Talk:Common Sense Party of California

Updating this page after the November 2024 elections in the USA

It is "common sense" to me that a diversification beyond communicating via Silicon Valley controlled Facebook, Instagram and X is to be recommended, and it was apparent, thusly checking for an update here, that this site had become out of date in a number of respects. It also looks as though the main website of Common Sense Party of California is itself similarly out of date, but I cannot be sure of that and anyway have no grounds for -or at least no authority for- any revising there. It was, however possible to gather updating info online for this Wikipedia page, which I have applied today in the following ways:

1. Reviewing the Wikipedia guidelines for the maintenance issues ("promotional content," "neutrality" and "primary sources"), confirmed my initial impressions that none of them legimately apply. They may have applied in the past (I did not try to comb through prior revisions to check that) but not longer did as of today. I thus removed all three.

In particular, I did not see anything that looked like "promotion," except possibly for some citation of the policy platform which were quite informational, and neutral not promotional, but could have been better worded to make that even clearer. No primary sources were in sight, except again for the limited and (generally) quite appropriate reference to the Party website. I also reworded text, and diversified sources, to reduce even that limited potential impression of a problem.

2. Somewhat more serious attention was required to locate new accessible documenting newspaper and internet sources, and to provide direct quotes of relevant portions of the party website giving examples of specific positions and indicating when they were "potential" policy preferences rather than firmly held.

3. I did not uncover much information as to what became of the early 2023 joint registration arrangement with the Forward Party. Clearly that deal is no longer very active, if at all. "Absence of proof isn't proof of absence" (if that's correctly formulated and relevant here: I guess maybe yes), but I could at least demarcate the silence after about April of last year.

4. In the process of doing the above, I also found it reasonable to update the registration data and apparently now mostly parallel but separate trajectories of Common Sense and Forward, and to add clarity and more specific examples of functional and "platform" issues.

5. Only just before posting my updates did I notice the "sidebar" at the top of THIS page, e.g. to the "nominiated for deletion" and "Speedy keep" discussion, much of which I could not fully follow, and did not seem to be expected to. However, re the comment about "one of the references even implies possible fraud, which is conveniently left out of the article": I did spot the oddly placed footnote in question, citing the 2020 KPBS story or investigation. I did not attempt to add text specifically related to it, for two reasons: (a) While I have little doubt that the episode of unauthorized blanks-filling is of relevance to the back history of Common Sense, and probably has something to do with it not reaching the 66 or 73 of 75 thousand validated signatures, even four years after Quentin Kopp assumed that would happen, "at the latest!" (see my newly added footnote #2). (b) My mission was to update the site for the future, not flesh out the historical background (unless that back history is critically relevant to that future). Which it might, indeed, be! But: I was not able to readily trace the mystery of the rogue registration (if that's what it was) forward beyond 2020, for any quick determination one way or the other. What I DID do was to rewrite the text preceeding the footnote, to indicate -though not stress with maximum directness- that Common Sense Party of California was founded five years ago, Step 1 was to get the minimum signatures needed for full registration, and that the CSPC has basically not yet gotten past, or apparently even completed Step 1. Readers and editors better informed than I may well expand or augment or debate from this, and rightly so. I would be a little surprised if this chapter is sufficiently expandable to cover the "whole story," but (again), and as a historian by semi-profession, I am not going beyond what the sources indicate, at least not now. Especially since my main interest here (for now anyway) was to try to add depth and clarity to the current status and future outlook.

A couple of personal background details: Born and raised in California, I've been registered to vote, and off and on actively involved in grass root politics there, for close to 5 decades. At multiple (different!) times in past, I've been registered with both major parties, but more often (lately) more sympathetic to the independent and unaffiliated category, and especially in public-interest oriented new reform parties (such as Common Sense and Forward today).

I am not in the habit of checking Wikipedia regularly, but can look here from time to time (and also at my rarely used Wikipedia "user page") for comments or corrections. Drewkeeling (talk) 06:31, 11 November 2024 (UTC)