Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Barack Obama/archive4

What I see so far ...

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Closed as personal attack unrelated to FA review - Wikidemon (talk) 00:34, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

... are the people who have camped out on the article to instantly delete any criticism, now complaining that this Feature Article Review should be closed as a procedural matter. Curious bystander (talk) 00:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Except that I haven't edited this article in months. Thanks though. Grsz^talk 00:17, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

And please tell everyone why you haven't edited the article in months. It wouldn't be because you're an Obama campaign volunteer and, unlike me, you can't control your bias − would it? Curious bystander (talk) 00:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I am restoring but archiving the comment just deleted as a personal attack because it's better to leave it so people can see what is going on. "Obama campaign volunteer" was one of the taunts being thrown about a few months ago around the time the article got the article protected, then in long-term article probation. Wikidemon (talk) 00:34, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

People are not identical

Wouldn't it be easy if it were so? If everyone notable enough for a Wikipedia biography had an equal amount of scandal and good behavior in their backgrounds, we wouldn't be here, having this discussion, arguing over what rumors, facts, and innuendo needed to go in the article. We could compare Obama's page with McCain's, or Hillary Clinton's, or Richard Nixon's, or Warren G. Harding's, and say, "oh, there's more scandal in Nixon's page than Obama's. Looks like we need to add a little more detail to Obama's page." That would be great. Simple, no fuss.

But real people aren't like that.

In the end, this FAR boils down to a misunderstanding of WP:NPOV, perhaps the most frequently abused policy on Wikipedia for content. I'll summarize the misunderstanding like this:

NPOV requires that an article contain an equal amount of positive and negative detail, or it's unbalanced.

Makes sense, doesn't it. I mean, who can argue against balance? Well, guess it's time to start adding positive details to Pol Pot's biography, or maybe find some journals from Native Americans who enjoyed the Trail of Tears. Hmmm...

A neutral POV means just that: We present the facts as reported in reliable sources, without bias. If the facts are overwhelmingly positive, this will result in an article that reads fairly positively. If the facts are overwhelmingly negative, this will result in a similarly negative article. That is normal. This is not to say that the tone the article is presented in should be positive or negative, simply that the facts the article presents will lean one way or the other.

Now then... In this particular case, the negative content some editors want included has overwhelmingly been rejected as POV-pushing, as it is largely rooted in blogs, opinion pieces, and books indulging in guilt-by-association. The viewpoints of these blogs, opinion pieces, and books have themselves been the subjects of numerous news articles from reliable sources, but that in no way validates those opinion pieces as reliable sources themselves. And there's a world of difference between statements from a news article such as "Conservative groups have made political hay over these associations" and "there appears to be merit to their accusations." The first is notable strictly from the perspective of a campaign. The second would be notable from a biographical perspective if, as an example, a news article demonstrated conclusively that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers were best of friends. But no news article has actually done that.

So, this negative content has been resoundingly rejected, over and over and over again. Let us imagine, if you will, that we stop beating this dead horse. What are we left with, when we exclude these blogs and opinion pieces? Reliable sources that indicate Obama doesn't have very many biographically notable relationship or legal scandals.

OK, then. Like him or hate him, he's apparently kept his nose clean (so to speak; yes, I'm aware of the admitted drug use). So the article, in order to be neutral, will of necessity be fairly upbeat, if not in tone then in factual content. That is OK; people, after all, are not identical. --GoodDamon 03:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)