User:PatrickByrne/Sandbox

Since the fracas here in Wikipedia the article on Naked Short Selling has improved slightly, but it still exhibits two major flaws. First, it is structured poorly. Second, it remains incredibly lopsided. Rather than suggest incremental improvements I have built out a Sandbox page here for the reference of all interested parties.

I have rearranged the current material so that it is less hopscotch. This rearrangement should not be controversial. On the current article one finds material about the acts of shorting and naked shorting, the regulations governing it, and the beliefs of various people about the practice, all interwovern. After my rearrangement it contains the same material but is, to my eye, far more readable: first, the material on the acts of shorting and naked shorting, then the legal environment (regulation, legislation, and litigation) in which it occurs, then the controversy surrounding the issue (the beliefs of those who minimize its significance versus those who think it is a great disaster in our markets). This restructuring has allowed me to eliminate some slight redundancies, but as I said, I believe that essentially all (if not all) material from the current article appears in this restructured one (less those redundancies).

I say that this rearrangement should not be controversial. However, it may cause controversy. That is because once all the cutting and pasting is done, it is clear that woven into the current article is an extraordinary amount of editorializing, achieved by allowing citations to all NSS-deniers, but almost nothing coming from NSS-critics (which at this point includes all serious observers, including the SEC Chairman). My guess is that this is no accident: the muddle structure of the current article permits a laughably reactionary Party Line to saturate the article, and restructuring it along the lines I propose exposes this fact.

Finally, I have added citations to other highly reputable articles to balance out the debate.

Those that see the logic of my approach may consider importing it to the actual Wikipedia page on naked short selling.

I apologize in advance for any conventions of Wikipedia that I am upending by doing this. Don't get mad. Just let me know. PatrickByrne (talk) 00:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)