- Jon Roland (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|AfD)
The article was resubmitted with different content to satisfy the established requirements for notability. The original article was created by someone else as a stub, apparently based on the subject being a candidate for public office in the upcoming 2006 election. Although one can understand that after the subject has been a candidate and not won his level of notability might cease to qualify him for inclusion, there are many other notability criteria the subject does satisfy, which can be easily verified by a web search. For example, he has been the subject of a chapter of a book written by a prominent journalist, Jonathan Karl, then a reporter for the New York Post, later a correspondent for CNN, and currently a frequent on-air reporter for ABC News.
Furthermore, the subject has a prominence based on his work as editor of the digital editions of most of the more important works of constitutional history, law, and government, including most of the works of the Founders, the works they read and cited, and commentaries by their contemporaries. These online editions are not mere copies of work done by others. They are authoritative scholarly edits (some in progress) that have caused others to cite those versions as authoritative, and in some cases, unique. Most of the other copies online of these works began as copies of his work, often without attribution. That work has led to the site being linked to by many other sites, which has put the site at or near the top of search engines, and led to recognition as a leading constitutional scholar, evidence by being invited to write articles for encyclopedias, speak to conferences, and submit articles to various journals.
It is suggested that on future deletion reviews, the subject be contacted and afforded an opportunity to respond to arguments for deletion. That was easily done for the subject here discussed, and was not done. The reviewers should also take the time to do a search on the name, which would have yielded abundant material to support notability, or to follow the links provided by the contributors, which often provide justification by reference that are not repeated in the body of the article, in an effort to keep the article concise.
Jon Roland 16:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion - vanity article. -- RHaworth 20:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion and keep deleted, new article does not show multiple non-trivial sources unrelated to the subject covering the subject (arguably shows one, but that's not multiple). Seraphimblade 20:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion - vanity and conflict of interest issues with the author and subject of the article. Notability required to be asserted with reliable sources. (aeropagitica) 23:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion per above; even nomination for review sounds like a vanity page. Furthermore, I find the suggestion that living persons are somehow inherently more notable than deceased persons laughable. Mr. Roland had ample opportunity to provide multiple reliable sources for his claimed notability, which he failed to do, choosing instead to make circular arguments on AfD and here.--chris.lawson 00:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I protest the statement that I have had ample opportunity to provide multiple reliable sources for "notability". I don't keep scapbooks of such things. I selected one that came to mind, and was by someone the administrators are likely to have seen on television. I don't have long periods of time to add content in response to such demands, but must find time between other projects. Yet you consider a few hours since I added that content as "ample opportunity"? I can and will add additional sources when I find them, but that could take several days or weeks. Further, nowhere did I suggest that living persons are more notable than dead ones. I never discussed anything like that anywhere. My scholarly work is all about bringing to the public the works of notable persons, most of whom have been dead for centuries. I am loathe to assert my own "notability", preferring to let my work speak for itself, but when someone creates the article as a stub, and many people discover it and ask for content, then they tell me it has been deleted, I feel a need to set the historical record straight. It is not about "Jon Roland" but his work and the work of others in the Constitution Society. Unfortunately, the tendency of too many people to argue from authority rather than considering work on its own merits is difficult to escape. Dismissing the worker disrespects the work, in this environment. I also object to the summary deletion of the article on the Constitution Society, which it appears is somehow related to this action by the administators. The Constitution Society is a real organization with real members and real activities, the evidence of which is online for anyone to examine. More people read its materials than read all the textbooks in all the lawschools, and its influence is real. That has to count for something unless there is an ideological agenda at work here. Jon Roland 01:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The "ideological agenda" is that articles must be about subjects which are verifiable and notable, and all content in them should be verified by reliable sources. If you can bring quite a few sources to bear in several weeks, then recreate the article, with those sources cited, in several weeks, and it will likely do just fine! You may want to note, however, that we do offer some cautions for those writing articles about oneself or a subject very close to oneself-it's very difficult to remain neutral in such a situation. Seraphimblade 01:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Okay. With some interaction of this kind I may get a sense of the standards you are applying as you understand them, something that does not really come across by merely reading your guidance documents. For example, you now seem to say that "all" content must be verified by those "reliable sources". That goes well beyond your guide documents, which only seem to require validation of notability by a third party, not all content in the article. That is a very severe requirement. I don't know many scholars who could get affidavits that they did all the work of editing a historical writing, much less of all the other things they do of importance. They don't always have witnesses. They just do the work, publish it, and readers review their work and decide for themselves how well it was done. It is not as though there is anyone else who is suspected of doing the work. And what is the validation that the work was done according to scholarly standards? Cites in other works, or by other sites, with favorable comments, of course, but much work of that kind can be available for years before anyone comments on it, other than to make use of it for his own work. There are fashions in history that lead its practitioners to exhibit herd behavior and focus on hot topics to the neglect of those that others might consider more important in the longer term. But being out of fashion does not invalidate the merit of the work. That should always be evaluated on its own merits, not on who does it, or or what others say about it.
- As for verification, what is so difficult about just going online and reading it? It might be more fun to try to find it on a library shelf, but in the age of the Internet online publication is displacing paper publication, which is no longer the sole standard for credibility. Yes, I still write articles for print publications, mainly because I get paid for it, but frankly I almost never read the printed editions. I read the copies online. And I suspect, so do increasing numbers of others.
One more point: If it is your intent to allow deficiencies to be corrected (even if you don't take the time to notify the submitter of such deficiencies to give him a chance to do so), then how is he supposed to correct deficiencies if there is no article he can edit or his submissions are blocked by a protected status? I can understand if the hassles of administering a site like Wikipedia make you somewhat impatient and disposes you to make summary decisions, but there comes a point beyond which impatience becomes abusive. I have been intervening in several cases against judges who, perhaps in a mood of impatience, have been riding roughshod over due process protections and the rules of judicial procedure and conduct. Become too arbitrary and the public is going to start rejecting Wikipedia the way they are beginning to reject the justice system. Jon Roland 02:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Which is why we have review processes, as you are currently using. :) However, a judge is hardly "arbitrary" to say "Hey, in order to work with your claim, I need to see some evidence." It's the same when we request sources-we want our readers to be able to see that what they're reading in our articles is, in fact, true. We also want to see that there's enough source material out there on a subject that we can have a good, comprehensive article on it, from verifiable information. If it'll take you a few weeks to find those sources, come back in a few weeks with them! No one's out to get anyone, but just like anything, we do have some rules, and we try to follow them. One of those involves recreating articles after they've been deleted-it's possible, no decision here is forever, but there's got to be some evidence that it'll be better then it was when the community decided it should be deleted. That's not arbitrary-indeed, what would be arbitrary is to allow someone to recreate the same article over and over against the community's expressed wish, with no way of allowing the community to have input on whether the old decision should be reconsidered. Surely, as an attorney, you do realize that such review processes are quite important, and not always instantaneous? Seraphimblade 02:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- It's rather arrogant to write in the third person, don't you think? Endorse deletion as clearcut vanity -- Samir धर्म 02:31, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion, constant allegations of an ideological agenda whenever a page you create is deleted does not help. -Amarkov blahedits 02:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- A judge, however, if he follows established due process, rules of judicial procedure, and precedent, will set a date and time for an evidentiary hearing. He doesn't just render judgment sua sponte and without due notice. It is now clear that I am going to have to maintain copies of the edit windows for things I submit so I have something to work from in making revisions and resubmitting. But I can imagine most people don't come to this realization until they have been burned in this way. If, as you say, I can resubmit when corrections are made, how am I supposed to make them if the article is blocked? Or if the revised version is summarily deleted again, within seconds, apparently without the revisions having gotten due consideration? And do you ever allow for some reasonable grace period on the creation of new articles, to allow time for them to be composed carefully, and the content you demand be added at a leisurely pace that most of the world operates by when they have other demands on their time? Why not allow the author to finish his edits before deleting the article? If he has the article open for editing (and you have the ability to detect that condition, which a good revision control system has), that should be a clue he is still working on it.
- It is not arrogant to refer to myself in the third person. That is the way I think of myself when writing about myself as the subject of a discussion. It is common practice to do so to maintain the kind of detachment needed to be reasonably objective.
- And if you are going to respond to a suspicion of an ideological agenda by punishing the complainant, that is precisely the kind of abusive behavior that proves the complaint. Judges do that, too, and it doesn't bring confidence in their judicial integrity.Jon Roland 02:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- You're treating this as a legal proceeding. The issue is not if your article got due process, the issue is if it should be undeleted. Since you appear to have no secondary sources, at all, it should not be undeleted. -Amarkov blahedits 03:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One of you has already aknowledged I have one, the book by Jonathan Karl, who devotes a chapter to me, and who, besides being a correspondent for ABC News, has credentials as a historian in his own right. He is notable enough to have an article of his own, although I don't know him well enough to write it. He has interviewed me by phone and on television, but I didn't have much time to ask about him.Jon Roland 03:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- It doesn't really matter to me what "one of us" has done; we are not a homogenous entity. Regardless, even if you had such a chapter, I would still endorse deletion, because that's not enough to establish notability, nor to verify article content. -Amarkov blahedits 03:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- No, but it does indicate you are making hasty decisions and not even reading either the submissions or the comments carefully. Those of you who have volunteered to be administrators are to be commended for your willingness to do so, but whether you buy into the fact or not, you are actually operating in a judicial role in a private law arena, and as such, the rest of the community has a right to expect proper judicial conduct from you. I would hate to see the Wikipedia experiment dissolve into contention in real courts over property rights in the articles about living people or organizations, defamation, neglect, or historical inaccuracy. None of us want that. But if you neglect to practice your judgment like good judges, that could happen. If you were editors of a private publication, only the publisher would have to be concerned about that, but when you create a kind of public utility or commons that has a real impact of the lives and fortunes of people, that situation changes. No academic department or law review journal could be as arbitrary as some of you have been today. A little collegiality would go a long way.
- There is also a problem with verifying "all content". Not all important subjects are investigated by large numbers of people. Some, especially in the early stages, are known only to a single investigator. For example, I have done significant research on letters of marque and reprisal. You have a somewhat deficient article on "Letter of Marque" that I contemplate correcting. However, there is almost no publshed scholarly literature on the subject, and I suspect at this point I may be the world's leading expert. Am I barred from adding my findings because there is no one else to verify them? Yet it is the one measure which might have made the incursion into Afghanistan constitutional, which I at least consider important. Yet when I asked a deputy to the U.S. Attorney General, charged with managing the legal issues involved in that engagement, to explain the topic, he admitted he didn't know anything about it. This was a nominee to the the federal bench parked in the AG's office pending Senate hearings, and he not only knew nothing about a critical subject in his area of responsbility, he disdained learning anything about it. That is the way we get the public officials whose decisions affect our lives! But the topic is also not fashionable in academia, so getting an article published in a professional journal is unlikely. Self-publication is the only option. That doesn't mean it lacks validity. It just puts the burden of verifying on the reader. Jon Roland 03:57, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- As to letters of marque-how, exactly, did you do research without looking at reliable sources? If you did primary research, that's great! Wikipedia is not the place to first publish your research, but once it's published in peer-reviewed historical journals, it is absolutely reliable and suitable to cite as a source. Your contention of "property rights" is fallacious-all contributors agree to contribute under the GFDL whenever they make a submission, and that's clearly stated on the edit page. This means they specifically grant to everyone permission to edit their work. As to defamation, we have clear guidelines in place about that-and avoiding defamation is the exact reason we require sources, and are especially strict on requiring sources when a living person is involved! As to "neglect"-a private website is not required to list information on anyone or anything, and may delete information hosted on its servers entirely at will (unless paying customers are promised other terms, which is not the case here). Surely you're aware of this, as you do claim to be an attorney? As to self-publication, you're welcome to do that. On a privately-hosted website. On Myspace. On any website which will allow you to do so. In a self-published book. However else you can find. But this is not such a website, and confirmation in reliable sources, when publishing on Wikipedia, is not negotiable. Seraphimblade 04:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- To respond to your first point above, I mainly work with primary sources. In many cases they are single copies of old documents that will never be seen by any but a few scholars until I scan, OCR, correct, and publish them on the constitution.org website. My reputation as a legal historian is largely based on that kind of work. Like any historian I will then typically analyze the content of that and other works and draw conclusions. That is what you would call original research that you maintain Wikipedia is not the place to publish, but there is an important difference: Whereas most other analyses discuss primary evidence, they typically do not present the evidence for immediate examination. I do. The reader can examine the same evidence I did and come to his own conclusions from it. However, I do bring one more thing to the table: I did that kind of analysis for literally thousands of other works, probably more than any scholar will ever be able to read, unless he starts early and doesn't waste much time over decades. That can produce insights that don't come out by reading a few passages lifted out of a text.
- Consider the subject of Letters of Marque and Reprisal (it is important not to omit reprisal). Then I find a statement that letters of marque and reprisal may only be issued to private parties. Even my colleague, Doug Kmiec, testified to that effect before Congress. The problem is, that's wrong! As it happened, almost all the letters of marque and reprisal were issued to privateers, because in a world of monarchs who may declare war on their own authority, there is no need to issue them to officers of the Royal Navy. But there is nothing in the theory of the letter of marque and reprisal, a kind of warrant, that restricts the issuance of them to private parties, just as there is nothing in the theory of search and arrest warrants that restricts the issuance of them to law enforcement agents. (I once almost had a search warrant issued to me as a private citizen because the local sheriff didn't want to serve it on a prominent citizen.) But you won't find a pithy citation on that point. You get it from gaining a deep insight into law as the Founders understood it, but because they took the fundamentals for granted, never really explained in concise ways that we could cite today.
- So my problem is, I've found an error, and a serious one, and I am the only expert available to refute it, based on my primary source research. It's not that my research is inaccessible to others. I have tried to make it all available online, but the insights are not expressed in quotable quips. It takes total immersion in the subject. I've done that, and so can anyone else, but I have done it and they are unlikely to. I can cite the authority for my position, but that is a huge body of material that cannot be reduced to a single, short passage, except by my finding about it.
- Why is it a serious error? Because the issuance by Congress of letters of marque and reprisal was the one way Congress had to comply with the Constitution concerning the incursion into Afghanistan. Now, I grant that not many people today care about strict constitutional compliance, until it is violated against them, but it is my general conclusion from the study of history that strict constitutional compliance is one of the most important things in human affairs. That itself is not a position I can support with "reliable" sources, because anyone may cite other "reliable sources" that take the opposite position. Ultimately, it comes down to personal choice. But if someone who made one choice grabs the podium, and no one challenges him, his position can come to be seen, mistakenly, as some kind of irrefutable truth rather than as disputable and disputed.
- On the legal points you make, I am familiar with them, but I also know that what is provided for in GFDL licenses and other accession contracts is for a civilized world that bears little resemblance to what actually happens in courts, where, as the old saying goes, "A good lawyer knows the law; a great lawyer knows the judge." There is a reason why Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, in a talk to the Harvard Federalist Society in 2003, said that the "American legal system is corrupt beyond recognition". If some lawyer smells money you may find your GFDL resembling Madison's "parchment barrier". I fight that corruption every day. It is the reason I don't seek a bar card, because honest lawyers are not allowed to challenge corrupt judges and prosecutors.
It is not just contributors who may have a justiable interest in what is published on the site. Consider the revelation of sensitive information about someone else than the contributor. Information needed to steal his identity, for example. Or revelation of the location of a protected witness, or of a whistleblower for whom it is the government that is the threat. The possibilities for "when did he stop beating his wife" aspersions are endless. In the words of Cardinal Richelieu, "Give me six lines written by the most honourable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him."
- Now I'm not saying one has to make business or editorial decisions on the basis of that corruption, but don't be surprised if it rears up and bites you. "Know everything, believe nothing, and be ready for anything." (And hide your assets.) Jon Roland 07:09, 17 January 2007
- What I got out of all that:
- I shouldn't have to verify everything because it might be new stuff that only I know.
- I shouldn't have to provide secondary sources because I'm gonna give you the primary sources for analysis.
- Both of those fail WP:NOR. -Amarkov blahedits 14:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- No, I am not arguing for special treatment of myself. In all of the above I have been arguing for equal treatment of everyone. I am not important. If I could have my work attributed to "anonymous" that would be fine with me. I once considered doing that, but it doesn't work. People demand to know who did the work, if only to tie the work together to a single author or editor. It is the work, not the worker, that matters. But I am also saying that you are not applying your own standards consistently or even-handedly, or in a way that gives the submitter a reasonable opportunity to respond to demands from editors. I have spent many hours responding to the demands of print editors for more cites, especially of law review articles, where editors seem to feel that one key cite is not enough, but want everything found in "shepardizing" the case, which can result in more footnotes than anyone who reads the article really wants, and cuts into the word limits for the article as a whole. We usually negotiate a compromise.
- I have been taking a tour of many articles of interest to me, and I have not found a single article of any length in which everything is verified. Each of them, like the articles in any print encyclopedia, are a mixture of fact and opinion, some of that of professional grade and some of it not, with perhaps some cites that support some or many points, but not all of them. When I turn to the talk sessions involving changes to the articles, I do not find the discussants applying those standards consistently to themselves or one another, or exhibiting a level of subject-matter expertise that makes their comments a "peer review". I am familiar with the peer review standards of professional journals, and the lesser review standards of law review journals (3rd-year law students who have a lot to learn). My print editors don't even aspire to the standards you claim to uphold. They are content to look at the body of work of those they ask to submit articles, spot check their work, find what they examine to be reliable, and form the general opinion that the rest of the author's work is probably also reliable. That is a leap, given that print encyclopedias and journals can't be corrected as online publications can, but they do so in the recognition that corrections can be made in subsequent editions, or in the case of professional journals, that others will submit articles that challenge the findings of earlier ones. Many of my print article commissions are to correct articles written by others that have come under criticism.
- You have also not responded to my questions. How do we resubmit articles to satisfy your demands when the article is blocked, as someone has done for the Constitution Society article? I see many other articles for other organizations in the field that are very similar to the version I last tried to submit. Indeed, mine was modeled on some of the others. None of the organizations I looked at had any third-party verifications of their notability. I do not see the same standards being applied to articles on organizations that you are applying to articles on individuals. Nor do I think that would be appropriate. It can't be numbers of voting members. That would probably exclude the Republican and Democratic National Committees, the only formal organizations for their parties with voting powers, organized as nonincorporated associations. Many important organizations are "private foundations" under IRS definitions, others are "public foundations" with self-appointing boards who have the only voting powers. A more reasonable way to assess notability, for individuals or organizations, would be to put up an article and count the numbers of page visits over some period of time, then give extra weight to some deemed notable by peers in their field. After all, 18th century legal philosophers are not going to get as many hits as rock stars, but those of us in that field can better assess their importance to the development of legal thought.Jon Roland 16:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Jon, the solution here is pretty simple. Cite third-party reliable sources (scholarly legal journals, major media outlets) that have covered you and your work and no one here will contest their validity or notability. If you can do that, which ought to be a fairly simple task, it will be quite easy to get the articles in question restored. If you cannot cite such third-party sources, you have no argument, period.--chris.lawson 18:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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