Jump to content

Talk:2011 Wisconsin protests

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Qwertyyqwertt (talk | contribs) at 18:17, 11 October 2011 (→February 14?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Pbneutral


Reasoning for including the recent Concealed Carry bill?

Just noticed that this has been added recently to the Timeline in June:

"On June 14, the Wisconsin Senate passed a bill that would allow citizens to carry concealed weapons, if they had a permit and gun training, with a 25-8 vote. The Assembly is expected to take up the bill on June 21."

What does this really have to do with the 2011 Wisconsin Protests? In my personal opinion, the Concealed Carry bill really has nothing at all to do with the protests here in WI, outside of the fact that it's coincidentally taking place at the same time. Because of this, I'm inclined to remove it, however, I will leave it in the article for the time being so as to give the person that added it (and anyone else who feels it should be included) a chance to make their case for how the concealed carry bill is related to the protests. As always, opinions are most welcome one way or the other. If I don't hear anything, I'll go ahead and remove it in a couple days. - 66.188.97.36 (talk) 18:56, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The way it reads now, it isn't clear how this is related to the protests. Has there been protests related to concealed carry? If so, we probably need evidence directly related to that for it to be included in the article. Stylteralmaldo (talk) 22:15, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Removed the reference. Doesn't seem like anyone objects... - 66.188.97.36 (talk) 18:40, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fact checks?

Two quick points. "On June 8 in Madison, protesters of Scott Walker dressed as zombies and caused a disruption during an event where the governor honored the accomplishments of members of the special olympics."[175][176]

This line is very screwy, when read it makes me fell as if the number of protesters where large and actually disruptive. When one views the video it can be seen to be just a group of about or less then 10. MW defines Disrupt as: 1a. to break apart : rupture b. to throw into disorder <agitators trying to disrupt the meeting> 2. to interrupt the normal course or unity of

when i view the video I do not see either of those happening. as walker never stops his speech, and the crowd watches on with very little reaction to the "Zombies"

Also the protesters where protesting the VoterID bill that passed in Wisconsin shortly before this. (check the source, even saying "Yet the protest on Wednesday appeared to be unrelated.") So this event is unrelated to Wisconsin union protests??

If anything a more correct line would be that similar to that of the Fox news source. "Several protesters in zombie makeup "silently" injected themselves into a Special Olympics ceremony in Wisconsin this week when they walked in front of Gov. Scott Walker and stood between him and the group of athletes he was paying tribute to in front of the state Capitol."

Lastly!!! The Special Olympics organizers told media they didn't disrupt the event!

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/123554474.html

"Rachel Grant, a spokeswoman for the Special Olympics, said officials were nervous when the zombie protesters first arrived, but they turned out to be peaceful.

"We were all a little bit on edge, but it turned out for the best," Grant said. "Nothing was disruptive at all."

Kelly Kloepping, another Special Olympics official, said the protesters were respectful and did not diminish the excitement the Special Olympians felt about being in Madison to meet Walker and other leaders.

"We feel it's really about the athletes," Kloepping said. "We knew the protesters were there, but they were respectful of our athletes."

All in all, this line is factually incorrect and seems at the slightest bit biased. Something an article of this political debate, should stay away from but doesn't. Both sides in this wiki article are tit-tating around and fingerpointing with petty and unrelated interjections.

Also with the email"s" of recall challenger Shelly Moore, it talks of e-mails, i believe I've only seen the one mail talked about in the paragraph. I may be wrong though as I've only briefly heard of this "issue". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.95.70.251 (talk) 13:20, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The protest is relevent as the Wisconsin Protests, although primarily related to the collective bargaining, are not exclusively related to it. There continues to be protests....albeit diminishing related to voter ID, as well as the rest of the proposed fiscal budget. Nonetheless, I've added verbiage to give better context as to why the zombie protests were important. There were concerns related to an incident earlier in the day which saw some zombie protesters being arrested at Representative Vos's office. I've included comments indicating that the protest itself was not disruptive as the Journal Sentinel reported. However, it was disavowed by Republicans and Democrats alike and have included that commentary to the article. Stylteralmaldo (talk) 01:15, 3 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia's policy on Copyright Violations, I removed several blocks of text that were cut-and-pasted from copyrighted web pages (with only slight alterations):

According to Wikipedia's policy on Non-free content, small blocks of text can be copied if they're in quotation marks or block-quoted and clearly attributed as quotations. But in this case, a better choice would be to rewrite the text and paraphrase.

I suspect there are numerous other cases of WP:COPYVIO in this article. Davemck (talk) 16:06, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re-added with paraphrases. Stylteralmaldo (talk) 18:07, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it's better, but I think there are still copyvio problems -- some sentences are still virtually identical. There's a good discussion, with examples, of what to avoid at WP:Close_paraphrasing. (I probably should not have used the term paraphrase; "close paraphrasing" can still be copyvio.) I think Wikipedia text should be written so that the reader can't detect that the writer has ever seen the source article, other than that they convey the same facts.
The first edit above (from the WSJ opinion page) brings up a different problem: opinion pages are not reliable sources. As WP:NEWSORG says, "Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces are reliable for attributed statements as to the opinion of the author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact." A case in point is the WSJ sentence "Public unions depend entirely on tax revenues to fund their pay and benefits." That's pretty clearly not true -- but after all, it's just an opinion. Davemck (talk) 17:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely on the WSJ opinion page. I'm removing that statement that "all union moneys come from the taxpayers" because that doesn't make sense on its face. I've paid union dues. Where do they go? – Muboshgu (talk) 16:59, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention that whole sentence was a WP:COPYVIO from the partisan opinion piece cited. There are a good number of COPYVIO and NPOV violations on this page. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:07, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Muboshgu, you clearly are not looking at this issue in a non-partisan manner regarding the small sentence "Union members in the public sector are paid entirely from tax revenues". You have not made a case to dispute this sentence, and continue to disrupt editing. Your union dues go to pay the union leaders, political campaigns, and various other things. As a union member, I'm surprised you do not know such things. Union members clearly can not edit this article without having a biased point of view. S51438 (talk) 16:40, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My "bias" is towards fact, and opinion pages don't meet that level of WP:V. I am challenging this based on WP:V. You need to assume good faith and not use derogatory language about other editors. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:17, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I assume you have removed "all" opinion references from this page? What you removed WAS fact, regardless of what source it came from. You know it's true. S51438 (talk) 01:34, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I assume that I have removed all opinion pieces, at least all that I recognized as opinion pieces. Opinion pieces fail WP:V. We work for verifiability, not fact. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Then why is there an option to allow a FACT in-line citation? 98.196.173.156 (talk) 08:48, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you're referring to {{Fact}}, it's a synonym for {{Citation needed}}. To quote WP:V, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." – Davemck (talk) 20:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

February 14?

Have we decided on an end date yet? Clearly, the protests are not currently happening, but why have we labeled the date February 14? S51438 (talk) 16:49, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The best reference for when things cooled down considerably was June 16 (reference is in the lead). I put this as the end date in the article. Stylteralmaldo (talk) 14:51, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While things have considerably cooled down from the 50,000 in the winter, there are still Capitol Sing-A-Longs Monday through Friday that would qualify as protests. Will revise back to ongoing. Qwertyyqwertt (talk) 18:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Taxpayer funded pay and benefits

I'm at a loss as to why information explaining that the taxpayers fund the pay and benefits of pensions and health care is not allowed to be explained in this article? This article from the Wall Street Journal contained the following information regarding taxpayer funding of benefits: Public unions depend entirely on tax revenues to fund their pay and benefits. This article from the Chippawa Herald contained the following information regarding the same: According to the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds, in the past 10 years, taxpayers contributed more than $8 billion to health care coverage for state workers, while the employees put in a total of $398 million. It was argued by Moboshgu that the Wall Street Journal info was not allowable because he/she said that taxpayers do not entirely fund pensions and benefits. Now he/she is claiming that we can't include the Chippawa Herald info because ALL pensions and benefits are paid by the taxpayers. Which is it? I've put the Wall Street Journal info minus the word entirely as a compromise. Either way, it seems a bit odd to me not to clarify to an uninformed reader of the article not to mention that taxpayers are the ones who had been funding these benefits - particularly since two sources say it is the case. Stylteralmaldo (talk) 23:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The WSJ piece was a problem because it was an editorial, written from a clear POV slant. I'm not the one who opposed inclusion of the Chippewa Herald, that was Gandydancer (though I did agree with him/her). To me, that sentence is redundant. The term "public" refers to taxpayer funded groups and organizations. It seems like you're trying to make a point by making specific mention of it. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:16, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sty stated in his edit review that the WSJ was the "key", however the WSJ editorial used that information to make an argument against public unions. From the article:
Thus the collision course with taxpayers. Public unions depend entirely on tax revenues to fund their pay and benefits. They thus have every incentive to elect politicians who favor higher taxes and more government spending. The great expansion of state and local spending followed the rise of public unions.
To use the phrase in this article and state that it is reasonable because it is referenced in the above wording doesn't make sense since all public officials, including the governor's salary and benefits, are funded by taxpayer money. Gandydancer (talk) 12:57, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The reasoning given at the time of omitting the information from the WSJ was because the argument was that taxpayers did not entirely fund the public employee benefits. I then provided the Chippawa Herald reference which stated that taxpayers funded $8 billion towards the benefits. This to me solved the problem of what portion was funded by the taxpayers. Then to remove the taxpayer reference within the article didn't make sense to me because it doesn't explain that $8 billion of the funding was provided by taxpayers. To merely say the state paid $8 billion does not adequately explain how the state funded that $8 billion. The problem with the WSJ reference was not because it was an opinion piece, but because it was opinion that the taxpayers entirely funded the benefits. Removing the verbiage stating that taxpayers funded the $8 billion doesn't explain how the state funded the $8 billion. It was established through the removal of the WSJ info that not all funding is taxpayer provided. The Chippawa Herald info explains the portion that is taxpayer funded. I hope that made sense as to my reasoning why the information is key. Stylteralmaldo (talk) 13:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:2011_Wisconsin_protests&oldid=455076712"