Talk:Tuttle, Oklahoma

Trivia

If you have comments, please make them here. If you wish to tender a straw poll vote, please do so at the bottom of this talk page.

WCityMike - The article is about the town. I'm not sure how including a tidbit about the rude personal behavior of someone who happens to be the city manager, fits within the parameters of an encyclopedic article about the town. What's the point of this section? That many bureaucrats are arrogant and/or incompetent employees? Welcome to the world outside your cave!! Gyan 03:23, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The point is (I suspect) that outside the fact that the Federal Census knows about this place, 99% of the people who've heard about this place and come here to look it up have heard about it because of that dude and his Emails. 68.39.174.238 04:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It's humorous that the more rational Wikipedian's way of quieting things they don't like is to claim it's non-encyclopedic. The town has entered the public eye as a consequence of the city manager's behavior. An objective, factual recounting of that incident is most certainly encyclopedic. To omit facts because they're not complimentary is the very definition of POV. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 04:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The public eye must be squinting awfully hard since there are only two mentions of this "incident" on Google News at the time of this writing. One is at Register.co.uk, the other is at some German site called "ShortNews" which picked it up from the Register. It hasn't made the wires, not to mention, any of the major news outlets. This is less reporting of an event that oriented the public eye onto Tuttle, and more, documenting a juicy odd-story in the hopes of making it news. IOW, the only way this is important is if you make it so. Gyan 05:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

When attempting to determine whether something is worthy of inclusion in a Wikipedia article, few Wikipedians use as a metric whether major news outlets and newswires have decided to cover the issue. In this case, newswires are hardly going to cover a small town official's dispute with a Linux distribution; it's not exactly the kind of news story Joe Public would be interested in, given that Linux is not a topic of interest to most. That does not mean it is not encyclopedic and does not deserve coverage. Furthermore, you ascribe to me motivations I do not have. It makes your argument weaker when you infuse personal attacks and insinuations into your statements. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 18:41, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The reason you gave was "The town has entered the public eye...". It hasn't. 'Public eye' doesn't correspond to whether the techies at Slashdot know about it. There are hundreds of instances that one could find if one were to diligently dig up similar "incidents" in almost all cities. A general-purpose encyclopedia has to filter its coverage. I've no dog in this fight with regards to eitherthe manager or CentOS, but this is much ado about nothing. Gyan 20:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

By the public eye, I didn't mean America as a whole. I meant that it has left the area of a private discussion between two people. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 21:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Surely, you are not being literal? Everything posted on the public web has left the "area of private discussion". Should we search for all references to Tuttle, OK on Google and include them here? The standards for inclusion should filter in items of broad interest, items of nontransient interest (will this seem out of place in 3 years?), and information that is potentially useful. Problem here is that a paper encyclopedia certainly wouldn't have included this, but the seemingly infinite volume of a web encyclopedia has made the notions of 'encyclopedic' very fluid. This item would fit right in at everything2, but I don't think it has a place at Wikipedia. Gyan 21:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, you attempt to defend your stance and attack mine by virtue of hyperbole and/or a straw man argument. Kindly don't; you come across as a lot more rational when you don't throw hyperbole and insults in your stance. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia and its policies specifically state that it is not limited by what a paper encyclopedia will and will not cover (link). The site's official commentary (not policy) on Wikipedia:Notability simply lays out arguments on both our sides, so I am not sure it's helpful in our disagreement. However, Wikipedia's commentary on importance in coverage state: "There is evidence that a reasonable number of people are, were or might be concurrently interested in the subject (eg. it is at least well-known in a community)" (link). Granted, that is for whether an article should exist or not, but I think it can scale down to the question of information within an article. I think that this tidbit meets that 'importance' requirement. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 21:53, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Where the hell have I insulted you?? You are the one throwing out these false allegations. Gyan 22:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Since you insist:

• "What's the point of this section? That many bureaucrats are arrogant and/or incompetent employees? Welcome to the world outside your cave!!"
• "documenting a juicy odd-story in the hopes of making it news" -- rather insulting of my motivations
• "Should we search for all references to Tuttle, OK on Google and include them here?" (this one not an insult, but was my reference to hyperbole)

Could you also please address the policy cites, if you want to go on from here?

— WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 22:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

That last sentence at the end of the first one was a snark, and I apologize for that. The second one wasn't literal, and my next sentence put forward my point: "IOW, the only way this is important is if you make it so." which was a rebuttal of your point that this was inherently noteworthy. The third one was an application of your broad criteria about what constitutes a "public" event. When we move to a subjective standard i.e "that a reasonable number of people are, were or might be concurrently interested", that still hasn't been satisfied since a few thousand eyeballs across the wide internet used by millions doesn't constitute a "public" event. A key indicator would be the net activity around this topic (NOT originated from WP) a month from now. If nothing develops beyond a Fark thread and a few Usenet threads, it doesn't belong here (nontransient interest). Gyan 23:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Where's the cite on nontransient interest as policy, or is that just your own standard? I don't think nontransient interest is a sensible policy to determine whether something belongs in Wikipedia or not -- nor do I agree that notability necessarily is a function of how many eyes see the news story. Also, see the additional notes below: you had mentioned that you'd concur with the results of a straw poll. Third opinion evidently only involves, but so far on this page, we've got 68.39.174.238, WCityMike, PeteVerdon, and MartinRe all on this page saying "keep it," and only you saying "don't keep it." Are you willing to accept that as straw poll results and concede the point, or do we need to go to the Mediation Cabal, which has the mentioned 2- to 20-day wait time? — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 23:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The straw poll has been up for only a few hours now (on a Sunday). Give it a week. Advertise it at some Wikipedia community forums (I'm not well-versed on these matters) and get good number of eyeballs. Like you mentioned, Notability is not an official policy, but it supports both of our stances. 'Nontransient interest' is my standard, yours is the opposite. Only votes in the official tally below count, which is 2 to 1 right now. Gyan 00:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I should furthermore say that your rejection of the first draft of this language written by another was understandable. That language demonstrated a considerable bias and point of view. Your desire to not have any coverage of the fact, even material neutrally written, whatsoever reflects a point of view in and of itself, one much less understandable or commendable. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 18:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Your desire to have coverage also reflects a PoV. There's no such thing as 'objectivity', only points with different degrees of agreement. Gyan 20:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

No such thing as objectivity? An interesting philosophy for a Wikipedian. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 21:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

---

So, Gyan, where do you want to go from here? I'm firmly of the opinion it's encyclopedic and should remain in the article. You hold an opposing view. Articles on dispute resolution on Wikipedia suggest that we try to resolve it between ourselves, and if not possible, seek mediation. Shall we? — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 21:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Can we put it up for a public vote somewhere? If so, I can accept those results. Gyan 21:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

As a point of information, I have heard of Tuttle - and came to this page - solely because of the incident in question. You're right that it's not something that's newsworthy in general media, but that applies to plenty of other things in Wikipedia. The current wording seems objective enough to me. PeteVerdon 21:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Gyan, I've listed it at Wikipedia:Third Opinion -- trying to represent our disagreement as fairly as possible there -- and asked for comment here, and set up a format for a straw poll at the bottom. Cool? — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 21:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Gyan, it looks like I misunderstood Wikipedia:Third Opinion — the third opinion is only for a site requesting a tie-breaker vote between two dissenting Wikipedians, not requesting a full straw poll vote. Still, everyone else who's voiced an opinion on this page has expressed an opinion to keep it here. Are you willing to concede, or do we need to continue? As far as my research yields, it looks like the next step would be mediation, but their page indicates a 2- to 20-day backlog. See Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 22:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Straw Poll

Straw poll vote: should this article make mention of the incident between the city manager and the CentOS development team? Please vote keep if you believe the reference should be kept, or remove if you believe the reference should be removed. Please sign your vote by including four tildes after your vote.

• Keep, for reasons stated above. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 21:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. Two issues here. Does this belong at WP, at all? Maybe, although case for that is weak, IMHO. This was a private discussion made public by one of the (grieved) parties, and wasn't a public event. It's a very, very minor dispute in terms of scale & impact. Not even the local paper (Tuttle Times) has mentioned it. Second, if it belongs here, should it belong in this article about the town? No. If a pattern of incompetence was revealed among Tuttle authorities, that would be noteworthy. An individual instance should not be made to reflect on the town, unless the impact was significant, which it wasn't. If it belongs here, it belongs as an illustration in an article about bureaucratic incompetence and/or technological illiteracy. Gyan 22:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep As WP:3O (see below) The impact wasn't significant, yes, but that's why it's under trivia, and not in the main sections. MartinRe 22:19, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
• Despite the fact that this wont count, I suggest it be kept since (As has probably been discussed above) beyond the fact that exists, this is probably its claim to fame and notability. 68.39.174.238 00:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep As Jerry Taylor invoked his official title when threatening Johnny Hughes, it's official town business. It's really frightening and amazing official town business, but official town business none the less. Should Jerry Taylor do this to some other company that can actually afford lawyers, Mr. Taylor's town might find itself having to indemnify itself for the obnoxious and unprofessional behavior of its manager. I, for one, would really enjoy having the complete history on line should Mr. Taylor hit the jackpot in the future. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.157.63.203 (talk • contribs) 01:27, March 26, 2006
• Keep This is going to be something that many people will reference in the future. Perhaps the original emails should be here also. Jspr 05:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Like it or not, Mr Taylor is now as much a claim to fame for Tuttle as whichever football star I've never heard of came from there. The mention must be kept proportionate, though, and not grow to dominate the article. The "original emails" definitely do not belong here. PeteVerdon 10:49, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep The only reason why I looked up Tuttle, OK was because of the Register article. I agree with PeteVerdon; links to the emails is enough. Dflanagan 16:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
• Remove, for god's sake, as per Gyan. This is a funny but unbelievably minor occurance (and yes, it is why I looked up the city) that just isn't appropriate for Wikipedia. It will be forgotten in a week. If you want, create an article for city manager Jerry A. Taylor, include the issue there, and see how long that lasts before it goes to AfD. And no, I am not from Tuttle :-) -- Blorg 22:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, This hit Slashdot, so its noteriety is assured. Florence, Oregon has to live with its exploding whale, so Tuttle, OK shall have to live with its exploding Mr. Taylor. VonWoland 23:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

An exploding whale (note: featured article!) is far more notable than Jerry Taylor! Note the foot on the Slashdot story, it's 'Oddly Enough' even on Slashdot and plenty of stuff makes even the serious parts of Slashdot that doesn't belong here. (I saw it first on Slashdot myself.) No lawsuit, nothing, just an obnoxious email exchange from a manager who got out the wrong side of the bed and doesn't understand computers. It's a funny story that will be forgotten within a week. For the moment, as someone has gone and created an article for Jerry, I hope no-one minds me reducing the mention to a single line with link? (As per the exploding whale!) Even if it isn't forgotten within the week, and Jerry becomes some sort of cult figure (and with that photo...) the place for this is still in his article. -- Blorg 23:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

"Forgotten within a week?" Je me souviens! In fact, I am hoping that "tuttle" will enter the jargon file, or some new, relavant, incarnation of that document. But point well taken, Mr. Blorg. In fact, you argue it so well that I am pained to have to dissagree with you. I tell you what, if things have quieted down here within, say, a month, you can just quietly make the change you propose and no one will notice. And I even promise, that if _I_ notice, I won't object. --VonWoland 20:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, Zeth For three reasons 1. It is the first (and last?) time that Tuttle has been heard of in the UK. How many other Oklahoman villages can I name? 2. Is anything else really going to happen in Tuttle that we have to keep the trivia section clear for? 3. This incident has cleary captured the public imagination, therefore it deserves inclusion in its own right. There are some important cultural issues being explored here. Take for example this talk page, look at the percentage of it discussing other Tuttle issues.
• Keep, the incident is a quality example of Texas-Oklahoma rivalry. Note that Taylor became noticeably more inflamed after learning that Hughes resides in Corpus Christi. --G0zer 19:06, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Town articles ought to have more than just the Census info in them, and this is notable info. I'd also add the Heisman winner they mention on the website, personally. --ZachPruckowski 21:39, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, as per WCityMike, plus this is easily as notable as the other piece of trivia mentioned, to do with an American college sports award winner coming from the town. The fact that this is something negative for the town rather than positive appears to be the only real difference and discriminating on that basis is absurd. Wibbble 21:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, as per WCityMike. --81.79.174.75 22:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, subject to re-evaluation depending on how notable or not this incident ends up being in the long run. *Dan T.* 01:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, This tuttle issue has developed into a little internet meme. (unregged)
• Keep Rich Farmbrough 23:36 30 March 2006 (UTC).
• Keep, The incident may be forgotten soon, but I'm already hearing people use the word "Tuttle" to refer to particularly boneheaded user requests. I have a feeling that the word may last longer than than the incident itself, and it should remain documented for now.RandyKaelber 16:07, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, If you were a researcher writing the history of Tuttle, it's definitely a piece of trivia you'd want to know.
• Keep, The good people at Columbine may tear their hair out about it and our hearts may go out to them, but we all know why we've heard of them, why we search for them in search engines or in Wikipedia. Ditto My Lai, ditto lots of other small localities known for one thing. Heard of Salem, Massachusetts? It's because of the leading role they played in the American China trade, right? Not that, you say? Oh, it's because you heard about some nasty incidents involving a couple of dozen people accused of witchcraft over 300 years ago? Tsk, tsk--just a few isolated incidents besmirching the town's reputation cuz of a few bad apples; this sort of slander should be removed from Wiki!
• Keep, and also please refrain from making a chatlog out of the dicussion page. Delete entries of no interest. I don't understand the argument, what is unencyclopedic about this scandal? I too came here to learn more about it.
• Keep, linked by media and usage of word "tuttle" may spread. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.72.115.212 (talk • contribs)
• Keep, It is the poster-child story for pretentious and agressive ignorance. Beside Mr Taylor himself begged for the 'media publicity' in his emails exchanges. --Shmget 10:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, and by the way, I translated the story into french for fr:wikipedia, hoping it might help to expand and amplify the publicity this guy deserves. Archibald Tuttle 20:25, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Ignorant and Rude

WCityMike (in Edit Summary): "Ignorantly" and "rudely"? Come on!

I do prefer your original paragraph that you've put back there, but I don't think anyone could deny either that Mr Taylor was rude or, given his supposed position and the very clear text on the unexpected page, that he behaved ignorantly on that occasion.

Unrelatedly, I do think it's worth explicitly stating that the problem had nothing to do with CentOS - I don't think this is immediately clear to non-technical readers. PeteVerdon 15:55, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I have a similar interpertation of his actions, but WP:NPOV#Another_example puts it well. In this context, we don't need to say he was rude, the emails speak for themselves. Related to your unrelated point, I agree it isn't very clear that Centos didn't contribute to the problem, I'll try and think of a better way of putting it (but I'll post the suggestsion on the talk page first to avoid potential edit disputes) Regards, MartinRe 18:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

As things stood before you re-inserted your summary paragraph, the emails couldn't speak for themselves because they weren't linked to. The one-sentence summary was there mostly to introduce a link to the Jerry Taylor page, but it was so bald that the average reader was IMO unlikely to bother to follow the link. Anyway, this is all academic now - your summary is (barring a few tweaks) the right thing here as far as I'm concerned. PeteVerdon 19:20, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Possible re-wording: Instead of "Despite attempts to convince Taylor..." which might be read that there was really a problem, and they were just trying to convince him there wasn't, how about re-writing it as "Despite being informed that it was simply a common misconfiguration by their website's host, Taylor remained unconvinced and threatened to call the FBI". Comments? MartinRe 23:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds more neutral -- although I don't think it adequately conveys that there were numerous attempts to explain things to him, all of which he blindly ignored. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 02:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

How about "Despite being informed repeatedly that..." then? MartinRe 08:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but really, which phrasing do you think carries more POV to it? "Despite attempts to convince Taylor ... " or "Despite being informed repeatedly that it was simply a common misconfiguration by their website's host ..." The latter does, I think, which makes it unideal as a replacement. Also, the grammar of the phrasing is a little weird, as there's some noun-verb stuff going on. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 17:03, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

(de-indeted for readability) I do like the tuttletimes way of putting it as "... threats for a problem he didn’t cause and really had no obligation to fix", which might be a good final phrase. I still find it hard to believe, that after finding out that the real problem was, that he still states that threatening an innocent, unrelated, person who was trying to be helpful with the FBI was justified, unless that's a matter of trying to save face. Also hard to believe (or maybe not!), is that after this incident showing the level of comptence of the city manager, the Mayor admitted that "the city manager knows a lot more about computers than he does". Also, with the amount of coverage this has got, it may be worth making a full paragraph of the incident, rather than just a triva note. MartinRe 20:00, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion of Jerry Taylor Entry

New: Related issue? There WAS a Jerry Taylor entry on Wikipedia last night, but it appears to have disappeared with no history record. Ayone know what happened?

Yeah. I submitted it for speedy deletion, and the admins zapped it. The article as written was a maliciously vitriolic attack piece (and this is coming from the person who first added the Taylor "trivia" to this page) and frankly Taylor could've probably sued Wikipedia for libel if he had a mind to. Taylor isn't notable enough to stand on his own. If you disagree, you can question the speedy deletion at Wikipedia:Speedy deletions, but I think it was entirely founded. — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 02:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Deletion review is at WP:DRV#Jerry_Taylor. To me the speedy was justifible under a combination of A6 and A7 of WP:CSD Regards, MartinRe 08:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Exhaustive listing of farms in Tuttle

Wikipedia does not intend to provide an exhaustive list of all the farms in town (verifiable or not), so I removed that feature of the second Geography section before I redistributed its content.Wyzyrd 02:11, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Controversy section

I have renamed the CentOS Incident to "Controversy Regarding the City Manager", because the section has expanded to include incidents beyond CentOS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rgl168 (talk • contribs) 13:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Because Taylor is no longer the City Manager of Tuttle, I've rewritten the section to reflect a more NPOV, remove unnecessary advertising, and make the entry more encyclopedic. It's previous incarnation was obviously slanted anti-Taylor, and the event is largely forgotten. It's worth a mention, but it no longer needs to dominate an article about Tuttle. 64.250.218.114 (talk) 01:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Recently user Bonusballs expanded this section, making it less NPOV and more anti-Taylor. This expansion is really inappropriate at this point given that Taylor's been out for over a year and does not contribute encyclopedically to the article. 208.114.37.253 (talk) 03:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• I think it's important to include Mr. Taylor's side of the story and his response to the incident. How better than using his own words? The fact that he is no longer working there is not relevant in my opinion. If it were the case that we would remove entries regarding any ex-employees, we would have to remove Babe Ruth from the Yankees entry. I will rewrite it to make it NPOV, please let me know what you think. Helixweb (talk)—Preceding undated comment added 01:48, 7 May 2009

Outstanding Citizens section

Someone moved mention of Jason White to an "outstanding citizens" section and then added mention of someone named Brandon Golf without opening discussion on the matter. I've never heard of Brandon Golf, and since there is no reference, this smacks of self-promotion. Regardless, because the idea of "outstanding" is very subjective, such a listing should be reserved only for well-known (i.e., nationally recognized) people. Also, such a list should be formatted like similar lists on other City articles. These changes can be reverted if there is substantial support for making Tuttle's list different from everyone else's.64.250.208.53 (talk) 03:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)