Talk:Abigail Spanberger

As a courtesy to other contributors, could we discuss complicated or controversial issues on the talk page, not in our edit summaries...

As a courtesy to other contributors, could we discuss complicated or controversial issues on the talk page, not in our edit summaries?

In a pair of edits another contributor removed material I think was relevant. Their two edit summaries were "Remove biased and unsourced content" and "Remove tweet quoted without context".

I consider that first edit summary to be questionable. First, it is clearly sourced, to the Washington Post. If, for the sake of argument, the passage was relevant, but phrased is a biased manner, it should have been re-written in an unbiased manner - not deleted.

I consider the second edit summary to be even more questionable, when one's previous edit removed the context, one should not then justify a further excision by claiming material lacked context.

Spanberger's comments on the POTUS are relevant. She said her comparison of the POTUS to dictators held extra merit, because, as a former CIA official she special expertise with dictators. I think that makes her comparison worthy of inclusion.

I call on the contributor who made these excisions to come here to discuss their edits. Geo Swan (talk) 20:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello Geo Swan. It would be easier to just ping me here rather than going to my talk page to make a second post. The first edit was partially sourced to the Washington Post, but most of it was without a source. That is, unless the source was intended to cover all of the content. In that case, a citation ought to be placed at the end of each paragraph. Otherwise, how is anyone to know that they are covered by the source? The reader shouldn't just have to assume that material in a paragraph completely lacking in citations can be verified by a citation found in the middle of a previous paragraph, assuming that is indeed what the person who added this content intended. In addition to being heavily biased, part of the content in that edit is simply untrue. Floyd had been resisting arrest. He refused officers' orders to get into a patrol vehicle. He wasn't resisting arrest at the time that he was beeing knelt on. But of course, he couldn't at that point. Also, I believe that the chokehold being used on Floyd was not banned until after his death. In addition, the content was grammatically incorrect. "[F]ormer President's" should be "former presidents'." The dictator comment is worthy of inclusion if it is sourced, which it wasn't. Essentially, there were numerous things wrong with these two paragraphs.

For the second edit, even if the material that I had removed had been in the article, the tweet would still appear without context. That's because it appears in a text box rather than in the body of the article. In order to make it clear that this was the same tweet that we were referring to in the body of the article, the tweet itself should appear there. Display name 99 (talk) 21:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• I left you a note on your user talk page, rather than name you here, out of respect for your feelings. I didn't want to shame you.
• As for whether a single cite per paragraph is sufficient - I follow OVERCITE and have done so throughout my 15 years here.
• As for whether the content was biased - I called the choke technique "unauthorized", and you disputed this. I looked into this, in some detail, in June, when the content was added, and when you excised it. It was the position of the Minneapolis Police Department's position that the technique was no longer authorized. Reporters found an older manual, online, that still described the technique as authorized, but only by officers who had special training in its use, and special authorization. Reporters found other Minnesota Police Departments did not authorized use of this technique. What about that manual? Its presence, on their website, was almost certainly an oversight. It should have been deleted when the MPD dropped the technique. Even if, for the sake of argument, the MPD was lying, and the technique was still authorized, I haven't seen anyone claim the officer had received that training, or was an officer who had been authorized to use the technique.

  So, yes, I think calling it "unauthorized" was correct wording.

• Your grammatical point that I should have used "former presidents'" not "[F]ormer President's" is correct, but hardly grounds for excision of the entire paragraph.
• You wrote "The dictator comment is worthy of inclusion if it is sourced, which it wasn't..." Hmmm. How closely did you read the Wapo article when you concluded the passage wasn't sourced?
• As I wrote in the title of this section "As a courtesy to other contributors, could we discuss complicated or controversial issues on the talk page, not in our edit summaries..." When there is nothing complicated or controversial about an edit, then, by all means, leave your edit summary as the only explanation. But for complicated or controversial edits, explaining yourself solely in your edit summary is a very bad practice. I suggest this is the most common trigger for edit wars, because it triggers other people to respond in kind, with their counter-argument in their own edit summary, when they revert the first party. A couple of back and forths, and you have a terrible edit war.

It is a particularly terrible edit war because it is almost always impossible for an uninvolved third party to follow whatever points and counter-points the edit-warriors think they are making, out of context. They almost always have to step through each edit, one at a time, to see the edit summaries and the actual content changes as a whole. But when they do that they can't see the whole discussion. In my experience, after a couple of weeks, even the edit-warriors can't understand what they were battling over, without stepping through each edit one at a time. You had to do that today, didn't you. Now imagine if I did not take this to the talk page, but had succumbed to the temptation you presented me, and had followed your example and replied in my edit summaries.

Wait, it gets worse. Think about the uninvolved third party, who finds a passage awkward, or puzzling, and looks to an article's talk page for an explanation. Guess what? They won't find it. How are they supposed to know that the explanation is hidden in the edit summaries?

• So, I strongly discourage you from following this practice in future. Geo Swan (talk) 02:18, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• Display name 99, above you asserted I only provided a reference once, for two separate paragraphs I added. You seem to have made this assertion carelessly. Paragraphs are separated by two newlines. Lines separated by a single newline form a single paragraph.
• I restored the material you excised. Geo Swan (talk) 02:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Geo Swan, there would be no "shame" in pinging me to ask me to contribute. My username was going to appear anyway when I responded. Regarding the policy on needless repetition, you appear to have missed this sentence: "In addition, as per WP:PAIC, citations should be placed at the end of the passage that they support." (Emphasis added) Therefore, a citation should always appear at the end of the paragraph. I moved the citations to the end of the paragraph. I didn't read the WaPo article at all before stating that the Tweet was unsourced because the article was cited in a totally different paragraph. I've gotten rid of the text box but quoted the tweet in the body of the article instead, as I explained above would be best. I removed some of the biased language in the article, stuff that you should have known better than to re-add. Words like "slowly and brutally" and "tragic and senseless" are intended to cause someone to form a particular conclusion about Floyd's death that is inviolation of Wikipedia policy. Therefore, I removed this. You failed to respond to me pointing out that it was inaccurate to say that Floyd wasn't resisting arrest, but you restored that content anyway. Therefore, I've taken it back out.If you wish to describe the chokehold as unauthorized, please find a source that says it. I read all three articles and neither one says that it was unauthorized. Therefore, I took it back out, not necesarily because it is wrong, but because it is unsourced. The only article in which Floyd's death is mentioned is the Internetional Business Times article. All it says about it is this: "The unrest began after George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly 9 minutes." It doesn't use the word "chokehold," nor does it make the unproven indication, as this sentence seems to, that the officer intended to kill Floyd. It certainly doesn't say that Floyd wasn't resisting arrest. Finally, I couldn't find anywhere in the three articles a sentence verifying the statement that Trump was criticized for not reaching out to family members. Therefore, I deleted it. Again, feel free to re-add it once you find a source.

Any neutral observer reading these paragraphs would know that something was gravely wrong with them. They were so bad that I didn't see how a post on the talk page was necessary. In the future, you should phrase content more carefully. You should also place your sources better and ensure that stuff you write about can actually be found in them. Display name 99 (talk) 13:34, 28 October 2020 (UTC)