Talk:Dave Pine

Neutral Tone and Verifiability.

Sirfneew and Krunk9,

Thanks for contributing to the Dave Pine article on April 22, 2010 with your many edits - it's great to get some help with this article. I missed several relevant facts - for example Dave Pine's self-financing and his mailed campaign materials. Thanks for adding these.

I realized after re-reading the article with your edits that I'd originally written it with an excessively positive tone in favor of Dave Pine. I removed a few statements that could be construed as non-neutral that I'd written, especially regarding somewhat irrelevant information on the tech companies Dave Pine worked for.

However, I thought that a few of your edits were of a negative tone, and so I removed these. I think that with our edits together now we've got an article that complies with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policy.

Unfortunately, many of the statements you added were either un-referenced or referenced unreliable sources (blogs in this case). I removed these to comply with the Wikipedia's Verifiability policy.

Pophuerna (talk) 08:49, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Sirfneew,

Since we've both reverted each other's edits a couple of times now, it's clear we disagree about what should be included in the Dave Pine article. In order to avoid an edit war, let's discuss our disagreements. Below is a list of those edits of yours that I disagree with - please comment on them so we can come to a consensus.

Introduction:

• "He spent $760,000 of his personal fortune in an unsuccessful bid to represent California's 19th State Assembly district in 2002..." Although this is true and reliably sourced, it doesn't make sense to include in the introduction of the article. The introduction should simply be a brief summary of Dave Pine's life. This particular campaign contribution is already included in the "2002 State Assembly Election" section as "His campaign was mostly self-financed (he contributed more than $762,000 to his campaign).", and is more appropriate to be included there since it's a detail of that specific election.

Infobox:

• Occupation described as "Retired Corporate Lawyer and School Board Member". I reverted this to "School Board Member" because "Retired Corporate Lawyer" is not an occupation. "School Board Member" is Pine's current occupation.

Education:

• Fenwick & West was described as a "corporate law firm". I reverted this to "law firm" because Fenwick & West practices not only corporate law; their practice areas also include intellectual property, litigation, and tax law.

Corporate Law Career / Silicon Valley Tech Career:

• I reverted the name of this section to "Silicon Valley Tech Career" because, as noted above, Pine did not practice only corporate law but several types of law, but also because it describes his career in a more understandable manner: he worked in the Silicon Valley tech industry. The fact that Pine worked as a lawyer is already noted several times in the article.
• "Pine remains a major investor in Chevron, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Cigna, and United Health Group, among other companies." This is unreferenced - it could be completely false. I doubt Pine is a "major investor" anyway. I would define "major investor" as owning a significant percentage these companies. If in fact Pine is an investor at all in these companies, I'm guessing he owns very tiny percentages of them (as these are huge companies). If he only owns tiny percentages, he's a "minor investor", just like hundreds of millions of other people, so it's not a very relevant fact.

Public Service - Redwood City

• "From the beginning of his corporate law career, Pine was interested in running for office." Seems like the wrong introduction to a paragraph describing unelected Redwood City commission positions he held. Also no reference. How do we know what Pine's interests were at the beginning of his corporate law career in 1985? If true, we should include it as the first sentence of the "2002 State Assembly Election" section.

Public Service - 2002 State Assembly Election

• "Pine, who was relatively unknown to voters at the time, made waves by pouring more than $762,000 of his own money into his campaign." I moved this fact later in the section to the paragraph where other facts of the campaign's funding are described. Do you agree it makes more sense there?
• "Despite outspending each of his opponents, Pine finished a distant 3rd place with just 19% of the vote." The total amount spent by each of the candidates in this election isn't stated or referenced. A "distant" 3rd place, with "just" 19% of the vote has a negative tone. I thought it was better to say "Pine finished 3rd place in the Democratic primary with 7,815 votes (19% of the total)." - that way it has a neutral tone and includes all the referenced facts.
• "This comes out to roughly $98 spent per vote received." Unreferenced, because the total amount spent by Pine is unreferenced.

Burlingame and San Mateo School Boards

• "After Handspring was re-acquired by Palm, Inc in 2003, Pine had amassed sufficient wealth to leave the corporate law industry and make another run for political office." Was desire to run for political office Pine's motivation to leave private industry? How do we know this? Also implies that a great deal of wealth is required to run for the Burlingame School District Board. Is this accurate? What do most candidates for this office spend on their campaigns? Did Pine in fact spend any money on this election? How do we know? We should either reference these things, or just say something like "Pine left the tech industry and was elected to the Burlingame School District Board."
• "He ran unopposed for a seat on the Burlingame School District Board..." May well be true and I agree that would be a relevant fact. How do we reference it?

2011 County Supervisor Election - Funding

• Dave_Pine_House_Party.png caption: "Dave Pine enthralls voters in Menlo Park." Sounds subjective and unencyclopedic. The voters in this photo certainly do not appear to be enthralled! To me, they actually appear to be the opposite of enthralled, rather calm and relaxed. But why describe the photo with subjective emotions at all? Why not use the simple description "Dave Pine at an election house party in Menlo Park." as the caption?
• I think that "Of this, he contributed $200,000 himself." sounds more neutral than "However, $200,000 was a personal contribution from himself." A minor issue though.
• "As of April 16, 2011, Pine had spent $324,000 including accrued expenses, mostly on campaign staff and consultants." The reference used here only states that Pine spent "about a third of his war chest" as of April 4, 2011 not $324,000 as of April 16. But I know what you're trying to say - that Pine spent a lot of money on the election. The best reference I could find to express this idea stated that Pine "spent $216,434" in the period from March 20, 2011 to April 16, 2011 (from the San Mateo County Daily Journal). I added this reference to the article.
• "Pine has since given $95,000 more to his campaign." I could not find any reference to this. Pine did give significant amounts to his campaign, but not since April 16, 2011. This idea was already expressed by noting with Dave's $200,000 personal contribution a couple of sentences earlier.

2011 County Supervisor Election - Mailings to voters

• "...usually a sign of a candidate trailing in the polls." Has a negative tone and is subjective. If there were polls showing Pine trailing in the election, that would interesting and relevant, but I can't find even a single poll conducted for this election.
• "Although Pine is a Democrat, he sent out another mailer to Republican voters, showing prominent Republican supporters." Unreliable reference to support this statement (a personal blog). I could not find any reliable source (newspaper or news site) describing the contents of Dave Pine's mailers.

Sirfneew,

On April 25, 2011 you reverted all of my above edits without any explanation why. My edits were intended to make the article comply with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View (NPOV) and Verifiability policies. In some cases I tried to incorporate material that you yourself added to the article and correct the details of references that you added, but you undid these edits as well.

It doesn't appear to me that you're making a good faith effort to help create a neutral, verifiable, high-quality article about Dave Pine. Every single one of your edits appears to be an intentional attempt to create a negative bias against Dave Pine. Please explain if this is not the case.

Pophuerna (talk) 08:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Pophuerna (talk) 21:32, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted because...content and citations in the article look to easily raise the subject above the minimal level for inclusion past WP:GNG --Off2riorob (talk) 11:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe that this page should be deleted because Dave Pine is not notable. He is a candidate for local office and none of his opponents have Wikipedia pages. It is clear that this article was created only to promote Dave Pine's candidacy, not to inform voters about the election or San Mateo County politics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirfneew (talk • contribs) 17:58, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• Dave Pine is notable as a former New Hampshire State Representative. (He passes WP:POLITICIAN.) The article is poorly written, but that should be fixed through editing. • Gene93k (talk) 13:35, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The New Hampshire House of Representatives is a volunteer, part-time body with one representative for every 3,000 residents. It is about as notable as being a Councilmember of a small town. Very few New Hampshire State Representatives have Wikipedia pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirfneew (talk • contribs) 22:36, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

This Wikipedia page was created to give credibility to a candidate running for office. It does not meet an objective standard for publication on wikipedia because the subject of the article is not well known and has no significant accomplishments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krunk9 (talk • contribs) 19:11, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks good to go to me if you don't like it take it to WP:AFD - its funny but the more partisan attackers want to delete the article as an uninvolved British wikipedia editor the more I want to support it and keep it. Off2riorob (talk) 23:28, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Mailings section

I removed this since it seems pretty non notable and the material didn't match with the citation. There was also a dead link. Was this covered anywhere else? Thanks, --Threeafterthree (talk) 04:03, 1 May 2011 (UTC)