it is best to clearly attribute the opinions in the text to the author and make it clear to the reader that they are reading an opinion. In saying that Kimball has repeated a debunked and discredited claim, we clearly attribute that opinion to him.
  • Second, the disputed sentence offers no claim that Kimball did not himself make. Here is the relevant excerpt from his Spectator Australia piece: This was no squalid two-bit voter fraud. It was a planned campaign. … some geniuses understood that COVID was the perfect cover for voter fraud on an industrial scale.
Please do not remove this reliably sourced content. NedFausa (talk) 02:30, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nedfausa, Roger Kimball is the author of the article. That means the article is not independent of this BLP. We can't use an article written by Kimball to establish weight to include something Kimball says. Second, it doesn't matter if he said the moon was made from green cheese, we can't then say he was wrong unless we have a RS that says, Kimball was wrong when he said the moon was made from green cheese. While it may be true, we need a RS to say Kimball was wrong for us. Springee (talk) 02:50, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Springee: Here is the disputed sentence.
In the aftermath of the United States Presidential Election, 2020 Kimball has repeated the debunked and discredited claim that Joe Biden won the election because of large-scale electoral fraud.[1]

References

  1. ^ Kimball, Roger (13 December 2020). "Is America still a democratic republic?". Spectator Australia. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
Please note the wikilinked phrase "debunked and discredited." To verify that the claim has been debunked and discredited, the reader merely has to click once on that link. It is quite unnecessary to offer additional proof inline. NedFausa (talk) 03:08, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Kimball didn't describe it as discredited or debunked. That was OR on the part of the editor. It doesn't matter that it's true, it matters that it fails WP:V. Springee (talk) 03:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Springee: Sorry, you lost me there. I now completely fail to understand your point. Accordingly, I will bow out and let other editors deal with this. NedFausa (talk) 03:15, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's straight forward. The only source in that section is Kimball. That is fine if we are saying he grew up in [town]. The problem is we need an independent source to provide weight for including his comments on the election. We don't have that. That means this content is UNDUE. Ignoring that, our only source for claims in that sentence is Kimball's article. That means we can't editorialize what Kimball says. If Kimball says the moon is made of cheese, we say "Kimball says the moon is made of cheese". We don't say, "Kimball wrongly claims the moon is made of cheese" because we don't have a source that says Kimball is wrong. This comes back to Wikipedia isn't about what is "true", it's about what is "verifiable". I've opened up a BLPN discussion that can hopefully provide some additional feedback. Springee (talk) 03:23, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Full disclosure, I have had many run-ins and arguments with Springee on Wiki and I maintain (supported by other users who've made similar contentions in their talk page history) that their editing raises serious NPOV and partisanship problems. Springee, can you provide specific excerpts from Wiki policy to buttress the point you're making, which seems to be "you cannot use a primary source for any point on a BLP article"? On my talk page you've already dropped by, and I mentioned the Pizzagate analogy.[2] Now, surely if a commentator stated that they believe in Pizzagate, we are likely to record that they "believe in the debunked Pizzagate theory" without adding a litany of inline citations to establish that Pizzagate is, in fact, a debunked conspiracy theory. The paragraph above the "debunked and discredited election fraud contention" sentence contains several direct citations using Kimball's journalistic work, which you have not contested. The Douglas Murray (author) page that you're also currently litigating has many references to the subject's journalistic work, none of which you have contested. Could it be that you object to this sentence because it could be perceived as unflattering to Kimball? Noteduck (talk) 10:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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