Talk:C. Scott Grow

Written like an advert?

@TheTechnician27: can you point out specifically which part(s) of the article is written like an advertisement? Thanks PerpetuityGrat (talk) 12:27, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
ce PerpetuityGrat (talk) 13:17, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi, PerpetuityGrat. I'm going to remove the tag while I work on the article, as upon further review, I think it was too heavy-handed of me to place it there (it can imply, although I didn't mean it this way at all, that the article or parts thereof were written with a COI in bad faith), but there are a few factors in this article that – to me – summed to make the article feel like an advertisement. For example, a description of him in our article is taken verbatim (i.e., plagiarized) from his own bio for his campaign website: "Grow is a member of the West Boise Rotary Club, has served on two statewide advisory committees focused on Idaho families and religious freedoms, and has served two terms as a West Ada School District Trustee." We're essentially advertising that Grow is "focused on Idaho families and religious freedoms" without even once detailing what that entails (I wonder if "focus on Idaho families" could possibly be a euphemism; see: Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, the Center for Family and Human Rights, the Family Research Institute, the Illinois Family Institute, etc. I'm not saying it's a euphemism, but given Grow has publicly written against gay marriage and then ostenisbly never renounced or updated that position, it's 100% a euphemism. I furthermore wonder what "religious freedoms" means. Questions, questions.) It's just puffery. Secondly, we give no mention to Grow's actions – some controversial, some not so controversial – as a state senator, such as proposing an infamous constitutional ban on descheduling Schedule I and II drugs (and his corresponding claim that recreational cannabis use "destroys lives and ruins families"), his support for legalizing hemp as a crop, trying to stifle future ballot provisions, forcing doctors to perform transvaginal ultrasounds before an abortion, his stance on the highly contentious 17–18 vote on SB 1108aa,aa, his proposed property tax deferral bill HB 309 which handily passed the Senate, his aye vote on HB 377, etc. Regardless of their positions, I pretty much consider any article about a living, sitting politician that doesn't actually mention any policy positions they've held – assuming they've received plenty of coverage for us to do so – to be advertisement-like, but this is exacerbated, again, by our line about his "focus on Idaho families and religious freedoms". Thirdly, we have three external links, all of which are essentially self-authored bios.

I'm going to try to remedy these, along with some other issues such as lack of sourcing for multiple large chunks of this BLP. I don't have access to sources like this, which could prove to have a lot of good information, but I'll at least try to source the information we currently have in our article. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 15:38, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Darn those McClatchy pay walls... it is difficult to cite sites like those. TheTechnician27 I am unfamiliar with the subject of the article, but did clean the infobox. As it was written, I did not see any issues with advert language. I was also unaware that content was taken directly from the subject's website, but it does seem pretty level-headed (as far as brief/stub bios go). I also also was unaware of the subject's reputation or stance on policy—I will let you take the lead on this one. Not familiar with them at all, other than that they are a sitting legislator. Thanks for your contributions here and elsewhere! PerpetuityGrat (talk) 16:34, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@PerpetuityGrat: Yeah, the 'advert' tag was pretty lazy and vague on my part. In general, I try to give a lot of scrutiny to articles about BLPs, companies, and products, but I should've taken steps to fix the problems I saw instead of just placing a tag. As far as contributions go, your contributions to state legislatures are much appreciated, as articles about state issues are often quite undersourced and lacking in essential detail – detail which can be lost to time if the one or two sources covering it remove their coverage from their website and it isn't archived. If you haven't already, you might want to consider checking out WikiProject US State Legislatures. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 16:59, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@TheTechnician27: thanks for the tip! I've added myself there. PerpetuityGrat (talk) 18:28, 5 May 2021 (UTC)