Talk:David Scrymgeour
NPOV
The recent anonymous edit to this page is modeled on several slanted edits to the GPC page and to the biography page of Jim Harris. Some of the information is unverifiable, the tone is unnecessarily hostile and the entire section reads as though it were written to benefit Harris's opponents within the Green Party.
There were numerous protests against Scrymgeour's advice for effectively removing participatory democracy entirely from the Party's ethics. There were also protests based on his involvement with Flaherty and others who had been historically very hostile to ecological goals. A small minority within the party considered him to be an outsider and saboteur who was deliberately steering the party in a disastrous direction to benefit another party or parties.
This may or may not be accurate, but it is not encyclopedic. 22:47, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Autobiography
Mr. Scrymgeour,
- Please do not delete comments made by other editors on a talk page.
- Please reveiew Wikipedia:Autobiography to see why I have reverted your changes.
You may well have good reason to disagree with what is written here, but there is a very basic problem with the subject of an article substantially revising an article. See also Wikipedia:Neutrality. As a result, I think that the best way to address your concerns is for you to provide evidence here on this talk page for changes that you think should be made, and allow other editors to make those changes if they agree that they are appropriate. Please understand that this is not "your" article. You will not be allowed to re-write it as you see fit. Wikipedians are, however, generally very reasonable people, and we will work with you to ensure that this article is as accurate an unbiased as possible. Ground Zero | t 12:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I have now protected this article against editing from unreigstered and recently registered editors. Please raise your concerns here, and they will be addressed. Ground Zero | t 12:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
- again, i would be happy to speak with an unbiased editor. please contact me at david_scrymgeour@hotmail.com D.
David, on Wikipedia, issues over articles are normally addressed on the article's talk page. This is most convenient for all involved, and provides the most open and transparent process. Please identify on this page the specific problems that exist in the article, and provide whatever evidence you have that the information is incorrect. Thanks, Ground Zero | t 12:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I have looked at the article and removed some obvious POV to get us started. Ground Zero | t 12:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
David Scrymgeour's response
re ground zero's note below ...
ok. if this is the method lets start ... although doing this by email or phone would be much simpler and more civilised.
firstly i did not make the original post. i have no interest in having an entry at all.
this entry has been flagged for bias from the beginning as it had been made a small activist faction of the green party. this is one of hundreds of clients i have dealt with.
unfortunately the posting comes up first on google and has been called to my attention as something to be corrected for balance and accuracy if it needs to exist at all.
although far from perfect the following information would be significantly more accurate to be locked while this is resolved.
please let me know how you would like to proceed. it may also be worth referencing CJCurrie who appears to have done some work on this
david_scrymgeour@hotmail.com would be the preferred method to discuss this.
D.
suggested post while this is being worked out below
Career Background
David Scrymgeour worked internationally from the mid 80s through the early 90s as a consultant & trouble-shooter in the information industry. In 1992 he founded the first of a number of information management and training companies. Although a strong management team now runs the day-to-day operations, he remains involved as majority owner of the group.
Conservative Party of Canada
From 1999 through 2003 he held a number of dollar-per-year positions with the former Progressive Conservatives under Joe Clark, ultimately serving National Director of the Party.
His contract expired at the end of the leadership convention that elected Peter MacKay following an agreement with David Orchard. As part of that deal, Orchard objected to him because he was seen to be a promoter of the Alliance/Progressive Conservative merger. MacKay engineered that merger despite the agreement with Orchard, leading to the formation of the Conservative Party of Canada that eventually took power in the 2006 federal election.
(FYI doesnt take much research to get this right. please note the following as one example ...
Globe and Mail, Thursday, Jun. 5, 2003 Deal gives Tory jobs to Orchard supporters By BRIAN LAGHI
OTTAWA -- Progressive Conservative Leader Peter MacKay secured his party's leadership by promising to remove the Tories' national director and guaranteeing David Orchard's supporters jobs at the PC head office, according to a controversial deal made public yesterday.
The deal, which has caused a storm of protest within the party, was made public by Mr. MacKay after demands from his caucus and other party members.
.................
Mr. MacKay said the party's director, David Scrymgeour, had already agreed to leave his job on May 31, the night of the leadership vote. He said Mr. Scrymgeour had been with the party on a contract that ended that evening.
Green Party of Canada
In 2004, he was hired as an advisor to the Green Party by its leader Jim Harris. This party had made an electoral breakthrough in the 2004 federal election, and Harris believed that this was due to his own centralization of power and reliance on paid staff rather than volunteers.
In two position papers entitled Green and Growing by David Scrymgeour and EDA Champions, outlined a structure for minimum critical central coordination under an Executive Director and the building of strong, self-reliant, volunteer based electoral district associations.
Other Activities
He has engaged as a Volunteer Advisor and Board Member for a number of organisations including Canadian Executive Services (Business Development Advisor to First Nations communities and trainer of political campaign managers in the Republic of Georgia); the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust; and the Make Poverty History Campaign.
His current focus is exploring the potential of Private-Public-Third Sector linkages, globally and locally, in the areas of Sustainable Development and the Environment.
Ground Zero's response to D. Scrymgeour
- Please post at trhe bottom of the page. This is the way it is done in Wikipedia. thanks.
- "although doing this by email or phone would be much simpler and more civilised." Please work with me here instead of insulting me. Doing this on a talk page allows any interested editor to participate or to see why changes are being made to the article. This is the way tings are done on Wikipedia.
- "firstly i did not make the original post. i have no interest in having an entry at all." Subjects of biographical articles do not get a say in whether an article appears on them in Wikipedia. We are trying to build an encyclopedia of human knowledge here, not a collection of personal web pages.
- "this entry has been flagged for bias from the beginning as it had been made a small activist faction of the green party. this is one of hundreds of clients i have dealt with." Fair enough. Let's fix it then. But we do not fix one bias by installing another in its place.
- "something to be corrected for balance and accuracy if it needs to exist at all." I don't know whether you have really done enough to warrant an article here, but I believe in improving Wikipedia by adding to it, and by fixing errors/bias, rather than deleting, so I am prepared to work on this.
- "although far from perfect the following information would be significantly more accurate to be locked while this is resolved." For the reasons identified at Wikipedia:Autobiography, I am not prepared to replace a biased version of the article with one written by its subject. Also, your version is not consistent with the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, especially with respect to capitalization. Let's work to fix the current versio of the article. I have already deleted some obvious NPOV material and incorproated some material from your version.
- "it may also be worth referencing CJCurrie who appears to have done some work on this" I'll let him know.
Please identify what, if anything, is wrong with the current version. Ground Zero | t 17:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
ok. lets start by improving fact and balance
ok. i am not trying to be discourteous or to insult you. i have no familiarity with the rather cryptic code of behaviors so apologise for what must appear unseemly to you. i am merely aiming to fix an entry that was conceived out of bias ... and due to its emergence under google at the top of the findings for my name ... has been causing a good deal of grief to my business collegues.
it would certainly be nice for Mr Currie to become involved and possibly take this over as he has invested in it previously. as i have no clue how to 'copy him in' on this conversation i will trust you to do so. thank you
that said lets go over what you have. starting with pre-existing bias is not likely the best way to go but lets at least start with accuracy and then maybe we can move on to the order and relative weight of the facts:
- David Scrymgeour is a Canadian political advisor*
actually he is an organisational designer, strategist and troubleshooter who does the bulk of his work in the private sector. if this is meant to be an encyclopedia entry it might make more sense to go from the general to the specific as proposed in the text i supplied above
- who was once close to
more accurately 'worked with'
- the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
- and Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.
never worked for the ontario party
- As of 2006,
no, 2004
- he was associated with
worked with
- the Green Party of Canada,
- and was a known support of David Chernushenko for that party's leadership.
unproven and of no interest to anyone other than the radical activist group that made the first post. why include it?
- He was also associated and a member of the Green Party of Ontario, having given a proxy ballot for that party's 2005 annual meeting to Dan King, who cast it on Mr. Scrymgeour's behalf on party matters.
trivial. what does this have to do with an encyclopedia. it is not harmful. it is merely frivilous. why include it?
- Contents [hide]
would not a general statement of his central occupation be most appropriate to start?
1 Progressive Conservative Party 2 Green Party of Canada 3 Other activities 4 Footnotes
Progressive Conservative Party
- Scrymgeour had been an aide to former Ontario Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Jim Flaherty.
not true. never an aide. did 3 weeks of volunteer work as a favour to a friend. completely insignificant in the context of his political work and only included to create bias in the eyes of the audience of the activists .
- Flaherty later was elected to the Canadian House of Commons as a member of the Conservative Party of Canada, and was appointed Minister of Finance.
true but given the above hardly relevant. this is not the Flaherty entry
- Scrymgeour served as national director of the federal Progressive Conservative Party in 2002-03.
- He lost this position
as shown in the Globe article article you appended ... the position was not lost ... the contract had expired prior to the orchard deal and was not going to be renewed in any case. the green activists and the orchard activist are the same group and the ones with the axes to grind. hence the bias.
- as part of a deal between David Orchard and Peter MacKay that led to MacKay's assumption of leadership of the party. As part of the controversial deal, MacKay promised to remove Scrymgeour as the Tories' national director,
knowing he had already come to the end of his contract and would not be renewing
- and guaranteed Orchard's supporters jobs at the PC head office. [1]
- Green Party of Canada
In 2004, he was hired as an advisor to the Green Party by its leader Jim Harris
actually hired by its national council
(if you look at the history of all the biased posts relating to the green party you will see that Jim Harris like Jim Flaherty is a lightnig rod for the radical activists. they throw them in whenever possible, regardless of accuracy, to get the right 'flavour' for their case)
- This party had made an electoral breakthrough in the 2004 federal election. Scrymgeour, in a position paper entitled Green and Growing[2], recommended the appointment of an Executive Director to manage the party.
recommended an architecture for the creation of a national political organisation
- In two position papers, Green and Growing and EDA Champions,
in a second paper 'EDA champions' Scrymgeour outlined a balance between minimum critical central coordination under an Executive Director and the building of strong, self-reliant, volunteer-based, electoral district associations.
Other activities
- Scrymgeour worked internationally from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s as a consultant and trouble-shooter in the information industry. In 1992, he founded the first of a number of information management and training companies. Although a management team now runs the day-to-day operations, he remains involved as majority owner of the group.
this is actually the general statement that would logically lead the entry. Scrymgeour is not a politician he is an organisational designer, strategist and troubleshooter
- From 1999 through 2003, Scrymgeour held a number of dollar-per-year positions with the former Progressive Conservatives under Joe Clark, ultimately serving National Director of the Party.
this would be more appropriately placed inder the conservative party heading. his work for Joe Clark and later Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper is infinitely more significant than his minor association with Flaherty which was discussed above
- Scrymgeour also volunteered for the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO) in 2003, and as a trainer of political campaign managers in the Republic of Georgia. He has also engaged as a volunteer advisor, donor and board member for a number of organizations, including CESO, the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust, and the Make Poverty History Campaign. His current focus is exploring the potential of private-public-third sector linkages, globally and locally, in the areas of sustainable development and the environment.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dscrymgeour (talk • contribs) 18:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Comments from CJCurrie
I've provided some additional sources, and have added information concerning the 2000 election and the 2004 leadership campaign. If any of this information is erroneous, please let me know.
I've also removed the protected notice, as it seems unlikely that the recent disruptions will be repeated. CJCurrie 22:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)