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Archive 1

Retitle? (June 2008)

The William Ayers bio should present coverage of all of the former leader in the Weather Underground's general controversialities.

Yet, as the dual sub-article of the above mentioned biography and also with the "Barack Obama 2008 presidential election campaign" article, this sub-article ought be sure to encyclopedically reference its connection with Obama, to avoid ambiguity (that is, be as non-misleading about the who? what? where? etc. of the subject it covers. For example, see guidelines at style manual, naming conventions. Hence: Good: Bernard Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy Giuliani promotions of Bernard Kerik; bad: an overly ambigous title e/g Bernard Kerik election controversy.)

How 'bout----

  1. "___?___"
  2. Barack Obama acquaintance with former radicals
  3. Barack Obama association with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
  4. Barack Obama—William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn election controversy
  5. Barack Obama—William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn controversy

 — Justmeherenow (   ) 05:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I have no objection to the title of the article being more explicit, but I'm not sure what the best way would be. The first two above don't work because they assert that the subject of the article is an actual acquaintance or association, which is a POV thing and not the subject of the article (the subject is the controversy). The second two don't work because B. Dohrn isn't part of the controversy as far as I know. The closest I can come to it is "2008 William Ayers - Barack Obama election controversy" but that sounds clunky. Wikidemo (talk) 06:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Like it.

Dohrn is indeed part of the controversy. Not as much as Ayers, since Obama wasn't involved with putting her on the Woods board, but she co-hosted Obama's coming out party and the pair are often shown together in photos illistrating the articles.[1][2] With her quote about how cool Charlie Manson was and her connections to the Brinks robberies (Google Dohrn and "Broadway Baby") and the associated murders it seems she's an even nastier bit of work than Ayers. "Actual acquaintance or association" isn't POV -- it isn't controversial that Obama knows these people and has associated with them. It's the weight to be attached to the association that is disputed, not its existance.

Oh... and just a headsup. You'll be hearing more about this before November.[3]Andyvphil (talk) 11:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Adding Dohrn is more encyclopedic. ...Let's see if anybody else agrees. — Justmeherenow (   ) 10:36, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't know. It may be that a name for this situation will (has?) formed from those that write about this. Dohrn does seem to be much more marginal in this than Ayers, for the reasons already given. As with the proposed renaming of the Jeremiah Wright controversy article, what's the practical advantage to the reader? Is there something separate about Dohrn's relationship with Obama that she doesn't already share with Ayers? I don't see a need to change the name, so far. It isn't very important to me either way. Noroton (talk) 12:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I think I've read every single article about this controversy, in the Chicago and national media, and Bernardine Dohrn is not part of it other than being married to Bill Ayers. If you want to include her because she 'co-hosted' the political coffee (I certainly wouldn't describe it as a 'coming-out party'), you would have to include her mother as well, as I believe she was also living in the house with them at the time. I realize you want to make this as ooh! ooh! an article title as possible, but we're an encyclopedia, not a tabloid.
As far as the title itself, encyclopedia articles should be as short as possible. For example, google 'teapot dome' which was about an oil reserve scandal. None of the various sources call their articles about it anything but teapot dome or teapot dome scandal. You have to go to the article to get names and dates. We don't summarize articles in the title, except for disambiguation purposes such as 'John Doe (Idaho politician)'. Currently, we have Jeremiah Wright controversy, and Bill Ayers election controversy. The articles are linked in various ways to and from the Obama article, so I don't see any absolute necessity of adding that to the title. If we add the name, then we could argue we should add presidential election and/or campaign to the title and it gets over-long. The longest I could consider would be Barack Obama and Bill Ayers controversy (we don't use hyphens to connect names unless the hyphen is actually part of someone's legal name).
I think a possible solution would be a Wikipedia List of controversies we could link to (the earlier article we had was deleted, but a List should be acceptable).
I can understand the interest in Ayers, but quite frankly, Obama is 'on friendly terms' and has served with hundreds, if not thousands, of people. He's been on lots of boards and panels, there's everyone in the Illinois legislature, everyone in Congress, everyone at the University of Chicago (not just the law school), a lot of people in Kenwood-Hyde Park....to pick out Bill Ayers and claim he was a 'friend' (in the sense of hanging out together on a social basis) is simply misleading at best. I think we all know that, yet some insist on implying the two are BFFs, and in cahoots to overthrow the government and criminalize baseball, mom and apple pie. I don't care if you do that in your personal blogs (you can claim the earth is flat, for all I care), but that sort of thing doesn't belong in Wikipedia.
Another thing. It's important that we stay balanced with how the John McCain (and possibly Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ron Paul and Bob Barr) articles are handled. I'm very concerned about Wikipedia's reputation in general. imo there have been too many efforts to document the scandal du jour here (and not just in political articles), when we should be concentrating on giving weight to encyclopedic material. There is no scandal with Bill Ayers and Barack Obama. There is some media coverage trying to 'gin up' (the current phrase, it appears) shock and awe that they have both worked to improve conditions, particularly in education, in Chicago.
We don't have to decide on a new title today, so let's think this through and look at similar articles (and no, I don't like the Giuliani example at all). Flatterworld (talk) 14:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
NOW maybe SUPPORT Barack Obama and Bill Ayers controversy as I'm switzerland as to (not a hyphen, but) an en-dash----'though the house Manual of Style does specify them as appropriate as an occasionally-necessary joiner of proper nouns in titles: "Taft–Hartley Act."

En dashes in page names. When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span. However, editors should provide a redirect page to such an article, using a hyphen in place of the en dash (e.g., Eye-hand span), to allow the name to be typed easily when searching Wikipedia.----WIKIPEDIA MANUAL OF STYLE

 — Justmeherenow (   ) 17:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
From a current David Broder column, "The country was captivated by the Kennedy-Nixon encounters." Then, an unrelated news headline reads "Obama-McCain battle to focus on swing states"; and this from the Pittsburg Post Gazette: "Some 83 days passed between the two most recent Bush-McCain meetings." So the house style manual's advice re connecting proper nouns via (hyphen/)endash seems to be the proper way to punctuate this type of expression. — Justmeherenow (   ) 15:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

(July 2008)

Let's try "Obama/Ayers controversy." Curious bystander (talk) 00:32, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I think I'll try a bold move soon. Any objections to "Obama - Ayers controversy" (I like a dash better than a slash). If someone thinks of a better name we can always move again and people can follow the redirects. Wikidemo (talk) 00:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
Fine with me. Flatterworld (talk) 13:43, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
checkY   Justmeherenow (  ) 17:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikidemo's suggestion included 'spaces' around the dash which imo makes sense. Two last names with just a dash between is suitable only for hyphenated British last names such as Antony Armstrong-Jones (and those married women who choose to hyphenate their 'two last names'), imo. Is there a guideline on this? I just want to be sure we're being consistent with other articles. Flatterworld (talk) 17:58, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

While the in-house style manual says that an endash placed between spaces is stylistically akin to an emdash, for our usage it suggests just a bare endash: "En dashes[...]substitute for some uses of and, to or versus for marking a relationship involving independent elements in certain compound expressions (Canada–US border, blood–brain barrier, time–altitude graph, 4–3 win in the opening game, male–female ratio, 3–2 majority verdict, Lincoln–Douglas debate, Michelson–Morley experiment, diode–transistor logic; but a hyphen is used in Sino-Japanese trade, in which Sino-, being a prefix, lacks lexical independence. [... ...] When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span. However, editors should provide a redirect page to such an article, using a hyphen in place of the en dash (e.g., Eye-hand span), to allow the name to be typed easily when searching Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)."   Justmeherenow (  ) 18:24, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

So what is going on with your dozen renames today with no consensus? Is this yet another attempt to confuse anyone trying to find this article? Flatterworld (talk) 23:04, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete or merge

This article should be deleted, not renamed. Some aspects of it could be merged into Bill Ayers. It's another WP:COATRACK of a WP:POVFORK. The entire controversy could be fully explained in a single paragraph with a couple of references. -- Scjessey (talk) 16:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That's been discussed. It's independently notable, a distinct subject, not a fork, doesn't belong in the Bill Ayers article, and would have weight problems in the Obama election campaign article. As long as it's here the best thing is an accurate, neutral title. Wikidemo (talk) 16:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Delete or Merge: There doesn't seem to be enough here for a separate article. Why isn't there an "Obama" section in the Ayers article? Obama is only mentioned once in that article.Ferrylodge (talk) 17:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The reason there is no Obama section in the Ayers article is that Obama is of no relevance to Ayers' life, and because there is a more logical place - here - to discuss the controversy as it relates to the 2008 election. Wikidemo (talk) 17:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, Ayers is getting more publicity this year than he's ever gotten in his life. He may not want it or like it, but it still seems very notable, and I don't think it would be undue weight to include a section about it in his bio.Ferrylodge (talk) 18:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose merge. This article (as a topic, not necessarily the quality of the current version) addresses a particular media event. That has an independent encyclopedic interest, which is not the same as the interest in a biography of Ayers. Any inclusion of more material from here in Ayers' article would be WP:UNDUE weight. LotLE×talk 17:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Oppose merge for the reasons Wikidemo and LotLE have stated. Flatterworld (talk) 18:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

  • Oppose merge per Wikidemo and LotLE. This is similar to what has happened with Jeremiah Wright, though on a smaller scale. The article needs work, but the topic of of significance. This controversy has impacted not only Mr. Ayers, but Barack Obama, his presidential campaign, and the 2008 United States presidential election (though not as much as Wright, granted). Including all this material at the Ayers BLP would result in too much undue weight on this one matter. Should it be mentioned there? Of course, but this serves as a main article for the less-detailed mentions on other pages. Happyme22 (talk) 03:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
    • Neutral on the merge. I've begun to rethink this. The topic is notable, but there is not enough here to assert why it has impacted the race and to how great of an extent (little extent? large extent? etc.) . So I'll swtich my input over to 'neutral' for now. Happyme22 (talk) 03:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
That's a problem you can expect will be solved. There is a mountain of reliable, encyclopedic information on the Web alone. I'm surprised it isn't in here already. Noroton (talk) 18:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

That this article even exists is an embarrassment. -- Fifty7 (talk) 03:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

This needs to be deleted or merged, it's blatant republican propoganda in the form of an article. J'onn J'onzz (talk) 22:16, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

How do we treat Bill Ayers on the Barack Obama page?

How much information should Obama's bio article have on his embarassing associates -- Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko? The Barack Obama talk page now has an important discussion about this (at Talk:Barack Obama#Attempt to build consensus on the details).

Some editors here think that when a U.S. presidential candidate is embarassed by someone associated with that candidate, no information about it should be mentioned in the WP biography article, even if the campaign (and therefore the person who is the subject of the article) was affected. Others think WP should only mention that this person was controversial and leave a link in the article to the WP article on that controversial associate. Still others (including me), think we should briefly explain just why that person was controversial in the candidate's life, which can be done in a phrase or at most a sentence or two. Other examples:

Whatever we do, we should have equal treatment, so anyone interested in NPOV-, WP:BLP-compliant articles should look at and participate in the discussion. We've started the discussion by focusing on how much to say about former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers in the Barack Obama article. On some other pages where I've posted this, people have been responding only beneath the post, which is fine, but won't help get a consensus where it counts. So please excuse me for raising my voice, just to make sure I get the point across: Please respond at Talk:Barack Obama#Attempt to build consensus on the details where your comments will actually affect the consensus!!! Sorry for the shoutin'. I promise not to do it again (here, at least). Noroton (talk) 18:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Terrorist

The FBI is the official U.S. determiner of who is and isn't a terrorist, and of which kind - yes there are several 'levels'). If you can find a reference in their website about Bill Ayers specifically, we can use that descriptor. Otherwise, no. 'Terrorist' is not a term which should be tossed about casually in an encyclopedia, and the NYT is not authoritative in that area.Flatterworld (talk) 05:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

It's hard to know where to begin:
  • What gave you the impression that anyone but Wikipedia is the official determiner of who is and isn't to be called a terrorist in Wikipedia?
  • What gave you the impression that the FBI had to say so?
  • What gave you the impression that any use of the word "terrorist" means it's being "tossed about casually"? It was footnoted to a New York Times story calling it a "terrorist group". That's my evidence. Where's yours?
  • Find some facts or policy. Otherwise you look like you're POV pushing. Noroton (talk) 07:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
There's actually a policy or guideline page on this somewhere...someone will look this up eventually...where we are advised to avoid using either "terrorist" or "freedom fighter" and simply say what they did. I won't opine on who is entitled to make the designation official. FBI list itself is of limited scope and is US-centric. But anyway, better to simply say what happened. And anyway, the article that does that best is the Weathermen article. Wikidemo (talk) 05:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Check Al Qaeda, first paragraph. I'm keeping a set of "terrorist" citations in my "Favorites" list on my computer. There are quite a few WP:RS calling Ayers a terrorist. Going way back in time. Setting off bombs is kind of a classic element of it. Noroton (talk) 06:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Al Qaeda tried to kill innocent civilians. Bill Ayers did not. Can you spot the difference? I expect I can find plenty of mainstream, major news media in other countries which label various American politicians as terrorists - are you suggesting that's sufficient to update their Wikipedia articles? That's the point behind 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'. (Of course the FBI is US-centric. Bill Ayers only acted within the US, so I doubt anyone's interested in what, if anything, Iceland might have thought of him. It's encyclopedic to add to an article: 'x group was added to the FBI's y List of Terrorism Groups in March of 1998'. That's a verifiable fact. A reporter's opinion, shared or not, is not a verifiable fact.) I asked you to read the other Talk pages about Bill Ayers, and apparently you couldn't be bothered. Fine - consider this link nothing but an audit trail then, but the topic was discussed at length and I see no reason to repeat it just because you can't or won't read it for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bill_Ayers#Terrorist Flatterworld (talk) 08:49, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the link to that discussion. I didn't realize a lot of this content was discussed over at the Ayers article talk page. Phil Sandifer showed he has a good handle on NPOV policy and how it works. What was completely inadequate about that discussion is that editors didn't indicate they knew what a range of sources said about Ayers. I've been reading up on him over the past several days, and there is good reason to call him a terrorist and an even better reason to explain it, just as there's good reason to call him unrepentant and good reason to explain that, taking into account his own statements and the statements of others. Killing innocent civilians is close to a good definition of terrorism, but you can terrorize without killing -- setting off bombs in public buildings, even if they go off when no one is around, is easily understood to be terrorism. There is not a great deal of dissent from the view that Ayers was a terrorist -- it's a common way of describing what he was and those descriptions from reliable sources vastly outnumber the few sources that dispute the term. There ought to be a section of the Ayers article that presents the dominant view and the objections to it. The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion involved an accident with a bomb with nails in it that the terrorists were going to set off at a dance for noncommissioned officers at Fort Dix army base. That's what former Weatherman leader Mark Rudd wrote, and that's terrorism. I think this should be put within the language of the Ayers article before we do it here, so I'll work on it over there later. Where there's a widespread, dominant opinion in the sources, we're not required to refrain from saying something just because someone somewhere objects to it. Noroton (talk) 16:08, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You are STILL missing the two cogent points. Ayers had nothing to do with Greenwich Village. The rest of the WU members renounced killing people after the bomb blew up. The GV information belongs in the Weatherman (organization) article, but it's obviously misleading to use it in an article about Ayers to imply he EVER wanted to kill people. A Catholic can be in the parish of a convicted priest, but that doesn't make the parishioner responsible for the priest's actions. The problem with using the word 'terrorist', obviously, is that the current connotation is ONLY with people trying to kill non-combatants. You can make the denotation argument as loud and as long as you like, but the connotation remains. That's why the main Bill Ayers article is there to address his WU 'career', and the main Weatherman article is there to address the organization. We have hyperlinks. There is no reason to repeat bits and pieces in this article simply to lead our readers down the garden path. If you read Clinton's comments at the debate, it's obvious that's EXACTLY the image she was trying to project. So are you. As far as 'outnumbering sources' - well they would, wouldn't they? They're all based on what was said in that NYT 'interview'. It appears you're not checking any original sources, but simply what the media is repeating. Reminds me of Curveball - everything goes back to one source which wasn't accurate in the first point because of a private agenda. Flatterworld (talk) 16:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
If you like Ben Smith so much, he calls Ayers "a former violent radical', NOT a terrorist. From the source you added to the article: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=3FC289D8-3048-5C12-009AD5180C22FF0B As I said - you're cherry-picking things from articles just to reinforce the points you already decided to make. Just like the NYT. Judith Miller is NOT the role model to be followed. And of course, Ben Smith couldn't refrain from quoting the NYT itnerview: "“I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,” Ayers told the New York Times in 2001." Ayers wrote a letter to the editor immediately after that appeared, as he said the journalist conflated two separate sentences, thus mischaracterizing what he said and believed. But nobody wants to hear that, do they? Not when they can choose ooh! ooh! trash instead. Fine. People are idiots. They believe the National Enquirer, so what's new? But I'm not interested in encouraging them, certainly not through the use of an encyclopedia that requires a trust factor. If something is not true, we do no one any favors by adding to the repetition. Flatterworld (talk) 16:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Gotta go and haven't read your whole comment yet, but you miss something when you say A Catholic can be in the parish of a convicted priest, but that doesn't make the parishioner responsible for the priest's actions. (1) Ayers was on the five-member governing board of the entire Weatherman organization ("Weatherbureau"), and he says in his 2001 memoir (again and again, according to the NYT review) that he can't say everything he knows because he wants to protect people). The analogy is to the Bishop, not the guy in the pew; (2) Ayers girlfriend was one of the Weather people in that house. It's not a simple matter, but there's no exoneration here. And nothing Ayers says, when you look at it, is simple and clear. So don't strain so much to exonerate him when he's being weasily. The evidence for him being weasily is in his own writings and in what plenty of reliable sources say about him. If you've really done the reading, including the bottom of that Sept. 11 piece in the Times, you know you've got to be careful with his statements. And again you're completely failing to follow WP:AGF when I'm trying to add information in a non-POV way. Don't you realize that making charge after charge of POV pushing while doing nothing but try to make him look good doesn't actually help your own credibility? And it's just plain uncivil. Go hit a punching bag. Treat people with respect. I spent some time writing on your talk page trying to suggest ways of dealing with editing disagreements. Even MastCell tried to reason with you. If you won't try to get along, step away from the keyboard. Noroton (talk) 21:21, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Clearly you've become so caught up in this you can't even recognize that you are the one who needs to step away from the keyboard. All you've been doing is coming up with various excuses as to why the sources I provide shouldn't be used, and your media echo chamber of the original NYT interview is the gospel truth. I'm not arguing for exoneration, I'm arguing to present all sides. You're arguing for a guilty verdict based on what you've read in the NYT and 'Musings & Migraines'. And then you blame me. Wrong answer. Flatterworld (talk) 04:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

POV edit to lead paragraph

Wikidemo changed the language in the lead paragraph to "a characterization by opponents of presidential candidate Barack Obama". I have these questions about that edit:

    1. Please provide proof that the name of this article is a "characterization by opponents".
    2. And is it the name of the article you're saying is a characterization or something else? Please clarify. We don't normally say "is a characterization by opponents of" in the lead of an article since the actual topics that articles cover is generally a neutral subject. If you don't have proof, I'm going to have to conclude that edit is POV. Noroton (talk) 06:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
  • No. 1 - citations already in article. None of the underlying facts were ever hidden. There was a Bloomberg article which as far as I can tell was the first mention in the current election cycle. It got picked up by a lot of blogs and partisan news sources, overwhelmingly conservative ones, as a way of attacking Obama, and then some Clinton supporters seized on it as a matter that would supposedly invite conservative opposition. Covering the underlying events as an association, connection, etc., would be hard. There is no affiliation between the two, and if there were that is not the subject of the article. This article is about the political controversy, not an attempt to show that the two men are connected.
  • No. 2 - the name of the article has been questioned, and there have been proposals to rename. The scope of this article is supposed to be (at least when created) the controversy arising in the 2008 presidential election about the purported / alleged connection between the two men. I don't think anyone has ever shown that the two men are in fact related, associated, friends, etc., only that they have had certain contacts. The rest is partisan politics. Wikidemo (talk) 06:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You're not being clear -- It's late where I am and perhaps where you are, so maybe that explains it. It is unclear from the sentence just what is "a characterization by opponents". Is it a "characterization by opponents" to call it a "controversy"? Is that what you mean? Or is it a "characterization by opponents" to call it "Bill Ayers election controversy". I just don't get it. It seems to me that the standard way to treat this is the way the news accounts treat it and to call it what the news accounts call it. If there's no standard way of treating it, we don't just say "characterization by opponents", we describe the differences, taking into account what opponents, proponents and neutral parties are saying. But first you've got to be clear.
Also, you're treating "connection" and "association/associate" as if they were controversial words. That's not controversial at all. It isn't debated and there's barely a difference of description about that no matter where you go. There is widespread acceptance at this point (that is, barring any new information), that they met and knew each other. The point that's controversial is whether or not Obama should have separated himself from Ayers even on the level that everyone accepts was the case. Click on any of the links in the references and you'll find what I'm saying is the case. If you've got evidence otherwise, give me a link. I'm getting the impression you're not familiar with the sources. Please read them if you haven't. Noroton (talk) 06:46, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Here's an example:
[...] their connection to the Democratic presidential candidate -- they hosted a gathering for him in 1995 when he first ran for the state Senate and later contributed $200 to his reelection campaign -- has been [...]" -- Washington Post article, fourth paragraph
"Connection" and "association" are not a big deal. Either word refers to the accepted fact that they were on a foundation board together, but it could also mean a lot of other things, including that Ayers helped out Obama with that meeting at Ayers' house -- which you strangely removed from the article. See Merriam-Webster. No POV is implied. Noroton (talk) 06:59, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Coatrack? How?

Wikidemo removed the following from the article after I had just added it. I added it back unwittingly when I just copied and pasted a whole paragraph due to an edit conflict. Here's the passage:

"When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn," Chicago blogger Maria Warren wrote in a 2005 blog post. "They were launching him — introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread." Warren later wrote that she was concerned Republicans would use her comment for "left-baiting" to hurt Obama."

Wikidemo's edit summary mystified me: (rm irrelevant coatrack material) I have no idea how WP:COATRACK is supposed to apply to a description of what the meeting was like and what it was about. The passage is the clearest information I've come across in all the articles I've read about this as to what that meeting was all about. It gives details others don't have, especially Ayers enthusiasm for Obama at that point, something I hadn't seen elsewhere. I found it in Ben Smith's Politico piece. We should have an adequate description of that meeting, with details, since it is one of the fundamental elements of the connection between the two men. Noroton (talk) 06:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

An unreliable source is denigrating two people (BLP) as legends in their own minds. The quote (though a nice, evocative opinion piece) is utterly unnecessary and unrelated to the subject of the article, namely that there is a controvery over Obama's alleged association with Ayers. We can certainly summarize, no? I'm not sure we should cite a blogger for anything, but if it passes RS and WEIGHT we can say that a blogger recounts Ayers and his wife Dohrn, as introducing Obama to local society. Whether you call it coatrack (using a reliable source's mention of something to heap on criticism of Obama and Ayers) or something else, the stuff about being legends in their own mind and the greatest thing since sliced bread is just cattiness and has no place in a Wikipedia article. Wikidemo (talk) 07:29, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I see what you mean with the "legends in their own minds" phrase, and I've got no problem with removing it. I think you're right about the cattiness, and I should have thought about that. But she's the source Bill Smith uses in his article at Politico.com and Ben Smith & Politico.com are a reliable source (both separately and together). Your concern for WP:WEIGHT is perplexing: The meeting itself is one of the most prominent parts of the facts that underly the controversy. You can't have a controversy article that's any good without giving as full a description of the underlying facts as is possible in the space we have. The woman quoted is one of the few people who gave out any information about the meeting. It is only natural that her description be included in the article. You talk about summarizing in an article that is two steps removed from a stub. You summarize because the article shouldn't get too long -- it's not a concern until then. Aren't we trying to provide the best, most complete account possible of the controversy?
Does removing the "legends in their own minds" phrase settle all the WP:COATRACK concerns? Noroton (talk) 15:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
No. Ben Smith writes a blog which is the equivalent of a political gossip column. That's fine, he doesn't represent it as anything else, but it's not a reliable, encyclopedic source. Flatterworld (talk) 16:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Since you couldn't be bothered yourself, here's the original source material as opposed to Ben Smith's portrayal of it, from the 'Maria Warren blog, aptly titles "Musings & Micgraines" http://warrenpeacemuse.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_archive.html I trust you can tell, by the casual language she uses throughout her blog, that just perhaps she isn't an authoritative resource we should rely on, 'eye-witness' or not. btw - journalists use something called 'corroboration'. Ben Smith was only interested in corroborating that those people were there (which he did, and no one disagrees), NOT who said what, who called the meeting, who knew whom when, or any of the rest. Flatterworld (talk) 17:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
No. Ben Smith writes a blog which is the equivalent of a political gossip column'. Review WP:RS. Ben Smith, 30, a reporter for The Daily News in New York, who will be writing a blog for The Politico about the 2008 presidential campaign. [4] Why not learn a bit more about policy and the facts of the situation before -- or instead of -- going on the attack? Go see what Norm Sheiber of The New Republic had to say about Smith (link is in the footnotes). Why do I have to do your research for you? Noroton (talk) 18:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I read Ben Smith's blog every day. I enjoy it. It's entertaining. But he's not the authoritative expert on everything, especially not in Chicago (which is why he relied on the stringer listed at the end of the article), and he does have his biases. Journalism is the first draft of history, which means you can't expect it to be 100% correct. Just because he got a few things confused doesn't mean he did that on purpose, but it also doesn't mean we have to believe everything he ever wrote is the gospel truth. He wouldn't claim that, so why should you? (Do I care what Norm Sheiber says? No. He's not on my personal whitelist of trusted sources.) If all you're going to do is quote journalists quoting other journalists, then no wonder you're going off on the wrong track. (And of course I noticed you had nothing to say about the...shall we say 'quality level'...of the Maria Warren blog.) Flatterworld (talk) 20:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

(redent)Forgive me for not following your link to the blog, but I haven't been following everything you say since you attacked me. You made a point about WP:RS and my response was to that, not to whether someone is totally accurate. What I have been doing is looking at various articles on newsbank.com to see how this story was reported and commented on. I see The Observer of London noted Smith's story was apparently one of the first, if not the first, significant, in-depth articles on the topic. Noroton (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

So to summarize...you're researching nothing but the media coverage, while I'm researching on the actual facts. Obviously we're not likely to come to the same conclusions. And blaming my 'attitude' for your own ignorance of the facts isn't going to change that. But do feel free to continue your rant that everything is my fault, if it makes you feel better. Flatterworld (talk) 04:49, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The Politico is, also, a newspaper----whose print version (see ...here...) I believe is distributed particularly in the D.C. area. — Justmeherenow (   ) 18:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I provided the links to the original source material (Warren's blog) in hopes those who relied on quoting Ben Smith's quotes would correct the article to reflect the original source material (including Warren's reaction to Smith's 'report'). That wasn't done, so I'm now made the changes myself. Legends in their own minds reflects her flippant blogging style and her attitude to the meeting. She was NOT writing (or attempting to write) the definitive report on that meeting, just making a joke about it - which that phrase makes clear. Her blog is for her friends, and they all live in the area and know the people involved. Again, we are an encyclopedia which means researching the facts and relying on original sources as much as possible - NOT recycling whatever journalists happen to write at a particular point in time. If you're going to insist on doing that, then the original source material they relied on, when available, should be added to show how ridiculous that journalist's assumptions were in writing that. Flatterworld (talk) 03:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
btw - if you read her blog entries, she wasn't concerned about Republicans engaging in left-baiting. Flatterworld (talk) 03:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps we should remove all that material as unreliably sourced, and on BLP grounds. A flippant blogger describing someone as a legend in his own mind isn't very dignified here. Wikidemo (talk) 03:33, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
We're striving for accuracy, not dignity. The problem is that Ben Smith treated it seriously, which caused some of his readers (including other journalsits) to take it seriously. If we remove the entire Maria Warren and Ben Smith section, that would be satisfactory to me IF both names are included in the Edit Summary so we can find it again easily when this discussion resurfaces a month or two from now. Flatterworld (talk) 02:22, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

If you're concerned with accuracy, don't look at Ben Smith. November, 1995 was the special Democratic primary election for the Mel Reynold's congressional seat that Alice Palmer was running for. The state senate election was a regularly scheduled election for 1996. He misstates this, and it's been months and the man hasn't corrected the error. I guess it's only journalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.20.38.29 (talk) 02:27, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Unrelated complaint about description of meeting at Ayers house

Let's be frank. The Palmers have been concerned about power and the importance of their issues and concerns. They were the generation that came from the civil rights movement. Barack Obama was a new generation, and they most likely wished to have control over the Reynold's seat and the State Senate seat. Obama probably would be groomed for a congressional seat or to assume Alice's seat if she won. The meeting at Ayers was to introduce Obama to the political tastemakers in the area, the donors and the close circle around the Palmers. Barack was Alice and Buzz' candidate and Alice would have wished to have her supporters on board while she pursued the Reynold's congressional seat in the fall of 1995. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.20.38.29 (talk) 02:03, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The way you've (Noroton) rewritten the article, it appears you think there were two separate meetings at the Ayers house. There was one. Again, you'd have to read the Bill Ayers Talk page, but what's clear is that various sources imply various things. The meeting was at the Ayers house, but it was Alice Palmer's meeting. As you've stated, one source claims that's where Ayers first met Obama. Others have implied they were already some sort of BFF and Ayers was 'launching' Obama's political career (quite unlikely, for various reasons). Now you've got a blogger claiming she remembers exactly what was said 10 years before she wrote it down. I think we're going off the rails here.... Flatterworld (talk) 08:59, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I've put this tangential criticism in its own section because it appears to have nothing to do with the previous one. Your concerns:
  • The way you've (Noroton) rewritten the article, it appears you think there were two separate meetings at the Ayers house. There was one. Again, you'd have to read the Bill Ayers Talk page, but what's clear is that various sources imply various things. The meeting was at the Ayers house, but it was Alice Palmer's meeting. As you've stated, one source claims that's where Ayers first met Obama. Others have implied they were already some sort of BFF and Ayers was 'launching' Obama's political career (quite unlikely, for various reasons). I haven't yet seen a source that says Ayers met Obama before the meeting at his house. Could you provide me with the ones you know of? If they conflict with the witness who remembers Ayers trying to sell Obama, then so be it. It isn't a contradiction for Palmers to have a meeting at Ayers house and for Ayers to try to sell Obama at that same meeting. If there is a definite conflict and we can't sort out which is right or wrong, Wikipedia policy is to present the differences in what the sources say, not to present nothing or only one side. One way of doing this without violating WP:OR might be to say something like "According to XX source(s) this was the first time Obama met Ayers, yet according to YY source, Ayers was promoting Obama at the get-together..." I'm open to suggestions, but not if they keep the article in a near-stub state, the way I found it.
  • What is "BFF"?
  • Now you've got a blogger claiming she remembers exactly what was said 10 years before she wrote it down. What do you mean by remembers exactly what was said? The way I read it, she described the meeting in general terms. Don't you have memories older than 10 years? The fact is that Obama and Ayers have refused to talk about the meeting. Same with Palmer. So we go with the best sources we have, and she was an eyewitness. It's simple and straightforward.
  • I think we're going off the rails here.... Not a constructive comment. Noroton (talk) 15:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
BFF - Best Friends Forever
You're the one who added this: "Obama was introduced to Ayers and Ayer's wife, Bernardine Dohrn in 1995 at a "meet-and-greet" political meeting the couple held for Obama at their home in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where all three lived.[7]" The exact words of the source (your NYT article you like so much because it includes 'unrepentant terrorist' which they cribbed from the earlier NYT interview in a rather incestuous fashion): "Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said." Beyond that, your wording makes it appear all three lived in the house - which is EXACTLY how rumors get started.) This really isn't difficult. Alice Palmer had decided to run for higher office. She wanted her supporters to meet Obama. The Ayers agreed to hold this meeting at their house, as they were supporters of Alice Palmer. They, along with the rest, met Obama. The only thing in conflict involves your misinterpretation and extrapolation of the facts.
No, I do not trust my memories (enough to commit them to print) from any wine-and-cheese party I attended 10 years ago. Remember Obama waas being introduced? Sure. Remember exactly who said what? No. I also don't know any responsible journalist (as opposed to a casual blogger) who would state something categorically from 10 years ago if he/she didn't have his/her contemporaneous notes from the time. That's why they take notes. Why on earth would you trust this blogger any more than a stranger on the street telling you something salacious? And then add it to an encyclopedia entry? No way.
"Near-stub state"? No, it was concise. It covered all the points raised in the media - there just isn't that much there. Unfortunately, Wikidemo removed the rebuttals to Clinton's remarks which were footnoted in the main Bill Ayers article (last time I looked, anyway). You also ignored them, so imo they haven't made any progress here.
Your POV is obvious. Research is about finding all the information about a person or subject, putting it together, analyzing it, and then writing the results, whatever they may be. It is NOT deciding what you want to say, and then finding supporting sources. Cart, horse, before. Flatterworld (talk) 16:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You've got a real attitude problem about knocking other editors who don't agree with you 100 percent, don't you? You like attacking people? You're being disruptive. I don't care how old you are, act like an adult. I'm not even going to read the substance of your reply now because I'm sick of your childishness. If you can't abide by WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA don't interact with other editors. I'm trying to do a serious job here, it is demonstrable that I haven't pushed only one side of this, and I've listened to you and Wikidemo and been flexible. I've made a number of improvements. What good have you done? I'll address the substance of what you say, if there is any, later.Noroton (talk) 18:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't remember exactly what I've removed on each occasion and I've slowed down on removing stuff. I've tried to trim things back a few times, for a couple reasons. First, I was hoping to succinctly describe the controversy, the positions of various parties, how it arose, and a few underlying facts. By repeating too many snipes and zingers on both sides, it seemed like the article was turning into a proxy for the controversy itself. Second, the people kept expanding the transcript of the debate to the point where we were repeating quite a large chunk of primary material here. A link to the debate would be more appropriate. Wikidemo (talk) 17:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Hey, it's an article about a controveersy, and a controversy will involve some back and forth. From the sources I've already seen, I can add a bit on how it arose. They say two British newspapers picked up on it first in early February, the Ben Smith article in Politico.com was the first or almost the first to treat the issue in depth, and before February it had been mentioned but, apparently, not treated in depth by the media. As I put in the article, Fox news has been running with the story for some time. Ayers has been controversial, even with regard to associations, in ways unconnected to Obama but especially after 9/11. I haven't read a lot of the commentary yet (sticking to news accounts mostly, so far), but I've added a bit in the reaction section. I expect to add more and balance that out. That's got to be a large part of an article about a controversy.Noroton (talk) 18:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Sure, I don't disagree. But on the other point, two paragraphs or so of Obama and Clinton "debating" each other (I use quotes because throwing faint coded jabs at each other is hardly like anything I ever thought of as a debate) was a bit much. If a reader really wants to see or read that they can follow the link. Wikidemo (talk) 19:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
And if they follow the link, and we have offered nothing to rebut her statements, they may well assume that Clinton was being honest and accurate when she implied that Bill Ayers's comments were made after, or in response to, the September 11, 2001 attacks; that people other than the Weatherman's own members (see Greenwich Village townhouse explosion) died from their bombs, or there was any intention by Ayers to ever kill people; and that Ayers was referring specifically to setting more bombs (again with the implication 'to kill innocent people') rather than his wish they had done more in some way to stop the Vietnam War. That's the problem: to refute invalid statements, we have to repeat them. If we ignore the statements, and especially if we casually use the word 'terrorist', we're sending an inaccurate message (and I would say the same if I were working on Robert McNamara's article with his 'confessions of lying' book). We don't want 'technically true' statements, we want to convey the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Flatterworld (talk) 20:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

(redent)Nails were within the bomb that blew up in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed Ayers' then-girlfriend. Mark Rudd and others have said the bomb was planned to be used at a dance at Fort Dix that night. That's classic terrorism. More important than that we call it terrorism, we can report that many, many others call it terrorism, describe the other opinions about that and his response to that, and simply describe what he did as a leader of the Weatherman. A lot of that needs to be done in the Bill Ayers article, which has extremely little information on the thing about him that is most controversial and prominent -- his activities in Weatherman. Noroton (talk) 20:55, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Except Bill Ayers was in Michigan at the time. That's why, in his memoir, he thought perhaps Diana Oughton was trying to stop the bomb-makers. Clearly making a bomb to kill people wasn't his idea. Now go research some original sources and stop relying on 'journalists' with an agenda. Flatterworld (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Also, on the debate coverage. There is a huge block of text on that, from what I saw. While we have quotes in the article and we need them, I think the link is the best way to present the whole thing. There needs to be some kind of balance with being able to tell people how the matter came up and what was said and the problem of having too big a chunk of text in the article, leading to editors adding a little bit more here and there (maybe now that Clinton is leaving the race that won't be a problem). There certainly is no need to go into every single detail that gets us farther and farther from the subject.Noroton (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You're mischaracterizing what I said. Flatterworld (talk) 04:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

IP editor adding inaccurate material

An IP editor has twice[5][6] made the same change over my reversion, and despite a discussion on my talk page.[7] The problems with the addition, among others, is that it incorrectly says that the controversy "followed Hillary Clinton's discussion" (whatever that means), it fails to actually assert in the lead what the controversy is (it just says incorrectly when it arose), and it adds a spurious editorial comment praising Ayers and Dohrn's post-Weathermen accomplishments as "overshadow"-ing their controversial past. In fact, As these sources from February 15[8] and February 23,[9] 2008, show, it was a controversy long before George Stephanopoulos brought it up at the debate, which was Clinton's first direct comment. The controversy hasn't been traced to Clinton's campaign. We've wrestled back and forth about what to call the controversy - it's really a political football of some sort, a partisan political issue. But how do you describe that in neutral terms? Best to say that it's a public debate or something like that. Wikidemo (talk) 07:27, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Despite discusson on your talk page? I left a message on your talk page, which you ignored upon another revert. The current lede contradicts the article itself and pushes several POVs. The article states categorically that this controversey had not recieved media attention until February 2008, when Hillary Clinton started discussing it. As you say on your talk page, the relationship between Obama and Ayers was well-known before that and was not controversial. It only became controversial - there only came into existence an "election controversey" - when Clinton started trying to exploit the issue. Have a look at the two articles you linked to above. How does the first one start? "Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton questions whether Barack Obama would be able to withstand..." Doesn't that prove my point? Your evidence for the start of the controversy is an article that directly attributes it to Hillary Clinton's "questions". Every link mentioning the controversy in the References section comes after the Clinton campaign began briefing on Ayers in early February. Furthermore, the article discusses the controversey only in terms of the debates between Clinton and Obama - everything else is defined as part of the reaction to the controversy. It provides no evidence that this controversy exists beyond the Presidential campaign - no evidence, for instance, that it would be an issue in any other campaign - therefore it is mis-leading to elide mention of the campaign from the lede, as it implies this is some self-sustaining controversy independent of the briefing points the campaigns give to the media. The current lede also equates "controversy" with "discussion", which is wrong. And by neglecting to mention that Ayers is one of Obama's constituents the lede ignores the primary reason for their relationship, which pushes the POV that that the relationship is inherently improper - it also pushes this POV by using the words "nature" and "propriety", which are loaded and imply that there's are serious claims that the relationship is improper and secretive. Finally, it claims that McCain has "criticised" Obama for the relationship, which is not supported by the source referenced, which states merely that McCain has "questioned" the relationship. As to your second point, that is not a "spurious editorial comment" - it comes from the article referenced in that section, which is currently quoted out of context in another attempt to push POV.--92.11.212.158 (talk) 13:42, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
What definition of "ignored" does my response[10] fit? By posing this as a POV issue this editor makes it one. And reverting a third time[11] - edit warring from an IP account. The new revert rephrases things but still inaccurately blames Clinton personally for starting the controversy, and still contains the inappropriate commentary (that's seemingly untrue) that Dohrn's and Ayers' subsequent lifetime accomplishments overshadowed their radical past. "Overshadowed" is an opinion so it's hard to argue either way, but in the minds of the public that's hardly true. Repeating Ayers' "colleagues" purported opinion of his overall value to society is not relevant to this controversy. What is likely true and relevant is that Ayers was accepted into academia dn the backwaters of local Chicago politics despite his past - many people in Chicago local politics have unsavory pasts. Like any politician in Chicago Obama had to deal with all kinds. Here is the source I was thinking of, already in the article, that gets to the origin of the rumors as being British press and blogs.[12] Wikidemo (talk) 16:01, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I've just tried rewording it to be more matter of fact. There were a couple problems I'm trying to address. First, most articles begin with a simple identification, e.g. Horse is a type of animal. The article omitted that and just said when it started, like The Horse was first introduced to America by Spanish Conquistadors. (without identifying what it is). The previous attempt to say what it is went kind of like The B.A.E.C. is a discussion... which was really awkward for two reasons. First, it is a controversy, to put it politely. More of a political issue, or partisan talking point, etc. There's not a whole lot of controversy, just grumbling. But more importantly it's not a "discussion" or "dialogue" - it's a series of op ed pieces, blogs, Internet rumors, and an occasional news story or fact check talking about the op ed pieces, blogs and rumors. You can't really say the "x controversy is a controversy". So I decided to sidestep it and get right to the point. The second big problem is that there isn't clearly a "relationship", "connection", or anything else between Obama and Ayers. That's what the whole controversy is about. All of those words describing how two people are related have two meanings, one being the amount or lack thereof, but the other implying a certain minimum level. When you say two men have a "relationship" there's an implication of some reciprocal expectations, shared history, etc. Something beyond trivial. When you say two people have a connection you imply the same thing. But many argue - and the sources seem to show - that any interaction was merely incidental and didn't mean much. Even if you don't agree, and you think that the two of them were blood brothers, you have to admit that it's not universally believed and the controversy is over whether or not it's true, and if so what it means. So we can't cover the controversy properly by introducing it in a way that asserts that the disputed claim is true. I tried to convey that with the phrase "connection, if any". Any attempt to define Ayers and Obama in the lead beyond identifying them is likely going to snowball - best just give their primary title / notability and let the body of the article and the linked articles say more. Wikidemo (talk) 00:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Decoupling of sentence

I decoupled the following sentence:

Ayers, who had been one of the five-member central committee of the Weathermen in the late 1960s and early 1970s,[13] donated $200 to Obama's 2001 state senate campaign.[14]

The information remains in the article, but the two facts have been moved to more appropriate places. Left like this, the article suggested that there was a connection between Ayers' participation in the Weatherman committee and the donation to Obama's campaign. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:09, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Good edit. Noroton (talk) 17:41, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Thank you! Scjessey (talk) 17:43, 28 July 2008 (UTC) (falls off chair)


No new developments in months- currently providing undue weight- reopen the merge discussion...

pare it down so its small enough TO BE merged, and then merge it into the campaign article. Nothing is developing, and I have a hard time buying that the few meetings between two people who both have their own WP page- and mention each other on the respective pages- should somehow have ANOTHER page on these actual few, very well reported as innocuous meetings, is not ideal in my mind. The main argument for supporting such a large level of text for these meetings, seems to be more because of media reaction and not so much actual notability. Which was a fine argument a few months ago when there was media activity on the subject. Looking now though there is nothing, which reminds me of wp:recentism and I fear once again WP has over-notablized a current event. Clearly when taken against the background of world history, and of the 2008 presidential campaign, there will be mentions of this event within the context of the historical events it was a part of- the 2008 race and the bio's of the two people. But as many feel and recentism supports, there is no separate notability there and this article is not the answer. Any length concerns are even more trivial- the subject has no independent notability and needs to be trimmed to fit in the proper articlespace. Arguments "that it won't fit in BO 2008" are spurious... it should be made to acceptably fit, regardless of how long or short that ends up being, because otherwise its a serious undue weight situation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.0.180.2 (talk) 21:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Strongly disagree once again. We've been through all the arguments on both sides, tried numerous variations, and this is still the solution that is 'least worst' of not 'best'. I would prefer this not be brought up every few weeks, as it's looking like harassment. Flatterworld (talk) 15:35, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree with Flatterworld here. This is the lesser of about 37 different evils. It can't go into Barack Obama or Bill Ayers because of weight issues, and it is too elaborate and well-sourced to be fully subsumed by the (already long) primary campaign article. Perhaps after the election, when it is becomes clear how this was nothing more than a failed smear campaign, it will be merged with List of failed Republican smear campaigns. </sarcasm> -- Scjessey (talk) 15:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Too early to tell. If we go through the entire election cycle and nothing comes of it, we may want to trim and merge it as a matter of news, recentism, trivia, etc. However, it has lots of notable sources and has been in the news more or less for six months now in a variety of contexts. And, as mentioned, there is no better place to put this material for now. Wikidemo (talk) 00:39, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
After the initial reportings on the manufactured "controversy" I didn't hear anything yet for quite a while by the media. I was "reminded" of this when I first came to the Obama article, and since then it's the only place I read about this!!!!! Doesn't that say something about importants and weight? And yes, I pay attention to the news (the "real" news!). Guess I made my point very clear. --Floridianed (talk) 03:11, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
it just seems to be undue weight here, as is. If it needs to be shorter to fit in the main articles, so be it. It could be a lot shorter in my mind. We are talking summary style here. I could see all the informational content being conveyed in two paragraphs, or three at most. Right now we use numerous quotes and lists of responses, when most of these are totally politically predictable and fall into broad categories that are easily summarized. And all the lead-up (fundraisers and board meetings) basically needs to get summarized because its not very encyclopedic right now. And also these meetings are factually very simple and do not need sentence after sentence wedging in minutiae and more quotes.
so if all this is accomplished I think a merge might be feasible. I will try some edits and you guys can let me know. 72.0.180.2 (talk) 21:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Reverting changes

An IP editor, User:72.0.180.2 (the un-logged in version of good faith editor User talk:Fancy-cats-are-happy-cats - no accusations intended), made a series of major edits[13] that seem well-intentioned but I think introduce a number of problems. For example, by repeating Chicagoan Maria Warren's claim that Ayers "launched" Obama's campaign, without context, it spreads an inaccuracy - she clearly did not launch the campaign, she denied the statement, and she was not claiming anything about Obama's campaign. Similarly, by removing all the context about Ayers and Dohrn being "fixtures" in the neighborhood that everyone knew, and instead focusing on a litany of contacts between Ayers and Obama, it makes it sound more conspiratorial than it should be. The mention of google hits is impertinent (and also out of context - saying it has more currency "out of mainstream" without pointing out the coverage is in conservative blogs and sites is misleading). I was going through these one by one but it's a hard task and I would end up reverting much to most of it anyway. I'm suggesting that if the editor or anyone else wants to make some changes we should go in smaller pieces, and consider a manageable piece at a time. Thanks, Wikidemo (talk) 22:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

just working on improving the summary writing style of the article fyi. I am fine with your opinion on the "launch" comment, I was just trying to remove all the slang used in that section. And I never said "she" launched the campaign, I said she described it as such (which she did). I though using her words was bette than the long list of semi-denials we were using at that point.
believe it or not my intention was to make it sound less "conspiratorial" by focusing on the facts. All the "Ayers as a community leader" stuff is fine, but its kind of a sidenote to this subject and it really belong on the Ayers page at that level of detail. Also it sounds a bit treacly and soft for a political page. Again we can summarize if neccessary but we shouldn't use it all.
as for Google hits, yes I know thats semi-encyclopedic, but I was trying to find some way of quantifying the vast differential we all know exists between RS reporting on the subject, and what people are actually saying and thinking (yes I agree it is mostly right wing stuff, but how do we say that and stay npov??)
anyways I hope this helps-- what other sections did you have concerns with?
PS- please also note my long post on this subject in the other section. Don't totally understand why you didn't reply there before RVing me.  :( 72.0.180.2 (talk) 22:50, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Which other section? I wouldn't favor a merge at this time if that's what you mean, but think we'll be in a better position later (probably after the election) to assess whether this controversy was meaningful or not. I agree with your approach. As it is the article is a big pile of semi-raw information. I don't mind trimming and organizing this article better but can we deal with it in chunks? There are too many issues for me to call out each one - that would become unworkable. But if we do a paragraph or two at a time we can probably figure this out over the course of a day or two as long as nobody starts objecting. Wikidemo (talk) 23:04, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

advocate re-titling of article

so we are supposed to merge "controversy" sections in with main text, and not use words like "controversy" or "criticism" unless necessary... so I think the article needs a new title that is more NPOV, like "Relationship between Barack Obama and William Ayers" or possibly "Obama-Ayers connections" but I don't think we should keep using the current title. 72.0.180.2 (talk) 22:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

There is no relationship between Obama and Ayers. A title, or premise, that assumes as much has a fatal POV problem. The subject of this article is a political controversy over allegations of a relationship, a fact that is neutral, notable, and easy to source. Wikidemo (talk) 22:47, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
well then how bout connections, like I also suggested???? please admit that this is about more than "allegations" because face-to-face interaction took place however brief... there are many summary words we could successfully use (ties, connections, meetings, interactions)- but my point is we should NOT be using the current title... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.0.180.2 (talk) 22:53, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
"this is about more than "allegations"". In criminal justice someone would be already under "criminal investigation" under these terms. So please refine your words. Thanks, --Floridianed (talk) 03:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Alleged connection is an okay term to describe what the controversy is about, but that there is an actual connection, relationship, whatever is still POV, unproven, and not notable either. If you look to the talk history of this page and some others, you'll see my comment that all these words exist in two senses - first, a tie between two people without regard to its strength (or lack thereof), and second, that there is a tie of sufficient magnitude to be worth nothing, which is the underlying dispute. Saying that the tie is worth writing an article about (i.e. notable) is tantamount to choosing one side of the controversy, the more conspiratorial fringe theory side at that. This was one of the problems with housing the information in any article. The actual meetings are insignificant and not relevant to Ayers' life or Obama's. Nobody ever mentioned them except in the context of a campaign issue. So if there's any notability at all it is as a campaign-related controversy. Thus, the only place it reasonably fits is in an article about the campaign. It's already there, in a brief summary and link, in Obama's Presidential primary article. Wikidemo (talk) 23:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm in favor for a merge and by that I mean to merge the slight connection between Ayers and Obama to the Ayers article and be sure, the name of Ayers shows up somehow (with WP-link) into by now to be newly (repeated) proposed articles. I guess that would be the right approach and avoids any "WP:COATRACK" suspicion. --Floridianed (talk) 03:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't put it in the Ayers article - it's a weight/NPOV problem just to be there. We're not listing in the Ayers article every notable person Ayers ever met. Including it is only fuel to the silly controversy because it acknowledges the contacts as notable. There was some edit warring in the Ayers article over how to handle this, which is what lead to this article's creation in the first place. Also, note that the Republican Party is now making a deal out of it - see my recent addition to the article. The controversy is gaining in notability as McCain is "going negative", and it's just too early to figure out where that's going to end up. Wikidemo (talk) 04:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok. That needs more attention that I can put in here with a "side note". Since I don't have the time right now let me tell you my "quick thought" on this. We could put the "controversy" in both, McCain's and Obama's campaign article (in the appropriate section; "media campaign" or so, depending who speaks out first about it). The question of the extend of the issue is of course still open and it might be necessary to "split" it in-between the Ayers and campaign articles. I'm talking about the controversy brought out by the media (scrutiny) so it should focus on that and not Ayers past itself especially not in extend. Does that sound reasonable to you and in general? --Floridianed (talk) 06:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
The title seems just fine as it is, IMO, since it has been a controversy. As with any controversy, we need adequate space for the underlying facts and then a description of what was said about the situation. This controversy is far from over, and controversial information about Ayers is surfacing and may well continue to surface as we get closer to the election. In upcoming days I expect to be adding some information about Ayers and Dohrn, although we need to treat it with some care. You might call it "explosive" ... -- Noroton (talk) 20:18, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
You see this is precisely what the problem is. "New information" about Ayers and Dohrn belongs in their BLPs, because none if it relates to this particular "controversy". Bear in mind that this "controversy" is an historical event because it hasn't received any significant coverage since the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. Consider this article watchlisted. -- Scjessey (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice, but don't worry. Noroton (talk) 00:14, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
more advice- controversy is a word we should not be using, long-term at least. especially as a title word. 72.0.180.2 (talk) 07:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Relationship again

An editor has twice now changed the lede[14][15] to assert that there is a "relationship" between Ayers and Obama, after adding a now-deleted paragraph that also asserted a "relationship."[16] As has been argued on this page (above), the word "relationship" and similar words imply that the two men are in fact connected beyond an incidental way, and that this article (and the controversy) is about detailing the connection and what it means. In fact, the reliable sources do not establish that there is in fact a relationship (a few use words like that casually, most that address the point conclude quite plainly that there is nothing to it). The subject of this article, then, is the attempts (controversy, one might call it) by some to allege that there is a relationship - not the details of a relationship that has been established. I do not wish to revert past 1RR given article probation (nor should the other editor), but I do believe the lead should be reworded to be neutral as to whether a "relationship" (or any other word that tends to imply anything beyond an incidental degree of contact) is present or not. Wikidemo (talk) 20:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Republican party use as campaign isuse

Given that the entire subject of this article is how the allegations of a friendly relationship between Ayers and Obama is a campaign controversy, I'm surprised by this deletion of sourced content,[17] which seems to be the most significant part of the controversy to date. For the GOP, on an official attack site, to play up the controversy, seems quite a notable development (they also issued a press release).[18] It's sourced to a very reliable source (a significant mention in the San Francisco Chronicle) but it could also be sourced to Wired Magazine,[19] ABC News,[20] Boston Globe,[21], CNN,[22] New York Times,[23], local affiliates of Fox News,[24] ABC,[25] and various lesser sites.[26][27] No doubt I missed some. They're even covering it in France.[28] Plus, some very interesting aftermath.[29] I would say that the sources establish weight/notability, and it's directly on the point of this article. If the GOP has decided to make Ayers part of their official strategy, I only see that becoming more of an issue over time. So why delete it? I'm actually surprised nobody has improved or expanded that point. I won't edit war but I would hope people can weight in. Wikidemo (talk) 22:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I support inclusion of that paragraph. Let's restore it. Noroton (talk) 00:07, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Firstly, I think there's an aesthetic problem of a section which contains just one or two sentences. But I also think there's a structural problem. The article has a section with the portentous title 'Rise of the controversy', suggesting that the things described in that section (the February media coverage and the April debate question) were just the prelude when they were actually the flourishing of this controversy. Then we have a section on the reaction. Then there's this final section, which seems to treat its subject as the legacy of the campaign, as if this is coming back to haunt us. The feeling I get from the article is that the actual controversy exists somewhere between this rise, reaction and legacy - but we aren't told where. I'm going to try moving bits around in the hopes of improving this.--The Bruce (talk) 02:35, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

becoming a bigger issue

Michael Barone raised the issue in his US News column this week, as did a New York Times opinion piece, and RealClearPolitics linked to an opinion on this as well. According to Barone, "They were closer than Obama implied when George Stephanopoulos asked him about Ayers in the April 16 debate". Although US News' editorials and RealClearPolitics aren't necessarily MSM gatekeepers, they are gatekeepers of a sort, in that they've pushed talk about Chicago Annenberg Challenge up one level from the blogs. See also this Chicago Tribune column. An LA Times blogger is on this as well, and LA Times bloggers are subject to some editorial control (an editor banned any blogging on latimes.com about Edwards' alleged infidelity, as you might recall).Bdell555 (talk) 16:27, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

The opinion of a conservative pundit isn't really a good guide for the size of this issue. Furthermore, sources are reporting the smear campaign rather than the association. This is essential news about news. -- Scjessey (talk) 16:43, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
And the "Reaction to the controversy" section of this article is NOT "news about news"?Bdell555 (talk) 23:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
The opinion of a conservative pundit isn't really a good guide for the size of this issue but it's a perfectly good source about the opinion that that prominent conservative pundit actually gave, which is acceptable under WP:ASF section of WP:NPOV, which, Scjessey, you might want to familiarize yourself with. -- Noroton (talk) 03:01, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

New addition

This edit[30] is a coatrack. It repeats a partisan anti-Obama book (a non-reliable source) to rehash various Republican anti-Obama talking points, namely:

  • "conservative commentators said the situation raised questions..." - we know that. They did not say - they repeated a campaign talking point.
  • "his association with Ayers...." - there was no association with Ayers. It is POV, and assumes one side of the controversy, to premise a sentence on that claim.
  • "The Obama Nation, which appeared at the top of the New York Times bestseller list" - trying to bolster a shoddy source to attack Obama is unacceptable. It is POV to call Corsi a "conservative commentator" - he is a partisan operative and fringe theorist, as the sources in the article on that book indicate.
  • "David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama, which was No. 5 on the list." - again, attempt to bolster the credibility of an unreliable source by irrelevant mention of sales statistics is not helpful.
  • "According to Freddoso , Obama's associating with Ayers raised these "worthwhile questions": [list of accusations]"...Freddoso is not a reliable source; his partisan comments cannot be mentioned in this way. Even if the book were reliable, which it is not, this is a clear statement of opinion and clear advocacy against Obama, with no indication that the opinion is notable.
  • "Freddoso continued, " [BLP-vio continues]

I'm going to remove the BLP vio, and I suggest we prune everything except perhaps a simple, neutral mention that the issue was raised in two anti-Obama campaign books. A link to those books would be okay. Wikidemo (talk) 02:28, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up - the Barone and Chapman material are even more unreliable and problematic. Barone is a BLP vio as well so I am removing it. Chapman is merely an unreliable partisan source, so in the interest of being as modest as possible with my reverts I'll leave it. But it should go too, at most be mentioned neutrally without quoting or trying to advocate it, if some other source can establish that this criticism is notable. Wikidemo (talk) 02:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikidemo, will you please read the WP:BLP section about sources and the section on WP:WELLKNOWN; and readWP:NPOV, especially the section WP:ASF. WP:NPOV very clearly allows a representation of a range of opinions, and the opinions you just censored from the article are very clearly significant ones in this controversy. The entire section is called "Reaction ..." and is meant to be a representation of opinions. You can't just have opinions favoring Obama. The opinions you just censored out were no more or less opinions than Schrieber's or Kinsley's or Daley's or Washington's. I notice you didn't censor those opinions out and they've stood in the article for quite some time. So why is your edit not a WP:NPOV violation? You will note that that policy does not require "neutral" opinions as it specifically states. Please read it. This is an article about a controversy. Controversies involve different opinions.
Also, you don't have BLP violations when you're talking about criticisms of WP:WELLKNOWN individuals and verifiable facts about them, and Obama, Ayers and Dohrn are all WP:WELLKNOWN, the last two are well known because they are former terrorists, as you well know I have shown again and again and again with citations from numerous reliable sources. We can certainly treat the opinions of reliable sources on that as material falling well within WP:BLP guidelines. -- Noroton (talk) 02:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Please desist from any patronizing insults - on another page you accuse me of other things and I wish we could stick to the point.Stricken after above comment refactored. Certainly you know that I am a seasoned editor who has read BLP many times and participated in the ongoing maintenance and discussion of that policy. I know full well what it says. The material I removed quoted unreliable sources, partisan operatives, to accuse a living person of a major felony, and a moral corruption that he denies. "Unrepentant terrorist" is not the way to describe a University of Illinois professor. Wikidemo (talk) 03:10, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I've refactored my comments at 02:58 because I certainly don't want to offend you. What I said about you on the other page concerned my problems with your argument, but I'm going to go back there now and look over my comment. I understand you have sincere concerns about these passages being unfair and BLP violations concerning Ayers (and perhaps Dohrn). I value your concerns because I recognize you as a sincere editor committed to accuracy and fairness. I don't think you know just how much research and care I've been taking before I made these and other edits in recent days about those two. I've done everything I can to find the best sources about them and about Weather Underground. Perhaps I first should have added more of that sourcing I found to the Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn articles. I think that would have answered your objections. I'll comment more on this on your talk page and add more sourcing. Your justification for removing the information is contrary to the very clear language of WP:ASF section of WP:NPOV and the equally clear language of WP:WELLKNOWN at WP:BLP. You're making assertions completely contrary to those policies and I need to point them out, but perhaps that's not going to be clear until I explain just how solid the sourcing is on Ayers' past. Noroton (talk) 03:46, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate the civility. Thanks. On the BLP question for The Case Against Obama I don't think there is question under BLP that we could allow a partisan author writing in a book premised on defeating Obama in the election to call Ayers an "unrepentant Communist terrorist" by way of trying to defeat Obama in the election. This violates BLP in a number of ways. BLP places the burden of evidence "firmly on the shoulders of the person who adds or restores material". Sources are supposed to be "high quality", and poorly sourced material is supposed to be removed "immediately and without waiting for discussion." As per the "Criticism and praise" section criticism must be relevant to the subject's notability, and written so as not to overwhelm the article or take sides. The material is to be responsible, conservative, in a neutral, encyclopedic tone, not to represent a minority view as a majority one, and avoiding "biased or malicious content." We are told specifically to avoid guilt by association. Calling Ayers an "unrepentant communist terrorist" fails on nearly all counts. It is not necessary to bash Ayers in this way in order to describe the subject of the article, a controversy over Obama's alleged ties to him. The article was just fine and described the controversy perfectly well, describing Ayers as a founder of the radical Weathermen group. Labeling him an "unrepentant communist terrorist" merely heaps insults on Ayers in order to disparage Obama by association, without adding anything. It is certainly not neutral, responsible, or conservative to use those kinds of pejorative terms. The section on questionable sources is important too. Questionable sources are those that are "extremist, are promotional in nature, or rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions." a political attack book certainly qualifies as being promotional and a matter of opinion. Per that section, questionable sources are to be used as sources only about themselves. Quoting a political attack book to disparage Ayers fails this test. Ayers himself disputes that he is a terrorist, communist, or unrepentant. Calling someone a "terrorist" when he plausibly denies it (and calling him "unrepentant" at that) is way over the top. It is not our place to allow a political partisan to make those accusations here.
The Michael Barone quote suffers most of the same failings - it is a news blog, but clearly an opinion piece written by a conservative pundit, which is automatically unreliable. It too describes Ayers as an "unrepentant terrorist", again something we cannot repeat.
The argument is made that because Ayers is a well-known person we can accuse him of terrorism. I don't believe he is well known in that sense. He is well-known enough to have an article for sure - as is everyone who has an article. But he is not well-known as an unrepentant terrorist - that is a disputed claim. In any event BLP cautions that if the person is truly well-known, then any accusation against him will have "a multitude of reliable, third-party published sources". I do not see reliable third party sources that call Ayers an "unrepentant communist terrorist" and seriously doubt such sources exist. For every unreliable source that says so there are plenty of sources that document that Ayers is not a terrorist, and that he has expressed regret for his actions (though the question itself of whether he repented or not fails BLP whatever the source - it is an irrelevant disparagement). Further, this is the wrong article for the question of whether Ayers has regrets or not - that is rightfully treated in his biography. Neither article is the right place for affixing the meaningless epithet "terrorist" to Ayers - that is rightfully treated in the article on the Weathermen (I say meaningless because the actual events Ayers and the Weathermen is not in any serious dispute; calling him a terrorist or not is merely a value judgment).
We can argue separately about the other pundits. Jerome Corsi's book is utterly unreliable and should not be used at all as a source (and trying to rehabilitate it by citing sales stats is pointless). I think some paraphrase of Freddoso's list of questions, best attributed to multiple authors who raise them, is allowable as a way to frame what one partisan side of the controversy hope to show - that Ayers may have influence on Obama and that it impugns Obama's judgment. Chapman is clearly not a reliable source. His blog post is based on two false partisan claims, that Obama and Ayers are "friends" and have "warm relations." Anything with that premise is dubious, and claims that Obama and Ayers actually are close associates are off topic. Chapman's calling it "the simple truth" and not a "smear" is editorializing, and in fact goes to the subject of the controversy, whether it is true or just a smear. Wikidemo (talk) 08:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
In summary, the only thing to come out of this reasonably is a brief statement that some conservative writers use the incident as a way of questioning Obama's judgment, and whether the contacts with a former radical might have influenced Obama. These could be cited to some of these authors, but quoting their material in this way is no good (and for the most part, a non-starter of a BLP violation). Wikidemo (talk) 08:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
After thinking over the matter I've gone ahead and summarized the partisan criticism accordingly - no cause to reprint opinions from unreliable sources, whose prominence has not been established (or to call Corsi a conservative commentator). I'm allowing the scaled-back version to pass as acceptable if phrased that way; otherwise please consider the entire addition to be contended and leave it out until and unless there's consensus for inclusion. Thanks, Wikidemo (talk) 20:30, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
There is no reason to smear Steve Chapman, or by connection the entire editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, by misrepresenting what he wrote. I have restored the summary of what he actually said. In future, please read his columns as opposed to cherry-picking a sentence or two. There was POV all right, but not in my summary. Flatterworld (talk) 17:05, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) 1. See WP:TERRORISM.

2. The Weatherman (organization) has long been called a "terrorist" group by reliable sources, including:

  • Article: UPI wire story, "Weathermen Got Name From Song: Groups Latest Designation Is Weather Underground", January 30, 1975, last paragraph: "On Jan. 19, 1971, Bernardine Dohrn, a leading Weatherperson who has never been caught, issued a statement from hiding suggesting that the group was considering tactics other than bombing and terrorism."
  • Article: "Guilty Plea Entered in 'Village' Bombing: Cathlyn Wilkerson Could Be Given Probation or Up to 7 Years", July 19, 1980: First sentence: Cathlyn P. Wilkerson, expressing a wish to begin a new life after 10 years in the terrorist Weather Underground, pleaded guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court yesterday ... Elsewhere in the article: Miss Wilkerson's cell was apparently using the town house at 18 West 11th Street to construct bombs -- a later Weatherman statement said "antipersonnel bombs"
  • Article: "Many States Are Adopting Stiff Laws to Curb Terror Bombings", August 16, 1970. The article uses a picture of the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion. Caption: A passer-by photographed the explosion of what was described as a bomb "factory" at 18 West 11th Street last March. [...]
  • Book: Diana Oughton, who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, was Ayers' girlfriend. Proof of that is in their Wikipedia articles. Shortly after her death, a book about her was published. Written by Thomas Powers, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, the book's title is Diana: The Making of a Terrorist. He and Lucinda Franks, both working for UPI, won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 for their project of the same name. If the girlfriend was a terrorist, why not the boyfriend who was higher up in the hierarchical organization certainly was.

3. Two definitions:

a. Merriam-Webster defines the word "terror" as "violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands."
b. The same dictionary defines "terrorism" as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion."

4. Dohrn was the top leader of the Weatherman group. Ayers was one of the top leaders. Both were on the "Weather Bureau" (later called the Central Committee) that controlled the group.

There is no WP:BLP violation whatever. We judge these things by reliable sourcing. Barone, Freddoso and the other sources are reliable for their own opinions. Ayers and Dohrn are well known because they were terrorists and it is clear from their articles that they are unrepentant, a fact that is noted widely among numerous reliable sources. -- Noroton (talk) 20:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC) (((added bit about Diane Oughton -- Noroton (talk) 20:16, 25 August 2008 (UTC))))

Moot. Ayers was not convicted of anything, so calling him a "terrorist" opens up Wikipedia to potential libel action, and also violates WP:BLP. Also it is worth noting that both Barone and Freddoso are conservative commentators with a vested interest in a McCain election victory. -- Scjessey (talk) 20:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Practically, I doubt Ayers would sue anyone for libel so that's a bit of a red herring. But by the policy behind it, BLP, we don't accuse people of major felonies they deny and for which they have not been convicted.Wikidemo (talk) 20:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Scjessey, you have made this statement before and it's been proven false before. Yet you continue to make it. You have also just committed a WP:BLP violation by saying certain people have a vested interest in an election. You should back that up with a reliable source if you ever say it again. -- Noroton (talk) 01:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
(ec):No, opinions are not citable in this way to accuse living people of crimes or of corrupt thoughts in their minds, particularly when they deny it. Nor can we use synthesis of dictionary definitions or editorial word use choices. "Unrepentant terrorists" is a drum banged mostly by deliberate Obama opponents of late. We're not going to use this article to paint Ayers as a terrorist by way of disparaging Obama. We may or may not choose to report that Obama's opponents were calling Ayers a terrorist in order to create that POV spin, but we cannot per NPOV (much less BLP) endorse that here. Wikidemo (talk) 20:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Your opinions are without foundation in policy; opinions may be cited in Wikipedia articles. One phrase in Barone's comment mentioned "unrepentant terrorist" and I have restored everything but that. Your edits were disruptive. Noroton (talk) 03:23, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Noroton, I'm getting pretty tired of you conveniently 'forgetting' past discussions. Diana Oughton was indeed killed in the Greenwich Village bombing, but that doesn't make her a terrorist, especially given the difference in use of that term in 1971 vs. in 2008. According to Ayers's book, he believes it's likely she was either trying to stop others from making a bomb intended to kill people, or she intentionally caused it to blow up to prevent them from doing so. Now if he were truly a self-defined 'unrepentant terrorist', in your meaning of the term, that belief wouldn't make sense, would it? He'd be bragging about her role.
This is the same problem I have with the authors of those smear books. Instead of looking at the facts dispassionately and letting the chips fall where they may, they decide what the result 'should' be and then selectively choose whatever factoids and spin will support their claim. That isn't the purpose of an encyclopedia. Period. Flatterworld (talk) 22:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
especially given the difference in use of that term in 1971 vs. in 2008. There is no difference. It means today what it meant then. Ayers book is not reliable, as multiple reliable sources have said in reviews and elsewhere. Ayers himself has said on multiple occasions, including in that book, that he does not assert the truth of what he writes in it. He doesn't have to be a self-defined unrepentant terrorist for us to say so. he were truly a self-defined 'unrepentant terrorist', in your meaning of the term, that belief wouldn't make sense, would it? -- so therefore it would be impossible to call anyone a terrorist unless they said they were? Neat trick. The commentators are being cited for the fact that they hold these opinions, not for the facts. That's why they're in a "reaction" section. The truth that Ayers was a terrorist is in my post above, but you conveniently ignore that, don't you? We go by what reliable sources say. We have reliable sources -- non-opinion sources -- saying the organization he helped lead was a terrorist organization. When asked whether he's repentant for the bombings that the group did, he said he is not, although he does deny that they were terroristic -- a semantic difference, not a substantive one. -- Noroton (talk) 02:08, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Reverted

I have reverted Noroton's latest edits on BLP and BRD grounds, and based on the principles of article probation. In light of the above discussion I am concerned that this is reaching a point of tendentious editing, and I urge Noroton to take a step back from editing these articles lest this become an administrative issue or community sanction. Please do not add contentious material back to the encyclopedia, particularly not material that has been questioned on POV, RS, and BLP grounds. We have discussed this, often rather heatedly, for the past day or two (an extension of a months-long discussion), and this material has never had consensus. If you have a problem, please address that on the talk page or through dispute resolution channels, not by revert warring. Thank you. Wikidemo (talk) 03:52, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikidemo, your reading of WP:BLP is seriously wrong, as is your edit reverting opinion that is allowed to be reported in Wikipedia articles. I note that you've reverted only the negative opinion you disagree with, not the positive opinionns you agree with, which makes your edits look extremely tendentious. I didn't notice the Freddoso comments about "unrepentant Communist terrorist" when I added back the comments. I'll let that part ride. But you've taken everything out, not just that. I'm not going to address the "unrepentant terrorist" business at this point. I'm too tired. But I'll get back to it later.
You really need to study the relevant policies more. Your interpretation of WP:BLP and WP:NPOV is wrong in these ways:
  1. As per the "Criticism and praise" section criticism must be relevant to the subject's notability, and written so as not to overwhelm the article or take sides. This isn't a BLP article. It's an article about a controversy. Controversies are about public debate. The public debate doesn't overwhelm the article, in fact it's too short. And it only represents one side now that you've cut out the other side.
  2. It is certainly not neutral, responsible, or conservative to use those kinds of pejorative terms, When we report on opinions, neutrality means representing different opinions, not censoring opinions because they aren't "neutral". You fundamentally mistake presenting facts with presenting opinions. Reread that section of BLP, and that should become clear to you. Your other objections to "unrepentant terrorist" I'll get to another time, but you don't censor opinions for that reason -- if you have to remove an opinion, it's done for other reasons.
  3. a political attack book certainly qualifies as being promotional and a matter of opinion. The word "promotional" is about promoting a product for money. It doesn't apply to a journalist voicing his opinions. Freddoso's book is not called irresponsible by any reliable source that I know of. It is the expression of an opinion (along with some reporting, but I'm not using it for that here). Quotes from it are mentioned in the article to express his opinions. We are allowed -- even encouraged -- to present differing opinions at the WP:ASF. I've certainly been citing this enough in discussions you've taken part in. So I'm mystified that you still don't understand this. What is the reason for that? You have absolutely no reason to call this book a "questionable source", and frankly, it's hard to believe that you misunderstood the meaning of the word "promotional".
  4. clearly an opinion piece written by a conservative pundit, which is automatically unreliable and Chapman's calling it "the simple truth" and not a "smear" is editorializing And just who the hell do you think Michael Kinsley and Norm Schreiber are? Why is it not tendentious for you to edit out the conservative and not the liberals? Again, WP:ASF is a pretty fundamental part of WP:NPOV. Are you trying to make a WP:POINT?
  5. We can argue separately about the other pundits. Jerome Corsi's book is utterly unreliable and should not be used at all as a source (and trying to rehabilitate it by citing sales stats is pointless). Nope. When a book hits the New York Times bestseller list it's worth reporting that it has an opinion on this. The book's reliability is irrelevant to simply reporting that it talks about the Ayers case. What's pointless is your assertion doing the work of building a reasoned case.
  6. I think some paraphrase of Freddoso's list of questions, best attributed to multiple authors who raise them, is allowable as a way to frame what one partisan side of the controversy hope to show You're setting an artificial standard for opinions you disagree with while ignoring that standard for opinions you agree with. How obvious.
  7. what one partisan side of the controversy hope to show - that Ayers may have influence on Obama and that it impugns Obama's judgment. Now who's trying to read minds after complaining that others are trying to read someone's mind? You don't have a clue as to what one side of a controversy is trying to say because you're not bothering to try to understand it.
  8. Chapman is clearly not a reliable source. His blog post is based on two false partisan claims, that Obama and Ayers are "friends" and have "warm relations." Anything with that premise is dubious, Bullshit. It isn't a premise. What he was quoted as saying had nothing to do with whether or not they were friends or nodding aquaintences. You're stretching logic in order to remove a comment you don't like.
Read the relevant policy. -- Noroton (talk) 04:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I have a reasonably firm grasp on policy. I reverted some contentious material you added, back to a scaled down version that I could live with. We can take that out too. You should not have restored contentious material of any sort given article probation (much less material accused of being poorly sourced and a BLP violation) and I would not have reverted a second time but for BLP concerns. Regarding your specific counterarguments:
  1. BLP applies to all information about living people, not just a specific class of articles. Criticism of any particular person - Ayers, and Obama - should be relevant to the subject's notability, i.e. the notability of the controversy. Trying to establish that Ayers an unrepentant communist terrorist is gratuitous. The article is about a political scandal / partisan political tactic, not about Ayers' past.
  2. BLP applies to opinions even more so than factual claims. We can't make a partisan attack on a living person, then hide behind a claim that our partisan source made the attack, not us.
  3. Corsi's book and Freddoso's are both questionable sources under the verifiability policy. Corsi's is not written to inform or even advocate a position - it is written as a simple exercise in trying to change the outcome of an election. The author acknowledges as much. He is not advancing ideas but promoting an instrumental goal. Though it does not literally fit, the rationale for not accepting statements of facts from books nakedly promoting political outcomes is similar to the rationale for avoiding facts from books promoting brands or companies. Truth is not the goal - outcome is the goal. But no matter - if you take the softer interpretation Corsi's book is one long opinion. Which brings us to Freddoso's book, which is clearly an opinion - the Case against Obama - obviously an opinion. So it falls squarely under the latter type of questionable source. Sure, those books can be used as sources about themselves. But the subject of the article is not the books, it is the Ayers controversy. Two partisans' opinions that Obama is unfit to be President is neither here nor there, nor is their smearing Ayers to get there. These irrelevant opinions can't ride in on the quotes like some trojan horse. The payload meant for the article, calling Ayers an "unrepentant terrorist", is not an opinion about the subject of the article. It's a coatrack.
  4. I don't respond to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments invovling "what the hell", but if it helps I have no idea who Michael Kinsley or Noam Scheiber are. They seem to be off topic. You should not be calling me tendentious or accusing me of WP:POINT violations - if you have a complaint about my behavior this is not the appropriate forum.
  5. (No point responding to the incivility or the attempt to defend Corsi's book)
  6. (No point responding to the incivility or the OTHERSTUFFEXISTS claim)
  7. (No point responding to incivility or ad hominem) - Freddoso and the other conservative bloggers announce exactly what they are trying to show, so saying so here on the talk page is perfectly reasonable - I'm paraphrasing the partisan quote you had inserted directly into the article
  8. (will not respond to the personal attack) Chapman is a bad source here, not legit.
That's about it. The proposed edit is rejected, and given that the discussion has become uncivil I don't think further consensus discussion is a good idea right now.Wikidemo (talk) 05:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a reasonably firm grasp on policy. No, you don't:

  1. Trying to establish that Ayers an unrepentant communist terrorist is gratuitous. Actually, it's one of the two elements at the heart of the controversy, which is why it gets repeated so often by sources who are sincere and not trying to be unfair. If you read more of the sources who are criticizing Obama about this, you'd be aware of this fact. It isn't as if I haven't provided many of them in the past. You're censoring Wikipedia's reporting of a controversy with this specious reason.
  2. We can't make a partisan attack on a living person, then hide behind a claim that our partisan source made the attack, not us. Thanks for the ABF, so glad you weren't uncivil and decided to take the high road. You don't get to call the criticism you don't like "partisan attacks" because you don't believe them. Following WP:NPOV policy of reporting criticism rather than making our own criticism is not hiding "behind a claim that our partisan source made the attack", it's doing what we're supposed to do. WP:NPOV does not distinguish "partisan" sources from non-partisan sources: In fact, comments by Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- the most partisan sources around, by definition -- are also perfectly fine for this article, so drop the "partisan" canard, please.
  3. Corsi's book and Freddoso's are both questionable sources under the verifiability policy. Not for their own opinions they're not. And you cut out more than the "unrepentant terrorist" part of the Freddoso comments. Corsi's is not written to inform or even advocate a position - it is written as a simple exercise in trying to change the outcome of an election. That doesn't matter when we cite a source for that source's opinions. We don't require that standard of Hillary Clinton, McCain or Mayor Daley. You can't seem to get the idea that we're not citing any of these commentators for the facts. Freddoso's book [...] obviously an opinion. So it falls squarely under the latter type of questionable source. Well yeah, if I'm citing something because I want to cite a range of opinions in the article, I go for sources that give opinions. You don't get it: WP:ASF and WP:WELLKNOWN and WP:BLP#Reliable sources all allow critical opinions, even about BLPs and even if the sources are partisan. I refuse to believe you've actually read and understand either one because you're showing evidence to the contrary with this point. I've quoted them, and you still don't get it. And you've removed from the article far more than what anyone would call "facts". If any partisan source is automatically a questionable source, then WP:V negates all quotations of partisan sources, including Clinton, McCain and Obama. Still think you have a firm grasp on policy? Two partisans' opinions that Obama is unfit to be President is neither here nor there, nor is their smearing Ayers to get there. These irrelevant opinions can't ride in on the quotes like some trojan horse. Uh, the controversy is a notable controversy because Obama is running for president. That's obviously a part of this. No passage in the article said that they don't think Obama should be president because of this, but if they did, that would not even be a bar for a comment to be included here because that's got nothing to do with the immediate subject either way.
  4. if it helps I have no idea who Michael Kinsley or Noam Scheiber are. They are just exactly as partisan as Corsi, Freddoso and Barone. They are all political commentators. If you don't know who they are, you should consider whether you are in over your head here. That's not a personal attack. If you're not familiar with politics and political commentary, you are going to find pitfalls here. In fact, you already have. You treat independent opinion journalists as political hacks, which would be consistent with being ignorant in this area. You don't understand the implications of calling someone "partisan" when the whole subject of the article is a controversy with strong connections to a political campaign.
  5. The rest of your response is not worth answering.

Except for this comment: The proposed edit is rejected, and given that the discussion has become uncivil I don't think further consensus discussion is a good idea right now. What makes you think it's not going to go on without you? -- Noroton (talk) 08:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

What makes me think you are going to stop? This: Talk:Barack Obama/Article probation/Incidents#Noroton. You cannot say I did not warn you or try everything else first.[31] Wikidemo (talk) 10:39, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
What is going on?! Steve Chapman is indeed a reliable journalist, and he's been a member of the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune for years. He drew an important parallel between Obama-Bill Ayers and McCain-Gordon Liddy. That was the point of his piece that Noroton had first footnoted, claiming he said something quite different. I corrected that, and Noroton claimed I was showing POV. Rubbish. He was the one spinning Chapman's piece, and that isn't what Wikipedia should be doing. So now Wikidemo thinks he's 'fixed' it by leaving in the ooh!ooh! claims made in some sleazy books (which have been shown to have plenty of inaccuracies but are apparently considered 'notable'), but leaving out the Chapman point which is indeed a balancing view. So again: what's going on?! Flatterworld (talk) 15:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I am not "fixing" anything. I am objecting, per BLP and the BRD editing process (and also NPOV, RS, and WEIGHT) to the repeated attempt to insert disputed content against consensus. I am not required to improve the entire article to make an objection here. Regarding that last point, Chapman may or may not be a respected journalist but the opinions voiced in his "Minority of one" blog are not a reliable source on the facts - punditry that says what Obama ought to do predicated on the statement that Obama and Ayers are "friends" who have "warm relations" is an opinion piece based on a false premise, and we must treat it as just another opinion from the sidelines. Calling his own opinion "the simple truth" does not make it so. For that, I do not deserve to have my comments called "bullshit". Having been basically told I am an idiot who does not read policies or sources, I am being browbeaten out of participating, then told the discussion will proceed without me. That line of discussion has broken down to the point that it needs to end. Please don't use this space to comment on editors - if you have a suggestion for improving the article please make it. Wikidemo (talk) 21:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Michael Kinsley: Rhodes scholar. Former managing editor of The New Republic. Liberal foil on groundbreaking PBS series Crossfire. (Firing Line.) The founder of web opinion site Slate. Currently also contributing pundit in Time magazine.   Justmeherenow (  ) 20:16, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I have not objected to his material, but punditry from any source educated or not is a specialized kind of opinion, not terribly reliable, which is useful only to the extent that the opinion itself is notable. Wikidemo (talk) 21:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
So now you've changed your opinion, Wikidemo. Therefore, what is your remaining objection to including comments from David Freddoso's book, the No. 5 New York Times bestseller? It seems to me you just dropped your last complaint against including the information not including the "unrepentant terrorist" line. -- Noroton (talk) 01:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
No change of mind at all. I didn't say I approved Kinsley's material either, simply that the objection I made to the new BLP/NPOV violations did not address the Kinsley material already in the article. The attempt to show inconsistency in editing is unwarranted - please desist from collateral criticism of me as an editor. Beyond that, I'm not sure where this is going with quoting sales statistics of books but calling Ayers an "unrepentant terrorist" here is a BLP violation however it comes in. It's a Republican talking point, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen it in a reliable source. Freddoso is a partisan who wrote an advocacy book to oppose Obama. It's inherently unreliable to the extent that calling someone a terrorist is an opinion, and partisan arguments about the degree of repentence of Ayers mind (when he denies it) are also advocacy/opinion. The fact that some people consider Ayers a terrorist, or Obama a muslim, or whatever, does not need repeating to describe the subject of the article. It's all unreliable BLP stuff, and even if it could be elevated beyond that it's coatracking. Wikidemo (talk) 18:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
On whether "calling someone a terrorist is an opinion" or not or is acceptable Wikipedia practice:
1. See WP:TERRORISM.
2. The Weatherman (organization) has long been called a "terrorist" group by reliable sources, including:
  • Article: UPI wire story, "Weathermen Got Name From Song: Groups Latest Designation Is Weather Underground", January 30, 1975, last paragraph: "On Jan. 19, 1971, Bernardine Dohrn, a leading Weatherperson who has never been caught, issued a statement from hiding suggesting that the group was considering tactics other than bombing and terrorism."
  • Article: "Guilty Plea Entered in 'Village' Bombing: Cathlyn Wilkerson Could Be Given Probation or Up to 7 Years", July 19, 1980: First sentence: Cathlyn P. Wilkerson, expressing a wish to begin a new life after 10 years in the terrorist Weather Underground, pleaded guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court yesterday ... Elsewhere in the article: Miss Wilkerson's cell was apparently using the town house at 18 West 11th Street to construct bombs -- a later Weatherman statement said "antipersonnel bombs"
  • Article: "Many States Are Adopting Stiff Laws to Curb Terror Bombings", August 16, 1970. The article uses a picture of the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion. Caption: A passer-by photographed the explosion of what was described as a bomb "factory" at 18 West 11th Street last March. [...]
  • Book: Diana Oughton, who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, was Ayers' girlfriend. Proof of that is in their Wikipedia articles. Shortly after her death, a book about her was published. Written by Thomas Powers, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, the book's title is Diana: The Making of a Terrorist. He and Lucinda Franks, both working for UPI, won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 for their project of the same name. If the girlfriend was a terrorist, why not the boyfriend who was higher up in the hierarchical organization certainly was.
3. Two definitions:
a. Merriam-Webster defines the word "terror" as "violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands."
b. The same dictionary defines "terrorism" as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion."
Wikidemo, you didn't respond to this before (I just cut and pasted it from above) and now you're repeating the same statement on a different day. Please respond to this evidence. -- Noroton (talk) 18:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I oppose applying the pejorative label terrorist, something Ayers denies, as a way to identify either Ayers or the Weathermen, on BLP and NPOV grounds. There is a more balanced and appropriate discussion of this issue in the Weathermen article, and a discussion in Ayers' main article about his reflections on his past. I've talked about this quite enough and it seems to have consensus. I'm not interested in opening this up again. Wikidemon (talk) 19:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Removal of "Warren criticized Smith" passage

I removed this from the article:

Warren later criticized Smith for quoting her "grossly out of context" in his attempt "to paint Barack Obama as a closet leftwing radical".[1]

Maria Warren says Smith quoted her "grossly out of context". That's ridiculous. Smith quoted her blog post. We have a link to the very short blog post. We have a link to Smith's article. There is no quoting out of context as anyone can see. Warren simply didn't like the information getting out there and said so in subsequent blog posts. That isn't cause for us to report Warren's whining unless we just want to try to cut down Smith's credibility. If someone can point out what specifically Warren found wrong or can make a case for it, I'm all in favor of returning the passage, but we can't have her mudslinging a BLP on a Wikipedia article unless we can see something plausible in it, and I can't. It's also a criticism of a report of the subject of the article, and pretty tangential. But if someone can point out to me where the criticism might have something to it, I'd agree with restoring it. -- Noroton (talk) 18:28, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

That's fine if we remove the whole thing. Warren isn't a reliable source and the Warren quote is highly misleading (and factually wrong) without that context, so I'll remove the Warren quote as well.Wikidemo (talk) 18:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
1. I thought you just agreed to back off editing as I continue to edit that section, as I requested on your talk page and as you said you would do on that same page. Yet you went back to editing. Which is it? Will you please clarify?
2. Your application of WP:RS is faulty. Information reported by reliable sources -- Ben Smith of The Politico -- is reliable. The information was sourced both to her blog and to Ben Smith's report, as you can see from the footnotes of the passage you eliminated. Please review. Also explain what is "highly misleading (and factually wrong)" I don't follow what you mean there. Is Ben Smith wrong in what he reported? How so? I don't see an error. I don't even see Warren identifying an error. Please explain. Noroton (talk) 18:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
The old Warren blog post is quoted out of context by the campaign attack machine to promote a lie that Ayers launched Obama's political career - something clearly not true given the history of Obama's campaigning. The people advancing the claim must know is not true if they have even the most rudimentary grasp of the history of Obama's campaigns, and sitting here on Wikipedia we know it is not true. We don't need to reproduce that kind of misinformation here. Having already established by reliable sources that Ayers and Dohrn hosted a meet-and-greet for Obama, the only legitimate thing that quote adds is a little opinionated sniping that Ayers and Dohrn were full of themselves (that's not encyclopedic but interesting - it characterizes them as gadflies, outside of the Chicago liberal establishment) and that they thought their introduction of Obama was important. It doesn't actually establish that they started Obama's career or introduced Obama to Chicago - quite the opposite. The quote is a put-down of Ayers, saying it was all in his head. Ben Smith is clearly unreliable on the subject - he's a partisan blogging in an election cyclce. If Warren (unreliably) says X, Smith takes Warren's saying X out of context to badmouth Obama, and Warren criticizes Smith for misrepresenting her, it's misleading to quote Smith on the subject and omit Warren's denial. And the result, on the Wikipedia page, would be to convey the misimpression that Ayers launched Obama's career. Wikidemon (talk) 19:18, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Did you intend any further edits on the paragraph? You seemed to be done. In any event an IP editor has restored everything to this paragraph so now we have a long back-and-forth between Warren and Smith about which one of the two is the irresponsible blogger. Murky and irrelevant. But I'd suggest nobody revert that because it would be silly to get into a revert contest over this kind of trivia. Wikidemon (talk) 19:18, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
From your post at 18:35 above, It's a Republican talking point and from 19:18 above: The old Warren blog post is quoted out of context by the campaign attack machine Your attitude is troubling in that you seem to indicate we should remove facts (or perhaps at some point add them) only because some political group is using facts in a way you don't like. That is tendentious and contrary to WP:NPOV. Whether or not a political group is doing that is neither your concern nor mine and certainly not Wikipedia's. We provide an adequate description of the subject. Warren, an eyewitness to an event that very little is known about, tells us that Ayers and Dohrn seemed to be heavily supporting Obama at that meeting. That is a relevant fact to this article. It is not your job or mine or Wikipedia's job to lean one way or another in presenting a fair description of this event, which is an important element of this article. You will have to provide proof of Ben Smith being unreliable. The Politico does reporting and that's what Smith does for Politico, certainly that's what he's doing in this article. Noroton (talk) 19:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Please, per article probation do not criticize other editors (I will strike the worst of those personal attacks and note it on the incidents page if you don't self-revert them). Smith is a conservative blogger taking quotes out of context to bash Obama - the proof is his blog. It's not as if this is some accidental confluence of words - there is a concerted effort by anti-Obama operatives to: (1) call Ayers an "unrepentant terrorist" - in so many words, it's a talking point(see [32][33]); and (2) misrepresent Warren's blog to claim that Ayers "launched" Obama's career, e.g. a lot of conservative blogs plus Coris's new book (see [34][35][36]) To say that "unrepentant terrorist" and "launched Obama's career" are partisan talking points is no different for me as an editor than to say that "rightsizing" is a euphemism for "layoff". We should not be using Wikipedia as a mouthpiece to reprint one side's partisan language. Warren's blog is an unreliable primary source that contains a quote that, interpreted out of context, is a clear factual misstatement. It is our job at Wikipedia to present reliable secondary sources in order to arrive at encyclopedic treatment of notable subjects, not to play up the misleading quotes promoted by one side of an election.Wikidemon (talk) 20:19, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
No, I'm not done. The edits recently made to that section have created a mess. I'm going to clean it up in the next 10 minutes. Noroton (talk) 19:52, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm done. I'm confused by this whirl of editing, but I get the impression that CENSEI and the IP editor who's just been editing that section are in favor of keeping the Warren quote. I'll ask them. I have no problem keeping the quote on this page if you'd prefer to do that until we sourt it out. -- Noroton (talk) 20:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The Politico picked it up, its informative, reliably sourced, and has been presented in an NPOV manned, there is no compelling reason to remove it IMO. CENSEI (talk) 20:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikidemo, after reading your comments that Warren is not "reliable" and that all these are just "republican talking points" sounds an awful lot like your opinion and you know what they say about opinions. Please keep your opinions out of this article. CENSEI (talk) 20:18, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Please self-revert the above, per article probation. Wikidemon (talk) 20:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Self revert what? I dont understand. CENSEI (talk) 20:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
It's your "keep your opinions out of this article" comment - if you look at the terms of article probation (see notice above) you're supposed to use the talk page to comment on the article, not other editors. I make a valid point that this article should not mimic the language and talking points of the campaign against Obama. I don't deserve to be called "tendentous" and "troubling" and told to keep my opinions to myself for that. That kind of treatment leads people to tune out of the discussion, and simply take a position without talking about it. Wikidemon (talk) 20:51, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Your opinions are not notable, plain and simple. Get a syndicated column if you want your opinion to be reflected in the article. Otherwise your opinion on what is an what is not a "republican talking point" does not belong in the article or on the talk page. Warren is a reliable source and his comments are notable, thats all there is to it. CENSEI (talk) 22:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
This is not my opinion - these two points are Republican (and Anti-Obama) talking points. That is so obvious it hardly needs support, but I have pointed to some google search results - take your pick and you can see partisans using them as talking points, and some articles about the fact that they are doing so. Poorly sourced material like this that parrots partisan talking points does not belong in article space. (Even if it were my opinion I am free to state it here and my opinion on the merits of material is a perfectly valid basis for taking a content position. Personal attacks like the two editors' above (added four times in a row now to this one section) are a violation of article probation. Please desist. At this point you have shut the discussion down, which means you have failed to gain consensus for your edits. Do you insist on talking about it here, will you stop, or do you want to move this to the article probation incidents page?) Wikidemon (talk) 22:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
The exists no concensus to remove the material (despite what you keep saying)... just because you are louder than the other editors in your argument does not make for a consensus. In addition, its your opinion that these are partisan talking points. If you want to remove anything that an individual believes is a partisan talking point, most of the content from most every article, including this one, will have to be removed. The material is not poorly sourced, Politico is a relaible source, strike one. Asking that you keep your POV out of the article is not a personal attack, strike two. Threating to take me to the subject probation page is intimadation, strike three. CENSEI (talk) 23:47, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
So I'm free to post my take on things here? Good. There is no consensus to add the new material, or to delete the existing statement that the Warren quote is out of context. Politico as a whole is not the source. The source is the particular Ben Smith article in that news feed, which the subject of the comment claims Smith took out of context. A quote of a blog, which the blog writer claims is out of context, containing a quote that people are misinterpreting (and anti-Obama partisans deliberately misinterpret) to stand for the falsehood that Ayers launched Obama's career, is both unreliable and wrong. That's all there is to it. We can't convey misinformation here. Wikidemon (talk) 00:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was support for move. Note that the sole "oppose" !vote, upon reading the text, is actually support with an apparent confusion over the direction of the move.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:04, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

So what will it be? The old name, "Obama-Ayers Controversy", was chosen and accepted because it is short and neutral. Nobody yet has proposed a name that is short, neutral, and fully explanatory of the subject at the same time. I don't really like the latest name, "Controversy over an Obama–Ayers connection", for three reasons:

  1. non-neutral. It asserts that there is a connection when, in fact, that is what is in dispute in the first place. A more neutral wording, that suffers from the other two problems, is "Controversy over contacts between Barack Obama and William Ayers".
  2. wordy. Very long, obviously.
  3. is it a controversy? Controversy implies something that may not be there. There is little or no doubt as to exactly what happened. The details about contacts between Ayers and Obama are uncontroversial, straightforward, and have been known for some time. The controversy is a debate over what that means and how important it is, and arguably it is not even a debate - it is a simple campaign tactic. Are campaign charges and denials really a controversy, or are they just political theater?

- Wikidemon (talk) 23:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I didn't mean to imply any urgency in this, or any big harm in a suboptimal name. This article has been struggling for the right name the whole time. But if anyone has any brilliant ideas, that would be great. Another criterion is that anyone stumbling on this article, or searching google, ought to instantly know they found what they were looking for. The new name is better than the old one in that way. Wikidemon (talk) 00:28, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose While the old name, "Obama-Ayers Controversy", might be less than perfect, "Controversy over an Obama–Ayers connection" is a step backward. Obama acknowledges that there is a connection between the two and has no issue with it. The new title implies that there might be a controversy about the existence of the connection. The wordiness does not help. Alansohn (talk) 23:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Favor "Obama-Ayers controversy" -- Just keep the name as it has been for some weeks now. The difference in names is slight and I see no advantage to this new, longer name. Shorter is generally better, the three-word name is neutral and clear enough. There are benefits to having a stable title, as well. No more name changes, please, unless consensus is reached on this page first. -- Noroton (talk) 23:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikidemon: it is a simple campaign tactic. Are campaign charges and denials really a controversy, or are they just political theater? This is WP:SOAPBOX material. Please don't do that. -- Noroton (talk) 23:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Noroton, you have inserted this twice now. Under article probation you are supposed to use talk pages comment about the article, not other editors. Will you please stop? Wikidemon (talk) 04:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Merge and rename

I'm just floating this idea out there to see what people think. There are essentially two "controversies" that have accompanied Senator Obama during this election. This "connection" with Bill Ayers, and the more significant matter of his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. We have two poorly named articles on these matters:

Why not merge these two articles under the new title of "Barack Obama presidential campaign controversies" or something like that? -- Scjessey (talk) 14:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Although conceptually appealing, list articles of controversies tend to get deleted around here. A while back I tried to create a campaign controversies list article that for the sake of completeness and neutrality would include all the candidates. Even if limited to Obama, such an article would invariably include other controversies both real (Rezko, Wright, comments about gun-toting Midwesterners) and imagined (middle name, fake birth certificate, closet Muslim), and become quite a mess. Moreover, an article devoted to controversies could turn into an incubator of new controversy articles when fully-formed material like the stuff here gets spun off as a child article. Wikidemon (talk) 16:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Oppose this attempt to downplay what Scjessey's preferred candidate finds inconvenient for people to know. -- Noroton (talk) 23:28, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Scolding didn't work so maybe I'll just tease other editors when they accuse each other of ulterior motives. I don't think one has to look to POV to oppose a merge. A merge would have the effect of burying a reasonably good article that has enough encyclopedic content to stand on its own. Wikidemon (talk) 02:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Noroton has got the wrong end of the stick here, and has (again) assumed bad faith on my part. If it was up to me, this article wouldn't even exist because it's a bunch of Republican POV bullshit. I was suggesting ("I'm just floating this idea out there to see what people think.") something that would solve a problem with inaccurate titling of the articles - nothing more than that. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:02, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

"legends in their own minds" quote

I removed the language in the title of this section because I think it's a minor WP:BLP violation (not "conservative" language and it mocks two people). Wikidemon has restored it (diff). I think having this phrase (Warren describing Ayers and Dohrn) is unnecessary to the purpose of the quote and is a rude comment about these two people. I'm all in favor of harsh criticism of both of them when it's necessary to adequately describe the controversy, a serious issue -- but this isn't necessary and it's not on the topic. I hope other editors will agree. I don't understand Wikidemon's reason for wanting to keep it in.WP:BLP#Basic human dignity states: Wikipedia articles should respect the basic human dignity of their subjects. Wikipedia aims to be a reputable encyclopedia, not a tabloid. Our articles must not serve primarily to mock or disparage their subjects, whether directly or indirectly. This is relatively minor, but it violates the spirit of WP:BLP, as the quote indicates. -- Noroton (talk) 01:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Even in its complete form the blog quote is misleading, because it suggests incorrectly via an ambiguous interpretation (and has been cynically adopted as a falsehood by the political machinery that has geared up to defeat Barak Obama's presidential candidacy - citations provided elsewhere on this page for that) to stand for the proposition that Ayers "launched" the political career of Barak Obama. Obviously, he did nothing of the sort. Warren, in her own flippant snide way, was making a dig at Ayers, that he and Dohrn were "legends in their own mind" who had the audacity to think they could "launch" a political candidate. In fact Ayers and Dohrn were second or third tier local organizers who had no such power. Obama had already launched himself, and their contribution (though undocumented) could not add much. Or so Warren thought, in making the comment. This sort of factual ambiguity, by the way, is exactly why we do not accept unreliable sources like Warren's blog piece and the commentary around it by political partisans, as a reliable source. In the past couple days some of the vociferous editors on this page have edit warred over including the quote, a citation of the quote by a pundit, the author's vehement denial that the pundit got it right, and lots more back-and-forth. This is simply not a reliable statement, and it's problematic to include it here. If we do, at a minimum we need to reproduce it faithfully instead of redacting the piece of snark that reveals it as an attack on Ayers rather than a straightforward claim about Obama. Better yet we should delete it entirely, or place it in full context.

Establishing proper context in the lead -- Obama's response, defense of Ayers

I want some feedback from people on the removal of this text from the lead by Wikidemon:

Obama condemned Ayers' past through a spokesman,[2] and Ayers has been described as "very respected and prominent in Chicago [with] a national reputation as an educator."[3] Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daley and the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune immediately issued statements in support of Ayers in response to the controversy.[4][5]

Wikidemon initially provided no reason for removing this material, but now he states on my talk page that his removal reason is that "you've dupliciated the exact same prose, citations, etc., in the edits and in the article." This is what the LEAD is supposed to do. These sections are important parts of the article. Even if they aren't, in terms of kilobytes, large, they are still significant parts of the article, and need to be reflected in the lead. II | (t - c) 17:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

If you will read the article carefully or the edit history you will see that I did not remove anything. A couple days ago I reorganized the article for organization and flow [37], and one step of that was to integrate material that was out of place and unique to the lead (which violates the WP:LEAD guideline) into the body of the article where it logically fit. The description of Ayers as a prominent Chicago resident and nationally respected educator logically went in the section describing who Ayers is, and the statement that Obama condemned Ayers in light of the controversy while the Tribune editorial board and Mayor Daley praised Ayers went in the section on reactions to the controversy. Where else would they go? It may be reasonable to summarize in a few words that Ayers was both a respected professor and a former radical activist but that is more context than summary, and per WP:LEAD the purpose of the lead is to be a brief version of the article, not to set the stage for the article. Either way, it makes no sense to put citations in the lead. The lead needs to be a shorter version of the article, not a copy. This edit[[38]] has the effect of mirroring the exact same prose twice in the article, together with redundant citations.Wikidemon (talk) 18:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
The prose was not the same when I made the edit; that would be your doing, by copying it from the lead. The lead should summarize all important material, not just the stuff you want it to summarize. The controversy is only half the story; the reaction is the other half. II | (t - c) 18:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
I moved text and citations from the lead into the body where they belong. The key word in your last response is summarize. You may be right that the reaction is part of the story, in which case a sentence summarizing all the key reactions would be reasonable - Republican commercials, facebook page, ongoing attacks, pundits, Obama, Ayers defenders. The first paragraph already contains this: "The matter was covered by news organizations and brought up by the campaign of competing candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in February 2008, and was revisited during a debate between Clinton and Obama in April 2008. Republican presidential candidate John McCain subsequently also questioned[1] Obama's interactions with Ayers[2] and it became an issue in the general election campaign." So how would you expand that (and how is it relevant) to say who supported Ayers personally and who condemned him? The lead paragraph already has the text: "his constituent Bill Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground Organization and presently a professor in Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago." That already implies respect and reputation but if you want to add a few words to emphasize that I don't see the harm either. Please understand this is a style matter, not a question of the underlying content. The shorter, sweeter, and more on topic we can keep the lead, the better the article will be. Wikidemon (talk) 18:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Teasing should be avoided, according to WP:LEAD. Specific instances need to be referenced so that the issue isn't inadvertently amplified in readers' minds beyond what the facts imply. I think the two sentences that I added are quite appropriate and need to stay. The above section needs to be revised so that it does less teasing. We need to describe their relationship specifically. After that, I think it would be good. II | (t - c) 19:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Do you want to clean this up or should I? I'm happy to integrate the content you added into the lead, and get rid of the duplicate citations.Wikidemon (talk) 19:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
How do you propose cleaning it up? I don't think it needs clean-up, after reading through it more. Perhaps proposing it here is best, since if it removes Obama's response and the defense of Ayers, then I'm going to revert it, or perhaps start a thread on NPOV/N or ANI. II | (t - c) 20:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
No, I'll just do it. Feel free to do what you will but I'm not going to spend any more time trying to explain. Wikidemon (talk) 20:18, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Okay, all done. My edits[39] did not add or remove any material to the article, but rather fixed the citations, organized the lead in chronological order and summarized slightly there, and added material from the lead to the article so that the lead did not contain information that is not in the article. Feel free to edit, but please recognize that this was intended as a stylistic edit and not any kind of content change. Wikidemon (talk) 20:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
That looks excellent. Thank you, and my apologies for the earlier anger. II | (t - c) 20:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Thank you too - probably everyone's on edge here, imagining all the barbecues and vacations and wondering why we're still typing on a computer. Wikidemon (talk) 21:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Removal of Tom Hayden comments in "Reaction" section

I'm not so much opposed to having Tom Hayden's comments in the reaction section, but I don't think he's the best person to use for a comment. I don't feel strongly about it, but I wanted ideas from other editors on this.

Here's the comment I removed:

while USA Today quoted 60s SDS member and later California legislator Tom Hayden as having said, "I have met and like John McCain, but he bombed, and presumably killed, many people in a war I opposed. If I can set all that aside, I would hope that Americans will accept that Ayers has changed, too"; and law professor and legal theorist Cass Sunstein, reported to know both Ayers and Obama, as having said Sunstein is "very disturbed by [...Ayers'] past and by his refusal to disavow what he did.[...] I think the implications of this for Obama are zero."[6]

One problem with Hayden is that we should explain he has a past in which he associated with the Weatherman group. The Days of Rage riot was a protest of the Chicago 8 trial (Hayden was one of the 8), and at the December 1969 "War Council" meeting organized by the Weathermen in Flint, Michigan, Hayden was there: We reported to the hall about 10 o'clock for exercises that evolved into a practice session of arate; we had 300 people moving about the h all wiping out imaginary racist pigs. Some of the exercises were led by Tom Hyden, who was a celebrity because he was on trial in Chicago for his part in the demonstration at the National Democratic Convention. Hayden was connected with SDS, but he was not one of the Weathermen. [...]" (Larry Grathwohl, undercover FBI informant, in his book Bringing Down America, 1976)

I think if we mention Hayden, we need to mention his association with the Weatherman group, and that further lengthens an already long quote. And by the way, the Freddoso quote was cut but we have long quotes from supporters of Obama here? I think I'll cut down some of that. We don't present one side with elaborate, long quotations and then not present quotations from the other side. -- Noroton (talk) 01:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)edited to add identification of Grathwohl as writer of comment -- Noroton (talk) 02:07, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I would add two summary sentences, the first to say that some fellow militants from the time still defend their actions as a reasonable response to America's war and claim that others such as McCain were bombing innocent civilians on their side too. (or however we phrase it - we would have to be careful and find the right sources). The second would say that a number of commentators, both mainstream and Obama defenders (or however we can say that), condemned Ayers but denied that the contacts were significant enough to raise concerns. Personally I would summarize this and and even mention a few names (..such as Cass Sunstein) but not not give them additional weight by quoting their direct arguments. And then there's a third argument, already in the text, that Ayers is reformed and respectable so that a contact with him is okay. We might want to reorganize the "reaction" section so it reads thematically (commentators who say it's a big deal then the three different arguments as to why it is not) instead of chronologically. Balance is a hard thing to reach and I don't know that neutrality favors balance here. The controversy is a partisan attack. Of course you're not going to get an equal number or weight of people supporting it as valid as commenting that it's just an election tactic. Wikidemon (talk) 02:22, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
The controversy is a partisan attack. Of course you're not going to get an equal number or weight of people supporting it as valid as commenting that it's just an election tactic. (1) "partisan attack" and "election tactic" are purely your POV, which must not control the article: if we have an article on this subject (and it passed AfD), then we need to cover it seriously and without bias; that means covering both sides roughly equally unless you can find information showing that reliable opinion is massively favoring a particular POV; (2) I don't know if you mean to say in that second sentence that the overwhelming opinion actually does favor a particular side, but that's not at all what I see. You've mentioned in other comments that you, yourself, look down on opinion commentary. I completely disagree with that judgment because I've seen plenty of commentators who have well-researched, educated opinions -- far more than I've seen good reporters who adequately cover controversies. Some of the articles we point to in the notes for this article show news analysis that falls far short of the ideal, with much shallower research (probably because it's from newspapers with short deadlines). Noroton (talk) 02:52, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Not POV, describing the controversy as a political attack is a simple factual assertion about how this fits in the mechanics of the election. "Too many ties with unrepentant terrorist" or however you would distill the complaint is hardly a complaint made against people outside the world of politics. Neutrality does not mean covering both sides equally. We don't cover equally both sides of, say, a hollywood divorce grudge, sporting match, or a business board room fight. We simply report what it was. This so-called controversy is a claim made during the election cycle that Obama's contacts with Ayers indicate that he is less fit to be President. Wikidemon (talk) 14:47, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

What's POV and What is not in the lead paragraph

I removed information from the lead paragraph that was excessive in giving the opinion of one side of this controversy and added information that removed a misleading implication. Scjessey just reverted that. Scjessey has stated in a comment above that he considers this whole controversy "Republican bullshit".

Here are the changes, with my addition (reverted by Scjessey) in boldface and my removal (added back by Scjessey) in italics:

The controversy over an Obama–Ayers connection arose during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign of the significance and details of Presidential candidate Barack Obama's contacts with his constituent Bill Ayers, a former leader of the radical, violent Weather Underground Organization of the 1960s and 1970s, who later became a professor of national reputation at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a "very respected and prominent" member of local society.".[1] Obama served on two nonprofit boards with Ayers and lived near him, and both Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn had hosted a small campaign meeting for Obama at their home.[2] The matter was covered by news organizations and brought up by the campaign of competing candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in February 2008, revisited during a debate between Clinton and Obama in April 2008, then subsequently picked up by Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an issue in the general election campaign. It was frequently brought up in commentary about Obama, together with Obama's associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (see Jeremiah Wright controversy) and Tony Rezko. Obama condemned Ayers' past through a spokesman,[3] and indicated he does not have a close association with Ayers.[2]

No one, including Scjessey, I assume, disputes the actual facts. The only question is what is relevant and how you present a summary of the controversy in an NPOV way. Scjessey's version presents it in a way that heavily leans toward favoring Ayers and Obama. First he (and the previous editor who added this) promotes this by putting the "highly respected" business in. Ayers is in fact, controversial because he is unrepentant about having been a terrorist as his large number of critics have said. Those critics also say he is not respectable, and in fact that's largely what the whole controversy is actually about. To have Wikipedia calling him "respected" in the lead is very, very obvious POV pushing.

The addition of information indicating the controversy has received ongoing commentary (beyond just what the Clinton and McCain campaigns have stated and beyond even commenting on what the Clinton and McCain campaigns were saying) gives a cleareer picture of how notable this controversy has been and why, in fact, we have an article about it, an article Scjessey would like to see deleted, as he has stated. -- Noroton (talk) 13:52, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the reversion of the material, which seems like a coatrack. Ayers is controversial because this is an election season and Obama's opponents have decided they can exploit the issue. We report facts; we do not second political smears. Thus, if we are going to report what the controversy is all about the focus is rightfully on the making of the claims - who made them, why they were made, in what forum, and so on, not some endorsement of their validity. There is no favoritism towards Ayers or Obama here at all - any modicum of reporting on this is a slant against Obama. On the one hand, building up Ayers as "highly respected" is too flowery. But so is heaping on disparagement about Weathermen being violent and radical. Both are true of course, but repeating them in the lead is simply making the argument on each side. We should report the argument, not make it. If we introduce Ayers the salient details are that he is: (1) a former leader of the Weatherman, (2) a fixture of Chicago civic society, and (3) a high-level tenured professor. Bringing up Rezko and Wright is over the top - might as well bring up every other anti-Obama election issue if we do that. Wikidemon (talk) 14:41, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
We report facts then report that it has been commented on independently of the actions of the Clinton or McCain campaigns. Not to do so is to promote your POV.
so is heaping on disparagement about Weathermen being violent and radical -- but that is an essential part of why the issue is controversial, and therefore belongs in the lead, since you evidently want a lot of other facts in the lead. It also happens to be not primarily disparagement but primarily two facts that nobody disputes, not even former Weathermen or people sympathetic to them. You can't on the one hand include all the facts in the lead that are used by one side in the controversy and leave out the salient facts brought up by the other side. That's obvious POV pushing. Ayers being a tenured professor has nothing at all to do with the controversy, and the extent to which he is "highly respected" is at issue and should not be stated baldly, because that means Wikipedia is taking sides.
bringing in Rezko and Wright -- but generally how that's how the controversy is mentioned in the many reliable sources about it. It's part of the larger picture. Noroton (talk) 15:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Again, I'm just describing it for the political campaign issue it is. That's not a POV. No, it is not essential to bang the drum on how bad the Weathermen were (not a very loud drum to bang, I should add) any more than it is essential to bang the drum on how Ayers is a perfectly respectable professor who has contributed much to society and is worth having contacts with. Nobody disputes that Ayers is a professor of considerable renown, that the Republican power structure in Chicago accepted him, etc. Facts have to be relevant to the subject, not put in for the sake of argument. We're not including the other side at all - the other side would be that McCain dropped bombs on innocent civilians and has been cozy with plenty of criminals. But that's not the issue here. The issue here is an anti-Obama campaign strategy. The strategy itself is very POV and anti-Obama. We can't report on it neutrally by giving it the deference of treating it as a legitimate issue - it is not, and most reliably sourced coverage says so. To report on it neutrally we simply describe it as a campaign strategy. Ayers being an education professor has nothing to do with the controversy? That's a new one. That's the reason Obama was on panels with him, and why Obama served on the board of the education charity he organized. The "larger picture" is, as you demonstrate by tying it to other scandals, one of attack politics. If we're going to say that the Ayers/Obama connection is brought to you by the same people who demonize Wright and Rezko, we ought to point out that it's the same group that say Obama is Muslim, his birth certificate forged, and the 9/11 attack was a cover-up.Wikidemon (talk) 15:34, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
it is not essential to bang the drum on how bad the Weathermen were Of course it's essential -- from WP:LEAD: The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources That the Weathermen were violent radicals is a large part of what this controversy is all about. The controversy is about how Obama should treat an unrepentant radical who was violent. If Ayers hadn't been a violent radical, there would be no controversy. When something is that essential, it needs to be in the lead. You say it's not essential to bang the drum on how bad the Weathermen were at the same time you bang the drum on how good Ayers is supposed to be. You know you're pushing a POV here. Ayers' "respectability", unlike the violent radicalism of the Weathermen, is in dispute, so you can't present that one side in the lead without presenting the fact that his "respectability" is one of the essential points in dispute. It's POV pushing. Ayers being an education professor has nothing to do with the controversy? How is his being a professor a part of the controversy? If he were a plumber, the controversy would be essentially the same as it is now. If Obama had worked with him on a campaign to improve plumbing instead of education, if Obama had sat on a board with him (no change at all, there), if Obama had sat on panels with him about home construction, nothing would change, and it has nothing to do with the campaign contribution or the meeting at Ayers house. So how is it that it's an essential part of the controversy that needs to be in the lead? The issue here is an anti-Obama campaign strategy. That's part of the dispute to be put lower down in the article as an assertion of one side. And "campaign strategy" is not what journalists are doing, unless you want to make a contrary-to-BLP attack on them. If you want to say that the Obama camp calls it a "campaign strategy", fine, but recognize that as a summary of one side and present it that way. And then make sure the other side is presented with equal prominence.
We can't report on it neutrally by giving it the deference of treating it as a legitimate issue You know that statement is contrary to WP:NPOV. Why don't you reconsider it. we ought to point out that it's the same group that say Obama is Muslim, his birth certificate forged, and the 9/11 attack was a cover-up -- You know that doesn't describe Stanley Kurtz, National Review, David Freddoso. You know that because I've given you the links in previous discussions. Your statement is not factually correct. This article isn't here for you to promote your POV, it's to present the facts as the sources give them. If you can't do that, please back away from the article. -- Noroton (talk) 19:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Let us be clear about this. Adding "radical, violent" is POV editing, and completely unnecessary. That's just another example (they are coming thick and fast now) of agenda-based editing, and it simply won't do. Furthermore, the "highly respected" line comes directly from the cited source ("Bill Ayers is very respected and prominent in Chicago as a civic activist."), and is not my POV at all. Finally, neither Rezko nor Wright are mentioned in the source at the point Noroton placed them, and this can only be an attempt to conflate the controversies to make that mountain I mentioned a little higher. Never has there been a clearer need for administrative action against this agenda-based editing. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:14, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Scjessey, you completely missed the point: It's POV to include it in the lead paragraph because that over-emphasizes it. It's perfectly OK to include it in the article. You're just POV pushing here to advance the interests of your candidate. We're supposed to be here to present the subject without favoring one POV over another. It isn't people who disagree with you doing "agenda-based editing" it's what you're doing here. It's part of your agenda to present the terrorist whose respectability is in question as an unquestioned respectable person. Simply because one source asserts something doesn't mean Wikipedia presents it that way, unchallenged, in the very top of the article. I didn't source the Rezko/Wright matter because it's so obvious I didn't think anybody would challenge it. Do you seriously think the three aren't mentioned together in a lot of commentary about this controversy? Do you honestly think that's not the case? You call "radical, violent" "POV editing" and yet it isn't even contested by Ayers or any Weatherman person. He calls himself a "communist" and a radical and all Weatherman people agree with that. So how is it POV? He calls it "violent" and all Weatherman people agree with that. Do you honestly question either word as accurate? Are you saying it isn't an important part of the controversy that they were violent and radical? I could also say "terrorist" and back that up with sources according to WP:TERRORIST. Maybe I should do that. Because it's an important part of the controversy, after all. You see, Scjessey, the top paragraph is meant to summarize the most important parts of the controversy. How do your edits do that? How is it that mine don't do that?
Here, take a look at what Wikipedia actually says you should actually be doing in putting together a WP:LEAD:
The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies that may exist. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources.
Your not following WP:STYLE as well as WP:NPOV. -- Noroton (talk) 18:49, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
You have to provide reliable sources for everything, and you have to adhere to a neutral point of view, however much it frustrates your increasingly apparent agenda:
  1. You shoehorned "radical, violent" (which is part of your campaign to make sure Ayers is branded as a terrorist) into the article without citation, for no other reason than to spread a negative point of view.
  2. You shoehorned Rezko and Wright (who have no connection with this matter) into the article without citation, for no other reason than to spread a negative point of view.
  3. You removed a sourced statement about Ayers' respectability (which restored at least some fairness and neutrality), for no other reason than it failed to support your negative point of view.
Now you are reduced to desperately shopping around for anything that will justify your agenda-based editing. WP:LEAD is just a guideline that is trumped by the policy you violated. Also you are assuming bad faith on my part, and making extraordinary and uncivil claims about how Obama is "[my] candidate" (when as you well know, I don't even have a vote in this election). -- Scjessey (talk) 19:29, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) You have to provide reliable sources for everything Well, only because you demanded it, I'll answer you with the reliably sourced facts (if the facts matter to you, you will either be able to answer this or agree with me, one or the other):

  • radical -- "I am a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist ... [Laughs] Maybe I'm the last communist who is willing to admit it. [Laughs] We have always been small 'c' communists in the sense that we were never in the [Communist] party and never Stalinists. The ethics of Communism still appeal to me." (Chepesiuk, Ron, "Sixties Radicals, Then and Now: Candid Conversations With Those Who Shaped the Era", McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers: Jefferson, North Carolina, 1995, "Chapter 5: Bill Ayers: Radical Educator", p. 102);
  • violent -- Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days, page 263: whenever there are guns and bombs, the line narrows between politics and terror, between rebellion and gangsterism. We were part of a movement, and then of a tendency toward armed struggle. We crossed the line and came back. -- Here's another source: The release of the ad, first reported on Time.com's "The Page", could have the unintended consequence of reminding voters that Obama has in the past been friendly with William Ayers, a Chicago law professor who to this day remains unrepentant about his work with the violent Weather Underground group in the 1960s and 70s. ("Strangely Timed Obama Response Ad on William Ayers", blog post, "Political Radar" blog, ABC News website, August 25, 2008, 5:20 p.m., accessed August 31, 2008)
  • Even better, terrorism -- "Their elite radicalism, their belief in themselves as the insurrectionary vanguard, shaped the ultimate conclusion: a frienzied overreach of protest which took the form of terrorism, a deliberate assault on persons and property. (Milton Cantor, The Divided Left: American Radicalism 1900-1975, Hill and Wang: New York, 1978, pp 215, ISBN 0809039079); The role of the Left was thus to align itself with the international revolution abroad by engaging in irregular warfare behind enemy lines, thereby undermining the overextended power of America's imperialistic war machine. OUt of this new strategy came the Weathermen, an underground guerrilla cadre who believed that the core of the "Red Army" could be built in the streets of America through te symbolic power of violence. This American verson of the nineteenth-century Russian narodniki (terrorists) staged its first encounter in Chicago in October 1969. Dressed in helmets and blue denims, trained in karate, the Weathermen went on a three-day "trashing" rampage [...] (Diggins, John Patrick, The Rise and Fall of the American Left, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1973 (original edition); W.W. Norton & Co. (revised edition), 1992, p 264) Now why is it WP:NPOV to advance your POV about Ayers being "respectable" because one source makes this disputed claim, but a violation of NPOV to say he and his group were radical and violent when no one disputes it and when it is a vital underlying fact of the controversy, without which there would be no controversy?
  • Ayers, Rezko, Wright
  1. Google search [40] (I just got 86,900 hits, so apparently somebody's talking about this in tandem, including ...
  2. Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist (April 25): Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those "Saturday Night Live" parodies were so devastatingly effective.) Then came the three amigos: Tony Rezko, the indicted fixer; Jeremiah Wright, the racist reverend; William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist.
  3. John Fund, Wall Street Journal, August 30: Team Obama has launched an offensive against WGN, the Chicago Tribune's radio station, for interviewing Stanley Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz is a conservative writer who this week forced the University of Illinois to finally open its records on Sen. Obama's association with William Ayers, the unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist. [...] "They're terrified of people poking around Obama's life," one reporter told Gabriel Sherman at the New Republic. "The whole Obama narrative is built around the narrative that Obama and [campaign strategist] David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it's not entirely true." The stakes are high. If the full story of Mr. Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright had been revealed before the Iowa caucus, he wouldn't have won. [...] Then there's the house that Mr. Obama bought in 2005 in cooperation with Tony Rezko, [...] All presidential candidates resist full examination of their records. But it should be the job of reporters not to accept noncooperation, stonewalling or intimidation when it comes to questions about fitness for the nation's highest office.
  4. John Dickerson, in Slate, August 21: But merely engaging in such a fight is also a threat to Obama's brand. He's the candidate of change, and this is politics as usual. Ayers, Rezko, and Wright were going to come out sooner or later, but now they've been fully unleashed. One thing is for sure: The game has gotten uglier, and it will likely stay that way.
  5. Ron Claiborne, ABC News, August 27: Sen. John McCain's campaign is preparing to step up its attacks on its Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, over alleged ties to controversial figures, from Chicago developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko to former radical William Ayers. [...] On another offensive, the McCain campaign also signaled that it may revive the issue of Obama's relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, [...]
  6. Steve Benen, CBS News opinion blog, August 25: "My hunch is this is going to end up being one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for one of the candidates, but it's Barack Obama," Halperin argued, adding, "I believe that this opened the door to not just Tony Rezko in that ad, but to bring up Reverend Wright, to bring up his relationship with Bill Ayers."
  7. Associated Press report, June 8: SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) Who's Tony Rezko? William Ayers? Few Americans know, but they probably will by Election Day. [...] Associations already have produced one crisis for Mr. Obama — the furor over the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his spiritual mentor.
  8. David Freddoso, National Review Online, August 18: By what criteria does a man choose his friends and associates and end up with the likes of Tony Rezko, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Ayers?
  9. Chicago Magazine, June 2008. Just look at the picture.

-- (forgot to sign -- this was added at 21:22, August 30, 2008) -- Noroton (talk) 00:26, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I plan to give this article a "Neutrality Disputed" tag unless statements like "professor of national reputation" (meaningless POV) and "very respected and prominent" (also meaningless POV) are removed from the lead. If you later want to say that some specific person feels this way it would be fine, but as it now stands this article blatantly violates POV and needs to be cleaned up.
If for some droll reason, you really want to remove "violent and radical" from the description of the Weathermen, then there needs to be a brief statement in the lead explaining that they were Marxists who went around blowing things up. Otherwise there is no point to calling this a "controversy" which it obviously is. (BTW, I don't believe this lack of neutrality is justified by coatracks, rutabagas or any other type of furniture, vegetables, or tired cliches.) Freedom Fan (talk) 21:42, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Noroton asked me to look at this dispute. I confess that, because I'm not all that interested, I've only skimmed the foregoing (no doubt brilliant) comments in this thread. My quick reaction is that the introductory section should not include a full-bore attack on the Weathermen, and that it also should not include the "respected and prominent" language. It should summarize, in NPOV fashion, the key dichotomy about Ayers: that in the 1970s he was closely involved with the Weathermen and was underground for some years, but that these days he is a comparatively humdrum professor. Part of the basis of the controversy is that different people emphasize one aspect or the other (depending, not surprisingly, on their political interests -- the Republicans who trumpet Ayers's past seem to have no trouble forgiving people like Elliott Abrams and Lewis Libby, who, unlike Ayers, are convicted criminals). The "respected and prominent" language is an inappropriate way to handle that in the introductory section because it adopts a conclusion. Finally, the stuff about Rezko and Wright has no place here. This is an article about the Ayers controversy, not a grab-bag of all the attacks that have been made on Obama.
This whole dispute illustrates why some restraint is needed in framing the introductory section. I've seen it happen more than once that edit wars erupt because people think that a particular point just has to be right up front to make sure the reader doesn't miss it. It's a problem that the NPOV principle doesn't fully address. JamesMLane t c 03:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


I support Wikidemon's reversion. Noroton doesn't seem to know when to stop when it comes to tweaking to amplify the controversy. Leading off the description of a living person (Ayers) with all the controversial things in his past, rather than his current status, is unacceptable. I can understand concerns about "respected and prominent", ect., in the lead, but they are sourced reliably, and most likely accurate. Just saying "he's a professor" is not enough, because there a lot of professors who are not respected and prominent. Ayers was serving on these boards for a reason. II | (t - c) 17:26, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


I support Noroton's reasoning. A Neutrality-In-Dispute tag has been added until editors can come to the table on this. We need to lose the glowing POV adjectives about Ayers like "respected and prominent" and "national repute" in the lead. Obviously a brief description of the Weathermen's philosopy and deeds needs to be up front in order to support the idea that there indeed is some sort of controversy (kinda the whole point of this article). This article currently appears to drip with cover up to gloss over this controversy. Freedom Fan (talk) 18:03, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
In case everyone forgot, the "respected and prominent" language is a direct quote from the source - not a POV edit. This entire article is designed to inflate the importance of a minuscule "controversy" pushed largely by desperate Republicans. Anything less than a straight description of events, rather than the scintillating exposé envisaged and advanced by Noroton, would be a gross misuse of Wikipedia. -- Scjessey (talk) 20:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
No one "forgot" anything. Lose the biased language in the lead. "Respected and prominent" is meaningless; it could apply to anyone depending upon the source. There are plenty of folks who respect Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Lenin. The current article is a gross misuse of Wikipedia. Moderation will be requested shortly. Your choice. Freedom Fan (talk) 02:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Best to not use the lead to buttress the argument on either side of the scandal - and we aren't here to make those arguments. For laying out who Ayers is and why Obama may have legitimate contacts it's worth noting (as most sources do) that Ayers is a professor and civil participant of considerable stature in the Chicago community (and thus, someone who most people in that community deal with). For laying out why the contacts are controversial it is worth noting that Ayers has a past involvement with a violent radical 60s organization that was involved in carrying out bombings, and that a number of people are upset with Ayers today and find his account for his past actions unsatisfactory. That's too much for the lead in my opinion, and we should not be endorsing those arguments, just laying out that they are the arguments being made on either side of the controversy. I have noticed that accusing Ayers of being a murderer or attempted murderer, or terrorist, directly or by repeating those claims here, goes beyond the limits for BLP and NPOV, and it adds almost nothing to the article's laying out of the controversy. Other stuff, like saying McCain has friends just as bad, are fairly tangential. Wikidemon (talk) 05:18, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, I propose the following simple, neutral lead in:
The controversy over an Obama–Ayers connection arose during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign regarding Presidential candidate Barack Obama's contacts with Bill Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground Organization. The Weather Underground was responsible for a series of bomb attacks on the Capital and Pentagon during the 1960s.
This explains right away why there is a controversy but saves details, such as Washington's opinion of Ayers, for later. Alternately, if you really want to go with the lead description from your source I would be fine with that:
Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are aging academics who planted bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon and other buildings to protest U.S. government policy.
Freedom Fan (talk) 06:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
That's not a "neutral" lead, because you are using it to detail the actions of the Weather Underground. These facts can be gleaned from Weather Underground. Furthermore, Ayers himself was not convicted of anything. Nor is there any proof that he planted bombs. So that final sentence, at the very least, introduces bias into the lead (although I concede you probably did not 'intend' to do that). -- Scjessey (talk) 13:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Good; we have progress. There is consensus on the first sentence. Implemented accordingly. Thanks. Freedom Fan (talk) 16:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

(unindent)Scjessey: Nor is there any proof that he planted bombs. Ayers has said multiple times that he planted bombs for Weather Underground. The proof has come from that organ between his tonsils and his mustache and from the same fingers that dealt with the bombs. Yet again, Scjessey, you make wild assertions without any basis in fact. At all. Do you actually know much about Ayers? -- Noroton (talk) 17:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I was just reverted by editor ImperfectlyInformed, who hasn't bothered to contribute to this discussion yet. So I restored the first sentence, but if indeed there is no consensus after all this effort, then we will need to proceed into dispute resolution. I will include in the complaint, the names of all who have participated here. Freedom Fan (talk) 18:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Use CTRL-F to find my above contribution, where I stated that I agreed with Wikidemon's reversion and my reasoning for keeping the "respected and prominent" language. Ayers was on these boards because he has a high reputation among the educated in Chicago. That is the reason he knows Barack Obama. If someone were to read the lead that you tried to put in, they might get the impression that Barack Obama is associated with the Weather Underground. Every mainstream article that we have on this issue makes it very clear that Ayers has a strong reputatio in Chicago. The sources we have for this are very good -- the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago's Mayor, and even the Politico. No good excuse for removing it has been presented. II | (t - c) 18:46, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Duly noted. My confusion was over the dual spelling of your nic. Mediation request is in progress. Thanks. Freedom Fan (talk) 18:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm not averse to summarizing Ayers' controversial past activities in the lead. Could we add:

Ayers has [unapologetically?] admitted to planting bombs [forty years ago?], but he was never convicted.

II | (t - c) 20:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
"40 years ago" sounds like it's emphasizing how long ago it was that he was committing terrorism. Just say "in the 1960s and 1970s". That he wasn't convicted had nothing to do with him other than that the Weather Underground was too secretive for the FBI to do much in cracking it and then messed up by violating the Constitutional rights of Weathermen and others, according to a judge. Since Ayers was working with the Cuban DGI (intelligence agency) at the time, FBI officials thought they could justify it through a national-security exemption, but judges disagreed and found it unconstitutional. So it isn't relevant to who Ayers is in relation to this article that he wasn't convicted. One thing that is very relevant is that he is unrepentant, as his critics often say. -- Noroton (talk) 00:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
What are your best sources for this stuff, again? Please list them succintly. II | (t - c) 00:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
No, this article is about a political dispute. One side says that the connections between Obama and Ayers are significant enough to call into question Obama's judgment. The other side says the connections are insignificant and do not call into question the that judgment. We should not use the lead to make each side's arguments. Specifically, the off-Wiki proponents of the controversy (universally or nearly universally Obama critics) say that Ayers and Obama's various connections are significant, and that it is perceived as improper to associate with someone like Ayers. In the process they disparage Ayers as a communist, murderer, "unrepentant terrorist", and whatever else, and deny the significance of Ayers academic and civic life. Those wishing to deflect the political dispute call it a smear of importance only to the election cycle, and argue that the contacts are minimal, fully explainable as the interaction of a local political leader like Obama with a civic participant and important professor like Ayers, and say that contacts with Ayers would not raise an alarm because Ayers was fully accepted as a member of the Chicago community. Something like that. If one wanted to make the lead a point-counterpoint one could mention that Ayers is controversial to some because he was involved in an organization that set bombs in the 60s and has not in their view satisfactorilly laid the issue to rest, but that he is uncontroversial to others as a respected member of Chicago civic scene and an education professor of national prominence. But adding POV on both sides does not reduce article POV, it increases POV. There is plenty of room in the article text to state each side's contentions within reason to the extent they are notable and can be said without BLP problems or turning this article into a coatrack. All of these points on both sides are opinions and are best described as opinions, rather than trying to prove as verifiable facts. The facts are fairly simple and not in much dispute - they're available in the Ayers and Weatherman articles and their sources. Wikidemon (talk) 06:32, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I think Wikidemon articulated the matter quite effectively. It would be gratifying if this was efficacious in convincing editors who seek to wedge their POV into the article, but I have my doubts. I will go further and suggest that this article violates WP:POVFORK (as well as WP:COATRACK) and should be deleted. Arjuna (talk) 08:41, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Just throwing out Wikipedia policy references does not represent any sort of meaningful argument, and does not contribute to the discussion. It comes as no surprise that certain editors want to characterize this topic as "Republican POV Bullshit" and rally to delete it. Failing that, they seek to deny there is any controversy or bury it in POV phrasing in the lead.
The first sentence still contains highly POV wording such as "mainstream" and "nationally-recognized". Neither of these terms even appear in the sources used to support them. Bias or sloppiness on some editor's part is apparent since "Nationally-renowned" refers to his educational program, not Ayers personally. Regardless, such highly POV adjectives do not belong in the opening description of this controversial article.
The fact that Ayers is an "unrepentant terrorist" is central to the controversy. You can make this characterization more neutral, but the facts are not in dispute. As already mentioned, your source itself in the second paragraph, matter-of-factly states:
"Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, [are] aging academics who planted bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon and other buildings to protest U.S. government policy."
The article is severely flawed with obvious POV, even as certain editors claim to favor neutral wording.
Why does the topic of the talk page not redirect to the mediation page? Freedom Fan (talk) 16:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

refusal to turn over documents

I might have missed it but there was some controversy because the minutes of the Ayers inspired/Obama board member educational initiative weren't handled appropriately. Documents at first were going to be made available for journalists/scholars and then, at the last minute, not so much. Is this already covered in the article? I didn't spot it. TMLutas (talk) 23:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Here's a source article TMLutas (talk) 23:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I see no reliable source to connect the release of the documents to any of the principals in the scandal. As I understand the party that initially refused was a university library, and they will be turning them over. That source seems to be old news Assuming the documents are released in due course this does not look like an issue at all. Am I missing something? Wikidemon (talk) 04:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

What this article should and should not be

What this article SHOULD be
  • A neutral account of how and why contact between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers became "controversial".
  • A note about how the matter was raised in a presidential debate.
  • An account of the Republican attempts to exploit the contact using political advertising.
  • A brief note about how some conservative authors have written about the contact in "attack" books.
  • How this has been received by the mainstream media.
  • Only reliable sources of the highest quality should be used.
What this article SHOULD NOT be
  • An account of why the contact is controversial (it is only controversial to one "side").
  • An exposé on the alleged misdeeds of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
  • Labeling Ayers as a "terrorist", or any other BLP-violating designation.
  • An echoing of coverage and rhetoric from blogs, be they liberal or conservative.
  • There should be no "scope creep" - cover the controversy, not the subjects (who have their own articles).

There is a tendency for editors to use non-neutral language to describe the subjects being discussed that is simply unacceptable. Controversies like this should be covered neutrally and dispassionately, with no suggestion of an opinion whatsoever. Unless we keep this article scrupulously neutral, it will essentially be a coatrack article. Because the whole premise of the "controversy" has been conceived by Republicans as a part of a strategy to win the 2008 election (I have previously referred to this less elaborately as "a bunch of Republican POV bullshit"), neutrality is difficult to achieve; nevertheless, it must be achieved or the article should be deleted per WP:COAT. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

An account of why the contact is controversial If you can't explain why, you aren't serving the reader. This kind of restriction would only serve the Obama campaign. Specifics should be proposed and discussed because it's possible that people would come to agreement over certain language and not other language. -- Noroton (talk) 15:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Incorrect. Please read the first point in the first section again:
A neutral account of how and why contact between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers became "controversial".
The important thing here is that this contact only "became" controversial earlier this year, when for years previously it received not a whiff of coverage. There is a significant difference between describing why it is controversial (non-neutral) and why it became controversial (neutral). -- Scjessey (talk) 15:41, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
An interesting premise, Scjessey; in an article about a controversy, you claim it is improper to describe what the controversy is about, but proper to state that there is no controversy, just "Republican POV bullshit". But apparently there indeed is a controversy since the Obama folks have filed criminal complaints about ads related to this association. It is hardly surprising that certain editors are desperate to delete the article and pretend there is no controversy. Why not just state the facts without the POV characterizations and let the Wikipedia readers decide? Freedom Fan (talk) 17:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Scjessey is right - the article is about a political controversy, not the underlying question as to the truth of one side's assertion that Obama has an improper relationship with Ayers. If it were the article would be deletable as a non-notable POV fork / coatrack and the conclusion, based on the weight of the sources would be that Obama does not have such a relationship. Also - to Freedom Fan, you know this article is on probation and that comment is over the top. Keep the comments about the article, not the editors.Wikidemon (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I have not seen anybody who claims that relationship was "improper" in the sense of raising ethical or legal questions. The Obama-Ayers relationship raises political questions about Obama's political views today. The that "the relationship was not improper is simply a red herring--Mikedelsol (talk) 17:17, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
"But apparently there indeed is a controversy since the Obama folks have filed criminal complaints about ads related to this association."
That is also wrong. The complaint related to the fact that ads paid for by the American Issue Project were in violation of laws governing incorporated 501c(4) groups. Specifically, paying for "express advocacy" in an election is a direct violation of the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (known rather ironically as the "McCain-Feingold Act") - they broke the law to attack Obama. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Of course Scjessey is correct - it became controversial this year because of Republican POV. A lot of it comes from Fox News, and that's about Roger Ailes's attempt to blackmail Obama into giving them more 'access': http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/10/wolff200810?currentPage=2 That's a very important part of the 'controversy'. Flatterworld (talk) 20:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
This discussion is becoming a waste of time. The article as FF wants it is clearly POV, but the whole article is a fork and a coatrack. Not to mention increasingly a disruption from more significant work that we could all be doing. Delete the article. Arjuna (talk) 20:36, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree that certain editors are being disruptive by insisting upon inserting highly POV adjectives into the lead, and pretending they are in compliance with Wikipedia policy. However, no one can seem to tell me what is wrong with my suggested lead sentence:
The controversy over an Obama–Ayers connection arose during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign regarding Presidential candidate Barack Obama's contacts with Bill Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground Organization.
Freedom Fan (talk) 06:11, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Ignoring all the discussion about editors and simply addressing the proposal. The first part needs to be reworded to "The Obama-Ayers controversy" to fit the recent rename. Other than that I have no problem at all with the proposed sentence above replacing the first four sentences of the current lead (up until "The matter was covered by news organizations...") and think it is an improvement for the reasons FF states (eliminates argumentation on both sides, the facts of which can be treated better in the body of the article). I'll let others say why they think we should have more detail in the lead.Wikidemon (talk) 07:19, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree. I'd also recommend dropping "organization" from the end of the sentence and changing "contacts" to "contact", giving you:
The Obama–Ayers controversy arose during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign regarding Presidential candidate Barack Obama's contact with Bill Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground.
-- Scjessey (talk) 10:52, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Done. Also removed POV tag and requested mediation be closed. Freedom Fan (talk) 16:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

RfC on Weathermen, Ayers, Dohrm, Obama, and "terrorism"

Please note that I have created an RfC to discuss the matter of whether, how, and where we should use and cover the designation "terrorist" describe the Weathermen and their former leaders - in which articles an dwhere in those articles. It is located here: Talk:Weatherman (organization)/Terrorism RfC. The intent is to decide as a content matter (and not as a behavioral issue regarding the editors involved) how to deal with this question. Thank you. Wikidemon (talk) 20:14, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

DID ANYONE READ THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON OBAMA AND EDUCATION AND THE CAC, THAT MENTIONED THE CONTROVERSY CONCERNING BARACK OBAMA AND WILLIAM AYERS? DOES ANYONE READ THE NEW YORK TIMES ANYMORE? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/us/politics/10educate.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.20.213.47 (talk) 08:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Hope to paraphrase

a few choice bits from out of the following segment from Bill O'Reilly's interview of Barack Obama -- for contribution it to this article, when I get around to it:

[...Y]ou've been hyping, Bill, pretty good.
Not that much. You know, you were on the Woods Foundation.
Well, but here's the bottom line.
Yes.
This guy did something despicable 40 years ago.
You know, he did something despicable last week. He said he didn't do enough bombings. That's last week.
I haven't seen the guy in a year-and-a-half. But…
But you know who he was. He's on the Woods Foundation board. You know he…
Let me finish my point, all right? Here's a guy who does something despicable when I'm 8 years old.
OK.
All right? I come to Chicago. He's working with Mayor Richard Daley, not known to be a radical. So, he and I know each other as a consequence of work he's doing on education. That is not an endorsement of his views. That's not…
Yes, but you guys partnered up on a youth crime bill. Do you remember that?
And it was a good bill.
No, it wasn't. That bill said that if a youth commits a second violent felony, he does time in an adult prison. That's two shots. You said no. You know the Southside of Chicago. You know how many people are hurt.
Listen, you're absolutely right. My community gets hit by crime more than…
And I'm right on that bill. You were wrong on that bill.
Well, I disagree with you on that bill. We're getting too far afield here.
That's important though. You and Ayers were allied on that bill.
No, no. Look, he didn't write that bill.
No, he was supporting it, and so were you.
Well…
But you guys were together on it.
Hold on a second. Now we're getting…
All right. If that's unfair, I'm sorry.
That's pretty flimsy. Here's the point, right? This guy is not part of my campaign. He's not some adviser of mine. He is somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know. The problem that your viewers, your guys that — your folks, the folks you champion, the problem you're going through, the problems they're going through with trying to pay their bills, trying to keep their job, trying to move up in this world, their problem isn't Bill Ayers. It was Bill Ayers 40 years ago when he was blowing stuff up.
They want a president who they can identify with.
They want a president…
Who they can identify with.
And they should be able to identify with me because my story is your story. My story is your story.
But your associations are not my associations.
But…
MoveOn, "General Betray Us," the Daily Kos.
I was offended by that.
Come on.
And I said I was offended by it.
But you said good things about them. You showed up to the Kos convention.
But look…
You don't get worse than these.
Hold on a second. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff said on Fox about me that is completely…
Correct the record.
...Biased. Well, but I still don't mind coming on your show. Just because there are a whole bunch of things that may be said on this network that I completely disagree with, I don't sort of assume that you have to take responsibility for everything that is said on Fox News, any more than I would expect you to take responsibility for everything that's said on Daily Kos. Think about it.
That's a hateful thing.
No.
Fox News is not hateful.
They're…
Oh, it isn't. Some of those — some of our commentators…
If you were watching Sean Hannity consistently…
He's a commentator though.
Well, but that's all these bloggers are. I'm not making excuses for them. Listen, they…
No, Hannity's never said he wants…
They've gone…
...Dick Cheney to die of cancer.
Hold on, hold on a second. Hold on a second. All I'm saying is these guys, they've given me a hard time. You know one of the times they gave me a hard time?
They're raising a ton of money for you.
You know one of the times they gave me a hard time? Was when I went to campaign for Joe Lieberman. Now, Joe didn't mention that in his speech the other night.
Then they gave you a hard time about voting for the…
The Fisa.
...The Fisa thing.
Exactly. So it's not — all I'm saying is I expect to be held responsible for the things I say and do. And one of the things that's happened in this campaign, and I think that you have the power to help correct the record on this, is not to put me in a position where every tangential relationship…
It isn't. There's a pattern of behavior here.
No, there is not a pattern of behavior. It is guilt — it is classic guilt by association.
The pattern of behavior is that you feel very comfortable, for some reason, in far-left precincts. That's the pattern of behavior that I see.
But Bill, I've got friends who are on the far right.
Who?
They're — I've got colleagues in the Senate.
Who? Give me a name.
Well, no, no, no.
I always do that.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry.
But here's what happens is if I give a name, then people — then the next thing I know is people will say they're comparing this friend of his to Bill Ayers.
You know what I wanted to hear? I go golfing with Rush Limbaugh. That's what I wanted to hear there.

  Justmeherenow (  ) 06:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there a point to this? Do we really need to clog the talk page with the text of an interview when a link would do the job just as effectively? Also, are you proposing a change to the article or just trying to remind talk page readers how much of an oafish sleazebag Bill O'Reilly is? -- Scjessey (talk) 13:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
  1. People could provide general public opinion, and those of journalists and scholars about some public figure's beliefs and rationales, but when these can be supplemented by actual responses to to journalistic commentators' inquiries by the public figure hi/rself, this can be invaluable.
  2. The very reason Barack is going to whump Mac in the debates and win in Novemeber, Jcjessey, is because, for one thing, Barack calmly respects and gives his interlocutors well-thought-out and reasonable answers, whereas Mac gets petulant. (Incidentally, O'Reilly moreso fits the attitude shown towards those he debates that would be shown by Mac than would be shown by Barack --- uh, ironically, Scjessey (when we observe, for example, the attitude you've just now shown my editing proposal here!))   Justmeherenow (  ) 16:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
But you haven't actually proposed anything. When I need to "dump" information in order to organize my thoughts for future proposals/edits, I use my sandbox. -- Scjessey (talk) 16:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
It's not that many words by the way. It just seems so, because of the new paragraphing every few words, everytime Bill O'Reilly rudely interupts Barack. Anyway, I apparently mistakenly thought others might also propose elements to highlight or edit from the exchange for paraphrased coverage. (But if you insist, I'll create a Talk subpage for it.)   Justmeherenow (  ) 17:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
The most we could reasonably say about it is that O'Reilly brought the matter up again in an interview of Obama. O'Reilly is not a reliable source and his various partisan statements are not notable by himself. So his taking up the issue yet again does not rise above that of any other conservative blogger, pundit, editorialist, etc. And to put it more gently than Scjessey, O'Reilly's conservative bias and confrontational approach are nothing new and have little to do with the subject, so comments about that are better explored via a link to his own biography. The only thing that makes this special at all is that it came up in the context of Obama being a guest on O'Reilly's show. However, nothing in O'Reilly's bluster or Obama's attempt to explain raises any issues that are not already in the article.Wikidemon (talk) 17:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Meet and greet vs Fundraiser

I changed the line referring to the meet and greet as "some call a fundraiser". The source text cited calls it a fundraiser. Meet and greet is a term of art in political fund-raising which means a type of fundraiser. Funds were raised at the event. It was clearly a fundraiser and it isn't clear to me what support there is for any other description. Wellspring (talk) 13:13, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Several other sources describe the event at Ayers' home as a meet-and-greet, or as a political meeting at which Obama was introduced. The source immediately after the statement is about McCain's political attacks and does not seem particularly careful in its description of the meeting. Does anyone recall if there are authoritative neutral sources more directly on the point that say whether the event was primarily a fundraiser and, if so, whether it was for Obama as the article now asserts? Wikidemon (talk) 17:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
As a follow-up, this source[41] addresses the point more head-on, and does say that it was a campaign event for Obama. So that part is fine. It does not say directly that it was a fundraiser. Wikidemon (talk) 17:47, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Based on reading lots of articles about this meeting, it seems pretty clear it was a typical meet and greet. Donations are welcomed, but not required. What most people think of as a straight 'fundraiser' is the requirement to buy a ticket to attend. (All politicians always welcome donations, but that doesn't make each and every one of their appearances a 'fundraiser'.) So, I prefer the 'meet and greet' description as it's more accurate. Flatterworld (talk) 19:27, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Well as I pointed out, this is a particular term used by campaign fundraisers to describe a particular kind of meeting which is primarily a fund-raising event. However, the current language is fine IMO (where we simply call it a meet and greet and let the reader decide). I was mostly trying to eliminate the "some would call" weasel words that were creeping in. Wellspring (talk) 22:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Terrorists - plural

Palin's quote is 'palling around with terrorists'. This is a plural statement. Who apart from Ayers would she be referring to? 203.196.81.139 (talk) 14:39, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

She was either being sloppy or further misleading in her talking point, or referring to Bill Ayers' wife Bernadine Dohrn. The campaign failed to respond to at least one news organization that asked the question directly, but she later started using the singular.[42] Wikidemon (talk) 15:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
The WS Journal's James Taranto: "...Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of 'palling around' with terrorists -- a reference to his longstanding friendship and professional association with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn...."[43]   Justmeherenow (  ) 00:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Stanley Kurtz on Obama-Ayers

Stanley Kurtz has an interesting op-ed article at the Wall Street Journal, "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools" that should be summarized and included in our article. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 00:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

As an op-ed it is not a reliable source. It is not an appropriate external link. Wikidemon (talk) 00:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Its relibale for Kurtz's opinion, not unrelaibel for the article. Secondly, Kurtz has written several non-opinion articles on Obama hearts Ayers [redacted].[44] CENSEI (talk) 00:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Here's a straight news report re Stanley Kurtz on Obama-Ayers:

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/08/26/newly-released-documents-highlight-obamas-relationship-with-ayers/ --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

For now, I've added a much more reliable quote and link to clarify the ooh!ooh! Kurtz quote. On a related point, Kurtz did not write an editorial as you footnoted it. You are libeling the WDJ by claiming so. If you honestly don't know the meaning of a word (although you did state 'op-ed' above so that seems unlikely, please don't throw it in in an attempt to mislead our readers into thinking Kurtz represents the editorial board of the WSJ. We are an encylopedia, not a sleazy tabloid purposely playing games with the facts. Flatterworld (talk) 02:31, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Another editor has removed the Kurtz quote that Flatterworld mentions above. The quote is from the section of our article devoted to "Reactions to the controversy", which are all opinions, and the quote is impeccably sourced, so I'm uncertain what the objection is. Here's the paragraph in question:

Stanley Kurtz, a conservative commentator and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, examined the University of Illinois at Chicago records for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) for the period in the 1990s when both Obama and Ayers were employed there, and reported his findings and opinions in the Wall Street Journal in late September 2008. "The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association," Kurtz wrote. "Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle." Source: "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools", Wall Street Journal, 9-23-08

We can certainly tinker with the wording, but I don't think there's any question that this is a notable "Reaction to the controversy". Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Parking citations below that may be useful as background

  1. The Politico Newspaper's Ben Smith: "Top Obama advisors tell CNN that, when they first met in the mid-1990s, Obama didn't know of Bill Ayers' radical past."[45]   Justmeherenow (  ) 01:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  2. Chicago Sun-Times (October 7, 2008) "When did Obama know about Ayers terrorist background? My search for Ayers and Dohrn" by Lynn Sweet   Justmeherenow (  ) 21:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
  3. Obama (interviewed by Michael Smerconish): "Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated."
    (Also: Smerconish's Oct. 9 Philly Daily News opinion piece)   Justmeherenow (  ) 03:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

"chosen successor" claim.

Is there a reliable source that supports the claim that "Alice Palmer introduced Obama as her chosen successor" at Ayers' house? Rather than get into a revert war with an editor that keeps re-adding it without explanation, I've just tagged it as unreferenced but if an adequate cite can't be provided, it should be removed immediately. --Loonymonkey (talk) 19:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Obama knowing of Ayers past

Please include information about Barack Obama and his knowledge of Ayers past. This is crucial information that I did not see in the article. 192.231.40.3 (talk) 22:45, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

You got a source for that claim? Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 22:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I think everyone knew of Ayers' past; the whole thing got massive press coverage in the 1970s and he's been a public figure ever since. It's not as though revealing Obama knew of his past casts some kind of implication upon him. --Saforrest (talk) 17:01, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
The question is how many of the caterwaulers had any idea who William Ayers was or what he was part of in the 70s. As for how much Obama might have known about Ayers from visiting his living room on a political junket or sitting on a community education foundation board, I doubt William Ayers introduces himself with "Hi, I'm Bill, I used to be a domestic terrorist", for numerous reasons. Me, I'm waiting for the revelation that Ayers is secretly a gay Arab Muslim. - Keith D. Tyler 19:26, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

My edits to this article were reverted. User: Grsz11 revoted the new section section about a political add about the Obama–Ayers controversy. The ad got tons of publicity in the media. I also added this article to his temple [46] It was also reverted. Please note that Template:John_McCain includes the notorious Lobbyist controversy, February 2008. Lets discuses it here. --Megapen (talk) 20:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I adjusted your edit as it was placed at the front of the article, before the history and background of the connection is made, and it was lengthy and needed to be condensed per WP:WEIGHT. thanks, --guyzero | talk 22:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Journalists

I have changed the lead so that the New York Times and Factcheck.org are no longer refered to as "journalists." I am sorry, but you can't take two articles from 2 publications and pretend that the subject has been settled among all journalists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.228.90.93 (talk) 15:34, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I corrected two typos in the changes 74.228.90.93 made. The changes seemed reasonable otherwise. Flatterworld (talk) 16:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
There are two more issues. First, the reliable journalists in general who have looked into the matter overwhelmingly say there was no close relationship - there were two representative examples, but the CNN piece cited just before reports a number of others and makes a general statement. Second, by changing the "matter" to the "relationship' near the end, the revision makes wikipedia endorse the pro-controversy side of the debate, i.e. that there something cognizable as a relationship between the two. The article does not presuppose that there is a relationship, but rather covers attempts by some to claim there was, and that it was improper. Any language that presupposes that the two are connected in a meaningful way is a bias on one side of the controversy. Wikidemon (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the above comments by Wikidemon. Factchect.org is not correct - the citation is CNN. The lead should state: the vast majority of journalists... (or news organizations), but 'journalists' is fine. IP75 75.31.209.188 (talk) 17:59, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I would like to see a number of journalists before allowing the term "majority" to be used. I don't really care about the relationship at all, but to say "journalists" either agree or disagree with the connection by using only two sources puts too much weight on the NYT and CNN. As for the word "relationship" being bias, I can hardly agree. Obama himself admits to at least a friendly connection with Ayers, and the contraversy seems to be about the extent of the connection, not whether or not there is one.74.228.90.93 (talk) 18:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)mrathel
In addition to CNN and the New York Times, "publications, including The Washington Post, Time, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship." This is a partial list. IP 75 (talk) 19:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, I reserve that kind of language for the talk page. On the article page it's better to simply use the plural and leave any judgment on whether it's a "majority", "vast", "overwhelming", etc., for people to decide for themselves. Those words are slippery and subject to interpretation, and even if we could get it right they're argumentative. We can simply say that journalists. (or "some", "many", "at least several", or something neutral). Simply adding "among others" would work.Wikidemon (talk) 19:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Agree, when I restored the lead earlier, I just used the plural 'journalists' IP75 (talk) 19:59, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I have removed the "however" from the begining of that sentence and per the above discussion, I would go with "some" journalists. without that, it reads that all journalists have found this. --Tom 20:14, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The sentence in the lead: 'Investigations by the New York Times, CNN, and other newspapers' is not accurate because CNN is not a newspapers. Perhaps, 'and other media outlets' or 'and other news organizations' IP75 (talk) 23:59, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I fixed that at your suggestion. I called them "news outlets" (no particular reason to use that word, it just sounded right because it puts the emphasis on the publication of the claims rather than the organization behind the publication). Wikidemon (talk) 00:24, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Guyzero's edit to 'news organizations' is upon reflection, the best choice. It is the most commonly used with over 35 million google results. IP75 (talk) 00:56, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense. Have a good weekend, all. Eat real butter, ok? Wikidemon (talk) 01:17, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
  • There's a nice discussion of the current fad for "fact-checking" as thinly-disguised editorials at "The 'Fact Checking' Fad" and "More Fact-Check Follies, both by James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal. --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
    Good point. Just because it says "fact check" does not make it any more reliable, and not necessarily more neutral, than anything else in the newspaper. CNN, for example, is getting quite breezy with its "Check the facts!" mini-articles. In their case I don't think its motivated by bias, but the pressure to churn out seemingly official fact checks probably means they are cutting corners, being sloppy, and a little over-eager to find fault. Hard-hitting journalism is a real let-down and loses viewers if the conclusion is that there's nothing to see.Wikidemon (talk) 23:21, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

semi

How is an article on a topic this controversial and high-attention not semi'd? - Keith D. Tyler 18:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Letter to the Editor

I corrected the date & cite on this latest "Reaction to the controversy", but I wonder if a letter to the editor really has enough WP:Weight to stay in our article here? Comments? --Pete Tillman (talk) 02:52, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

The person who wrote the letter is notable and very relevant to the controversy. The fact that it was in a letter to the NY Times is not so relevant, and could be removed, which I've done. ~ priyanath talk 02:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I think it needs at least a date, and all the other items here state their source upfront. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:22, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks - I've added the date back and mention the source again. Interestingly, the Bill Ayers article quotes him in a Letter to the Editor to the New York Times. In both cases it's the author that's important and notable, though the publisher (New York Times) certainly makes it reliable. ~ priyanath talk 23:15, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

A Chicago reaction

I'm not sure this column has enough heft for our article, but it's an interesting counterpoint to Mayor Daley's praise for Prof. Ayers. Possible quote: "Obama says he was 8 years old when the bombs went off. But he was a grown man when he sought Ayers' political blessing, and when they worked on the same education projects." Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:22, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

We can't use the quote in the article because the piece an op-ed by a right-wing soapboxer. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 23:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
The "Reactions" section is all opinions. I don't think you're being fair to Kass -- per our article his main focus is on political corruption. His piece has since been picked up by the WSJ as "Notable and Quotable", but I'm still not sure it's encyclopedic. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 18:55, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Propose title - Bill Ayers election contoversy

1. The controversy began as a result of Obama’s candidacy and the political context is the main focus of the article. The controversy was created due to political motivations in the Democratic primary and has been a centerpiece of the McCain campaign in the general election. This is an election controvery.
2. It has been noted by another editor that, "There is no relationship between Obama and Ayers. A title, or premise, that assumes as much has a fatal POV problem. The subject of this article is a political controversy over allegations of a relationship."
3. WP naming conventions/guidelines suggests titles that are commonly known or referred to. 'Obama-Ayers controversy' is not how the public or media refers to it and most people would search for the information using 'Bill Ayers'.
4. A review of articles of other presidential scandals/controversies show they are titled by their known name or the name of the other party and not preceded by the name of the president/candidate: Whitewater controversy, Lewinsky scandal, Watergate scandal, Iran-Contra affair, Jeremiah Wright controversy.
I propose that the article be moved back to it's original name: Bill Ayers election controversy. IP75 (talk) 01:13, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I support the move. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Done, moved the page to Bill Ayers presidential election controversy. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:25, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Bill Ayers presidential election controversy as title

Bill Ayers is not the one who is a presidential nominee. This is not a controvesry about Bill Ayers running for President, but about the connection between Bill Ayers and candidate Barack Obama. We seem to be losing that in its entirety with this new title. Alansohn (talk) 01:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

The Watergate controversy is not about the Watergate hotel, nor is the Jeremiah Wright controversy about Jeremiah Wright, or the Monica Lewinsky Controversy about Monica Lewinsky. The title has to be an NPOV title that most people search for. People don't search for Richard Nixon spying in the Watergate Hotel controversy, or Bill Clinton's Sexual Promiscuity Controversy, and people don't search for Obama-Ayers controversy. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:56, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if Bill Ayers has reached Watergate level or even to the Lewinsky point. The fact that "presidential election" is still needed in the title should raise a flag about the completeness of the title. Alansohn (talk) 02:04, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
What does whether or not the controversy has "reached Watergate level" have to do with the title? We should have a POV title because it isn't as notable as maybe something else? Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 02:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

The move was awfully bold but I support it. The controversy is entirely a child of the US Presidential election (and primaries before), and has played out entirely as an election issue. So it makes sense to add "presidential election" to the title. Whereas the notability of the subject fell in several areas before - in a primary debate, among conservative British bloggers, in the US blogosphere - the adoption of this issue by the McCain campaign and the GOP at a national level means that the overriding importance of the event is that it is a partisan criticism of Obama. Nearly all sources mention it in that context. I'm neutral as to whether calling it the "Bill Ayers" controversy is the best thing to do though. I don't know if there's a good solution. Using his name is a bit of a BLP concern, and the focus of the controversy is Obama, not Ayers. I do agree that a title linking Obama and Ayers has fatal POV issues. Perhaps there is no ideal title.Wikidemon (talk) 02:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

So consensus isn't Wikipedian any more?! This is a disgrace. This article has been hit over and over and over again with sleazy attempts to raise its 'hit count', and this is just one more. I expect we currently have more than a dozen REDIRECTS, created only to try to lure search engines here - after digging around to try to find some other article that has some sort of similar name to use as an excuse for changing it yet again. As someone has already pointed out, this title only fits an article about Bill Ayers running for President himself. Once again Wikipedia is being made a laughingstock. You must be very proud. Flatterworld (talk) 13:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
It's not quite as bad as that (there are currently 7 redirects), but I agree that there should have been a proper discussion before choosing this title. Personally, I think this article should severely trimmed and merged into guilt by association, as part of a subsection on its use in political campaigns generally. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:59, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Flatterworld, it is unseemly to change the title on ten minutes (!) notice, with one other editor for "consensus". I preferred the earlier title, fwtw. At least it was shorter. But, as Wikidemon mentioned, there may not be a perfect title. The present one will have to be changed again after the election.--Pete Tillman (talk) 17:20, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
The controversy has existed solely in the presidential election, and is about Bill Ayers. You cannot deny it. To say Obama-Ayers controversy says that there is more than a passing connexion between Obama and Ayers and so is a violation of policy. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 19:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Obama and Ayers worked together for a number of years at two Chicago foundations -- this is a matter of record. The present controversy is about what this tells us about Obama's character and influences. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:52, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that the point of this article is to cast guilt by association on Obama? Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 20:57, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
That is a complete overstatement of their involvement. They saw each other for perhaps a dozen times over a period of years, ostensibly to discuss school reform. This says more about the rehabilitation of Ayers that about anything negative for Obama. -- Scjessey (talk) 20:54, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
What does what this tell us about the 'character and influences' of conservatives who funded the CAC project or were board members on the foundations? Absolutely nothing other then guilt by association. IP75 (talk) 22:04, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Please stop WP:SOAPBOXing, everyone. The page is for discussing edits to an article describing the controversy, not arguing the controversy. See WP:TALK, first paragraph, sentence in boldface. -- Noroton (talk) 23:59, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Discussion of editor behavior

closing as disruptive - Wikidemon (talk) 02:00, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
please note AN/I discussion of this thread here. - Wikidemon (talk) 02:42, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

How many times are we going to change the name of this article? Eric the Red 2 is acting disruptive by changing the name without consensus. It's more important to have a stable name than to be changing it every few months and confusing people, although, frankly, it's a relatively small issue. At this point, count me as favoring the former name, "Obama-Ayers controversy", since Obama was the one primarily being criticized, not Ayers. Ayers is perpetually controversial, so "Obama-Ayers controversy" helps remove possible confusion in the future about just which aspect of his controversial past. Eric shouldn't make a high-handed edit that looks biased. -- Noroton (talk) 23:53, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Per Obama article probation please concentrate on the article and not the editors. It was a bold edit for sure. Let's see what consensus is. Thanks, Wikidemon (talk) 23:58, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Please see Flatterworld's comment. The one with the boldface that you had to scroll past to get to mine. Since you're in an ongoing conflict with me, Wikidemon, rather than seek out ways to unnecessarily criticize me, which might leave you open to charges of taunting, and if repeated, to charges of harassment, try to avoid low-level sniping per Obama article probation, please. And I've got a question for you on your talk page. [47] Please answer it. -- Noroton (talk) 00:10, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
I have no conflict with you unless you choose to make one. Please redact the off-topic combativeness, and avoid starting arguments with other editors. Thanks, Wikidemon (talk) 00:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Please stop transparently attempting to continue your conflict with me. Also, you still haven't responded to my constructive comment on your talk page. Please direct your efforts to constructive goals. Please avoid starting arguments with other editors. Particularly when you've had extensive conflicts with them in the past. Thanks, Noroton (talk) 01:42, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
An editor requested a change. It fitted with policy so I was bold and made it. I didn't change the name against consensus, I would never make any action against consensus. I merely made a suggested edit that complied perfectly with policy. I do not appreciate you calling me disruptive. Wikipedia's death will come when improving the encyclopedia requires consensus before it happens. Ayers has never been controversial before Obama's presidential election opponents brought him up. To say that the title is too broad is ridiculous. What other presidential election controversy has involved Bill Ayers? Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 00:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
The article name was changed previously by a consensus. See previous discussions Talk:Bill Ayers presidential election controversy#Retitle? (June 2008) and Talk:Bill Ayers presidential election controversy#(July 2008). That last resulted in a consensus of Curious Bystander, Wikidemo, Flatterworld and Justmeherenow. Since there was a consensus just a few months ago, don't make further bold changes without a new consensus because the matter can be considered controversial. I'm sorry you don't like my saying you were "being disruptive". I don't know if it helps, but I crossed out that phrase, although I think if we're going to try to prevent unnecessary conflict, you should avoid acting like a bull in a china closet on an article you know is controversial. I didn't mind the previous change much and I don't mind this one much, but readers and editors are badly served when we switch names back and forth within months. Ayers has never been controversial before Obama's presidential election. Erik, Ayers' entire public life was controversial until he became a professor, when he remained controversial for his past Weatherman activities. He was extremely controversial when his book came out. Rather than make statements about Ayers that show you must know very little about his past, and which simply distract other editors here, please read up on him. Please. Read through the archives of Ayers' own blog, or read the articles linked on the Bill Ayers article page. You could also look at the many articles linked on this talk page and the Ayers talk page, or the Weatherman talk page or the Weatherman RfC page. You will find controversy almost everywhere you look. As I think about it, you're right, it doesn't look like there will be confusion if anyone looks at the title of the article. Calling my comment "ridiculous" is a violation of WP:CIV, so why don't you stop doing that if we're going to be punctilious, as per Wikidemon's reference to Obama article probation. -- Noroton (talk) 01:42, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
He wasn't controversial, he was quite uncontroversialy considered a radical and an outlaw. Don't quote WP:CIV at me when you are calling me ignorant. I'm actually commenting on your argument rather than on you. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:59, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
I didn't use the word "ignorant". Review WP:CIV: Judgmental tone in [...] talk-page posts ("that's the stupidest thing I've ever seen") You also cited WP:BOLD, but that guideline cautions you against doing just what you did see (Wikipedia:Be bold#...but be careful). If you know anything about the controversy surrounding Ayers' book in 2001 you wouldn't call him in any sense "uncontroversial". Controversy about Ayers was also sparked by a Weatherman movie a few years later. -- Noroton (talk) 02:12, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Reverting Wikidemon's closure of an ongoing discussion on the article topic. This constitutes Wikidemon's third act of harassment. -- Noroton (talk) 02:12, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Ayers Response?

Does anyone know if Ayers himself has responded to this controversy? If so, I would think that would naturally be included in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lockwood Like (talk • contribs) 17:01, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

IB he's been asked to comment a number of times, and to my knowledge has not yet made any public comment. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 17:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a good point that should be in the article:
Ayers has declined repeated requests for interviews. This week, he opened his front door a crack to tell an Associated Press reporter, "I'm not talking, thanks."
--Bellandi, Deanna, "In Chicago, ex-radical better known as a scholar", article, Associated Press, October 17, 2008, retrieved same day
-- Noroton (talk) 02:16, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Copyedit "William Ayers" para

I edited out a clause re the Weathermen's bombs causing no deaths or injuries, because a) they killed 3 of their own people in a premature bomb explosion, and b) that bomb was intended for mass-murder. See [48]: "The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder is mere incompetence. I don't know what sort of defense that is." --Pete Tillman (talk) 17:43, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

  • Added a cite, removed an uncited statement. However, the original editor was probably trying to paraphrase the third sentence quoted from this WAPO article:
    "Their pasts have hardly escaped Ayers and Dohrn. After Sept. 11, 2001, alumni at the universities where the two teach protested their presence and said the couple were unrepentant. Ayers is an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Dohrn is a law professor at Northwestern University.
    "Yet among politicians and activists in Chicago, what happened in the 1960s has long been overshadowed by what colleagues consider their mainstream liberal good works."
Someone else may want to try again (I failed). Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:40, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • While i understand another colleague's undo (summarizing in part "citation had been moved by another editor") of that removal (and appreciate their supplying the cite i requested), i suspect that checking (in the history) the juxtaposition of the clause in question with the rest would suggest bad faith. In any case, the connection "though" between discussing one type of community of educational institutions (alumni) and "colleagues" (another type of such community, viz. "fellow faculty members", the sense that should be inferred that context, in contrast to its clear meaning in the source, which says
Yet among politicians and activists in Chicago, what happened in the 1960s has long been overshadowed by what colleagues consider their mainstream liberal good works.
(I'm not sure i should have cited SYNTH as an objection; i don't understand that provision to be directed against juxtaposing straightforward two facts that are examples of contrary phenomena, and certainly its primary thrust is closer to juxtaposition of facts in an order that implies an unstated line of argument.)
--Jerzy•t 23:42, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • As to "deaths or injuries", i think parsing here what constitutes a valid "defense" is off-topic; it's clearly a fact that most people feel a lot more emotion about actual than (even barely) hypothetical, and this is reflected in long-standing law by the charge of "attempted homicide".
    But that discussion make me ask (maybe bcz i'm confused) "what about the police car?" There's been a significant amount of discussion that i understood as assuming the fatal bomb under a police car, that i believe someone did time for, was WU-associated. I haven't checked our related articles, believing others have done so, but i think the lack of reference to it, in the context of the car-less list, is a problem.
    --Jerzy•t 23:42, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Perhaps also off-topic here, but presumably relevant at least in related articles:
    • Chronology is much discussed outside WP: Ayers & Dohrn on 5-member body, town house explosion, Ayers & Dohrn out, armored-car-guard murder(s?) (and hail of bullets killing presumably ordinary cops presumably restrained by caution toward what most likely would be another of the many innocent motorists they had been questioning); where does the cop car come in that chronology?
      --Jerzy•t 23:42, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
      • In the course of looking for dates for the chrono refactor (in the two bios, Days of Rage, and Weatherman (organization)), i find that the town house was much earlier than i imagined (early '71), A&D out apparently not disclosed, but late '70s; armored car much later ('81 or '82 IIRC). And the "cop car" was a misdescription of a building bombing, quite earlier on, but (like the judge's son's recent "my house" grudge) not claimed by WU and not otherwise definitively attributed to them.
        --Jerzy•t 12:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
    • And it seems to me a mistake (in the talk-page point above in this section, that i questioned on other grounds) to adopt (only tacitly, rather than acknowledging the choice) the felony murder model from criminal law. (Any outrage against Patty Hearst's not being more harshly charged must have been a fringe phenomenon, since i can't clearly recall it. I don't recall if there were others than the SLA who died, but wasn't she engaged in a conspiracy to murder any police who responded to the bank robberies or showed up at the house with a warrant?) In that light, much individual responsibility cannot be established by what "WU did", especially since it was potentially a highly compartmentalized organization, and the absence of anything else comparable to the supposedly planned USO bombing must reflect either loss of nerve or cells choosing their own rules.
      --Jerzy•t 23:42, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand what exactly the proposed article language is that is being discussed here. Will someone please spell this out in simple terms for me? Is there a diff in the edit history for the article where the language was taken out? I looked and didn't find it. Thanks. -- Noroton (talk) 00:16, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Clearing up one point Jerzy makes at 23:42: much individual responsibility cannot be established by what "WU did", especially since it was potentially a highly compartmentalized organization Actually, the "Weather Bureau", later called the "Central Committee", on which both Ayers and Dohrn sat, was set up to approve any actions by individual "focals" (cells), according to various sources (I can provide multiple references if anyone wants to see them). For instance, Mark Rudd, a member of that committee, said he knew about the planned Fort Dix bombing of an officer's dance, even though he wasn't a member of the cell that was planning it. -- Noroton (talk) 01:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
  • That is very interesting and helpful, and also (let's call it) a provocative -- uh -- counterpoint to "his speculation that Diana Oughton died trying to stop the Greenwich Village bomb makers", found at Bill_Ayers#Fugitive_Days:_A_Memoir. (I never hoped to have this "clear[ed] up", and i find it surrealistic to weigh the word of someone (Rudd) who confesses to advance knowledge of a mass-murder plot, against someone (Ayers) with a theory of truth apparently similar to that of the Million Little Pieces author. But thanks for adding a bit of clarity.)
    --Jerzy•t 12:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
  • In case you were asking about what your indentation indicates, namely
clause re the Weathermen's bombs causing no deaths or injuries
i found the clause in about 30 seconds by looking at the editor's immediately preceding contribution. Otherwise, it's possible that i confused you by
  1. commenting about the language used on this talk page (what some editors call "here"), in contrast to the more usual comments about a talk page's accompanying article (what some editors -- probably some of the aforementioned editors -- call "here"), and/or
  2. twice (as i occasionally do, especially on long edits) forgetting that avoiding using "here" in its literal sense takes a lot more concentration than avoiding using it figuratively. If that doesn't solve your problem, please be a tad more specific.
--Jerzy•t 12:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Refactoring of the section

In a single edit, i reworded the core of one sentence's predicate (finding it unencyclopedically metaphorical) and changed the adverbial phrase's head from "due to" to "citing" (since what makes people do something is never a verifiable fact, but it's common to take them at their word about it, and of interest even if they lack insight or are lying). I also fact-tagged it, at least in part since an author might have instead have put in their own opinion without regard to any self-reports of motivation, and i'm pretty sure also bcz i was already aware of the earliest criticism i had then (and have yet) found sign of: the alumni flak following 9/11 and mentioned in the W'n Post "Former '60s Radical..." piece (where, in the course of the same long edit, i learned that another main clause in the section needed to be moved). A colleague responded by supplied a reference, and summarizing in part

the ref is clear from the last sentence, which expands on the same point.

Well. I'm not anxious to get into a habit of lecturing on this talk page, but:

  1. I lost some time following up the supposition that "clear" implied "right next to it" and that "last" was meant in the sense of "most recently preceding". Having admitted that i considered that possibility, it's important to say that footnotes go after what they verify. (Never regard a fact as adequately verified by a footnote that precedes it.) And they apply to syntactic units, or to contiguous and logically related units larger than a sentence: a footnote can occasionally apply to a word or a phrase, much more often to a major clause or a whole sentence, sometimes a paragraph. It can probably happen that a whole paragraph is better ref'd by a two or three footnotes, each supporting most of the 'graph, than by repeating a different combination of 1 to 3 at the end of each sentence. (Avoid when feasible using a single footnote or cluster of footnote for facts in two or more separate syntactic units unless they constitute the whole of a unit at a higher syntactic level. Even in exceptional cases, never cover with the same footnote or cluster multiple syntactic units, unless the footnote(s) is/are at the end of the last of those units and no other footnote(s) apply to any part of any of those units.) But the article ref'd by the preceding footnote doesn't hint at the question at hand, let alone seem like something adequate but slightly inferior to the ref actually saved. (BTW, if those principles pinch, don't forget that most paragraphs can be rewritten by refactoring clauses and phrases into different sentences expressing the same ideas, so there's a good chance you can use that to reduce duplicate footnotes without impairing the content.)
  2. Having ruled out a combination of two wretched footnoting practices, i went on to perhaps the only worse one, by trying out another construction of "last": "the last among the succeeding sentences...". (I didn't seriously consider the possibilities of completing that with "... in the article, much less "in the section enclosing this subsection.) On that hypothesis, i looked for something in the Post article, initially ruling out
    After Sept. 11, 2001, alumni at the universities where the two teach protested their presence and said the couple were unrepentant.
    and searched on for something not already covered elsewhere in that section of our article. Rereading the summary, there it is: "expands on the same point". Well, "expands on the same point" is pretentious when the point is expressible in a sentence with 17 words beyond establish time relative to a date. But there it is. And yes, it desperately needs the footnote as it stands (as one of the principles i stated makes clear in abstract form). As it stood before i added that fact tag, it risked sending readers off to the text (apparently not available on-line!) of "Outlaws of America"; i think the unlikelihood that its author covered the post-surrender careers was what first drew my attention to the clause i fact-tagged. Immediately below this contrib, i'll touch on at least one other reason for it.
    --Jerzy•t 12:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't care whether it happened bcz of a desire to hammer on the point or just from the chaotic structure of the section in question, but i think deriving 17 words in one sentence, and 16 in another, from the same 17 in a source is obscenely inefficient. Humans are story-listeners, and if a section about a person doesn't work well as a chronological narrative, almost always the best thing to do is find the minimal tweaks to the narrative version that will fix it. (And when new material needs to be added, start over from the new chronological refactoring -- at least mentally, but in the form of a grammatical chronological text if it's not obvious how to make the tweaks based on the imagined one.)
In this case, the duplication disappears, along with the hazard of suggesting something we have no verification of: any impact on their reputation, before the primaries, based on their VN-era actions, as distinct from the unquantified post-9/11 reaction to the combination of those actions with the perception of lack of repentance.
--Jerzy•t 12:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Changing the part about and other news organizations concluded that Obama does not have a close relationship with Ayers

Both of the sources are unreliable, I think it should say something along the line of "The relationship between Obama and Ayers went deeper, ran longer and was more political than Obama and his surrogates have revealed" That is taken almost word for word from the this cnn article, which, unlike the current one is not a blog. [49] I have some other sources from fox, abc and other news organizations that say about the same thing. Any thoughts? Xrxty (talk) 01:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The sources you call "unreliable" are The New York Times and a CNN Fact Check article (not a blog, in spite of what the URL says). You are already at 6 Reverts at this point, so another attempt to change the lead will result in you being blocked. Better to discuss, be patient, and see what other editors say. From everything that I've read, the current phrasing is generally accurate to what the majority of mainstream newspapers have reported. Also please note that so far, five different editors have reverted your attempted change—which is a very strong statement about current consensus.~ priyanath talk 02:12, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
The New York Times piece is crucial[50] because it is the report that Palin was waving around in her famous "palling around with terrorists" speeches, despite it's saying quite the opposite. The CNN piece is an important part of the puzzle because it states directly that Palin's claim about what was in the New York Times piece did not reflect what was actually in the piece. Were we to make that argument directly from the NYT piece it would be using that piece as a primary source as to what it says, and possibly synthesis. The CNN piece also mentions that other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, "debunked" that there was a close relationship. That too is important because if we simply held those reports up against the statements from the McCain camp, GOP, and bloggers, it would be a SYNTH/primary source problem for us to claim that journalists had discounted the relationship. As it is, we have a reliable source that states directly that journalists have debunked the claims. The CNN piece is part of a string of pieces backed by the full editorial machinery of CNN. If you search any snippet from the article you will find that much of the text has been re-used and repurposed across many different websites, articles, and article updates, under different headlines. CNN sometimes does not write a single article so much as builds an ongoing story. That's why the additional CNN article Xrxty proposes is somewhat strange. It uses some of the repurposed text but, after a string of CNN "fact check" articles, seems to come to the opposite conclusion. In fact, of all of the reliable sources on the subject this is a single outlier, in suggesting that Obama is hiding something. But if you read more closely, it does not say that there was a close or improper relationship either, only that Obama did not admit the entirety of it - a very different point, which may or may not belong in the article but certainly does not belong in the lead as a summary of what the controversy is all about. I think the latter CNN article is sloppy and is editorializing, as has been discussed elsewhere. Among other things, calling Ayers "unrepentant" is odd because it mimics the specific talking points of one side of the debate. All it goes to show is that confronted with a controversy, Obama downplayed it.Wikidemon (talk) 02:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Even the New York times article suggests that Obama has downplayed his past relationship with Ayers. I think that it should be noted somewhere. I don't think that this article is currently NPOV. Sorry for causing trouble in the past, I am no longer trolling. Also there are some very obvious factual errors in the article which should be noticeable by anyone who has read through the whole article. Can I fix those? 72.192.216.42 (talk) 15:26, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
"I don't think that this article is currently NPOV"
I agree - it is still heavily biased against Obama and Ayers. I still think the whole article should be deleted, but my AFD a while back was dismissed. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:48, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I think it is biased for Obama. If you can use The New Yorker and The New Republic as reliable sources I should be able to use Fox and CNN to support the statement that Obama had a closer relationship than he had let on, as my newer CNN source says, which has been confirmed to be more reliable than the current ones on #wikipedia IRC channel and #en-wikipedia IRC channel. I think that statement should be reworded to include the new sources side in order to keep npov. 72.192.216.42 (talk) 20:24, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
What's with this IRC chennel stuff? That's totally irrelevant. Flatterworld (talk) 21:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
The article itself is a bit of a COATRACK, in that it is about an anti-Obama campaign tactic that has little or no substance behind it. As soon as we use the article to try to establish a significant connection between Ayers and Obama, that Obama did anything wrong, or even that there is a legitimate question about it, it tends to endorse the anti-Obama side of the controversy. The controversy is all about smearing Obama with the taint of being a terrorist sympathizer, via guilt by association. The more we even talk about it, the more we further the aims of those who are trying to smear Obama. However, this campaign tactic is itself notable, and can be legitimately covered in the encyclopedia, so we are better off doing it, carefully. Pointing out that nearly all major publications looking into the matter have concluded there is no close association is not POV, it is reporting the WP:WEIGHT of the sources (and some direct statements to that regard). The newer CNN source is of course past the threshold of reliability, we don't need any IRC chat to prove that. However, it is problematic because it seems to be editorializing, and it contradicts some other things. Nevertheless, it can be well sourced that Obama has sought to downplay his interactions with Ayers. That in itself is either marginally notable or not notable at all. This article is about a controversy over Obama's alleged connections to Ayers, not a controversy over Obama downplaying the controversy - that would be an over-the-top coatrack. Whenever there is a political controversy, by definition one side is claiming something in a big way and another side is downplaying or denying the claim. Downplaying disparaging claims is not any evidence that they are true. Regarding sourcing, it is not the name of the publisher that establishes reliability. It is whether the specific piece, by a particular author, when published in a given publication under the circumstances of its publication, fairly verifies the particular piece of article content it is supposed to support, given its context and use in the article. Each gets evaluated on its own. Wikidemon (talk) 21:40, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I feel that the New York Times source is also editorializing. I don't understand why in the opening paragraph it says that Obama and Ayers do not have a close relationship. I do not see the need for that. Nobody in their right mind could possibly think that Obama and Ayers are currently friends, in my opinion that sentence is irrelevant and should be removed or replaced with either "that Obama did not have a close relationship with Ayers" or somewhat of the opposite(which I think is more verifiable). I don't think the controversy stems from their current relationship but from their past and is what should be addressed. Xrxty / 72.192.216.42 (talk) 00:37, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Obama and Ayers don't have a close relationship and it is relevant. I agree that nobody in their right mind could think that they are close friends, but Sarah Palin thinks they are, as explained in the article ('palling around' = 'friends'). So that point is central to the article. The vast majority of reliable mainstream sources supports the lack of close relationship, as explained in the article, and as Wikidemon explains above. Note that this article is covered by WP:BLP, which is one of the most important and non-negotiable guidelines on Wikipedia. It includes "Biographies of living persons must be written conservatively, with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid paper; it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives." ~ priyanath talk 02:44, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

how it came to be - the board

This article should mention some cited facts about how Obama and Ayers came to be on the board together. Because the people who are against Obama cite often that they worked closely together, an overstatement, and the people that support Obama basically excuse/avoid any interaction with Ayers. Because remember, we have to keep Wikipedia neutral and accurate - and sourced. WP:NPOV It seems important to mention how Obama came to be on the board, who invited him, or hired him, etc. and how Ayers came on the board. People against Obama, for example, don't seem to understand, or care, that Obama didn't hire Ayers to be on this board. And of course Obama himself did not create the board, so he was also hired/invited. If it sounds like I'm trying to help Obama on wikipedia, it's not the case - though I am fond of him. But for Wikipedia's sake, my point is that this article is missing that information that in my opinion is notable under WP:Notability - if not but for simply completeness. ~ GoldenGoose100 (talk) 05:44, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone have a good source for this? I don't recall ever reading about that issue. Wikidemon (talk) 05:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Are you talking about the Woods board or the Annenberg board? Flatterworld (talk) 14:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I suppose both. I'm just saying that it's important for the facts from neutral reliable sources to be on here. ~ GoldenGoose100 (talk) 22:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've just removed the entire external links section. All four links were a clear misuse of the section - partisan links (from both sides) that did not add any useful external resource. Since this is, essentially, a manufactured controversy, the only external links should really be in the references and footnotes. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The "fightthesmears.com" link is the only one that is potentially valid, because it is notable in its own right as something to examine in connection with the dispute, and presumably contains content that we could not reproduce here in the article for various reasons. If there were a specific anti-Obama attack site that figured prominently and was not a blatant BLP / copyvio then the same argument could be made there. Wikidemon (talk) 19:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I added the two campaign links to the References section for the reason Wikidemon gave, and I think Scjessey was cricizing the section, but those links? Are we supposed to have separate References and Footnotes sections? I've seen that in other articles. Flatterworld (talk) 21:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it's a good idea to have unreferenced "references". Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 23:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
There really is no point in any of those links, including those that point to the "fight the smears" site. They are only of value as references for something in the text, not as standalone references for nothing in particular. If nothing else, they would act as a magnet for links to opposing view sites that are equally irrelevant (which is exactly what happened here). -- Scjessey (talk) 02:19, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Tillman, as I said that's something other articles do for major sources. If you have a problem with that, you may want to take it up at a higher level within Wikipedia. Scjessey, they're now actual footnotes. Quite honestly, adding the relevant text and changing the references to footnotes is something you could have done yourself if it bothered you so much, instead of deleting them and then starting this 'read my mind' game. It's November 1st and you're doubtless aware the election is in a few days and everyone's temper is short. Clearly this is not the time to remove major relevant links based on your personal preference or whim of exactly how they should be included. Flatterworld (talk) 13:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Interviews

Ayers is now talking to the press after the election. Someone should add that he has stated that his relationship with Obama is distant ([51], [52]). Khoikhoi 21:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Also: [53]. Khoikhoi 23:54, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Original source of 'controversy'

I think it's clear that the most 'shocking' claims are bsed on clips from the NYT interview back in 2001. I noticed most of what I had added earlier about Ayers's counter-claims has been removed, which of course is showing a POV against Ayers in this controversy. If we're going to give space to quotes from the NYT reporter, we can certainly include Ayers's response in other than a mild, short 'summary'. Accuracy counts in Wikipedia. Flatterworld (talk) 20:13, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Response to Ayers' NYT piece

I posted the following to the "Ayers Reponse" section this AM (context):

Feminist critic Katha Pollitt has strongly criticized Ayers' December 2008 New York Times opinion piece as a "sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left." She further criticizes Ayers and his Weathermen cohorts for making "the antiwar movement look like the enemy of ordinary people" in the Vietnam War era. [7]

Wikidemon reverted, commenting: "Can we talk about this? I don't see the relevance to this article, and it is an unreliable source without any weight established, just one commentator's reaction."

Pollitt is a notable, respected commentator, and certainly a reliable source for her own views. You don't think Ayers should be rebutted? Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

To start, the edit in question is in the wrong section, "Ayers' response" and also in the wrong article. If we really ought to included this here we would need another section like "other responses" but then we would need more than one personal opinion in there and that should be the debate here. Just "slapping" some edit (in good faith) somewhere in the article is the wrong approach and just doesn't do it. As a final thought, it would belong in Ayers bio article (and with some more context), not here.--The Magnificent Clean-keeper (talk) 21:16, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
You're right, this is better placed in the main article, in a more balanced treatment. So I've put up a proposal there. See what you think. Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 23:56, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for moving this topic to the main article. It's always good (and nice) to get some agreement.--The Magnificent Clean-keeper (talk) 00:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, yes, I think it fits there. Wikidemon (talk) 00:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Correction to First Paragraph Under "William Ayers"

There is an error in "Bill Ayers Election Controversy". The untrue statement is, "The group intentionally chose its targets to avoid human injury." Larry Grathwohl, undercover FBI agent sais that Ayers for anti-personnel effect had fence staples included in a bomb for a Detroit police station. This is consistent with nails in the bomb that accidentally killed Ayers's girlfriend, Diana Oughton, in NYC. 76.177.225.181 (talk) 04:11, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

You might start by providing a credible source for this claim, O anonymous editor whose subsequent edits (starting with this one) have been signed "Antiayers". -- Hoary (talk) 06:00, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Distinguished Professor

In this edit, somebody changes "Distinguished Professor" (so capitalized) to "professor".

"Distinguished Professor" is a title. Ayers is a Distinguished Professor. I'm therefore about to revert the edit. -- Hoary (talk) 01:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

  1. ^ Warren, Maria You Don't Need a Weatherman... Musings & Migraines, April 20, 2008
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Scheiber was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference bddm418 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Mike Dorning and Rick Pearson, Daley: Don't tar Obama for Ayers The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference ChicagoEd was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-25-ayers_N.htm?csp=34
  7. ^ "Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again", by Katha Pollitt in The Nation, 12/08/2008
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