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The only first lady to have been subpoenaed, Clinton faced a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy; no charges were brought against her related to this or any other controversies in her life.
Emphasis mine. This has been nagging at me for a couple of days. It seems especially campaign-ish, defensive, and unencyclopedic. It's a lot like saying "[Bill] Clinton was acquitted by the U.S. Senate in 1999, served his complete term of office, and was never accused of beating his wife."
We're an encyclopedia. If Hillary had ever been charged with something, it would be in the article, and everybody understands that. We don't need to state that this didn't happen.
I have no problem with the un-bolded part. If we say she faced a grand jury, we have to say there was no indictment. ― Mandruss ☎ 14:08, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
"The only first lady to have been subpoenaed, Clinton faced a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy which resulted in no charges"I think reduces the "have you stopped beating your wife yet" implications. Gaijin42 ( talk) 14:24, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Mandruss is correct. The sentence should end before the bolded part above. The lede is to summarize important things that did happen, not the many things that did not. Jonathunder ( talk) 14:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
I think the two topics should be broken up. The subpoena is notable. The scandals are notable. but to mention the subpoena in the context of the other controversy may give a false impression that they were all investigated or prosecuted to that degree, which is untrue. The scandals are certainly a notable part of her repuattion, but they should be mentioned independently. Gaijin42 ( talk) 15:34, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
It should say "Clinton has faced wave after wave of bullshit charges by Republicans who think nothing of abusing their positions of power, and all have been repelled with grace and ease, mainly because Hillary is a whole spoonful of awesomesauce."
...
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Actually, I think the initial instincts of Madruss were correct. The bit in bold should just be nixed. --
Scjessey (
talk)
19:00, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
As the person who's made 2,374 edits to this article over 11 years and is responsible for most of its current content, I can say this:
Way back in 2007, this text was added to the lead: "In 1996 she became the first First Lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a Federal grand jury, as a consequence of the Whitewater scandal; however she was never charged with any wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during the Clinton administration." It has stayed in the lead ever since – through nine years of millions of readers and hundreds of editors looking at it, through multiple GA/FA review cycles leading up to attaining FA status a couple of years ago – becoming the slightly differently worded but otherwise identical: "The only first lady to have been subpoenaed, Clinton testified before a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy; no charges were brought against her related to this or other investigations during her husband's presidency."
What this text meant was that during her time as First Lady (which is what this paragraph of the lead is about), Hillary was the subject of formal investigations by the United States Office of the Independent Counsel related to four matters: the Whitewater matter, the Travel Office firings, the improper use of FBI files issue, and the removal of Foster files issue. These were the only times that she has ever been the subject of such investigations (until maybe the emails matter currently going on, depending upon what the current DoJ/FBI inquiry turns out to be). There was no link in this text to "other investigations" because listing them would be a little bit cumbersome and because we don't have a separate article on the Foster files matter. In any case the Table of Contents has a subsection underneath "First Lady of the United States" titled "Whitewater and other investigations" so it was pretty obvious where the reader could go to find out what the "other investigations" subject to Independent Counsel investigation were. The investigations were important because, depending upon one's point of view, they revealed Hillary as inherently power hungry and corrupt, or the victim of a partisan witch-hunt by an out-of-control Independent Counsel mechanism, or something in between. Thus they, and the result of them, need to be mentioned in the lead.
Then a few days ago, this aspect of the lead suddenly became destabilized due to the actions of a couple of editors. Why, I ask? Shouldn't some value be given to the fact that this stable text served well for nine years of a highly read, heavily reviewed article? The changes were not for the better. Saying "... no charges were brought against her related to this or any other controversies in her life" is out of scope of the paragraph, which just deals with her time as First Lady. It introduces an in-text link over a category, which usually isn't a great idea. And as pointed out above, it has an air of either defensiveness or insinuation about it. We're not trying to discuss all her controversies here, which for any political figure who's been nationally visible for three decades is going to be a long list. We're just trying to discuss these formal investigations that took place during a particular time.
There's a saying in the computer field: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This text was not broken. It should be put back the way it was and everyone can move on. Wasted Time R ( talk) 02:30, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
The lead contains something very controversial called a comma splice, in this sentence:
“ | Rodham co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977, became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978, then the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979. | ” |
Does anyone object to it? Anythingyouwant ( talk) 03:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
The article is rather long, though it makes sense considering her long tenure in politics. Were she to win the presidency, would we split any of the material from it? Informant16 May 5, 2016
Re: [7]
Re the edit summary, please have another look at MOS:U.S.. The relevant sentence begins with the condition, "When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence...". Your changes do not satisfy that condition. Given that Wikipedia apparently hasn't yet taken a stand on this question, I guess it comes down to local consensus, and if necessary I'll go to RfC at VP with this. ― Mandruss ☎ 11:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
The AP Style Book that I have from somewhere says "United States • as a noun, United States: The prime minister left for the United States yesterday. • as an adjective, U.S. (no spaces): A U.S. soldier was killed in Baghdad yesterday." The Style Book is not online for free, but if you do this search you'll see a bunch of sites that have captured that guideline as a reference to the Style Book. Chicago 16th ed. says "In running text, spell out United States as a noun; reserve US for the adjective form only (in which position the abbreviation is generally preferred)." That's not free online either but this search will show references to it. The style guide for an academic political science journal that I'm familiar with also has the same rule – nouns United States, adjectives U.S. Regarding MOS:U.S., I don't know where that 'When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence' rule comes from; I've never seen a style guide say that. But I think the spirit of MOS:U.S. means that if you'd like your writing to be perceived as more professional, stick to United States for nouns.
I will concede that I'm old school. For instance, I would spell out "United States" the first time it occurs in the lead, whatever context it is in, and I would use the full "United States Senator" and "United States Secretary of State" the first time they are used. I will also concede that attempts to make WP articles look more professional are probably hopeless to begin with. And finally don't worry, I agree that this does not need an RfC. Wasted Time R ( talk) 23:34, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
I disagree with this removal of information from the lead. We say she voted for the Iraq War and parenthetically mention "which she later regretted", and shortly thereafter say she opposed the 2007 surge while parenthetically mentioning "which she later praised".
As to the first (inserted by WTR), I think it's very important to very briefly mention her change of heart about supporting the Iraq War; it's been a key argument of hers to try and unload the political burden of that war, to earn support from people who strongly opposed it. And the later parenthetical is of the same sort, acknowledging an error on her part as regards something that we all agree belongs in the lead.
Both parentheticals are very brief (four words each), but very revealing about her fallibility, and her willingness to express fallibility, at least in certain important instances. Without them in the lead, many readers would assume she has maintained and defended these two positions, which is what politicians usually do once they have made a decision. And I don't think there was consensus to remove these two parentheticals, or either of them (a redlinked editor recently tried to remove one of them, without any edit summary or talk page discussion). Anythingyouwant ( talk) 16:59, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
I rolled back edits that expanded the "Email controversy" section to include stuff from a highly dubious Fox News story that claimed the FBI expanded its probe, with just a single anonymous source. Let's only do this when (and if) higher quality sourcing becomes available, especially since this is the main BLP article. -- Scjessey ( talk) 14:57, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
"World News Daily Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within worldnewsdailyreport.com are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to politicians and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction."
|
---|
There have been rumors about Hillary Clinton's sexual orientation, with this the most recent gem from Yoko Ono: http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/yoko-ono-i-had-an-affair-with-hillary-clinton-in-the-70s/ Also rumors about affair with her staffer Huma Abedin. Put in or no? RachelWex RachelWex 20:23, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
In particular WND's own disclaimer reads "World News Daily Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within worldnewsdailyreport.com are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to politicians and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction." Gaijin42 ( talk) 21:19, 17 May 2016 (UTC) |
1) the article currently deals only with her email server from the aspect of whether it handled classified material. It does not deal with the very real security problems associated with having a homebrew server handle strategic material. Classified or not, such material can be damaging in the wrong hands -- I give you the Panama Papers as an example. This has not been covered, I grant you, on the ten o'clock news, but there are a large number of analyses of the issue in reliable information technology sources.
2) Article seems to omit the existencce of the Guistra and Guistra/Slim associated foundations. Or did I miss them? I admitted only scanned the article looking for a fact I needed elsewhere.
In any event, I present these suggestions for discussion. I am not in a position to write them up and wikilitigate over them at the moment, but assuming for the sake of the argument that reliable sources exist for both -- and I can assure you that they do -- what should we write about these issues and in what section? Elinruby ( talk) 22:39, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Hillary became and was an officer of the foundation. Just like the rest of the family she clings to so tightly come campaign time. The Giustra info is just as relevant to her as it is to Bill. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.168.75 ( talk) 22:35, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Why does her net worth keep fluctuating between somewhere around 20 million and somewhere around 40 million? If you can't come up with a consistent, RELIABLE and VERIFIABLE number, delete it altogether. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.168.75 ( talk) 22:33, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 30 | Archive 31 | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | → | Archive 40 |
The only first lady to have been subpoenaed, Clinton faced a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy; no charges were brought against her related to this or any other controversies in her life.
Emphasis mine. This has been nagging at me for a couple of days. It seems especially campaign-ish, defensive, and unencyclopedic. It's a lot like saying "[Bill] Clinton was acquitted by the U.S. Senate in 1999, served his complete term of office, and was never accused of beating his wife."
We're an encyclopedia. If Hillary had ever been charged with something, it would be in the article, and everybody understands that. We don't need to state that this didn't happen.
I have no problem with the un-bolded part. If we say she faced a grand jury, we have to say there was no indictment. ― Mandruss ☎ 14:08, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
"The only first lady to have been subpoenaed, Clinton faced a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy which resulted in no charges"I think reduces the "have you stopped beating your wife yet" implications. Gaijin42 ( talk) 14:24, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Mandruss is correct. The sentence should end before the bolded part above. The lede is to summarize important things that did happen, not the many things that did not. Jonathunder ( talk) 14:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
I think the two topics should be broken up. The subpoena is notable. The scandals are notable. but to mention the subpoena in the context of the other controversy may give a false impression that they were all investigated or prosecuted to that degree, which is untrue. The scandals are certainly a notable part of her repuattion, but they should be mentioned independently. Gaijin42 ( talk) 15:34, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
It should say "Clinton has faced wave after wave of bullshit charges by Republicans who think nothing of abusing their positions of power, and all have been repelled with grace and ease, mainly because Hillary is a whole spoonful of awesomesauce."
...
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Actually, I think the initial instincts of Madruss were correct. The bit in bold should just be nixed. --
Scjessey (
talk)
19:00, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
As the person who's made 2,374 edits to this article over 11 years and is responsible for most of its current content, I can say this:
Way back in 2007, this text was added to the lead: "In 1996 she became the first First Lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a Federal grand jury, as a consequence of the Whitewater scandal; however she was never charged with any wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during the Clinton administration." It has stayed in the lead ever since – through nine years of millions of readers and hundreds of editors looking at it, through multiple GA/FA review cycles leading up to attaining FA status a couple of years ago – becoming the slightly differently worded but otherwise identical: "The only first lady to have been subpoenaed, Clinton testified before a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy; no charges were brought against her related to this or other investigations during her husband's presidency."
What this text meant was that during her time as First Lady (which is what this paragraph of the lead is about), Hillary was the subject of formal investigations by the United States Office of the Independent Counsel related to four matters: the Whitewater matter, the Travel Office firings, the improper use of FBI files issue, and the removal of Foster files issue. These were the only times that she has ever been the subject of such investigations (until maybe the emails matter currently going on, depending upon what the current DoJ/FBI inquiry turns out to be). There was no link in this text to "other investigations" because listing them would be a little bit cumbersome and because we don't have a separate article on the Foster files matter. In any case the Table of Contents has a subsection underneath "First Lady of the United States" titled "Whitewater and other investigations" so it was pretty obvious where the reader could go to find out what the "other investigations" subject to Independent Counsel investigation were. The investigations were important because, depending upon one's point of view, they revealed Hillary as inherently power hungry and corrupt, or the victim of a partisan witch-hunt by an out-of-control Independent Counsel mechanism, or something in between. Thus they, and the result of them, need to be mentioned in the lead.
Then a few days ago, this aspect of the lead suddenly became destabilized due to the actions of a couple of editors. Why, I ask? Shouldn't some value be given to the fact that this stable text served well for nine years of a highly read, heavily reviewed article? The changes were not for the better. Saying "... no charges were brought against her related to this or any other controversies in her life" is out of scope of the paragraph, which just deals with her time as First Lady. It introduces an in-text link over a category, which usually isn't a great idea. And as pointed out above, it has an air of either defensiveness or insinuation about it. We're not trying to discuss all her controversies here, which for any political figure who's been nationally visible for three decades is going to be a long list. We're just trying to discuss these formal investigations that took place during a particular time.
There's a saying in the computer field: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This text was not broken. It should be put back the way it was and everyone can move on. Wasted Time R ( talk) 02:30, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
The lead contains something very controversial called a comma splice, in this sentence:
“ | Rodham co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977, became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978, then the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979. | ” |
Does anyone object to it? Anythingyouwant ( talk) 03:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
The article is rather long, though it makes sense considering her long tenure in politics. Were she to win the presidency, would we split any of the material from it? Informant16 May 5, 2016
Re: [7]
Re the edit summary, please have another look at MOS:U.S.. The relevant sentence begins with the condition, "When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence...". Your changes do not satisfy that condition. Given that Wikipedia apparently hasn't yet taken a stand on this question, I guess it comes down to local consensus, and if necessary I'll go to RfC at VP with this. ― Mandruss ☎ 11:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
The AP Style Book that I have from somewhere says "United States • as a noun, United States: The prime minister left for the United States yesterday. • as an adjective, U.S. (no spaces): A U.S. soldier was killed in Baghdad yesterday." The Style Book is not online for free, but if you do this search you'll see a bunch of sites that have captured that guideline as a reference to the Style Book. Chicago 16th ed. says "In running text, spell out United States as a noun; reserve US for the adjective form only (in which position the abbreviation is generally preferred)." That's not free online either but this search will show references to it. The style guide for an academic political science journal that I'm familiar with also has the same rule – nouns United States, adjectives U.S. Regarding MOS:U.S., I don't know where that 'When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence' rule comes from; I've never seen a style guide say that. But I think the spirit of MOS:U.S. means that if you'd like your writing to be perceived as more professional, stick to United States for nouns.
I will concede that I'm old school. For instance, I would spell out "United States" the first time it occurs in the lead, whatever context it is in, and I would use the full "United States Senator" and "United States Secretary of State" the first time they are used. I will also concede that attempts to make WP articles look more professional are probably hopeless to begin with. And finally don't worry, I agree that this does not need an RfC. Wasted Time R ( talk) 23:34, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
I disagree with this removal of information from the lead. We say she voted for the Iraq War and parenthetically mention "which she later regretted", and shortly thereafter say she opposed the 2007 surge while parenthetically mentioning "which she later praised".
As to the first (inserted by WTR), I think it's very important to very briefly mention her change of heart about supporting the Iraq War; it's been a key argument of hers to try and unload the political burden of that war, to earn support from people who strongly opposed it. And the later parenthetical is of the same sort, acknowledging an error on her part as regards something that we all agree belongs in the lead.
Both parentheticals are very brief (four words each), but very revealing about her fallibility, and her willingness to express fallibility, at least in certain important instances. Without them in the lead, many readers would assume she has maintained and defended these two positions, which is what politicians usually do once they have made a decision. And I don't think there was consensus to remove these two parentheticals, or either of them (a redlinked editor recently tried to remove one of them, without any edit summary or talk page discussion). Anythingyouwant ( talk) 16:59, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
I rolled back edits that expanded the "Email controversy" section to include stuff from a highly dubious Fox News story that claimed the FBI expanded its probe, with just a single anonymous source. Let's only do this when (and if) higher quality sourcing becomes available, especially since this is the main BLP article. -- Scjessey ( talk) 14:57, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
"World News Daily Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within worldnewsdailyreport.com are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to politicians and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction."
|
---|
There have been rumors about Hillary Clinton's sexual orientation, with this the most recent gem from Yoko Ono: http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/yoko-ono-i-had-an-affair-with-hillary-clinton-in-the-70s/ Also rumors about affair with her staffer Huma Abedin. Put in or no? RachelWex RachelWex 20:23, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
In particular WND's own disclaimer reads "World News Daily Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within worldnewsdailyreport.com are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to politicians and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction." Gaijin42 ( talk) 21:19, 17 May 2016 (UTC) |
1) the article currently deals only with her email server from the aspect of whether it handled classified material. It does not deal with the very real security problems associated with having a homebrew server handle strategic material. Classified or not, such material can be damaging in the wrong hands -- I give you the Panama Papers as an example. This has not been covered, I grant you, on the ten o'clock news, but there are a large number of analyses of the issue in reliable information technology sources.
2) Article seems to omit the existencce of the Guistra and Guistra/Slim associated foundations. Or did I miss them? I admitted only scanned the article looking for a fact I needed elsewhere.
In any event, I present these suggestions for discussion. I am not in a position to write them up and wikilitigate over them at the moment, but assuming for the sake of the argument that reliable sources exist for both -- and I can assure you that they do -- what should we write about these issues and in what section? Elinruby ( talk) 22:39, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Hillary became and was an officer of the foundation. Just like the rest of the family she clings to so tightly come campaign time. The Giustra info is just as relevant to her as it is to Bill. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.168.75 ( talk) 22:35, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Why does her net worth keep fluctuating between somewhere around 20 million and somewhere around 40 million? If you can't come up with a consistent, RELIABLE and VERIFIABLE number, delete it altogether. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.168.75 ( talk) 22:33, 17 May 2016 (UTC)