Talk:Tara McGowan

Career beginnings

60 minutes as a start? Tinybirdie (talk) 06:10, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

That's the earliest job mentioned in any WP:RS. It seems that before that she may have been an independent filmmaker, but there isn't much material on that in any reliable source I've been able to find. But if you find evidence of a job she had before that, do of course add it in. - Astrophobe (talk) 16:09, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Separate page for ACRONYM

While there's heavy editing on this page due to increased media attention, it's probably best for me to explicitly note my intention to soon split material from this BLP into a separate article on ACRONYM. I think general notability suggests that ACRONYM deserves its own page, and it's not quite right for a BLP to be full of criticisms and compliments that are given to the subject's company, not to the subject themselves. If nobody does this first, and supposing that there's no outright lack of consensus, I intend to do this as soon as I have time, probably tomorrow. - Astrophobe (talk) 17:48, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I support this. She and her company are not the same thing. Some of the info in the ACRONYM section should be kept on this page under her career though. Cookieo131 (talk) 19:52, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

@Cookieo131: thanks for the feedback! The move of significant material to ACRONYM (Non-profit) (which someone else started in the meanwhile) is complete. If you (or anyone else reading this) has a moment, I'd really appreciate a second eye to make sure that I didn't leave any obvious gaps and that all the writing still makes sense. But I'm a whole lot more comfortable with where things stand now. Honestly I think with the huge volume of editing yesterday we were edging dangerously close to a truly unfair BLP, and the current pages look much better. - Astrophobe (talk) 16:29, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Shadow, Inc.

I don't think that a fair MOS:LEAD for this article should include mention of Shadow, Inc. I think that is recency bias to current coverage, while meanwhile the subject has received sustained coverage from a variety of WP:RS for years. I think it is completely fair to mention in the body of the article, but right now it really sticks out in the lead, any any mention of that event in the body has to be very carefully WP:NPOV per WP:BLPSTYLE. However, I have already removed it once and it was placed there again by a different editor, so I'm going to step back and raise this here instead in the hopes of a WP:CONSENSUS. - Astrophobe (talk) 16:31, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

A brief mention that McGowan in late January 2020 claimed ACRONYM is the sole investor in Shadow, Inc., is not out of place. She did brag about it, after all. Per The New Yorker: "last week, McGowan said on her podcast that Acronym was Shadow’s “sole investor.”" XavierItzm (talk) 10:44, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this, not sure how I overlooked it on my watchlist. The problem is not mentioning it in the article, like I said above I have no problem with that -- the problem I have is that the lead of a Wikipedia article is supposed to be a summary of the article's most important contents per MOS:LEAD. Right now the only mention of Shadow is in the lead, so nothing about Shadow is being summarised at all. Once there is a fair description of it in the body, then the lead can either mention it or not, placing due weight on that portion of the article as a summary of the article's contents should. I simply haven't yet found the time to try writing that into the body, and evidently nobody else has either, so for now it's sticking out glaringly in the lead. - Astrophobe (talk) 18:05, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Capitalize ACRONYM

Because that's what this political entity calls itself and because of MOS:TMRULES, which says that initialisms such as IKEA or IBM should be capitalized. Undebatable. XavierItzm (talk) 10:52, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Although I was the one who changed it from Acronym to ACRONYM, unfortunately I'm not sure that it is a real acronym or initialism. ACRONYM does not actually stand for anything, which by definition does not really qualify it as one. I believe that the name has been chosen as a sort of a joke, and stylized as if it is a real acronym although it is not one. MOS:TMRULES says that IKEA should be capitalized, but as per IKEA, it is short for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd, and IBM is short for International Business Machines (Corporation). However, MOS:TMRULES says that we should also write Time not TIME, and Sony not SONY, as these are not initialisms but rather styled in all caps. I think that Acronym unfortunately falls into the latter category, although the implicit suggestion in Acronym's own name that it is an acronym might mean that there is some nuance here, but really I don't think that the irony of it should sway us against convention. Cookieo131 (talk) 17:49, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I completely agree, I haven't seen any evidence that it's actually an acronym or initialism, it's just a stylization. Also if nothing else it needs to match the page Acronym (political organization) - Astrophobe (talk) 18:09, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

sources/content

I'm concerned that much of the sourcing is coming from the fringes. The assertions they're supporting aren't particularly controversial, but if no one but the fringes is mentioning something, does it even belong in the article? --valereee (talk) 13:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I totally agree that the page currently has WP:NPOV and WP:RECENT issues, and I've done a lot of conservative editing here this past week to try to manage the very real potential for this page to become an inappropriate BLP. Sadly it remains pretty clearly slanted. But I do not agree that the page "needs additional citations for verification" -- for a low importance political BLP, this article has a very high number of perennial sources that are strongly focused on the article's subject. The Washington Times and Sludge links are definitely marginal and should be removed if possible, replaced with any number of other sources covering the same events, but that's barely even a WP:BB edit. I encourage you or anyone reading this to address the templates you added (I intend to work a lot on this page at some point, but the to do list grows ever longer ...), especially since I'm confident that your assessment of the situation will lead to a positive change. - Astrophobe (talk) 16:40, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

NPOV template

An NPOV template, specifically Template:Like resume, was added to this page and I'm opening a discussion about it. No rationale was given for the template addition, and it is the opposite of my reading of the current judgment on this talk page. Specifically, a great deal of work has gone into keeping this WP:BLP neutral in the face of high-volume editing after the developments with Shadow Inc. following the 2020 Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses, and the most recent critiques of the page are that it lends undue weight to fringe sourcing. But of course we should know if there is a consensus that certain elements of the BLP are actually unduly promotional so that we can change those parts of the article. - Astrophobe (talk) 17:44, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Neutrality templates

I have added neutrality cleanup templates because this article is entirely the subject's positive press clippings and doesn't seriously address that she founded Acronym/Shadow. See https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-acronym-the-tech-consultancy-behind-the-disastrous-iowa-caucus-app Appears to be a whitewash to me. --William Graham ^talk 21:03, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Please do assume good faith of editors doing the tough work of writing politically salient BLPs in American politics. I think the article could certainly benefit from you adding the material you allude to. It is not better because of the drive-by addition of templates that take the stance that it was somehow deliberately slanted or meant to promote the article subject. The material in the article was written before the events you're discussing. Actually, because of the deletion discussion, I am certain that as of January 2020 it contained every in-depth reliable source that was written about her at the time, so there was absolutely no skewing of positive source selection -- I literally included every source that would help establish notability. Now coverage might look different, but nobody has made any effort to find out. I'm removing the templates with the hope that you'll try to engage with the contents of the page to improve it in the directions you name. - Astrophobe (talk) 22:37, 18 October 2022 (UTC)