Talk:Dougie McDonald

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Subject mentioned in right to be forgotten article[edit]

Guardian piece. Probably not worth mentioning in the article if this will be the only coverage. --NeilN talk to me 16:50, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think the fact that it was covered in the three original Guardian article makes it relevant. The Guardian is certainly a reliable source. At the very least there should be a link to the Guardian articles on this page, if not also a link to the article about why those three links are suppressed from search results on Google in the UK.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/oct/29/dougie-mcdonald-sfa-warning-penalty-celtic

Referee at centre of Celtic penalty incident escapes with a warning • Dougie McDonald 'lied' in original statement, concludes report • Official 'full of remorse' after linesman's decision to retire

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2010/oct/30/dougie-mcdonald-penalty-sfa

Dougie McDonald penalty saga exposes need for SFA transparency Referees' tendency to protect their own is again manifesting itself in the response to the Dundee United-Celtic penalty controversy

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/nov/28/dougie-mdconald-scottish-referee

Dougie McDonald, Scottish referee who lied over reversing penalty quits • 'I apologise for my role in that' • McDonald says more action from referees will follow

Xardox (talk) 18:01, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]


The exclusion from Google European searches, and the Guardian's decision to publicise this fact certainly is worthy of mention. This is the first high-profile result of the European ruling, and seems to have fallen foul of the Streisand effect. Arguably, it is now the most significant piece of information about Mr McDonald; far more significant than anything to do with his career in football. Liamcalling (talk) 01:15, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if it would now be appropriate to have the "Celtic v Dundee United penalty controversy" as an article in its own right.

That one incident has now generated several major issues; 

1. Exposure of McDonald's lie
2. Resignations of Steven Craven and Dougie himself
3. Alleged involvement of Hugh Dallas in covering up lie
4. Lead up to Scottish referees strike
5. On-going distrust between Celtic and the football authorities in Scotland
6. Google debacle

Given the above, and the significant involvement of three individuals (Dougie McDonald, Steven Craven and Hugh Dallas), what is everyone elses thoughts on a seperate article? ShugSty (talk) 10:11, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Re undue weight[edit]

Well, the article is tagged for "undue weight" and that seems reasonable. There's an awful lot of material on this one call. I guess people take this pretty serious over there or something. Anyway, sure is hard to sort out, but I'm not seeing that there was any corruption here. Looks like he made a mistake or something. That sucks. I hate it when people make mistakes. I've never made one so I only know about that as an observer, though.  :/

It's an encyclopedia article. Don't know how deep into the weeds we need to get on the details. We want to answer the question "Who is this person?" and the answer is pretty much 1) a long-term football referee who 2) got himself in a pretty big controversy which ended up with a strike and him resigning and everything and then 3) an early "right to be forgotten" case. He's not really that notable a person. The refs are there if you want to really dig into the guy's life.

Probably this amount of detail would be OK if it wasn't a tagged BLP. We're supposed to take tags on BLPs pretty seriously. Granted this is for undue weight rather than unreferenced defamatory material or something which would be much worse, but it's still a tag saying that the BLP is not right and not right in a way that is contrary to the subject's interests and needlessly so. The point I guess is that just spending so much prose on the incident, even if there's nothing directly negative in the material, casts the rest of his presumably no-worse-than-the-next-guy private-citizen life into shadow.

So I cut it down, a lot. It's an attempt. By all means put it back if you want and let's look at it how else we can fix this. But let's not ignore the assertion of undue weight. You can refute it and we can talk about about but for a BLP the burden would be to show that all this is necessary to answering the question "Who is Dougie McDonald?" at a level appropriate for an encyclopedia.

Couple other minor points: what is a "match observer". It looks to me like its some sort of person who attends a match and is employed by the league in some official capacity. Maybe the head referee, can't tell. I changed it to "league official" so regular people can understand it. If you want to restore it, explain it please. An article Match official would be great.

I'm not really happy with "Another referee was given a lifetime ban" (it's ref'd). There's certainly no need to name him (he's a private citizen) and so let's not. But even including the reference sticks in my craw a little bit. I'd rather it wasn't there but I wasn't sure it's not necessary or helpful. Herostratus (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Most referees do not meet WP:GNG except the famous ones such as Pierluigi Collina. I agree with the decision to trim the controversy section because it was becoming too long and out of step with the letter and spirit of WP:BLP.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:00, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Undue Tag[edit]

I made some changes to this article, which were reverted so am giving a fuller explanation here. There are issues with writing referee articles as the popular press is bias and only really cover them when they make mistakes. Fortunately we have WP:BLP and WP:NPOV (in particular WP:BALASP) policies. I have since removed the overcited tabloid sources and hope that no one will reinsert those.

My edit trimmed the controversy section and moved it into the career aspect of his biography, which it forms a part of. The salient points were kept without giving it undue attention. As a general rule we should avoid having sections labelled controversy in BLPs and I don't see why this is any different (if it is then we should have or make an article about it). I did the same with the "After 2013" section as this is a horrible name for a section and all but one sentence related to the aforementioned controversy. Most of the bytes removed in my edit pertained to the daily record (whoever used that as a source should be ashamed of themselves).

For more information on what I am trying to achieve in referee bios see the still being developed User:Aircorn/Sandbox/REF. AIRcorn (talk) 11:31, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The current version looks OK. The controversy over the Dundee United v Celtic penalty incident received a good deal of media coverage and is worth mentioning. The headline "SUPER CALEY GO BALLISTIC, CELTIC ARE ATROCIOUS" is regarded as one of the most famous sporting headlines [1] and is missing from the current version. It may not have much to do with Dougie McDonald, but it is one of the things that people always remember.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:18, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It was mentioned in the previous version,[2] it was just included as part of his career. I reduced it slightly, but it still got a large paragraph.
McDonald refereed a Scottish Premier League match on 17 October 2010 between Dundee United and Celtic. He awarded a penalty kick to Celtic in the 70th minute, but reversed the decision after consulting one of the assistant referees. The incident became the subject of an investigation and McDonald was censured by the SFA Referee Committee for lying in his post-match report about the circumstances surrounding his decision. The assistant referee involved was given a lifetime ban. Four years later several links to articles relating to the incident were removed from Google's search results under the EU Court of Justice's Right to be forgotten ruling. Following complaints, Google restored links to articles in The Guardian newspaper. The attempt to have the links removed drew more attention to the matter, and was seen as an example of the Streisand effect.
WP:undue is a policy and is strictly enforced on WP:BLPs. In the current version we have a referee with a 29 year career who refereed 229 premier games with the major focus on a single match, so I do feel it is undue. I am not saying remove it, it was a notable incident, but to give it the weight it deserves. Is there anything you feel I left out of my version above that should be added back in? Do you have any objections to incorporating it into his career? I do think the Streisand effect mention works better alongside the incident than in a different section.
The "super Caley" headline is in the current version. I removed it in my version as it was unsourced and as you say not really related to McDonald, not to mention my dislike of tabloids. I still think it is a little irrelevant to a referee bio, but it is not a major issue for me if it is included with your source above. AIRcorn (talk) 08:40, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, made some compromises and am hoping the current version is acceptable. The heading is still there it is just a sub heading of his career now. I also think it is a bit more neutral without the words to watch. Also moved some things around. AIRcorn (talk) 07:12, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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