Talk:A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

responses

It would be good to see some responses mentioned, such as

https://theobjective.substack.com/p/a-more-specific-letter-on-justice

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1280925848023916544.html

https://medium.com/@acvalens/free-speech-open-letter-harpers-393cd143f1e7

https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/status/1280598033382518784

https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1281672731709366274 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.194.23.121 (talk) 00:09, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I've added "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate", the most well-known response which was featured in the NYT. The others cannot be added unless they are discussed in a reliable source such as a newspaper/magazine. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:35, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Pretty much. Medium is a glorified blog, and we can't pick and choose of our own accord what tweets to mention and what to leave out. They need to be themselves mention in secondary sources. GMG^talk 11:46, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

USA Today source

Crossroads has reverted my removal of the following passage:

The letter has been described as a "high point" in the debate on the topic of cancel culture.

References

The issue is that the quote has been taken out of context—the source reads:

... The post came after ViacomCBS severed ties with the entertainer over an episode of his podcast “Cannon's Class”, where he “promoted hateful speech and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”

The cancel culture debate hit a high point this month when Harper’s Magazine published a letter proposing that successful writers and editors felt stifled by a growing public intolerance.

On the flip side, professionals who specialize in social movements say cancel culture was birthed from groups of people growing tired of others abusing power by controlling the narrative of marginalized communities.

In context, the use of the phrase "hit a high point" is just as a turn of phrase to describe another of many topics the article is discussing. It is not an actual comment, just a journalistic style of writing. We might as well say The letter has been described. Brown has to introduce the topic somehow and non-Wikipedians rarely use such dull phrases as Another prominent instance of the cancel culture debate occurred when ... There are also issues of due weight given that the letter is not covered in the source except in one brief sentence.

Of course has been described is not appropriate in general, except as a summary of multiple authors, and comments like this should be attributed wherever used, so I hope the fact that there is an issue here will not be wikilawyered away. However, I favored removal over attribution in this instance because I believe Dalvin Brown would not have seen himself to be making a sweeping statement that would be appropriate to use in this context. — Bilorv (talk) 15:51, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I re-removed it for now [1] since this comment did make me think that maybe we were making it look like he was praising it for quality, but maybe he meant more that the debate reached a new level of volume. But then again, it did say "a "high point" in the debate on the topic of cancel culture" (emphasis added). I'll have to think about it more. Crossroads ^-talk- 16:43, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

When I read our text, I interpreted it as the author praising the letter for quality. I then read the source and believed that Brown did not intend to imply that. If there's ambiguity over intention or it's down to nitpicking individual words then we should err on the side of caution. — Bilorv (talk) 00:19, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I can understand the concerns about due weight. On the matter of interpretation, I did not see "high point" as praising the letter, but rather as referring to the intensity of said debate. Fa suisse (talk) 21:07, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Boylan tweet

Jennifer Finney Boylan Twitter @JennyBoylan

I did not know who else had signed that letter. I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company.

The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.

July 7, 2020

Crossroads removed the tweet, saying "WP:Undue weight on one person's tweet. No reason to single out this tweet and not the dozens of more others by other signatories."

This is certainly not a hill I want to die on so I'm not going to reinstate it myself, but I believe a direct quote (block or inline) of the tweet provides a better context than does "retracted her endorsement", which is a bit vague. If NPOV is an issue then I'd rather see it solved by adding more views, e.g. those of signatories who reaffirmed their endorsement. Nardog (talk) 09:41, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I stand by my removal and the reason given for it. Most articles don't quote tweets in side boxes. It's WP:Undue and unencyclopedic. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:27, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

References