The result was: withdrawn by nominator, closed by
Zanhe (
talk) 00:30, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
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Created by Catrìona ( talk). Self-nominated at 07:39, 12 December 2018 (UTC).
A neutrality tag was added to the article yesterday, so we'll have to put this nomination on hold until the dispute is resolved. I'll be happy to finish reviewing at that time. Take care, Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 06:17, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
So I have a bit of time and thought I would share my take on the four articles you posted (thanks BTW for the recent edits to the summaries). I basically see the News Week, and Haaretez as repeating the claims of The Verge. The Week was of course its own thing. Anyway, The Verge's author did ask me for a quote but just 24 hours before. His question was vague (other than making the tone of the article clear). I decided not to reply and I don't think a well thought out reply would have mattered. I think there were two things the author got really wrong.
First, the sequence of events related to the AR-15 pages. As I recall and based on my limited exposure to the article prior to this year, there were kind of two debates going on. The first was the scope of the article. The Colt AR-15 article, as I gather, started as the general AR-15 page. My early involvement was around the time there was a big debate about what the scope of the AR-15 page should be. Some editors felt that, since AR-15 was a trademarked name it should only be about the "Colt AR-15". So the people who were trying to keep general AR-15 material (primarily crime material) out were doing so based on keeping the article on topic (thus not a PAG violation). As I gathered, the outcome of this debate was to change what was the AR-15 article to the Colt AR-15 article and then start a second article that was the generic page. Of course that didn't go smoothly. First, until recently, the AR-15 search term went to the Colt article vs a disambiguation page. So when someone searched for "AR-15" they found the Colt AR-15 page then assumed the removal of general AR-15 material was only due to trying to keep the material off Wikipedia vs just keeping the article focused.
That would have been easier to deal with if the generic page had been created properly (note: I'm really vague on this part of the history). I recall debates about what to call the page. At some point it appears that Modern Sporting Rifles was picked or morphed into the generic page. I have an issue with that since, as I understand it, not AR-15s can be MSRs. I also see why people who wanted to put some thing about a crime wouldn't think to search for that page and AR-15 didn't redirect there. So that I what I see as the setup that caused most of the issues The Verge reported. The biggest issue was that when the AR-15 page went non-generic, the creation of the generic page and setting up of disambiguations wasn't done correctly/at all. I'm not sure if this was a deliberate effort to keep this material out of any article or more likely just people weren't worried about creating the generic page so it was never really done. As it relates to the Verge, well, that author made it sound like this was a planned or controlled thing vs just the sort of outcome that inevitable given the circumstances.
Another issue with The Verge is conflating the removal of a given passage as refusal to allow any such material in the article. A number of the passages I've removed over the last 1.5 years were edits made by the many socks of [redacted]. Even the material we ended up adding to the AR-15 style rifle page started off as a [redacted] sock addition. When the reporter would see a single passage from the NRA article get removed he didn't distinguish between not wanting the general material included vs not wanting the specific text. ... [T]he Verge assumed a motivation without considering that material is sometimes removed for reasons other than suppression.
I don't have much to say about The Week other than first, the author didn't consider that simple suppression isn't the only reason to remove material. Second, given how quickly a single removal made it to a news story, I have trouble believing that was just a reporter who happened across the story.Springee ( talk) 16:29, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
The result was: withdrawn by nominator, closed by
Zanhe (
talk) 00:30, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
DYK toolbox |
---|
Created by Catrìona ( talk). Self-nominated at 07:39, 12 December 2018 (UTC).
A neutrality tag was added to the article yesterday, so we'll have to put this nomination on hold until the dispute is resolved. I'll be happy to finish reviewing at that time. Take care, Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 06:17, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
So I have a bit of time and thought I would share my take on the four articles you posted (thanks BTW for the recent edits to the summaries). I basically see the News Week, and Haaretez as repeating the claims of The Verge. The Week was of course its own thing. Anyway, The Verge's author did ask me for a quote but just 24 hours before. His question was vague (other than making the tone of the article clear). I decided not to reply and I don't think a well thought out reply would have mattered. I think there were two things the author got really wrong.
First, the sequence of events related to the AR-15 pages. As I recall and based on my limited exposure to the article prior to this year, there were kind of two debates going on. The first was the scope of the article. The Colt AR-15 article, as I gather, started as the general AR-15 page. My early involvement was around the time there was a big debate about what the scope of the AR-15 page should be. Some editors felt that, since AR-15 was a trademarked name it should only be about the "Colt AR-15". So the people who were trying to keep general AR-15 material (primarily crime material) out were doing so based on keeping the article on topic (thus not a PAG violation). As I gathered, the outcome of this debate was to change what was the AR-15 article to the Colt AR-15 article and then start a second article that was the generic page. Of course that didn't go smoothly. First, until recently, the AR-15 search term went to the Colt article vs a disambiguation page. So when someone searched for "AR-15" they found the Colt AR-15 page then assumed the removal of general AR-15 material was only due to trying to keep the material off Wikipedia vs just keeping the article focused.
That would have been easier to deal with if the generic page had been created properly (note: I'm really vague on this part of the history). I recall debates about what to call the page. At some point it appears that Modern Sporting Rifles was picked or morphed into the generic page. I have an issue with that since, as I understand it, not AR-15s can be MSRs. I also see why people who wanted to put some thing about a crime wouldn't think to search for that page and AR-15 didn't redirect there. So that I what I see as the setup that caused most of the issues The Verge reported. The biggest issue was that when the AR-15 page went non-generic, the creation of the generic page and setting up of disambiguations wasn't done correctly/at all. I'm not sure if this was a deliberate effort to keep this material out of any article or more likely just people weren't worried about creating the generic page so it was never really done. As it relates to the Verge, well, that author made it sound like this was a planned or controlled thing vs just the sort of outcome that inevitable given the circumstances.
Another issue with The Verge is conflating the removal of a given passage as refusal to allow any such material in the article. A number of the passages I've removed over the last 1.5 years were edits made by the many socks of [redacted]. Even the material we ended up adding to the AR-15 style rifle page started off as a [redacted] sock addition. When the reporter would see a single passage from the NRA article get removed he didn't distinguish between not wanting the general material included vs not wanting the specific text. ... [T]he Verge assumed a motivation without considering that material is sometimes removed for reasons other than suppression.
I don't have much to say about The Week other than first, the author didn't consider that simple suppression isn't the only reason to remove material. Second, given how quickly a single removal made it to a news story, I have trouble believing that was just a reporter who happened across the story.Springee ( talk) 16:29, 14 December 2018 (UTC)