Talk:Bruce Herschensohn

Superfluous 'cite sources' banner?

The two pages referenced by the banner, Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Citing_sources, talk about referencing sources for "direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged."

There are no quotes nor challenged/likely-to-be-challenged facts in this article. That makes the banner superfluous and distracting. Or is there some other unlinked policy that demands it? Gojomo (talk) 05:24, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

all unsourced information on wikipedia is challengeable. there are no citations in the article to establish the source of the information in it. i could easily add a line such as "Herschensohn is an avid collector of Dresden China". how would anyone know that it's not true, if it's not sourced? sourcing is crucial, as it prevents vandals from slipping stuff like the above into articles. Anastrophe (talk) 05:30, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

But the policy doesn't state 'challengeable'. It's 'challenged or likely to be challenged'. Are you challenging any of the content, or asserting that it is likely to be challenged? Are there any other encyclopedias that source every bit of minutiae? Gojomo (talk) 06:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

for purposes of this discussion, yes, i'm challenging it. your last question makes no sense to me. is there any other encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, at any time, for any reason, with any agenda? Anastrophe (talk) 06:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I suggest that by reflexively challenging neutral, non-controversial information that you have no specific reason to doubt, you are failing to assume good faith, and wasting your time littering articles that contain true, useful and verifiable information with unthinking boilerplate when there are many more valuable contributions that could be made. Gojomo (talk) 03:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

thanks for sharing. Anastrophe (talk) 03:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

1986 primary election

"He finished second, with 587,842 votes (29.6 percent) to U.S. Representative Ed Zschau of the Silicon Valley, who received 7,347,384 (37.1 percent)."

These numbers are inconsistent. 7,347,384 is 37.1% of about 19,804,270 votes; 29.6% of that is about 5,862,063 votes.

Does someone have a good source for the results of that election?

--AndersW (talk) 21:53, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Biases and POV tag

I slapped a POV tag on this turkey because of the rather obvious biases in coverage. The source banner is a good start, but one can generate a paper trail for nonsensical claims by citing a large number of kooky sources. In this case, at least pieces of the article are clearly done by people friendly to Herschensohn (BH). There is the utterly gratuitous description of BH's 1986 opponent as "considered a moderate to liberal"--normally, such a description would not arouse suspicion of bias, but given the current partisanship status and the history of BH as a conservative firebrand, the comment seems inappropriate here--BH lost the primary because they preferred his opponent. Had there been a more open description of the race, it might have been possible to include the tag. But the description is a mere stump, so the tag is inappropriate.

Second, the inclusion of the "strip bars" episode is equally gratuitous. Stating that something "arguably" contributed to an election loss amounts to having no evidence that there was any contribution at all. Not only is the claim of the episode contributing to BH loss dubious in its own right, the contribution then delves into the personal biography of Bob Mulholland. Given that Mulholland has a separate entry, which is linked, and that this is supposed to be an article on BH, again, the reference seems unnecessary. To make matters worse, the three sources cited for the story are all displays of extreme conservative bias--i.e., they are not POV-neutral, so they should not be cited alone in support of content that is intended to be POV-neutral.

But even the sourced material does not support the stated claims. The current version of the article claims that Bob Mulholland was suspended by Phil Angelides. Yet, reference [4] contains the unambiguous line, "Kennedy suspended Mulholland." Given that the cited article is about Kennedy, it seems to be an important point. Yet, there is no substance--just an attempt to obfuscate.

Reference [2] does not provide the information for which it is proffered--it is merely an account of local voting patterns in a very small area of the state, not of the results of the state primary.

Reference [3] is a dead link.

References [5] and [6] are extremely biased and don't try to hide it--citing them alone is inappropriate. However, it is worse than that. Reference [4] is an account of an unrelated political issue that has a brief reference to the Mulholland episode, with the comment, "GOP was outraged". References [5] and [6] go to the point that GOP was outraged over the episode, not that the episode contributed in any measurable way to BH's loss in the election. This is hardly POV-neutral. In legal terms, the three citations amount to hearsay--they describe the state of mind of BH's supporters, not the actual events. The discussion above--concerning appropriateness of the "Unsourced" banner--makes this point abundantly clear. Supporters want to keep this article--and others like it--as biased and unsourced as possible. This is why there is a neutrality policy and someone has to make sure that it is adhered to.

The rest of the article is essentially a stub. There is no content, aside from promotion of BH's books and a selective list of his career stepping stones. It looks more like a paid promotion in Who's Who than an encyclopedic entry. Alex.deWitte (talk) 13:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that the Strip Club issue did not contribute to the loss. I was a California resident at the time and it made a lot of noise and deflected from the campaign. Avatar910 (talk) 19:12, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I was in California during the campaign as well. I do not recall any meaningful intrusion of the strip club story into the campaign--it was widely recognized as a side issue and a distraction that was ignored by voters. BH lost because of his smash-mouth conservatism that did not sit well with voters outside of OC and Central Valley. Either way, irrespectively of your recollections, there is no substantive reference for the influence of the episode on the campaign. And the original language of the person who posted it suggests that even he was not sure there was any connection. Alex.deWitte (talk) 09:09, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

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